Crystallinegirl

This is one of those books that I realized, far too late, wasn't a standalone novel. Far too few pages left for everything that still needs to be wrapped up, and yep. Only the first book. I'm not sure why I hadn't realized it wasn't a standalone. The second book, Empress of Flames, isn't due out until early 2020, which is far too long to wait! I need to know what happens to these characters!

The Girl King is mainly the story of Lu, eldest daughter of the Emperor of the First Flame. She is expecting to be named heir, and when she isn't and her cousin (and bully) Set is named instead, she decides not to placidly accept the injustice. She runs away from court, intending to find allies to help her retake the throne. Lu is single-minded and selfish. She doesn't really pay attention to how her actions affect other people - she doesn't think twice about leaving her younger, more timid sister to face the court, their mother, and Set on her own. I know that we're supposed to be cheering for Lu in this book, but in D&D terms, she's a paladin. She might be right. She's not very likable. I had far more sympathy for Min, her sister.

Actually, thinking back on it, almost none of these characters did much thinking about how their actions affect other people. The leader of the refugee Gifted did, she had her people to think about. And the triad of rulers of the mythical city were looking out for their people. But Lu really only thinks of herself. Set definitely only thinks about himself. Min is set up to be more sympathetic but is stuck inside her own head. Nok is too consumed with his own private pity party to think much about other people. I love Nok, don't get me wrong, he was probably my favorite character, but he doesn't think much about other people other than his mentor.

I feel like it's reasonable to have one or two self-obsessed characters, but when it's everyone, I think that might be a writing issue. The story was still great, and I will definitely be reading the second book, but I'm hoping for some character growth and learning about empathy as the story progresses.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

So I knew this was inspired by Jim Henson's Labyrinth. That's partially why I picked it up, as I love that movie and David Bowie as the Goblin King. I didn't expect to get, basically, Labyrinth fanfiction. That was my first impression. As the book carries on, though, and especially as you get into the second book, it's more like a musician's fever-dream of their favorite childhood movie. There are so many elements taken from the movie, but they are deconstructed and put back together in such unexpected ways.

You'll recognize a line or two from the movie. The fairies still bite. The Goblin King is still beautiful and angular and strange. Liesl's after a stolen sibling. But Liesl and her family live in rural, probably 18th century Bavaria. She is not a spoiled, baby-sitting half-sister. Her grandmother has taught her the old stories, and unbeknownst to her, she's played music for The Goblin King her entire childhood.

The first book concerns Liesl's first foray into the Underground to save her sister when The Goblin King steals her to be his bride. This is where the acid trip starts. If you're familiar with Labyrinth, remember the ballroom scene? With people whirling about and appearing and disappearing and mirrors and the sense of disorientation as it all falls apart? Yeah, that's basically the entire time in the Underground. Though there is a ball scene, and it is especially trippy.

While Liesl manages to save her sister (that's a spoiler, but it isn't much of one), she has a harder time saving herself. Whether she actually does or not could be debated.

The second book of the duology, Shadowsong, has an interesting author's note in the front of it. The author first gives a content warning for self-harm, suicidal ideations, addiction, and reckless behaviors. She goes on to say Liesl has bipolar disorder, and further, that so does she. (The author.) She says Wintersong was her bright mirror, and Shadowsong her dark one. I can see that. Wintersong is a much happier book than Shadowsong, but the story would be incomplete without both books. Wintersong does end in a satisfactory conclusion, but Shadowsong just completes the tale in a way that I, at least, really enjoyed.

Shadowsong also contains more throwbacks to the movie - she falls and is caught by goblin hands; goblins form a giant face that talks to her about the old laws. These things don't happen in the same scene, though.

I loved the elements of music woven throughout the story; Liesl is a composer, and music - her music - is almost a character in its own right. It's definitely a huge plot element. It's in her connection to her brother, and her connection to The Goblin King. It's her way into the Underground, and her way out, and her way to reach back in.

It's an enchanting duology; I don't know if it would be as good for someone who didn't love Labyrinth the way I do. If you dislike the movie, I would probably advise against reading these. But if you like it or have simply never seen it, these would be good, atmospheric books to read in the dead of winter.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

I'm always interested in queer young adult books, and this one especially caught my eye with its mention of “performing mermaids.” Because y'all know I love my mermaid books! So Savannah isn't a real mermaid, she just plays one at a water park. But it was enough to make me pick up the book, and it's a good book. Young adult books about discovering your identity are always needed, and this book is about Savannah realizing she's bisexual.

Much of the angst in this book comes from Savannah not knowing if she has the same disease her father does, and she's not sure if she wants to know. Altogether, in this book we have chronic illness, hispanic teens, bisexual, lesbian, and genderqueer teens, small-town angst....there's really a LOT of demographics covered in this book.

I like Savannah, but I don't like her love interest, Leigh, very much. Leigh does NOT have her shit together, and between drinking and doing drugs, all while underage, she poses a very real threat to Savannah's well-being.

I'm a little nonplussed by the ending of the book. It leaves a few questions unanswered, but not in a cliff-hanger-y way. It's more of a possibilities-left-open kind of way. Which makes sense for a “first love” romance. It's not necessarily a “true love” story. It reminds me of John Green novels in that way.

So - it's a great book for representation, but don't expect a tidy, wrapped-up ending. You won't find that here.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

I didn't actually have high hopes for this book - the description hits a lot of standard YA tropes. Sisterhood, switched roles, Royal/pauper juxtaposition...but WOW. No, this book blew me away.

In Serina and Nomi's world, women are second-class citizens, forbidden to read, have romantic relationships with each other, or have careers of their own. Serina plans to be a Grace, effectively a concubine to the Prince, with her sister as her handmaiden. But it is Nomi who catches the Prince's eye when she stumbles into him in a hallway, and Nomi that he picks. In a moment of weakness, Nomi's secret is discovered and thought to be Serina's, and rather than jeopardize Nomi's new position, Serina capitulates and takes the fall. She's sent to a volcanic island prison while Nomi struggles to tame her own rebellious nature long enough to gain enough influence to free her sister.

The book is about oppression and sisterhood, whether it be with those that share your blood or not. Along the way, we discover a different history of the nation than what is normally taught, and find a few men who sympathize with the women's plight. (And eventually step up to take action alongside the women.)

It's a quick read - the action starts on page one and never stops. Chapters alternate between Nomi in the palace and Serina on her island prison fighting for food, and both girls learn that what they saw as weakness in each other can be strengths in different circumstances.

The only downside to this book is that it ends with things unfinished. Not a cliffhanger, exactly, but the story is most definitely not done, and the sequel doesn't come out until July of 2019! I will be snapping that up as soon as it releases because I NEED to know how these two sisters overcome their trials.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

I try to make a habit of picking up books written by people on the autism spectrum - it's part of my effort to read inclusively, but it also has a personal component, since my husband is on the spectrum. (You can see my list of books on this subject here.) Look Me In The Eye is a book about growing up in the 70s, when an autism diagnosis usually meant a kid entirely incapable of most communication - they didn't really understand the spectrum yet. John Elder Robison was not that child, so he didn't discover his diagnosis until his 40s. Autistic adults discovering the reason for their quirks is a very common story, though these days it's more often women who fall through the cracks than men.

It's always amusing to me spotting the similarities between autistic memoirs and my husband - one of them came very early in the book, when Robison is talking about a book shown to him by his father.

“We looked at books together, especially the Boy Scout Woodsman manual. I can still remember the pictures that showed how to make a trap, and the correct way to step over a fallen log.
I dreamed about trapping wolves and bears, but garter snakes and frogs were as close as I got. And I've never forgotten the woodsman's log-crossing techniques that I learned at five.”

I've been wanting to read the Twisted Tales series for quite some time, and finally requested the first book. To be honest, I'm not thrilled. Aladdin was never my favorite Disney movie, though, so it might just be unfortunate that it's the first book in the series. I'll probably still try the rest.

The book actually sticks pretty closely to the Disney movie in descriptions, characters, and setting. Everyone looks like their Disney movie counterparts. I had to check the inside cover to find that the book is indeed an official Disney product. There's no way they'd get away with it, otherwise; it'd be blatant copyright infringement, and Disney is rather strict about that.

Basically, the book takes the script of Aladdin and asks one question - what if Aladdin really did give Jafar the lamp instead of keeping it when he got stuck in the cave? We know what Jafar does with the lamp eventually, but what if he had it first, before Aladdin? A lot of the plot is familiar - Jasmine and her tiger, the hourglass with people stuck inside of it, the Sultan playing with his toys. It's really interesting to see the plot elements deconstructed and put back together in new ways.

I'm not sure whether I like this plot or the movie plot more; I never had strong feelings about Aladdin so I'm probably not the best judge.

It's alright. If you're a fan of Aladdin you might like it more than I did. I'm withholding judgment of the entire series until I read a few more, though.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

I first fell in love with Carrie Vaughn's work with the Kitty Norville series - a werewolf named Kitty who ran a late-night radio show. Kitty and the Midnight Hour. (Both the name of her show and the first book.) So when I discovered she'd starting writing a dystopia that revolved heavily around reproductive rights, I was SO ON BOARD. Bannerless and The Wild Dead are the first two books of the Bannerless saga. And they're GREAT. They're technically murder mysteries set in a dystopian society; Enid, our main character, is an investigator, the closest thing this society has to police.

The dystopia part of the society involves epidemics and natural disasters nearly eradicating humanity; with so few people left and less of the earth habitable, they've regressed to a mostly agrarian society. Farmers, weavers, hunters. To keep the population from exploding past the land's ability to feed it, birth rates are strictly controlled. As civilization was falling, people realized birth rates were going to be massively important, and the birth control implant, and the technology to make it, was one thing they managed to save. They also have solar-powered cars, lights, and flashlights, though they're uncommon enough to be notable.

I find it a little improbable that they still have the tech to make the implants; they say that before the supplies from “before the Fall” ran out, the medics figured out how to make the hormone from “what they had on hand” - but - I feel like a more interesting plot point would be that they're running out of implants, and how the society would have to deal with that changing. But that is not the case, at least not in the first two books.

Regardless of how improbable the birth control issue is, the rest of the plot is pretty good. There's a good mix of salvaged goods and subsistence farming; of new houses built in low-tech ways and the occasional ruins from Before the Fall. They have some books and records of what it was like, and Enid often wishes she had the tools that forensic investigators had, Before. Fingerprints, and DNA, though she doesn't call it DNA. They don't have cameras, she has to sketch crime scenes and take notes.

I really enjoyed both books; Carrie Vaughn's writing style is wonderful to read. The first book rambles a little bit, but while some of it doesn't seem necessary for the first book, it's important for the second. I'll definitely be following this series.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

Alright, so, with as much as I enjoy twists on mermaid stories, this was kind of inevitable, right? I'd heard a lot about the movie, but hadn't yet seen it, so I figured I'd read the novelization. What I didn't realize until reading the book, though, is that this isn't actually a novelization of the movie. The movie and the book were written at the same time, about the same story, but tell different parts of it. (This article explains how both were written.) The book delves more into the mythology behind the creature, and gets into the thoughts and feelings of both the creature and Elisa. Those things are incredibly hard to communicate in film, especially when the characters can't speak! So, far from “reading the book instead of seeing the movie,” now that I've read the book, I REALLY want to see the movie!

If you haven't heard of the movie, the basic premise of both movie and book is Elisa, a mute janitor at a top secret research facility, is cleaning a lab when she sees what's contained in it - an amphibious man-like creature kept in captivity and experimented on. She teaches him sign language and eventually falls in love with him and decides to break him out of the lab before the researchers kill him. The plot is set in the 60s, so there's a lot more overt racism and sexism going on, as well as some Cold War spycraft.

It's also set in Baltimore, which is another thing I didn't know before reading the book!

There's a pretty good amount of minority representation here - Elisa is mute, her two best friends are black (Zelda) and gay (Giles). Zelda worries about her place as “the black friend” of a white woman, but also sees Elisa as a little damaged and in need of her care. When Elisa gets tunnel vision on the merman, Zelda's worries are mostly confirmed, but not for the reasons she thinks, since Elisa shuts out Giles too. There's definitely something to be learned there about hurting your friends unintentionally when starting a new relationship!

A lot of people saw this plot as super weird, with the woman falling in love with the sea-creature, but how many mermaid films do we have where the man falls in love with the mermaid when she still has her fish tail? Sure, the merman here is fully scaled and can't talk, but Ariel can't talk in most versions of The Little Mermaid, either. I don't see it as much different, other than it's a women falling in love with someone who isn't the typical image of masculinity. And at least in the book, there are a couple of chapters from his perspective. He's sentient and consenting. (I hope that comes across in the movie, too.)

I really enjoyed this one, and I definitely need to watch the movie to get the rest of the story. The book is self-contained - nothing's missing, exactly, but since it was written in both mediums at the same time, I feel like I need to see the movie to perhaps flesh out some things.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

The world-building in this book is fascinating. At first, it seems like yet another YA novel about displaced royals trying to win back their kingdom, but this royal is in much more dire straits than most. Meira is a refugee living on the run with seven others, one of them her rightful King. All the rest of their people have been enslaved by the conquering country, and their kingdom's link to the magic inherent in the land has been broken.

A little backdrop is needed. In Meira's land, there are eight countries. The Rhythm countries, where seasons proceed as normal, and the Seasons - 4 countries locked in one season each. The rulers of each country have a magic conduit that lets them feed magic to their people - but the conduits are gender-locked. In four of the countries, only women can use the conduit; in the other four, only men. Meira and her little band are all that's left of the free people of Winter. Spring invaded sixteen years ago, killed Winter's queen, broke the locket that was their magic conduit (each ruler has one) and enslaved their people. Because the queen only had a son, he can't wield Winter's magic anyway. They're still trying to find the two pieces of the locket so when he has a daughter, she can wield it. You'd think at this point, since he's of age, he should be trying to get as many women pregnant as possible to up the odds of getting a royal heir who can wield the magic, but that...doesn't come up.

The book does delve into the country's people being oppressed, used as slaves, and being incredibly abused by the conquering country, and this is where I ran into a quandary. The Season's people reflect their countries: Autumn's people have copper skin, Spring's citizens are blond-haired and green-eyed - and Winter's people are white. Pale skin, snow-white hair, blue eyes. Writing white people as the oppressed people just rubs me the wrong way. (In that false “help I'm being oppressed because other people want equal rights!” kind of way.) Yes, this is fantasy, yes, it has nothing to do with our world's politics - but it bothers me. It's at least not white-savioring, as Meira's trying to save her own people, but I don't know. Is it better or worse to write white people as the oppressed protagonists?

That question aside, this was a well-written novel of fighting against an oppressor. There is definitely still work to be done at the end of the book, and there are two more books, as well as two short stories. While I am a little curious what ultimately happens, I don't know if the series has earned more time on my reading list.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

I am a Buffy fan. I'm not the biggest Buffy fan I know - that honor goes to a friend of mine, who I just gave a giant box of Buffy comic to, since we're downsizing in preparation for the move to the new house. I haven't seen anyone that happy in a while, and it made my day. (And hers, judging from the bouncing and squeeeeing and hugging!) But I am still a Buffy fan. I own DVDs of the entire show, plus Angel, plus the original movie. The box of comics I just gave away was Season 8 and some spin offs. Slayer takes place after all of that.

First I'm going to say, if you're not a Buffy fan, seriously don't bother with this book. You won't understand a lot of what goes on, and while there are cursory explanations given in the book, it's really not meant for people that haven't watched/read the rest of the world. You'd be okay not knowing much about Angel, but you really do need to have watched the TV show of Buffy, especially that last season. While the book takes place after the comics, they're not necessary to understand the plot as that, at least, is explained.

So, for the rest of us Buffy fans, this is a great continuation of the Buffy-verse. Nina is the daughter of Watchers - in fact the daughter of Buffy's first watcher, the one before Giles. Given what befell the Watchers, the ones that are left are kind of antagonistic towards Slayers in general and Buffy in particular. So when Nina becomes a Slayer, her world goes sideways.

The world is mostly the same, but with a twist due to events in the comics. (It's explained. You don't need to have read them.) The book expands on how Slayer powers work, a bit, especially their dreams now that there's more than one of them alive at a time. We do see mentions of familiar characters, with one notable scene where an old favorite appears briefly.

I really enjoyed the book, and I'm eager to read the second half of the duology when it comes out. I need to know how Nina's story ends! The book ended on a subtle cliffhanger; the main conflict has been resolved, and the characters think it's over, but we know it's not. Similar to how many episodes of Buffy ended, actually.

So yeah. If you're a Buffy fan, pick up this book, it's pretty great. If you're not - take a pass. Or start with the TV show and get yourself a new fandom if you're feeling bored!

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

From the title, you'd think this is a love story - and it kind of is - but not a traditional one. We don't have a center couple with side characters, and the plot doesn't revolve around their misunderstandings. No, the main character here is Emilia Nightingale, entrusted with her late father's book shop, and the romance is with the town. There are several side characters, and while Emilia does get a romance, it's the side characters' love lives that we spend the most time with. We have the heiress to the local estate and her devoted gardener, the property developer's minion and his estranged wife, the housewife longing to be a career woman again and her career husband who wants to stay home, the shy but sweet chef and the cheesemonger. (That one's my favorite! Bonding over books and food? Girl after my own heart!)

The main conflict in the book comes from the financial straits of the bookshop and Emilia's efforts to stay afloat - everything else revolves around that. We dip back in time to Emilia's father's life to learn about the founding of the shop and his own romances, which helps us see how some characters are emotionally invested in Emilia and the current status of the bookshop.

This is a sweet, gentle book that's perfect for a rainy day and a cup of tea. Combining characters who love books, the enchanting magic of a good bookshop, and the (mostly) serene atmosphere of a quiet English village, the book is just cozy and comforting and I absolutely loved it.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

So I obviously didn't read the description of this book closely enough, because it wasn't until I hit “One For Sorrow - A Clockwork Dynasty Story” that I realized this was the same author that wrote Clockwork Dynasty, a book I read last year! We'll blame it on my goldfish memory. My goldfish memory is a large part of why I keep this blog, so I can look back and remember what I've read and what I thought about it! I randomly plucked this book off the New Book display while grabbing my holds from the library; I didn't recognize the author's name at the time. So I'm highly amused.

These stories are . . . hard to quantify.  Some of them I really enjoyed - “Miss Gloria” is probably my favorite - she's a little girl with a robot guardian. When kidnappers disable the guardian and take her, the guardian's programming jumps to the closest possible hardware - being the getaway car. From there to one of the kidnappers' smart helmets, and so on. I very much disliked “The Blue Afternoon That Lasted Forever” but to say why would spoil it entirely. The Clockwork Dynasty short story was quite good - I'm still hoping he'll write another full-length novel in that world.

I haven't read his other novel, Robopocalypse, and I wasn't thrilled with the short story from that universe, but the synopsis of it sounds amazing. I don't know if I want to read it or not!

This was a fascinating, if weird, collection of stories. I like how he explores the possible consequences of things like teleportation, AIs, robots, and battle armor. As a race, our capacity for invention tends to outpace our consideration of the consequences. We try to figure out how to do a thing before stopping to consider if we should. In this book, over and over again, I feel that Wilson is asking us “Is this the future we want?” which has often been the case with truly visionary science fiction. That's why people complaining about politics in science fiction make me laugh - science fiction has ALWAYS been political!

This is a book for mature audiences. There are deaths, sacrifices, pain, sex, war, and other mature themes - it's definitely not the lightest of reads. But it's good.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

It's not often a nonfiction book has me laughing out loud, but this one did it. This is the first of Roach's books I've read, but her voice makes me want to read everything she's ever written! Bonk is the story of sexual research - how scientists have made discoveries about a topic that is awkward at best, and taboo or even criminal at worst. Roach takes research seriously, volunteering as a research subject more than once (and convincing her husband to help, in at least one case!) Her wordplay is clever and her footnotes are HILARIOUS - this was a nonfiction book I kept having to pause and read to my husband between snickers.

Even her chapter titles are giggle-inducing - with titles like “The Princess and Her Pea - The Woman Who Moved Her Clitoris, and Other Ruminations on Intercourse Orgasms” and “Re-member Me - Transplants, Implants, and Other Penises Of Last Resort.”

Roach writes about some truly awkward sexual encounters in the name of science:

On the bed are a man and a woman. They are making the familiar movements made by millions of other couples on a bed that night, yet they look nothing like those couples. They have EKG wires leading from their thighs and arms, like a pair of lustful marionettes who managed to escape the puppet show and check into a cheap motel. Their mouths are covered by snorkel-type mouthpieces with valves. Trailing from each mouthpiece is a length of flexible tubing that runs through the wall to the room next door, where Bartlett is measuring their breathing rate. To ensure that they don't breathe through their noses, the noses have been “lightly clamped.”

Another passage mentions two gymnasts who have sex in an MRI tube. (For science!) I'm impressed these people can perform under these conditions at all!

There's only one passage that squicked me out a little bit - there's a few paragraphs describing a urologist performing surgery on a penis and it's...a little disturbing. That aside, though, this is a delightful book on an uncommon topic. It's an easy read, which I don't say about much nonfiction. It might be awkward to explain why you're snickering over this book, though!

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

Toil & Trouble was a much-hyped anthology of YA stories, and I think it lived up to that hype. I really enjoyed almost every story in this book - only one or two of them were less than awesome. And they still weren't bad! Anthologies like this keep introducing me to yet more authors that I want to read, and just keep growing my TBR list! Some of the authors in this book I was familiar with; while I hadn't read her work yet, I met Zoraida Córdova at the Baltimore Book Festival, and she was amazing. I'm familiar with Brandy Colbert's work, and have not yet read Anna-Marie McLemore but desperately want to, and her story in this work (Love Spell) only increases that need.

I read this book just before Halloween, and it was a perfect choice. I'm not a fan of actual horror novels, which seem to be what everyone else is reading this time of year. Give me my strong witchy women! The stories in this book are all young women - teens to early adulthood - learning to rely on themselves. They embrace what family traditions mean to them, or break free of them entirely if they're the wrong path. They break social taboos and fall in love where they will. They FIGHT for what they want.

I think my favorite story in this book involved a woman whose powers had been bound by her coven until she was old enough to use them wisely, but had to watch her father die in an accident when she could have healed him if she'd had access to her magic. She went to an ancient place of power in the mountains and broke the binding, horrifying her coven. The story is actually about her defying them further in refusing her destined soul mate for the girl she's been in love with since she was a child, and Fate's punishment for that. The two girls fighting for each other and for their own magic was amazing. (The Heart in Her Hands, Tess Sharpe.) Unfortunately it doesn't look like it's part of a larger story, I was hoping for more in that world!

As far as I can tell, only one of the stories is part of something larger - I'm pretty sure Zoraida Córdova's story is part of her Brooklyn Brujas world. Other than that, they all appear to be standalones, which is a little sad as I'd like to see more of many of these worlds!

Toil & Trouble is an outstanding anthology of magical women, and I loved it.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

I've seen the movie based on Patrick Ness's previous book, A Monster Calls, but I haven't actually read the book. I definitely see similarities in style between the two stories, though. The blurb calls it “lyrical” and “haunting” but I'd call them both trippy.

In And The Ocean Was Our Sky, the story is told from the viewpoint of Bathsheba, a whale. In her world, whales and humans have been at war as long as she can remember. Whales have learned the human language, and how to build ships and use harpoons. (Though how they actually DO these things with flippers is never explained. Just suspend disbelief and go with it.)

I think the hardest thing to wrap my mind around was the whales have an inverted view of gravity. To them, the human world of air is called the Abyss, and it lives below them. The ocean is, well, their sky, as the title says. Bathsheba mentions the dizzying moment when she breaches and the world turns on its axis as gravity changes around her. When the whales talk of swimming up, they mean deeper into the ocean, or down, to us.

It's a crazy, inverted, fantastical world, and you just have to go with it. The illustrations both help and confuse further, but I think the fever-dream feel of it is intentional.

Bathsheba and her pod are hunters of men, and they come across a sign from Toby Wick. (You know, instead of Moby Dick.) Toby Wick is a devil in the eyes of both men and whales, and Bathsheba's captain, Captain Alexandra, resolves to hunt him down once and for all and rid the oceans of his menace. On the way, Bathsheba talks to their human captive and learns not all men are hunters, and they have dreams and fears just like whales do. Disturbed, she begins to question her own morality, and what makes someone a devil.

The book is a quick read at 160 pages, probably half of which are full-page illustrations. But it is magical and surreal and well worth reading.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

This book ripped my heart out and stomped on it. I started crying during one of the last scenes, and thought that was bad enough - then the next chapter just DESTROYED ME. It is the first book in a trilogy inspired by the Mahabharata (which I totally want to read now!) - the second book, A House of Rage and Sorrow, isn't due out until September. September! What am I supposed to do until then?!

So. Wow. This is the first book I've read by Mandanna, though The Lost Girl sounds interesting. Given how good this one was, that one has moved higher on my list.

In A Spark of White Fire, we follow Esmae, a girl who was sent away at birth because her mother was told she'd destroy her family. Trying to subvert those kinds of curses never works out well. She's grown up an orphan in a different kingdom, albeit one educated by royal tutors with the local princes, as requested by a goddess. (When the goddess of war asks you to educate an orphan girl with your sons, you do it.) All Esmae really wants is to return to her family; she believes the only way to do that, to claim her place with them, is to help her brother regain his throne. And she thinks she can best do that by winning this contest, earning the unbeatable space ship, and pretending to go join her uncle's family so she has an inside channel to her brother's enemies. It's a little convoluted, but it is something that her brother desperately needs, so it kind of makes sense.

Things unfortunately don't go as planned, and every attempt to escape fate only winds the net tighter.

I loved every character in this book, from the sentient warship Titania (who I wish we'd spent more time with!) to Esmae, her best friend Rama, her cousin Max, her brothers, even her uncle, the usurper king. And the gods. Everyone has such personality. They just leap off the page. Granted, some of them are trying to stab arrows into your heart, but they come to life regardless!

The family dynamics are really what the book is about - no one's truly in the wrong, here, and no one really wants to kill each other, but pride, miscommunication, and bad advice rips them apart. Esmae and Max are doing their best to reconcile the two halves of the family, but the family resists them at every turn.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

I picked this one up because of the mention of the online roleplaying game. Somewhat disappointingly, the book spends almost no time actually in the game. We're told that Analee used to escape into the game all the time, but in the book itself we see her putting aside the game for “real life”, over and over again. I was expecting her to be more reluctant to leave it.

That aside, this is a great YA book about adjusting to changes in family life and social pressures at school. The clique and rumor mill and popular kids are all there, with Analee on the outside - until she agrees to fake-date Seb. We watch as she goes from being invisible to being known at school, and how that affects her.

Analee's also dealing with the impending wedding of her dad and his girlfriend, two years after Analee's mother died, and all the emotions that brings up.

It's a cute YA book, with a lot of character development, but the part of it that drew me didn't get as much screen-time as I was expecting, so it just wasn't really my cup of tea.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

I've read a few different Young Adult anthologies recently, and they've all been utterly fantastic. This belongs right up there with A Thousand Beginnings and Endings and Toil & Trouble.

As someone who HAS a chronic illness that affects every aspect of my life, I identified with several of these stories quite a lot. There's one in particular in which they're putting on a play, and the narrator mentions how TIRED they are. That their doctor would tell them to back off, and not do so much, but they call that stagnation and they're not willing to give up the highs that come with accomplishing something that takes so much effort - and I feel that intimately. I'm still coming to terms with my new limits. There are times when I do too much, and I pay for it, in pain and fatigue and days unable to function as a human being - but it's usually worth it. I just have to plan for the aftermath. To see that in fiction was a really validating thing.

Other stories deal with other sorts of physical disabilities - a wheelchair user, people with canes, or blindness. Some of the characters have more mental disabilities - severe anxiety, depression, schizophrenia. This is a fantastic collection, spanning genres from contemporary fiction to magical realism to sci-fi to fantasy.

I'm going to be keeping an eye out for more Young Adult anthologies, as this is the third one that I've read recently and they're SO. GOOD. I know there's two more coming out in the near future; one centered on Jewish characters that Katherine Locke has another story in, and one centered on vampires that also has some familiar names in it. (Vampires Never Get Old, which is a super clever title for a Young Adult anthology of vampires!)

I love checking out short story anthologies to keep handy for days I don't have time to sit down with an entire novel, and man there have been some great ones recently. This is definitely one of them.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

This is one of the many new releases I have been eagerly awaiting from the library, and it did not disappoint! There are fifteen stories here, reimagining Asian myths, legends, and fairytales. Each story has an author's note following it, giving a little bit of background information on the inspiration for the story. I didn't realize until reading the author bios in the back of the book that three of the authors (including the two editors) are from the We Need Diverse Books team, which is one of my favorite book twitters! (@diversebooks) Their book recommendations are always fantastic. One of the editors is actually local to me, so that's pretty neat, too!

I think my favorite stories were the last two in the book - Eyes Like Candlelight (by Julie Kagawa), about a Kitsune falling in love with a mortal, and The Crimson Cloak (Cindy Pon), about a goddess falling in love with a mortal. Stories range from Japanese mythology (Eyes Like Candlelight) to Filipino, Hmong, and Punjabi-inspired tales. The diversity in both culture, style, and time period of these tales is fantastic. I really enjoy Asian mythology, and I love seeing more and more books exploring it. (Forest of a Thousand Lanterns was another semi-recent one.)

Because it's a bunch of short stories, it's an easy book to take in small bites - a story here, a story there. I like mixing short story collections in with my longer reads; they make for nice breaks. I highly recommend this book, and I'll be looking up the authors to find some of their other works! (That's another reason I love short story collections - they introduce me to authors I might not otherwise read!)

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

What defines a person? Your experiences? Your personality? The emotional bonds you forge? What happens when you forget? Are you still you if you don't remember who that is? The Book of M tackles these questions and takes an intimate look at what happens when some people forget but others remember.

We enter on Max and Ory in an abandoned hotel, running out of food and supplies. Max has lost her shadow, which means she will soon start forgetting. Everything. (There are rumors that Shadowless have died because they forgot to breathe or eat.) We learn it's been a few years since the phenomenon started happening, and flashbacks tell us the story of those early months. Like any good dystopia, it is a world-altering process. Governments are gone because no one remembered to run them. Food and other supplies are dwindling because farmers, shippers, manufacturers forgot what they were doing and how to do it.

But with the forgetting comes - magic, of a sort. Ory comes across a deer in the forest that instead of antlers, has wings sprouting from its forehead. Because someone forgot that deer shouldn't have wings - and so it happened. Forgetting that something can be destroyed can make it indestructible. Forgetting that you left a place can take you back to that place. Forgetting a place exists can make that place no longer exist. It's not a very controllable kind of magic. And it's dangerous - you can never be quite sure what you'll forget, and you can affect other people with it.

And the forgetting starts with losing your shadow. Ory gives Max a tape recorder, so she can record things she might forget. He posts signs around their hideout to remind her of things, like “Let no one in. Ory has a key.” and “Don't touch the guns or the knives.” But Max knows she is a danger to Ory, and so while she can still remember enough to function, she runs away.

The book mostly concerns Ory and Max's journeys across the country; Max trying to find something she's forgotten, and Ory trying to find Max. The adventure is gripping, heartbreaking, and at times confusing. (Mostly on Max's end, as magic warps things around her.) There are a few side characters who also have viewpoint chapters. Naz Ahmadi is an Iranian girl training for the Olympics in the US - in archery, which comes in quite handy. We also have The One Who Gathers, a mysterious man in New Orleans who has gathered a flock of shadowless.

If you ever played the roleplaying game Mage: the Ascension, and remember the concept of Paradox, this book reminds me of that a lot. (Is it a surprise that I'm a tabletop RPG geek? It shouldn't be. I own almost all of the old World of Darkness books, and currently play in a D&D game, and hopefully soon a second D&D game!) Anyway. Paradox. Where doing magic too far outside the bounds of acceptable reality punishes you, so you have to weigh the potential consequences against the magic you want to do.

I really enjoyed this debut novel; it is a very original take on a dystopia, and raised a lot of questions about personality, memories, and what makes a person the person you remember.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

The Weight of Feathers is a Romeo and Juliet story, with two families feuding over real and imagined slights, and a young person from each family falling in love and fighting their conditioning and the control of their families to be together. McLemore has added a touch of magic to the story, but it's deft enough that at first it can be mistaken for metaphor.

Lace Paloma is the Palomas' youngest mermaid, only just allowed to show herself in the shows, but not yet allowed to interact with fans. A big part of their performance is not being seen out of the water, out of costume, so when the show is over, all the mermaids swim off to deserted edges of the lake they perform in to exit, change, and make their way home. On her way home after one such performance, Lace is caught in the woods when some kind of acid rain from the nearby adhesive plant coats the town. While somewhat caustic, the rain is really only dangerous if it hits cotton clothing, which Lace is wearing. One of the Corbeau boys finds her in the woods, rips off her cotton clothing, and gets her to the hospital. Because she was in her normal clothing and not her costume, he didn't realize she was part of the rival family. This meeting and rescue is not actually the start of their contact with each other; they'd talked briefly in town, when each thought the other was a local, but it does turn it from a passing contact to something more, and when Lace is spurned by her family, she winds up under the Corbeau boy's protection.

The book is about family secrets, corporate conspiracies, abusive families, and control of one's own destiny, swirled together with a touch of magic, feathers, and mermaid scales. While it is definitely a Romeo and Juliet story, McLemore has taken the story and truly made it her own. Both the Paloma family and the Corbeau family have such a mythology woven about themselves that each family really has an identity that defines them. (Feathers and “flying” for the Corbeaus, scales and swimming for the Palomas.) When Lace and Cluck try to bridge the gap between the two, things get difficult.

I really loved this book, and it has made me even more eager to read Blanca & Roja, McLemore's next book. Her writing is gorgeous and surreal and I love it.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

We Set the Dark on Fire is an excellent example of how government-mandated relationship structures are oppressive. The core of the story revolves around an island society's marriage structure; because of an old myth, each man - or at least each upper-class man - has two wives. One wife, the Primera, is expected to be his intellectual equal; she runs his affairs and household and manages his social engagements - the business side of the marriage, if you will - and a second wife who is his heart. The second wife, the Segunda, is expected to be emotional, passionate, and beautiful; she bears and raises his children. The wives are expected to get along and love each other like family.

This is really only the framework for the plot, though. The plot itself revolves around the idea of who belongs in society and who doesn't. I've seen some people call it illegal immigration, and there IS a wall that it is illegal to come over; the unfortunates living outside the wall are uncared for by society and government alike. But I didn't get the impression that they weren't actually part of the same country. So I'm not 100% certain I agree that it counts as immigration in the story, though it does have a lot of the same principles, so it may as well be. There's a lot of othering and dehumanizing, and deciding who deserves what based on their wealth, and government checkpoints to check residence papers, so even if it isn't technically immigration - well. It's still a major theme.

This sounds like it could be a book on polyamory; it is not. This is government-mandated female oppression. The government, and our main character's new husband, specifically, are intent on crushing the resistance coming from the poor who live on the edges of the island. The resistance is called La Voz, or The Voice, and they help Daniela, our main character, out of a tight spot in the beginning of the book. In return, they expect her to spy for them on her new husband, a highly-placed government official. Not knowing who to trust, and afraid of her lies being discovered, she agrees.

What follows is the early stages of rebellion: protests, government cover-ups, undercover meetings, and military checkpoints. In the middle of it all, Daniela begins to fall in love with her Segunda, Carman, who seems to have secrets of her own.

I really really enjoyed this book, and I am very much looking forward to the second! It's listed as a duology, so it should just be the two. I can't wait!

You can find all my reviews and more at Goddess in the Stacks.

Sweet Little Lies was billed as a thriller in Book of the Month's description, but it's more of a police procedural. I hadn't read one before, though I watch plenty of them on Netflix - they're a bit of a guilty pleasure! It was interesting having one in book form. It's not my typical fare, but I did enjoy it, far more than I probably would have enjoyed a true thriller. It's got all your typical parts of a police procedural - older family man cop, ball-busting female chief who isn't as bitchy as she first appears, troubled main character who snapped on a case, police psychiatrist, puzzling case, lying witnesses. All we're really missing is a partner who isn't actually a cop but somehow worms his way into cases anyway.

I'm conflicted about Cat herself. I like her - but I disagree with some of her decisions. I think she should have come clean about her connection to the case immediately. She doesn't because she's trying to protect her dad, but why? She spends most of the book talking about how much she dislikes him! Her entire family dynamic is pretty weird. They have issues.

I really enjoyed the writing of this book. The pacing was excellent - slow enough to absorb each new reveal properly, but fast-paced enough that the action rolls along. Goodreads says the book is “Cat Kinsella #1” implying it's the start of a series. I'll have to keep an eye out for them. For a debut novel, I am impressed at the level of writing, pacing, plot, and characterization. There's a lot of threads in this book that get gathered together at the end and tied up nicely, with only one escaping. That worried me until I discovered it's the beginning of a series; the one loose thread makes sense in that context.

While I didn't like this one quite as much as Goodbye, Paris, it's still another great pick from Book of the Month.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

I....may have an unpopular opinion on this book. First, I LOVED the first book of this trilogy, The City of Brass. Absolutely loved it. It was one of my favorite books of that year. I like this one significantly less. I think that probably wouldn't be the case if I had read this in quick succession, but I read City of Brass when it came out, and had to wait a year for this one, in which time I read around 200 more books.

I expected a certain amount of backstory explanation in Kingdom of Copper - and it wasn't there. I think the book assumes you remember everything that happened in City of Brass - and I most certainly did not. I don't remember why we have the division between the djinn and the daeva, or really which is which. I know the shafit are part human, part...djinn? Daeva? See that's the problem. These are very politicky books and forgetting key parts of the political drama makes this book VERY hard to follow. I don't know WHY there's conflict between certain people, and I don't recognize missteps when characters make them because I've forgotten who has which opinions.

All the worldbuilding explanations are in the first book, and they aren't revisited in this one. Had I KNOWN that, I might have re-read City of Brass before this came out, as much as I dislike re-reading anything.

All of that aside, and despite my confusion, I mostly enjoyed this continuation of Nahri's story. We delved a little more into murky bloodlines, the more recent past of Daevabad, and the more ancient past of Nahri's healer ancestors, the Nahids.

I still love Nahri, I like Ali a little more, and I like Dara a little less. I am curious to see where the third book leads, especially after the cliffhanger ending of this one. I just might have to re-read both City of Brass and this one before reading the trilogy's conclusion.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.

Content Warning: Violence Against Women

One of my prompts for the Litsy Challenge is “Japanese Thriller” which took me some research to find one I could get my hands on. As it turns out, this isn't really a thriller, just a mystery. It was the debut novel of this author, who has now churned out over a hundred mystery novels. It only came out thirteen years ago; he must write very fast!

In The Tokyo Zodiac Murders, two friends are trying to solve a 40-year-old serial murder case in which a man, his five daughters, and his two nieces were all killed. There was a curious note left by the murdered man detailing his plans to kill the women, take parts from each of them, and make the “perfect woman” called Azoth, who was supposed to become some kind of goddess and “save Japan.” His eldest daughter was raped and murdered in a crime that, besides timing, looked unrelated to the rest. The other six were not only killed, but chopped up and dumped with parts missing, all according to the murdered man's plan. ....Except he was murdered first!

What starts the two friends on this path is one of Kiyoshi's clients bringing him a letter her father had written before he died, confessing to having consensual sex with the eldest daughter the night she was murdered, then dumping the bodies as instructed by a blackmailer who knew about the encounter. He did not kill the girls; just took care of the disposal. This is brand-new evidence to the case.

This was definitely a mystery, not a thriller, but they're largely lumped together in the lists of translated works of “Japanese Crime Fiction” so I'm counting it anyway. It was an interesting mystery; I liked that, unlike a lot of mysteries, all of the evidence is available to the reader. The characters tell the reader everything they uncover, but not the conclusions they draw. (Until the big reveal at the end, anyway.) Shimada actually put two author's notes in the novel itself; one before the characters reveal anything, saying “You have all the information you need to solve the mystery now, can you do it before the characters reveal what happened?” and one after the murderer is revealed but before the How is answered, asking “Can you figure out how and why she did it?” before the complete reveal at the end of the book. It was a little surprising, but I really liked it.

I've never been big into mysteries, so I don't see myself reading more of Shimada's work, but for a book I wouldn't normally have read, this was pretty interesting. That's what reading challenges are all about, right? Stretching out your literary comfort zones.

You can find all my reviews at Goddess in the Stacks.