Kit

It was good to return to the Singing Hills Cycle — and to see the actual Singing Hills this time! The writing is lyrical as Nghi Vo’s has been for the other nivelkas in this series, and this time the picture they paint is about grief and change.

We meet Chih’s childhood best friend, Ru, who they have grown apart from some as their lives took different paths. We meet the memory of Cleric Thien, being laid to rest as they died recently. We meet Thien’s granddaughters, who never knew them but have come on the account of their recently deceased grandmother. And we meet Almost Brilliant’s chick.

There’s a lot of quiet tension here, between the conflict between the clerics and the granddaughters, the things you discover about someone cleaning up what they left behind, and the grief that comes with change as well as loss, but the journey makes for a story that will linger with me.

I was really looking forward to this one — I’m an ace adult and I know it’s aimed at younger readers, but as someone who hasn’t had a lot of representation I was excited to explore a whole book of it. Which is why it was a little disappointing to discover that this not only not what I was hoping it would be, I can’t say it does a great job of fulfilling its own brief.

The good: you will find a lot of narratives about ace people in here, from a diverse collection of authors and covering many different genres. There is magical realism and both urban and secondary world fantasy, science fiction, contemporary, and even a mini thriller plot. All of the stories are own voices and I really enjoyed some of the stories found here. There is both romantic and explicitly aromantic love here. I am very glad this collection exists.

The bad: For an anthology with the brief of centering ace love . . . it does a fantastic job of centering ace isolation. It is a theme I relate to, and there were a few it really worked for (such as “Give Up the Ghost,” in which the main character capitalizes her dehumanization by other people even though it’s wearing on her, or “No Such Thing as Just,” in which the tension between a boyfriend who wants to fix the MC and a more accepting friend drives the story), it felt relentless in a way I didn’t enjoy in an ace positive collection. I had to out the book down a few times. There are more community building focused stories in here, but they’re mostly back loaded. There are a number where the character’s ace identity is incidental, which I didn’t mind, but also two where asexuality is neither mentioned explicitly nor alluded to, which felt very out of place in a collection about representation (even if I really enjoyed one of the stories, “Sealights,” in its own right).

The highlights for me were:

“How to Love a Sidewinder,” in which the main character, who has been cursed by a friend who misunderstood her view of the relationship, visits her mother for advice,

“Well Suited,” a courtly fantasy featuring a lie to get out of having to choose an escort to the MC’s debut, and her dearest friend enchanting a suit of armor to cover for her to unexpected results,

“Smells like Teen Virgin,” probably the strongest story in the collection, in which a monster slayer’s virgin blood keeps attracting monsters and the idea of purity in the first place is kind of deconstructed, and

“The Third Star,” which explicitly uses the word queerplatonic and features a poly trio trying to come to terms with each other and an unknown entity in a survival situation.

There is a lot to enjoy in this collection, and I’m very glad it exists, but it does not hit the way I hoped it would.

This is the first in this series I read, and I think I’m going to have to go back and read the other two since I’m invested in the story now. I was drawn to the series for the focus on the paladins living with their trauma and finding people who loved them with it, and that was an aspect I definitely enjoyed. But I knew I was going to love this book during the discussion of police corruption and the way the bishop was seeking to counter it in the second chapter, a theme that continues all through Earstripe’s arc and I really enjoyed the handling of that.

Also the worldbuilding around gnoles, their language and use of pronouns, was really interesting.

I adored Piper (and really sympathized with the combination of panic and wry practicality he brought to the situation), and felt for Galen, and watching their relationship build from initial attraction to realizing they really liked each other was a lot of fun. The underground maze was pretty cleverly constructed and Earstripe stole at least half his scenes.

I had a good time with this world and will look forward to returning to it!

This was delightful. It features a lot of unique spins on what is essentially a fairly narrow premise (trans speculative fiction narratives featuring bicycling), and it was really nice to be able to sit down to a whole collection of trans positive stories. I did find the reprint (“Edge of the Abyss”) thematically frustrating, but the ten new tales all had something fun to offer. This is a short volume, and so you’re going to find a few definite vignettes and ones I wish were just a little more fleshed out, but I may seek out my own copy.

Highlights for me:

“Riding for Luck,” in which an uninterrupted city cycling course can bring luck. I really enjoyed the writing and the way the characters came together in this one.

“Unexpectedly Trans-Parent,” has some great worldbuilding, looking for lost things through wormholes, and an A+ pun.

“Rovers” takes place in a post-apocalyptic world, in which a currier meets a werewolf. It’s t4t and I loved the way finding community featured.

“A Sudden Displacement of Matter” has a heist and reclamation of a monument for the people who had originally built it. What the prose lacks it makes up for in a great plot.

“Briar Patch” is more of a vignette, but the writing is beautiful and the rumination of moving on after loss and exile resonates.

Definitely a good one to pick up if you want some queer joy.

This is the second Hornblower book chronologically and the seventh in publication order, and it’s a fun read. It is the only book written from a point of view other than Hornblower’s, and if you’re familiar with the characters it’s interesting to see him from Bush’s point of view (and to take a break from some of Hornblower’s neuroses), and if you’re not, this choice still works in a “Nick in the Great Gatsby” kind of way.

Especially since the relationship between Bush and Hornblower is at the heart of this volume, and it was great to watch that develop. There’s a lot of tension in the first quarter with Captain Sawyer, and Forrester is a good enough writer to make the quieter parts near the end tense, too, and the middle has a lot of action, but it’s the growing friendship between the title and viewpoint characters that kept me invested.

(I will note that the way Maria is written towards the end is very “written by a man in the 1950s” and Bush’s PoV does not help, so that may be something to be aware of.)

This is a book I remember enjoying when I was younger and it was fun to revisit.

This is a very quick read and an excellent book, and one that will linger after the last page. I really enjoyed Emezi’s lyrical writing style, and once things got going in the third chapter it moves at a fairly quick pace.

Aside from Pet itself, the magical realism of the setting is a little abstracted and never fully explained, but it blends well with the story’s tone. It handles its sensitive topics in a very age appropriate way (although nothing is explicit, it will be a “mind the trigger warnings” book for many). I also appreciated how the setting played I a very thematic role, how it’s easy to become complacent even (or especially) in a world that prides itself on being better than the one that came before. And I loved the casual diversity in the cast (and Jam being both trans and selectively mute and neither of them being treated as a plot altering thing).

I do wish we’d had a little more from the conclusion, and I don’t know that I will ever reread it, but it is definitely one I recommend reading at least once.

A really solid collection of short stories. I enjoyed most of them, and so feel like many of the ones I didn’t enjoy would be by their intended audience — especially since this is a YA collection and while a lot of them wouldn’t be out of place in an adult collection some of them are more high school focused (I don’t say that as a bad thing, but there are a lot of modernizations in this collection!). There were a few I think missed the mark they were aiming for, but I expect some variation in any anthology. I also really enjoyed how many countries and traditions these stories covered, and the author’s notes on the stories they chose to retell.

Some personal highlights:

“Olivia’s Table” by Alyssa Wong, which is a lovely meditation of grief and haunting with a lead character I really felt for. The titular Olivia is cooking for a ghost banquet in an Arizona ghost town, and there’s some fascinating history in that setting.

“The Counting of Vermillion Beads” by Aliette de Bodard, concerning sisters who have been taken as two of the Emperor’s census girls and their separate paths to escape. I love de Bodard’s prose and her characterization of complicated families from her other works, and this is a lovely rewrite of a Vietnamese tale to focus on the sibling dynamic.

“The Smile” by Aisha Saeed, which also had beautiful writing and some good musings on love and possession. I really liked the twist on the original tale here.

“Bullet, Butterfly” by Elsie Chapman, a tale of star-crossed lovers in a war-torn dystopian setting. Gorgeous writing and a really interesting setting to see unfold.

“Eyes Like Candlelight” by Julie Kagawa, which features the two meetings between Takeo, the village headman’s only son, and a kitsune. I really loved the main character and the take on kitsune.

Definitely a book I would recommend to lovers of folktales and short stories.

This was a cute rivals-to-lovers romance and I quite enjoyed the worldbuilding — it dives right in and trusts the reader to gather what’s going on in the academic discussions, and I liked seeing the worldbuilding unfold that way. I’ve read E.E. Ottoman’s work before and I can definitely tell this is one of his earlier ones (and there are a few copy editing errors if you’re sensitive to that), but the concept was fun, and it has the same warmth of the historical romances of his I’ve read. Andrea and Geoffrey were fun to get to know, and this made a great quick read on Trans Visibility Day.

I found this a delightful book, but I acknowledge the narrative style isn’t for everyone. Robin has a very distinct voice (and I suspect he would have started to wear on me had he not had his own part to play in this drama).

The minor characters— Anne, the Caesar parents, the Irregulars, poor Nancy who puts up with so much and of course Miss Bickle — are fantastic and a huge part of the story’s charm.

It really is Mary Ceasar’s story as much as John’s, and I really enjoyed the old-school fairytale with updated players aspect. Hall handles a few heavier subjects with a fairly light touch, and brings both of our protagonists to the point of change — Mary realizing what she wants and John who he wants to be. (And if John is changing as much for a handsome captain as his sisters … that’s not a bad catalyst). Family — what you make of it in the Irregulars at the Folly as well as the Caesars — feels like the heart of the tale and that’s something I really loved.

I came here for the vibes, and I really enjoyed my time with this book. It does a fairly good job in capturing the feel of the time period it’s set in, and it’s as cozy as a queer romance set in the late fifties can reasonably be. I feel like I may be in the minority for connecting more with Nick than with Andy, but I liked both characters and the chemistry between them was sweet.

I did feel like there were a few pacing issues — it dragged a bit for me towards the middle, and I felt like we could have spent a little more time with Nick’s writing or the community he was finding at work. But on the whole I really enjoyed the historical details and felt it wrapped up better than I was expecting in the space leftover. I also loved the sense that these are just two people but they can contribute to dragging the world in a little bit brighter a future no matter its kicking and screaming.

I was drawn to this as something more lighthearted by the fun premise, and it was great to see two queer protagonists who are definitely old (the two leading ladies are 69 and 73). It is set in the 1860s but it just kind of acknowledges that homophobia played a part in the title character’s life but won’t be featured in this story (valid). There are a few heavier themes than I was initially expecting but they largely came with the age of the protagonists. Were all the hijinks entirely realistic? No. But I came here for petty revenge against the Terrible Nephew and it was a fun little novella.