Happy Monday, bibliophiles! I’m not fully back on schedule yet (still in the process of cleaning up my dorm), but I figured I would put out this post for the occasion.
Here in the U.S., May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month! Among the many histories that America has been attempting to erase is that of the AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander) community, even though they are a critical part of our country’s history. We’re so quick to dismiss the discrimination of Chinese immigrant laborers in the late 1800’s, the Japanese internment camps, and the bigotry faced by South Asian Americans, whether or not they were Muslim, as part of the rampant Islamophobia post-9/11. This history may not be in the spotlight as far as discrimination targets, but just because it’s getting less press doesn’t mean it’s there. Just look at Maggie Tokuda-Hall, who received requests from her publisher to remove specific mentions of racism from the author’s note of her picture book, Love in the Library, which takes place in the Japanese internment camps. (Good on her for not taking the licensing deal. Another reason to love Tokuda-Hall, who appears on this list!) Erasing the horrors of discrimination and racism from our shelves only serves to raise an uneducated, uncritical generation—the opposite of what we need right now.
Looking back on my previous lists, I noticed something. I’ve neglected the PI in AAPI, and that’s a mistake on my part. Books by Pacific Islanders rarely seem to get the spotlight, even during AAPI Heritage month, but that still doesn’t excuse me overlooking that part of the acronym—and the world. This is the first year that I actually do have a few great recommendations from Pacific Islander authors, but please let me know if you have any more recommendations! I’m on the lookout.
TELL ME WHAT YOU THINK! Have you read any of the books on this list, and if so, what did you think of them? What are some of your favorite books by AAPI authors?
Today’s song:
That’s it for this list! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!
Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles, and happy New Year’s Eve! 2024 was…well. It sure was a year, wasn’t it? Things happened! Too many things. Man.
I’ll keep it short, because I’ve said something along the lines of the same thing for several months now. I like doing these wrap-ups, but they’re certainly time-intensive, so I doubt I’ll be able to keep up with the monthly schedule going into 2025. However, my brain does like sorting things into silly little lists with bullet points and whatnot, so I thought I would throw this together for the end of the year. Even though I was working so much, I did get to a lot of fun reads, and I didn’t want to leave them out! As I said in my 5-star Reads post, it’s been a rocky and anxious year, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t populated with good reads—and moments in general—throughout. So, for the last time in 2024, here’s a wrap-up of everything from August to December.
Enjoy this massive wrap-up!
WRAP-UP: EVERYTHING I’VE READ SINCE AUGUST
AUGUST
I read 17 booksin August! I don’t think anything for the rest of the year will measure up to having two 5-star reads back to back, but either way, this ended up being a lovely month for reading. Also, before everybody comes after me for DNFing Remarkably Bright Creatures…you can’t blame me after this line was said by a supposedly 30-year-old character: “bicep day was lit at the gym today.” How do you do, fellow kids?
I read 15 books in September! I was so caught up in my reading schedule being disturbed (somewhat) by school starting that I didn’t even realize that I didn’t have any 1 or 2-star reads! Miraculous. Either way, between my work, I was able to squeeze in some great reads for both Bisexual Visibility Week and Latinx Heritage Month.
I read 15 books in October! Spooky season, busy as it was, another great month for books—new Crumrin Chronicles, new books from Amie Kaufman and Eliot Schrefer…oh, and I finally read Hamlet after all these years. I’ve seen so many adaptations that I just found myself going “HE DID IT!!! HE SAID THE LINE!!! HE SAID THE LINE!!” whenever I saw a passage I recognized.
I read 14 books in November! I shouldn’t have to explain why I decided to read The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet on Election Day. Jesus fucking christ. Also, I hate to speak ill of the dead, but either I’ve grown out of Rachel Caine, or I just read her better books in high school…maybe I should’ve read Ink and Bone when my taste was less discerning.
I read 13 books in December, and rounded out my Goodreads challenge with 199 books read this year! I’d say that’s pretty impressive. December proved to have a solid bunch this month (to say nothing of the pretentious, 212 pages of nothing that was Orbital).
In lieu of my usual songs/albums that I’ve been listening to lately, enjoy some selections from my Apple Music Replay. It appears I’ve lost my hypothetical Welsh street cred (no longer in the top 100 listeners for Super Furry Animals…it’s been an honor), but it’s been replaced by being in the top 500 for XTC? I did listen to “This is Pop?” and “The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead” an unhealthy amount…
In addition, here are my Sunday Songs for each month:
it’s finally cold enough to allow myself to listen to Victorialand! Great album to close out 2024 with.
Now, how to wrap up a wrap-up…all I can say is that I love you. My blog may not have the numbers of views and likes that it used to (even though the follower count has gone up…620 of y’all, oh my god, thank you!), but I treasure the small community that I’ve got here. I write these things mostly to write out into the world what I want to see and ramble about the things I love, but I’m grateful that, through it all, you’ve all stayed to stick it out and listen. I’ve always done it for myself and not in the service of getting more likes or views, so I’m glad that someone’s listening anyway.
I hope you all find love, solace, hope, or whatever it is you need in this coming year. In the grand scheme of things, I’m frightened (and hoping that my Canadian cousins have a room to spare up north, hahahahaha [SCREAMING]), but on the smaller scale, with the things I can control, I’m glad to be turning over a new leaf. It’ll be difficult, but I’ve built up the tools to go forward in a healthier, compassionate, and more loving way. Whoever you are, I hope 2025 brings what you need, big or small. As always: spread love, not fear or hate. Look at the stars. Keep on reading, watching, listening, and engaging with what you love. And most importantly, be kind—to others, and to yourself.
Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles! Also, a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy Kwanzaa to those celebrating!
To my parents: I tried so hard not to finish this in one day. I tried. But it was just too good. Just like how I devoured The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea around two and a half years ago, its sequel, The Siren, the Song, and the Spy captured my heart, and added some intricate depth, timely commentary, and no shortage of emotion to Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s fantasy world. Also to my parents: thank you so much for the incredible Christmas present!
WARNING: this review may contain spoilers for The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea—tread lightly!
After the Pirate Supreme and their crew wounded the Emperor’s fleet, they have gone into hiding, growing the Resistance that they hope will end the colonial rule that has trapped them for decades. In the ruins of the battle, Genevieve, a loyal daughter of the empire, has washed up on the Red Shore. Now in the company of strangers, she must decide where her loyalties truly lie—and decide for herself if the empire has lied to her all along. Back on the mainland, Alfie is a spy in the Imperial Palace, hoping to tear it down from the inside. But when everyone is hiding false intentions, who can he trust in his quest to see the Resistance win?
Meanwhile, the Sea readies for battle, looking for vengeance after years of the Emperor robbing her of her daughters…
I would have been satisfiedif The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea was a standalone—it had an ambiguous, hopeful ending, and it’s rare to see novels that willingly keep their worlds in one book after an ending styled like that. Usually, when authors go and make said ambiguous but satisfying endings not so ambiguous by expanding the story and the world, it feels hollow—the sequel doesn’t always live up to the original, and sometimes, it just feels like a cash grab. The Siren, the Song, and the Spy is none of these things. It does what every sequel (and duology-closer) should do—it makes the already beloved characters, world, and plot all the more intricate and vast, but has no trouble sticking the landing and wrapping things up.
I think The Siren has the most POVs I’ve ever seen in a single book; some POVs only appear once or twice, but even still, I can think of at least ten (maybe more, I didn’t go back and count) that this novel cycles through over the course of just 320 pages. Usually, any number of POVs over five or six is too much for any author to handle; some characters don’t get developed the way they should, and some of them don’t need the page time or the internal dialogue that other characters need to make the story move forward. Normally, uneven emphasis on certain characters is also a flaw of multiple-POV novels. However, what Tokuda-Hall succeeded in was knowing when characters needed attention and when they didn’t; some chapters are dedicated to side characters, but they’re few and far between, and often shorter than the main character chapters. And somehow, by a stroke of luck, all of them felt necessary to the narrative—and all of them were compelling. Even minor antagonists got their time in the spotlight, but Tokuda-Hall used those moments to her advantage—sometimes, these chapters were more to reveal secrets than to peer inside characters’ heads. It’s a skill that very few authors have, but The Siren proved that Maggie Tokuda-Hall is incredibly adept at the art of the multiple-POV novel.
With Evelyn and Florian mostly out of the picture, The Siren develops many of the side characters present in The Mermaid—many of whom got necessary backstories, and often, something of a redemption arc. I didn’t expect to start rooting for Alfie after everything that he did in The Mermaid, but Tokuda-Hall did an excellent job of making him come to realize the error in his ways, and at least partially put him on the path to improvement. I don’t fully believe that he can ever be fully forgiven, and Tokuda-Hall acknowledges that, but what she’s also very skilled at is created complicated characters—”morally gray,” as much as it’s become a buzzword in both book communities and publishing these days, really is the best word for it. The difference is that Tokuda-Hall actually seems to know what the term really means. Introducing a batch of new characters (and not taking the easy route and killing a bunch of them off) was also a tricky task to surmount for Siren, but both the new characters and locations elevated the novel a ton; Koa and Kaia worked incredibly off of each other as siblings with wildly different personalities, and they meshed easily with some of the already established characters like Genevieve. And as with Mermaid, Siren is full of diversity—most of the new characters are people of color (as are most of the characters in the novel), and we also have Kaia, who has one hand, and a character who uses neopronouns.
Speaking of Genevieve…
I was already excited to see what Genevieve would do next after how Mermaid left off, but that was mostly because of how cunning of a character she was. At first, it didn’t seem necessary to me for her to have a redemption arc—she could have been such a sneaky minor villain, and I would’ve enjoyed seeing that develop. But her character arc was so much more than redemption—it was one of the most well-written case studies in colonial brainwashing and subsequent decolonization that I’ve read in years. What with her POV jumping back and forth between the past and the present, you can see exactly the kind of manipulation that went into her being duped into believing in Lady Ayer and the Emperor, betraying her own identity in the process. Her change of heart wasn’t straightforward either—it was plenty messy, and it wasn’t until she actually witnessed a full-on genocide that she realized what the empire was actually doing all along, but the messiness in the middle was what made her arc so memorable. Decolonizing one’s identity is anything but straightforward, and Genevieve’s journey of restructuring her beliefs and identity was rocky—as it should have been. Genevieve alone should be proof of Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s incredible skill in crafting authentic, messy characters.
On the subject of colonization and decolonization, I also appreciate the realistic—and unrelentingly anti-colonial—approach that Tokuda-Hall took to bringing down the empire. The stakes built up over both books made them feel like a real threat, and not just a hollow “evil empire” that’s only evil because the author takes great pains to tell you so. (Basing this empire off of multiple real-life examples of colonialism probably helped, but my point still stands.) The initial takedown was was incredibly emotional, and appropriately incorporated the awesome forces of the Sea. But after that final battle, what stuck out to me the most was the epilogue; it was very brief and appropriately hopeful, but what it emphasized was so important to understanding the process of decolonization—it’s messy. Even several years after the fact, everything isn’t magically fixed—things take time to rebuild, and not everybody instantly changes their minds. In such a short amount of time, Tokuda-Hall managed to portray an essential reality of colonialism that most sci-fi and fantasy narratives miss: change isn’t instantaneous, and the limbo between changes in power is a long, messy process.
All in all, a worthy sequel that proves Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s many, incredible special talents as an author—juggling dozens of POVs with ease, writing flawed characters with complicated arcs, and giving both colonialism and decolonization with the nuance that’s often missing from fantasy and sci-fi portrayals of the subject. 4.5 stars!
The Siren, the Song, and the Spy is the sequel to The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea, and is the end of the duology. Maggie Tokuda-Hall is also the author of several picture books and graphic novels, including Also an Octopus, Love in the Library, Squad, and the forthcoming The Worst Ronin.
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!
The Bookish Mutant 