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.

A brief but solid biography of an important figure. There are some limitations imposed by the length — for one thing, I suspect previous familiarity with the French Revolutionary period is helpful, as the book rather glosses over some events that would be helpful for context but didn't have much to do with Marat — but as it's one of the only accessible Marat biographies in English that's kind of a limitation you've got to accept. It's got quite a bit of Marat's own voice for the length, which I appreciated, and even if I would have liked some more detail on a few incidents, it does a quite good job of narrating the last four years of his life. The style also makes for a quick, easy read.

Connor definitely has an opinion on his subject he makes no real effort to hide, and I know that will bother some people but honestly it didn't me. No one is without a perspective and this one is owned. His arguments about how Marat's posthumous reputation have influenced the scholarship are well done and definitely set you up for what to expect from the rest of the book. The only time Connor's upfrontness about his perspective bothered me was the counterfactual section right at the end, but to be fair I've rarely found that kind of speculation useful to me.

All in all it's a good choice if you're looking for more information about Marat specifically and to a lesser extent French Revolutionary journalism.

I really enjoyed this — there's a good range of varieties of gothic included, and a good representation of queer identities — and a lot of sapphic ones. I was expecting this to be tilted towards gothic romance because of the theme, and that is the case, but there's some gothic horror here, too. And if a few of those stories didn't quite hit gothic for me, I wasn't upset at their inclusion — most of the entries are really enjoyable; I think there are only two I didn't have a great time with.

There are 19 stories in 288 pages, so even with  three of them very short and more prose poems, these are all a pretty quick read — which was delightful for me in a fairly busy few weeks, since it made for a good book to dip in and out of. 

A few standouts, for me:

• “The Moon in the Glass” — classic Victorian set haunting, and a wonderfully creepy ghost and narrator
• “Lure of the Abyss” — admittedly boats and mermaids could have been written for me, but the tension building was great
• “Hearteater” — beautiful gothic romance; I figured out one character's secret very quickly but loved both women's instinct to reassure the other that their love at least was not monstrous
• “Quicksilver Prometheus” — gothic horror set in the interwar period, and unprocessed grief given ghostly form
• “The Ruin” — this is the one that genuinely freaked me out a little; it's modern gothic in the preoccupation with decay and a bit post-apocalyptic. I loved the casual trans rep
• “My Love Lays Split on Either Side” — very bisexual prose poem of self-acceptance with gorgeous imagery 

This story is going to haunt me, and I mean that as a high compliment. I love the way it plays with who gets remembered and how, the way we put our stories into boxes (the Ugly Women tales), and how much of someone you can ever really know.

The character interactions really sing in this novella; both the established ones and the way both groups interact with Chih and each other as they get temporarily embroiled in each others lives on a journey that winds up a lot tenser and more exciting than anyone bargained for. The girls were a lot of fun, but I wound up really falling for Lao Bingyi and Khanh (partially because I love seeing older characters). Highly recommended, and I am really looking forward to the rest of the series!

This is a gorgeously written puzzle of a book, and I really loved the way it all came together. I really enjoyed the frame; and how the empress's story was told not just through Rabbit's remembrance but also through the objects found in her home-in-exile, because all of the little details were so illuminating. You do see the worldbuilding mostly in story form, in this volume, which gives it a kind of fairytale vibe — and those details, like ghosts walking a royal road, women turning into kingfishers, and the subtle dystopia of 50 years of summer — all definitely suit that. It's a story about rage but it's also a eulogy of sorts, and that built up to an ending that had me near tears.

Cleric Chih and Almost Brilliant were fun characters to follow, and I look forward to getting to know them better in future volumes. Definitely recommend.

The first chapter of this book is a lot of fun and one where you can tell the author was having a great time, and that sets the tone. Guet Imm, the nun, in particular was easy to fall in love with, and Tet Sang and the rest of his band of roving contractors grew on me as the story progressed.

The plot does take a few chapters to kick off but I enjoyed the time to get to know everyone, and once things start moving it moves at a good clip. I enjoyed discovering the political situation with Guet Imm but there were some other worldbuilding aspects I felt I never got a good grasp on.

I loved the way gender identity was handled in the text — both the day to day and the philosophy of the Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water. It's accepted in its complexity and that was very comforting to read. I also enjoyed the ambiguity in the ending; it brings the character arcs to a resting point but how romantic it is is up to the reader. I really enjoyed the story.

This was my favorite of the three, partially because I've always loved psychopomps and ghosts, and queer romance is always a sure fire way to my heart. I also think it's the strongest of the three — I felt it was the best paced especially at the climax (which I couldn't put down), and while one of the two central mysteries was fairly guessable, I enjoyed seeing it play out on page  and the full reveal of our murderer at the climax had some good twists.

I really enjoyed the chemistry and self-discovery the two leads had, and the secondary characters were great. I really enjoyed that we got to see some of Elias's arc from Half a Soul and “The Latch Key” continue  (and to catch up with Dora in general). Mercy did have a stronger arc than Abigail and I loved the way her gender was dealt with and that her true form was what she was most comfortable in, not what was original or most powerful, but I think Abigail's worked for the story well. And I really appreciate that the uniting factor of the magicians in all three stories is anger at things wrong in the world. This was a great cap to the series, and I will definitely revisit it at some point.

N.K. Jemisin is a master storyteller, and there is a lot to love in this collection. The worldbuilding is vivid even in short glimpses and some of the food descriptions in particular left me hungry. There are definitely worlds I would have loved to see more of; I know “The City Born Great” and “The Narcomancer”  both take place in or are forerunners to two of her duologies (which I am now definitely interested in checking out). And 22 stories is a lot — there were a couple I bounced off of, which is not unexpected with that much variety, and some with more experimental forms.

A few standouts for me personally, not counting the two I've already mentioned:

• “Red Dirt Witch” - One of a couple of historical fantasy tales, that read like an old folktale with choices, belief, and eldritch deals at its center.
• “The Effluent Engine” - Steampunk and intelligence agents, with a world I was super invested in.
• “On the Banks of the River Lex” - Probably my favorite, featuring Death and post apocalyptic gods getting by and The beginnings of something new.
• “Too Many Yesterdays, Not Enough Tomorrows” — A time loop of an apocalypse, and musings on connection and disconnection that really worked for me.
• “Saints, Sinners, Dragons, and Haints in the City Beneath Still Waters” -  Just a great endcap to the collection. Modern urban fantasy with a lot of commentary.

This was a fun read! I appreciated seeing it center Effie's anger and anger as a catalyst for change. Lord Blackthorn was fun to see return from the first book, and I enjoyed seeing him try to figure out how to be helpful if that's what he wanted to be. In some ways I think the romance was paced better than in the first book and I enjoyed seeing it build, although like the first one the pace doubles in the last third of the book. I also loved Effie's very practical magic.

This one did not grab me as much as the first book, though. The main characters are likable, and a properly angry heroine is something I would like to see more of, though I would have liked to see Effie's needlework better incorporated into the climax — since it does play a role but is never narratively acknowledged. Both books had something to say, but I suspect Dora's metaphor for neurodivergence spoke to me more. But if you're interested in fractured fairytales or enjoyed the first book, I suspect you'll enjoy this one!

I got drawn into this book enough to read it in a couple of sittings, and it's a fun premise and the writing is engaging. I started really appreciating how the writer managed the period ableism (both Dora's neurodivergence and Albert's prosthetic) without loosing the Austen-esque tone — and I was happy to see the former managed fairly well throughout the whole book (provided changeling as metaphor for neurodivergence doesn't bug you) — but dipping out of the world of the Season and actually somewhat addressing the historical injustices of the wider world was what got me hooked. The climax in Faerie is fun and the romantic leads have a lot of chemistry with each other, and I look forward to reading the second volume in the series.

I enjoyed this, and I think it's best read as a preamble to Longshadow rather than a sequel to Half a Soul. It's nice to see how the style handles an actual fairytale with Elias's past (quite well, as it happens), and the present story does a nice job of setting up Abigail and gives us Elias figuring out how to approach parenthood in light of his past. If anything, I think it's a little too subtle on breaking the cycle for its own good, but I found it a sweet little story.

This was an intriguing debut novel and a really good read. I especially enjoyed the way stories were woven throughout the narrative — René's collection of sailor's tales, Jerome's interest in Greek mythology, the various native and African mythologies given presence throughout. Stories as inspiration and hope things can change are a major theme throughout, and it's good to see the wealth of different tales that play a part, there. The secondary plot — that of Danso and Abeni and their growing pirate legend — serves as yet another story for René and Frantz, if one that turns out to be true, and the way the thread is woven in with the Interludes and references (with a few key crossing streams), is well done before they come together in the last few chapters.

It does feel like a setup volume, but as the first book in a trilogy that's somewhat expected. There are two things I want to note. One is an addendum to a content warning: the only racial slur in text is the one towards the Romani people. There are some narrative reasons this might be the case, but it stands out as others are skirted around or implied by the narrative so it's something some readers will want to be aware of. The other is some of the dialogue. Some of it is a little clunky and expository in contrast to some really beautiful narration, and while it's mostly written in a style that suits a historical narrative occasionally a really modern turn of phrase would appear and jolt me momentarily out of the narrative (one of them in an otherwise really tense scene).

This didn't really tarnish my enjoyment of the story, though, and a lot of the descriptive passages really are gorgeously written. I've fallen in love with a lot of the characters and I'm really looking forward to diving into the other two books!

This is a quick and fun read. The narrator has a very strong voice, and it's written in an oral storytelling style that I suspect would have made the audiobook quite enjoyable, and which leant a lot of humor to the text. The story is based on a Senegalese folk tale, and discovering the ins-and-outs of the djombi as part of the tale was really interesting. I also really enjoyed Paama's character — she's an interesting heroine, who stands out first for her cleverness and later for her kindness, and she made a great heart to the tale. I also enjoyed seeing some elements circle back which I hadn't initially expected to return.

It does move fast and there are a few places I wish we'd had a little more time to linger and process what was going on — so I suppose I felt rather like Paama trying to keep up with the indigo lord at times — but it's got some really interesting reflections on the nature of choices and chaos, and I am definitely interested in Lord's other book with connections to this one. Definitely recommended.

The writing of this novella is beautiful, and I really enjoyed the way the political situation was drawn in only a few words and implications the characters were grappling with. In particular, the quietly oppressive situation Thanh is in is well drawn, and her complicated feelings are the driving force. I also enjoyed how low-magic the setting was (fire elemental aside), because of the way it drew the focus onto the real situation of an encroaching empire and what might be doable against it.

This does focus on a toxic relationship as a metaphor for imperialism and it is well done — I definitely felt Eldris's appearance set off warning bells, but it was subtle until it wasn't in a way that really worked for me. I do feel like there were a few sections that could have used a little more room to breathe, since 100 pages is not much, but it was on the whole a tightly paced and satisfying story I devoured in a few reading sessions.