Tag: The King Must Die

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs – 5/31/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles! I hope this week has treated you well.

BEFORE I GET INTO IT: my longtime best friend has joined me in creating a book blog! It’s over on Wix, but it’s well worth migrating to another website to see her excellent book reviews. Go show Daisy’s Fables some love!!

This week: this one really feels like I’m a 12-year-old holding up my interests and talking at you about them, but that’s what blogs are for, right?

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 5/31/26

“Huey Newton” – St. Vincent

Sit down. I’m yapping about St. Vincent’s self-titled album again. You WILL listen. You subscribed to this blog, this is the price you pay…

I really haven’t changed since the age of 12, huh? It really makes pieces of my soul wither to see companies running with the joking “your inner child needs a little treat” expressions and turning the healing experience of becoming one with your inner child corporate. No, your inner child doesn’t need the new Starbucks drink, or whatever. That being said, preordering the 10th anniversary pressing of St. Vincent’s self-titled album was for me, but also my inner 12-year-old. As I sat there listening to it, I could feel her curled up inside of me like a chrysalis. I feel like I’m slowly becoming everything she wanted me to be.

But present me reveres St. Vincent as much as 12-year-old me did. Now that I’m older, it’s become one of those puzzle boxes of albums with new layers that reveal themselves every time you listen to it. (And that’s saying something, because I listened to it a concerning amount in middle school.) For me, this listen made me realize that this album is musically and thematically sound. There isn’t as much of a narrative to it as some of St. Vincent’s other albums, but throughout the many modern anxieties that she dishes out, there’s this through line of life being swallowed by the Internet; it’s meant to be more of a near-future thing, if her cult leader persona is anything to go by, but it rang true in 2014—and today. Clark wrote “Huey Newton” as a loose stream of consciousness song; the reference to the Black Panther Huey Newton is only relevant because of a vivid dream she’d had about him after taking a high dose of Ambien. For Clark, the lyrics are “tied to the next in a way that I don’t even understand…It has the feel of an extended Google search, and is set in the near future, after a long winter.” It is kind of a sonic doomscroll in the way that it pinballs from one disconnected image to the next. But you can see the intention of the artifice of the Internet that comes through in some of these images; “Fake knife, real catcher,” or “fuckless pawn sharks” evoke the ease of which people construct their identities even though there’s nothing behind the curtain. 12 years later, her image of a lawless internet populated by fakers and criminals has become even realer, with the blight of AI polluting what was already polluted in the first place. (For the record, I’m taking the line “Cowboys of Information” as the name for my purely hypothetical St. Vincent cover band.)

“Entombed in a shrine/Of zeroes and ones” remains one of the hardest lines on the album, if only in delivery alone. “Huey Newton” switches from a more restrained, dreamy piece of indie synth-pop before launching a salvo of guitar shrapnel in your face at the 2:37 mark. Every line is spit as her signature guitars dissolve into glitch-like fuzz. It all sounds distinctly pixelated, aggressive in its assault, as though the false veil of the digital world is being torn apart by a virus before your eyes. The beauty of St. Vincent to me is that the layers on “Huey Newton” are present on every song—everything has digitized tree rings hewn into it, every one revealing something about the vibrant tapestry of this album’s dystopian, digital world.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Machinehood – S.B. Divya – “Entombed in a shrine of zeros and ones, you know/You know/Oh, with fatherless features/You motherless creatures/You know…”

“Greta” – Cate Le Bon

Cate! Le Bon! Cannot! Make! A! Bad! Album!

Genuinely baffling how one person can be this talented. Sure, there are weaker spots in her catalogue, but I don’t think there’s such a thing as a bad Cate Le Bon song. I’ve just listened to CYRK, her second album, and it’s just as inventive as some of her later work, though quite different in sound. Before she crafted atmospheres from saxophones and synths, she had a more traditionally indie rock sound, but not without the unique lyrical and vocal touches that she’s always carried. CYRK as a whole is playful (fitting for an album named for the Polish word for “circus”), an adventurous branching-out into whatever struck Le Bon’s fancy. In spirit, it reminds me a lot of Björk’s early work, where she was just putting out feelers wherever she wanted, with only the intention to make daring music.

“Playful” doesn’t exactly describe “Greta” though. It’s one of the slower, more contemplative songs on the album; aside from the vaguely trumpet detour at the end, most of it relies on muted guitar and bass. For that reason, it came out of nowhere for me. What also came out of nowhere was how emotionally moving this track is; Le Bon softly sings of a subject with “eyes the size of lagoons/Dreaming wild” and whose baby days are “coiled up inside her like ribbons all tied.” It feels like she took a telescope and looked down at me as a child, my eyes turned skyward. There’s something about it that feels like a comforting lullaby, from the references to a child born in the stars to the slow rhythm, fit for gently rocking a cradle back and forth. It feels like an ode to every weird child who refused to let the weirdness get beaten out of them, no matter how hard the world tried. If I’d heard this as a kid, I feel like I would’ve found infinite solace in it, but now that I’m hearing it as an adult, it feels like a potent reminder to keep the child alive, to not let the ribbons of baby days get tangled or forgotten, and to remember that all of us are made of star stuff.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Beautyland – Marie-Helene Bertino – “Observatories clocked you in the stars/They were holding you so dear/Greta, be good to yourself/You’ve always been here.”

“I Might” – Wilco

The Whole Love does not get the love it deserves. Fully acknowledging that I have a fog of nostalgia surrounding my head whenever I talk about this album, this album is severely underrated. I think the problem with Wilco’s discography is that Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is such an obvious, career-defining best that it overshadows so much of the adventurous work that they’ve made in the decades since. And if we’re talking about adventurous, then we need to talk about The Whole Love, an unexpected buffet of Wilco’s classic alt-rock sound and explorations out into both the electronic and folk worlds. “Art of Almost” and “Sunloathe” really shouldn’t be on the same album in theory, but The Whole Love makes it happen.

This album was the first Wilco release I remember being…well, conscious for. I was in elementary school when it came out; I specifically remember my dad playing the album all the way through while driving to work and watching the Popeye crossover music video for “Dawned On Me” at the old studio where I took piano lessons. So even before I went through the whole album on my own, I’d already listened to the whole thing. “I Might” was one of the many songs on the album that remained in a nameless limbo in my memory as A Wilco Song That Certainly Exists, but I couldn’t put it to a concrete song. It sounds like your average Wilco song from the 2010’s, with its driving rock sound and cheery organs, but even though it’s not as full-throttle weird as “Art of Almost” (which comes right before it on the album…talk about whiiiiplaaaaash), it has the spirit of “let’s try everything, what’s the worst that could happen?” Jeff Tweedy’s lyrics are nonsensical and free-association (“Your sno-cone/And it’s piss and blood,” anyone?) and the chorus of “You won’t set the kids on fire/Oh, but I might” is…wild, obviously, but the more I listen to it, the more it feels like it’s a defiant statement of turning his past work—and people’s expectations of the band—upside down and destroying them. The Whole Love came out of its ashes, and to me, it’s still one of the most daring albums in their catalogue.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Obake Code – Makana Yamamoto – “It’s in the cards, oh oh/’Get Well Soon – everybody’/Do all lies have a taste?/Let it go, I don’t know, oh…”

“Advice & Vices” – Chelsea Wolfe

I’d forgotten about “Advice & Vices” since…at least high school, around the time I had my Chelsea Wolfe awakening proper and listened to The Grime and the Glow, her first album. Hearing a song like this brings up so many contradictions—I love it, but I simultaneously feel like it’s slightly distant from the music she’d become known for, and yet it feels so innately Chelsea Wolfe. It’s always been goth, but it’s not cloaked in quite the same foreboding atmosphere as much of her later work. The album is much more lo-fi, and yet you can already see the seeds of her signature style germinating; “Advice & Vices” feels like a more understated indie rock song, until you hear Wolfe’s muted ghostlike howls recorded at the very end of the song. Her voice is already strong here, and it’d only get stronger. But it’s like watching Wolfe fish in a frozen lake for what would become her sound; the ice is melting, and around it is what would become the iconic artist that I love today. She was always that good.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The King Must Die – Kemi Ashing-Giwa – “I never listen to my own best advice, no/Like one thing leads to another/Like one heart bleeds for another/And everybody wants what they can’t have…”

“New Muscles” – mary in the junkyard

The cynical part of me is starting to think that mary in the junkyard (or their management) might’ve just been too good at picking singles. But the more optimistic part of me is starting to think that Role Model Hermit is going to be such a fun album. We’re at three singles now ahead of the album’s July release, and each one has been so different from the other—this is pretty much worlds apart from “Candelabra.” It’s also a very different song than I’ve expected from mary in the junkyard, and…I love it.

“New Muscles” is such an uplifting, confidence-boosting song. But from the more gloomy instrumentation, full of strings and percussion that sounds like somebody’s whacking a plastic bucket with a spoon, you wouldn’t think it. Yet it’s the perfect song for dusting yourself off and getting back on your feet. It’s all about emerging from a cocoon and embracing all of the possibilities of your new, stronger, and more healed self: “I’ve been getting up and getting out/Working out and working on myself/New muscles all over my back/New muscles all over my back.” It feels like the spiritual successor to Wilco’s “Kicking Television” in terms of empowering indie rock songs about self-improvement that totally avoid sounding corny. It has a playful element to it (“I will take you down with one finger”), but it balances the joking “they’ll never see the new me coming” attitude with a genuine, sparkling hope for the wonderful things that’ll happen once you start exercising these new muscles and putting that healing self to work. “New Muscles” came out at a very advantageous time in my life—I’ve been feeling some version of this song for a while, what with trying to claw my way out of a multitude of bad habits and becoming more independent in my life. It really does feel like emerging from a chrysalis, even though I know that I’ll probably be emerging from a number of chrysalises over the course of my life. For now, I’m taking this new self to better places. Here’s to flexing your new muscles.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Juliet Takes a Breath – Gabby Rivera – “Courage in my bones/I embrace the thunder and the lightning/I will make it so hard to forget me…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Sunday Songs

Sunday Songs: 3/15/26

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Sunday, bibliophiles!

This week: inside you, there are three wolves: one is only skin, one is only in my dreams, and the other is only you…

Enjoy this week’s songs!

SUNDAY SONGS: 3/15/26

“Only Skin” – Joanna Newsom

This song’s a way-homer, but it’s a hell of a long way home. It’s difficult to pitch this song, because yeah, how do you convince somebody to willingly listen to a nearly 17-minute long song whose main instrument is the harp with a decidedly squeaky-voiced vocalist? I doubt it’d convince you further if I said that it took me at least two listens to really get it. But when I did, I got it. I don’t think I’ve ever been captivated by a song this long, or this proggy. I say “prog” because there’s an element of this that its detractors would probably dismiss as self-indulgent, artsy-fartsy bullshit, and that its defenders would call epic. Prog of any subgenre is hit or miss for me, but I think what’s valuable about it is that it emphasizes art for art’s sake—it’s not afraid to get sprawling in service of creating music that defies mainstream traditions. I doubt that there was anything else like the harp-dominated, esoteric folk of Joanna Newsom released in 2005. Most of the imagery surrounding it feels medieval, and there’s a certain bardlike quality to how Newsom presents herself (especially on the album cover of Ys). But to me, it strikes me as strangely Appalachian, more rooted in the pioneer times of the U.S. in the 19th century than anything—particularly in this song, it’s the more folky instrumentation, the mentions of somewhat modern war imagery (even if it’s in an in-song dream sequence), and, somewhat irrelevantly, the way that Newsom says “swimmin’ hole.”

But really, “Only Skin” has genuinely made me go a bit bananas. Admittedly, I was exposed to this song through separate TikTok trends, but frankly, it’s wild that a song as weird as this got any traction. But this song is downright captivating. At best, I feel like I’m picking it apart in the same way that I would some esoteric classic in my English classes; other times, I feel like the voice in my head is about to bust a vein, announcing different elements of the track like a WWE announcer: “AND THERE’S ANOTHER TEMPO CHANGE! FELLAS, WE’VE GOT ANOTHER TEMPO CHANGE—AND HERE COMES BILL CALLAHAN WITH THE STEEL CHAIR!” (And yeah, that was wild to find out too—he has a brief but prominent feature about 13 minutes into the song.) Newsom has this distinct voice that squeaks so much in the first few seconds of the song that I genuinely though it was studio feedback, but I love that nontraditional quality of it—she peeps and howls and mewls, defying all notions of how the feminine voice is supposed to sound. She has this kind of sprite-like quality about her that makes her already stunning lyricism even more like a fable or a fairytale—there’s whole handfuls of lyrics that stop me in my tracks: “Back on the patio/watching the bats bring night in,” “The retreat of their hairless and blind cavalry,” “And I watched as the water was kneading so neatly/Gone treacly” are just a handful of the gems that Newsom has scattered through the rich earth of this track. I could probably go on for at least two paragraphs longer just picking apart all of the poetic devices scattered throughout, but this part of the post is already getting unwieldily long. But the real emotional oomph is the juxtaposition with the more devastatingly bare lines, things like the waver in her voice when she repeats the motif of “That’s an awfully real gun.” It all has a very Kate Bush quality about it, both in the vocal and lyrical styles—as well as her stories of women.

She breathes wonder and fear and devotion and snapped rage into every line—it’s so dense that I can only scrabble for certain meanings. As far as I can tell, Newsom is the kind of enigmatic artist who ostensibly does write true stories, but obfuscates them under at least seven layers of fiction so that they’re all but impenetrable. There’s hints of personal relationship turmoil, something that her ardent fans have been desperately trying to puzzle out in the 20 years since this album was released. In my mind, I can see some kind of 19th-century narrative of a desperate woman married to a man wracked by trauma. She breaks her back trying to provide for him, and he only responds with demanding more and more still of her, without any thought to what she’s going through. I don’t blame said TikTok trends for choosing the part that they did: the part beginning at 13:02 (yeah, sorry) is the most striking part of the song, the climax where the woman reaches her breaking point. You’ve heard me ramble about the watering-down of female rage…but if you want real, desperate, breaking-point female rage? Step right up. Holy shit. This part is the musical equivalent of the straw that broke the camel’s back, the final response of the protagonist as she confronts him about how much she sacrificed just to keep him happy: “All my bones, they are gone, gone, gone/Take my bones, I don’t need none.” I get goosebumps every time I listen to it. This is why it’s worth all 16 minutes and 53 seconds—even if you don’t appreciate the highs and lows of the journey itself, the payoff from that buildup is worth every note. Like Oingo Boingo’s “Change,” it goes through movements, but all in service of a staggeringly intricate musical narrative.

I think those reminders of Oingo Boingo and Kate Bush, at least in terms of their mindset if not in their musical style, is what makes “Only Skin” such a spectacular song to me. Art for art’s sake implies a kind of self-indulgent quality, but there’s nothing much more admirable to me than putting out art that’s nothing but the vision in your brain, removed from all sense of trend-chasing or conventionality. If not for the musical freaks of the world, we wouldn’t have art as singularly unique as this. Art needs not appeal to everybody—just you, in the end. And if it finds an anchor in somebody else, then all the better. But it’s got to be for you.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Crane Husband – Kelly Barnhill – “All my bones, they are gone, gone, gone/Take my bones, I don’t need none/Cold, cold, cupboard, lord, nothing to chew on/Suck all day on a cherry stone…”

“Only In My Dreams” – The Marías

What I appreciate about The Marías’s Tiny Desk Concert was that María Zardoya did what I love with a Tiny Desk Concert from an act that’s been around long enough to accumulate a larger discography; she called the setlist a “tasting menu” of their career, with selections spanning from their newest album to their earliest releases. It gave me the perfect jumping-off points for getting into their music. “Only In My Dreams” is off of their very first EP, Superclean, Vol. 1. It’s always so intriguing when you can see the nascent signs of a band’s sound beginning to solidify so early on. Sure, the lyrics aren’t as refined (and the music video veers on being corny), but already, their distinctive flavor of dream pop was right there, waiting to be chiseled away. If this track is proof of anything, it’s that when you have a clear vision of what’s you, it’ll always shine through in the music, and time will only expose it further—it certainly did so for The Marías.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The Stars and the Blackness Between Them – Junauda Petrus – “You’re everything I need/To bare this fear/The demons in my bedThey’re always here/It’s only just a dream…”

“Savior Complex” – Phoebe Bridgers

“Savior Complex” was a favorite of mine when Punisher came out…what do you mean, almost 6 years ago? I remember watching that music video in December of 2020 and, as I did with everything in reach, looked at it with a very Fargo Season 4 lens, but to be fair, they have the commonality of a black and white vignette of a bloodied Irish man in a sketchy hotel with a dog that follows him everywhere. (Rabbi Milligan is everywhere for those with eyes to see him.) Listening back to this song is making me marvel at just how immersive Phoebe Bridgers’ atmospheres are. Her best songs feel like being inside of snow globes, but every snowflake feels just as real as one would in the outside world. There’s an ice-skating rink somewhere in that snow globe, somewhere in the middle of a city, where the flickering lights of the skyscrapers illuminate the ice. “Savior Complex” evokes the palate of the dead of night in December, with starry flourishes from the celeste, Rob Moose’s orchestral arrangements, and the understated murmur of Bridgers’s acoustic guitar. Like the album cover, it evokes the feeling of being absolutely alone, out in the middle of nowhere—lonely and liberating in equal measure. Yet Bridgers’s wintry whisper of a voice is what anchors “Savior Complex” in the end, with her stripped-to-the-bone lyrics: “I’m a bad liar/With a savior complex/All the skeletons you hide/Show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.” As poisonous as the relationship sounds, every utterance of “show me yours, and I’ll show you mine,” feels like a secret you’re being let in on.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Camp Zero – Michelle Min Sterling – “Baby, you’re a vampire/You want blood and I promised/I’m a bad liar/With a savior complex…”

“Fourteen Black Paintings” – Peter Gabriel

Us is full of gems. I almost called them hidden gems, but most of them are pretty easy to identify as gems on the first listen. But amongst gems, some songs get overshadowed in the process. Practically every song on this album hits me like a train, so it’s exceedingly difficult to compete when about half of the album makes me feel like this after I listen to it. But I’ve found that in the three and a half years since I’ve listened to the album, there’s always another layer to peel back. “Fourteen Black Paintings” doesn’t necessarily have the gut punch of “Come Talk to Me” or “Secret World” or even the grooves of “Digging in the Dirt,” but to me, it thrives on simplicity. It’s one of the sparser songs on the album, but all of the lyrics speak for themselves, plain and simple:

“From the pain come the dream/From the dream come the vision/From the vision come the people/From the people come the power/From this power come the change.”

That’s it. That’s the entirety of the lyrics in this four and a half minute-long song, other than Gabriel’s hypnotic murmuring. It has the same, dense arrangements and international instrumentation (that haunting instrument you hear at the beginning is a duduk, an Armenian flute), and yet, it’s all so muted and subtle that it tends to relegate itself to the background. Yet it’s proof that even Gabriel’s most seemingly simple songs are anything but throwaways; though it doesn’t have the same striking emotional highs as some of the other tracks on the album, Gabriel’s soaring vocals make up for any need for them. In fact, it’s quite like the fourteen black paintings that Gabriel is referencing in the first place: fourteen black paintings by Rothko, all housed in the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas; though they seem like blocks of solid black to the casual observer, the brushstrokes within prove their deliberate and intricate construction. Quietly throbbing and pulsating, “Fourteen Black Paintings” remains an upfront declaration on the nature of power and resistance.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

The King Must Die – Kemi Ashing-Giwa – “From the vision come the people/From the people come the power/From this power come the change.”

“I’m Only You” – Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians

Consider this the millionth post where the gist just ends up being “Jesus, can Robyn Hitchcock leave some of that top-tier songwriting for the rest of us?” Predictably, I’m still stuck on the show I saw him at back in February, and I was delighted to learn that pretty much every other member of my family got as knocked off their feet as I was after hearing the line “I’m a house that burns down every night for you.” There’s a line that’ll stick in your head forever. Here’s the real kicker about “I’m Only You,” though: I’d say at least 95% of the lines are like that. “I’m a policeman working in an empty house?” “I’m a snow-covered mountain in an empty room?” “I’m a liquid you’re dissolving in?”

There’s so much in here about empty structures and becoming a vessel just to hold somebody else, but I found an interesting dichotomy with the lyrics: they’re all either about being said vessel (“I’m a liquid you’re dissolving in”) or being built for a purpose, but being abandoned (“I’m a distant steeple on a long-deserted plain”). It’s such a striking contrast between becoming empty or being surrounded by emptiness—and what a stunning metaphor for being devoted to somebody to the point of total self-sacrifice, only to find that you’re only a shell without them there.

…AND A BOOK TO GO WITH IT:

Nothing Burns as Bright as You – Ashley Woodfolk – “I’m a mirror cracked from side to side/I’m a snow-covered mountain in an empty room/I’m a house that burns down every night for you…”

Since this post consists entirely of songs, consider all of them to be today’s song.

That’s it for this week’s Sunday Songs! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Books

The Bookish Mutant’s Feminist Books for Women’s History Month (2026 Edition) 🚺

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Wednesday, bibliophiles!

In the U.S., March is Women’s History Month! More than ever, it’s blatantly clear that this administration views women as inferior and disposable, given the sweeping legislation attempting to curtail women’s rights and the complete lack of consequences here in the States for those in the Epstein Files. With all of that weighing on my shoulders, it’s hard to not feel that I’m disposable; I’ve unfortunately realized from a fairly young age that the government does not have my best interests at heart, but it’s hard not to internalize that rhetoric that I don’t matter. But that’s exactly how they want us women to feel. We have to remember, especially now, that the government is no match for the power that we have in numbers and strength. After all, this is Women’s History Month—there’s a long, proud line of women who have fought before us, and if they could face the oppression of their times, then we can face the oppression today. For all women—women of color, queer and trans women, disabled women, immigrant women, and all the rest—there is always hope.

So for the occasion, I’ve compiled another list of feminist books for women’s history month: fiction and nonfiction, Adult and YA, and from all different genres and contexts. (NOTE: I’ve included We Will Rise Again in this list; not all of the contributors to this anthology are women, but I thought this would be fitting since it directly talks about resistance and feminism, and many of the contributors are women. This is not to diminish or invalidate the different identities of the authors, but rather to celebrate the feminist message that they encourage.) I hope you enjoy this list, and I hope it makes you realize that there are so many ways to be a feminist.

For my previous lists, click below: 

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

Let’s begin, shall we?

🚺THE BOOKISH MUTANT’S BOOKS FOR WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH🚺

SCIENCE FICTION:

FANTASY:

REALISTIC & HISTORICAL FICTION:

NONFICTION:

TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of these books, and if so, what did you think of them? What are your favorite feminist books? Let me know in the comments!

Today’s song:

That’s it for this list! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Monthly Wrap-Ups

January/February 2026 Wrap-Up 🌨️

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Saturday, bibliophiles!

We’ve all felt it, right? Like the past two months have simultaneously crawled by excruciatingly slow and then sped up, and then the cycle repeats itself? Anyways, I’m in denial that tomorrow is the first day of March, but in the meantime, I’ve got some books to recap.

Let’s begin, shall we?

GENERAL THOUGHTS:

Before I go on: my heart breaks for the trans community, and especially all of the trans folks in Kansas. I’d like to direct your attention to somewhere to donate to/a potential resource if you need to get out of a dangerous state—the Trans Continental Pipeline, an organization based here in Colorado that helps relocate queer and trans people from unsafe environments. Donate if you can! Sending all of my love to my trans siblings, today and every day. You are loved.

Alright, so here goes nothing with this recap of the first two months—

Wait, first two months? Insert that one Tintin meme (“What a year!” “Captain, it’s only February…”) here.

But if there’s anything that those two humble months have taught me, it’s the value of staying busy during difficult times. The government committing war crimes not even a week into 2026 feels about as American as apple pie and baseball at this point. I can’t remember a time since the age of 12 where it hasn’t been at least partially a scary time to be alive, but January and February both exemplified that, what with the horrors of ICE in Minneapolis (and elsewhere in the States) and the formal declaration that our government is a rat’s nest of the richest and most depraved pedophiles (what else is new?) imaginable. I’m rarely grateful to be this busy. What with the honors thesis and everything crammed into my final semester of undergrad, I’ve had so much to keep me busy, and this period of work couldn’t have come at a better possible time for me. I get frequent flashes of guilt that I should be doing more: the world is burning, and I’m just chiseling away at this thesis in a coffee shop. But this is my education we’re talking about, and I’m trying to focus on not falling into stagnation creatively and keep my mind limber, which isn’t nothing. And I did knit the Melt the ICE hat—I spent about 75% of these past two months learning how to make a hat in preparation for this, and I’m glad I’ve got this finished project to show for it.

It’s difficult for me to separate politics from the past two months. But I’ve still been going at a number of projects. There’s all the reading, which has also kept me afloat both intellectually and emotionally. I’m taking a class on People of Color and Social Movements, and I’ve already gotten several great books out of that. Ever since picking up knitting, I’ve discovered that I’ve accumulated and awful lot of hobbies. But what better time to have a ton of hobbies? So I’ve been knitting my way through the horrors. I’ve been chipping away at some Cate Le Bon and Robyn Hitchcock on guitar…to varying degrees of success. I’ve been sketching out sci-fi soldiers and spaceships and ordinary people to better visualize my thesis and my novel. And speaking of said novel…ANOTHER DRAFT DONE, BABY! 108,000 WORDS! The key for me here, above all, is to not become stagnant—that’s when it’s easiest for both my negative anxiety thoughts and excess rumination on the bad news to take hold. At this point, Instagram has made it so that sticking my head in the sand isn’t an option, but I sure can limit my intake of negative news. So don’t underestimate the value of putting the phone down, hanging out with friends, and your craft of choice—and, obviously. reading.

Anyways, here’s my Melt the ICE hat:

My magnum opus.

BONUS: I meant to slip this in as a bonus after one of my Sunday Songs posts, but there’s one, singular thing that has made me feel patriotic as of late, and it was the Benito Bowl. Have I ever really cared about his music? Nope, but I respected his politics. I did not expect to be crying while watching the Halftime Show the morning after the Super Bowl. I full-on saluted my phone with tears in my eyes when he shouted out Colombia. GOD BLESS AMERICA!

JANUARY READING WRAP-UP:

I read 13 books in January! Though there were some misses here and there, I had an absolute slam dunk of a month, with two 4.5 star reads and one 5 star read. If that’s not a good start to my reading year, then I don’t know what is!

2 – 2.75 stars:

Son of the Morning

3 – 3.75 stars:

Pod

4 – 4.75 stars:

Railsea

5 stars:

Borderlands/La Frontera

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza – 5 stars

Borderlands/La Frontera

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

FEBRUARY READING WRAP-UP:

I read 12 books in February! I mixed it up with new-to-me and familiar authors, and although I had my first book in the 1-star range this month, there were tons of fantastic books that I discovered too. I thought I’d get lower than this because I ended up reading several VERY thick books in a row, but I’m happy with this number. And as it’s Black History Month, I focused on Black authors.

1 – 1.75 stars:

Every Variable of Us

2 – 2.75 stars:

This Great Hemisphere

3 – 3.75 stars:

This Town Is on Fire

4 – 4.75 stars:

Salvation: Black People and Love

FAVORITE BOOK OF THE MONTH: The King Must Die – 4 stars

The King Must Die

REVIEWS:

SUNDAY SONGS:

BONUS:

Today’s song :

NEW MITSKI, HOW ARE WE FEELING

That’s it for this wrap-up! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (2/17/26) – The King Must Die

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Confession time: I was not a fan of Kemi Ashing-Giwa’s debut, The Splinter in the Sky. I didn’t think I would read any of her other books. But my hunger for sci-fi knows no bounds, and when I saw this, I was intrigued enough by the premise to give her writing a second shot. Thankfully, the gamble paid off—The King Must Die was an unexpected delight, full of rebellion, blood, and the friendships that somehow spring up from those other two things.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The King Must Die – Kemi Ashing-Giwa

Newearth was once humanity’s last hope, a planet terraformed by incomprehensible, alien overlords. Now, it’s on the verge of destruction, with dwindling resources divided unfairly amongst the struggling poor and the Sovereign that rules over them. What’s more, the Sovereign has the power of the omnipotent, alien Executors on their side, willing to do their divine bidding at a moment’s notice, leaving a path of destruction in their wake. Fen, the daughter of anti-imperialist rebels, is on the run after the assassination of her fathers. With a target on her back, she flees for a neighboring rebel faction. But when Alekhai, the ruthless heir to the Sovereign, stumbles directly into the plans of the rebellion, Fen is faced with a brutal choice: join forces with him, or let the rebellion fall prey to the Sovereign.

TW/CW: murder, loss of loved ones, gore, blood, violence, descriptions of injuries, torture

I almost passed on this novel when I saw that it was by the same author as The Splinter in the Sky. But sometimes, every once in a while, it’s worth it to give an author another chance; if not for second chances, I wouldn’t have loved Grace Curtis’s Floating Hotel, for instance! I’m glad I took the chance with Kemi Ashing-Giwa, because The King Must Die was an action-packed, adrenaline-filled story of rebellion and intrigue.

My issue with The Splinter in the Sky was that the story did not feel original. A recurring thought I had while reading it was that it had poorly copied A Memory Called Empire‘s homework—there wasn’t enough about the story that was original. I can excuse some of it, since this was her debut novel, but debut novels can have a story that doesn’t border on being a rip-off. That being said, I do remember liking some of Ashing-Giwa’s prose. Thankfully, she’s worked on both of those fronts, creating an original story to go with said prose, and the prose itself has been leveled up significantly! Ashing-Giwa had such a vibrant way of describing the imagined world of Newearth and the many people within it, so much so that I could easily see myself walking through its war-torn jungles. Her dialogue is snappy without being corny, and her metaphors added a poetic flair to an often bloody and dreary landscape. The King Must Die is a marked improvement from Ashing-Giwa’s debut, fleshing out what I felt lacked in her writing on the first time around.

Whenever I say that an adult novel is a good transitory novel between YA and Adult age groups, it always seems backhanded. I guess that’s because literary circles still turn their noses up at YA for the most part. Listen—even though I’ve aged out of the target audience, I read a fair amount of YA (although adult novels have eclipsed them), I write YA, and I have a deep respect for it as an age group (it’s not a genre!). There’s a difference between YA (novels that genuinely portray the complex emotions of teenagers and their circumstances) and YA (tropey slop banking on the latest fanfiction/TV trends). And I think there’s something about The King Must Die that felt like it could be an excellent book to introduce older teens to more adult genre fiction. Sure, the kill count and amount of blood in general is very much adult, but Ashing-Giwa hits that balance between the political intrigue that’s more present in Adult novels with the character drama that I associate more with YA. It has the fast pace that I associate with some of my favorite YA sci-fi romps that I ate up in high school, but with a level of maturity that would have been lost on me at that time. It’s difficult to balance this kind of complicated worldbuilding and politics while also having this character drama, but The King Must Die had both in spades.

The main part that felt YA (affectionate) to me was the character dynamics. The dynamic between Fen and Alekhai is a classic YA setup; she’s a runaway rebel, and he’s the heir to the empire she wants to destroy. Will sparks fly? …no, evidently, but they did make for some seriously compelling character dynamics. I appreciated that, although there were multiple opportunities for Fen to be paired off with any number of characters, all of them were platonic, and they still gave me that juicy, delectable drama that’s usually only reserved for romances. Fen had such excellent chemistry with Mettan, Sinjara, and the other rebels, but what stood out the most was her relationship with Alekhai. I love a good redemption story for a villain, but it’s even more impressive given how much that Ashing-Giwa establishes about him that honestly…shouldn’t be that redeemable. But his development over the course of the story culminated in something so emotional, and the slow cracking of his shell from a ruthless, indestructible royal to someone who only wanted love in return was incredibly poignant.

The King Must Die is still sci-fi for sure, but I’d place it somewhere in the nebulous category of space fantasy. There are some elements that solidly ground it in science fiction: the alien Makers and their terraformed planet, for one, but also some of the technology. However, much of the action that we see on the ground was very fantasy, what with battles waged with intricate swords and quarterstaffs. I loved the strange, often horrifying beasts that we encounter throughout, though I would’ve liked explanations about how they fit into the ecosystems; we get a lot of tidbits of creatures that supposedly went extinct centuries ago, but are showing up for…reasons, and are never brought up again. As a whole, there were a handful of holes in the parts of the worldbuilding that didn’t relate to a) the politics or b) the terraformed Newearth, but for the most part, the world of The King Must Die was a compelling one without a doubt.

In general, I liked the ending and the epilogue; on a more technical level, Ashing-Giwa is excellent at writing battle scenes that really pump up your adrenaline. Some of the imagery, as well as Askrynath’s dialogue, reminded me of the final battle in the throne room in Hellboy II: The Golden Army, which, if you know me well, is a compliment of the highest order. Conceptually, I like how the ending and epilogue resolved—through selflessness and collective community work, the empire was dismantled and a more fair system was set up on Newearth. However, it felt wrapped up far too neatly. An empire that size—especially one with the backing of incomprehensibly all-powerful aliens—doesn’t crumble in a day. I wanted to see more of the messiness of rebuilding a new world in the ashes of the old one—the transition just felt too clean to be realistic. To be fair, The King Must Die is already pushing 500 pages, so I get it if that didn’t make the final cut. Nonetheless, it was a satisfying ending—just too satisfying for my liking, and for the tone of the story itself.

All in all, a sci-fi adventure that balanced genuine political critique with fast-paced action and dramatic, snappy dialogue—it’s rare to find a book that succeeds with both. 4 stars!

The King Must Die is a standalone, but Kemi Ashing-Giwa is also the author of The Splinter in the Sky and the novella This World Is Not Yours.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!