johnny dangerously.

Thank you to NetGalley for allowing me to read an ARC in return for a fair review.

This book is trying to do something tremendous, and, mostly, it succeeds. Its failings are small things, niggling complaints about pacing and length. I'd give this book a 4.75 if possible, because it's just short of absolutely perfect. A lot of the dramatic weight could have been improved by either having fewer main characters, or more room in the book to flesh those characters out. This book is a response to Stephen King's IT, and that book is famously enormous; while this book doesn't need to be a doorstopper, it could have benefitted from a few extra pounds.

All that said, it's thematically and emotionally immaculate. The mood shifts between Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the works of Alison Rumfitt, and IT, yet it manages to entirely original. The book really comes into its own as the voices of its main cast emerge and flourish, and perhaps selfishly I wanted more time to sit with them. However, the very action-oriented horror suits this book well, and the buckling conclusion is as heartrending as it is satisfying.

I'm afraid this is will be the best book I'll read all year, which is frightening because it's so early in the year. And yet, I can't see something else surpassing it.

This book blew me out of the water. I've never seen a social critique so apt, yet set in a fantasy setting so devoid of our current culture. I've never seen worldbuilding so in-depth yet so thoughtfully in-sync with the themes of the book. I've never seen such complex characters who felt both authentic to the totally fictional cultures and struggles created for them, yet completely understandable and sympathetic to the reader.

It is, in short, a masterwork.

It's not a light, happy masterwork. This book is dark, depressing, about how imperialist structures like racism and sexism and homophobia live inside us all and in turn destroy us all, not just ‘us' as individuals but ‘us' as in our society and the bonds we make within society.

Without going into too much detail, there are two central metaphors in the book: the bounds of society and what they mean, and cancer. Both are incredibly apt. There is a huge amount of discussion dedicated to what family and culture and society and obligation mean to every person and every culture and every person within that culture. There is a huge amount of discussion dedicated, as well, to the nature of cancer, tumors and radiation, and whether or not these are actually a force for good or evil. The metaphor is clear: this alien thing lives inside you, contributing nothing, slowly killing you and those around you, as it slowly and painfully separates you from others and keeps you sick and unable to contribute to the society around you. A tumor only infects one person, but it affects everyone. The book is in places disgusting, gory and painful, but the kind of exorcism that we as readers need, especially in the current political climate.

Which is to say, if you don't want politics in a fantasy book, this isn't the book for you. Yes, this book is a fantasy, but it's also very, very, very real. Baru and her struggles mirror our own in a way that can't be understated. The characters in this book use different words, have different cultures, and different concepts, but they're going through the same struggles we are now.

I once took a film course in college, and one of the lessons that stuck with me the most was the idea that ‘all movies made durring wartime are inherently war movies'. While obviously not film, this maxim applies here. This is not a book ‘about' the current political climate, but it also undoubtedly, inarguably is. I'm generally reticent to make wide sweeping generalizations about the nature of people's understanding of books and films and the like, but I'll make an exception in this case: If you don't think this book is about where we are now as a culture, you've missed the entire point.

In short: If you want the best written political fantasy I've ever read (and I've read quite a few), with fantastic and thoughtful forward motion, pacing, worldbuilding, characters, and nuance? Get this immediately. It may make you feel sad, or uncomfortable, or scared, or frustrated, or uneasy... but if you're living in the world we are now and you don't already feel those things? You're not living in Baru's world anyway.

2025 Reread: Since I read this during Trump's first term, I figured I'd reread it during the second. The first time, I got really weird about it! I was kind of going through it. I'm not gonna pretend I'm not going through something right now, but at least I have more perspective.

Some very dramatic whinging aside, I do think this is an excellent novel, a pure distillation of what fantasy is capable of when you put aside comfort food, shallow moralism and anxious Puritainism. (If you like those things, cool! The entire publishing industry does. Go read that stuff and leave me alone.) I think this book is a masterpiece on a craft level, from the worldbuilding to the tone, the themes, and much of the prose. In terms of pacing, it's kind of stretched out, and it ends on a hell of a cliffhanger. I don't personally mind it, but I can acknowledge this is because the book is so extremely special interest content for me that I can't be completely objective.

From this series' interest in eugenics, class, corruption, forms of government, cultural anthropology, technology, inequality, economics, Enlightenment-era ‘science', and ‘magic' as a cultural phenomenon... look, I understand intellectually why people don't like this book or this series, but I can't quite ‘get' it emotionally. One of the best fantasy books of all time for me personally, topped only by the sequel. If the 4th book never comes out, I'll be content, because Monster and Tyrant are truly everything I could ever ask of the fantasy genre.

I don't think I'll ever read a horror novel I'll like better.

This isn't one of those books I think was ‘written just for me', or whatever that phrase means. It is, instead, a way to look into another world and see what it's trying to say. The book is layered in metaphor under metaphor under metaphor. I came away with theories, only for the final few chapters to tell me my theories, however plausible, did not matter. They don't save Sarah. You can't save Sarah. The ending happens before the beginning, and you know it, but you keep reading anyway.

We're all just fodder for the tree.

Ultimately a strong work, though the historical errors in the first chapter made me suspicious of the factual accuracy for the rest of it. I strongly suspect that a great deal of the wild tales this book retells are better labeled as ‘apocryphal' and ‘alleged'. I was also a bit bothered– or maybe confused– by the continued habit of calling prostitutes ‘whores' when it wasn't strictly necessary– for example, in the actual prose written by the author and no one else. However, all of these things are a risk I knowingly took with this book, and all popular history books that attempt to make any sense out of sex and sexuality. Overall an entertaining read, and that's really all I wanted.

In particular, what saves this book from a lower rating are the chapters on the Restoration period, which are fascinating and full of life. That, and the unremitting effort on the part of the author to take a pro-woman stance, never doubting the prostitutes or their stories and always taking their side when applicable. We need more books like this, even if the writing is a little thin in other places.

I feel strange for not having more to say about this book, other than it's genuinely some of the best speculative fiction / fantasy / scifi / horror (pick one) I've read in years. It's a smooth, sleek little novel that knows exactly what it's doing and does it. While it's not perfect, I can't think of any flaw great enough to bring up in this review.

I think what I appreciate most about this novel is how much it trusts its readers, how confident it is with what it's trying to do. The twists aren't mindfucks, all reveals are telegraphed well in advance. Every change seems earned, all the dread is meaningful, and in the last sliver of the novel it goes from genre to literary, elegantly straddling both qualifiers to say something interesting, detailed, new, and worthwhile about identity, colonialism, gender, and medicine.

I cannot recommend it enough if you like a story bright with darkness, full of intention, inventive prose, lush worldbuilding, and smart narration.

I've read a lot of books with ‘Lovecraftian vibes', books that posit themselves as ‘Lovecraftian remixes', but they never quite catch the soul-sucking horror of The Statement of Randolph Carter. There is something horrible in the unknown, yes, but there's something further horrific in the fact that we are small players in a game where the rules are in a secret and unknowable language. The horror is precisely that, in the grand scale of the universe (for lack of a better term:) we are NPCs. Very few Lovecraftian updates seem to get this, but The Worm and His Kings really, really does. It's not trying to be uplifting, but if you find it uplifting (and you really might!) that's okay, because existence is a matter of perspective, time is casual, and the only constant is the burning of indifferent stars.

In general, I try to keep reviews short and not get too far into spoilers, but the deeper themes of this novella revolve around some revelations that are only revealed in the latter half of the story. There are no direct plot spoilers below, but I do discuss themes that will cause some reveals to be more telegraphed, and easily guessable, than if you're going in blind (like I did).

A cautionary tale on dating cis people, or a cautionary tale for cis people about how to not perceive trans people: it's both. This book is a resounding indictment of the idea that trans people are inherently so strong for being trans. It warns of the way in which cis people, in helping trans people, can often center themselves in their stories and in doing so harm trans people. It is a story about trans people that is about more than basic representation; it actually engages in all the messy, painful, deeply important parts of being trans. Self-love and acceptance is not enough. The sharp and painful parts of you do not need to be exorcized in order for you to be valid. No one can validate you but you, and that's a hard, painful lesson to learn, a difficult journey to make, not a soft and cuddly tale full of hugs, kisses, and the beneficent approval of the right cis person.

Thematically, this book makes a trilogy with Gretchen Felker-Martin's Manhunt and Maya Deane's Wrath Goddess Sings, though I think this one is perhaps the most successful, possibly due to its brevity. This book is truly a 4.75 for me, losing that quarter star just because its ending is a little belabored, but that's fine. The Worm waits for us all.

I will be thinking about this book for a long time. I will be thinking about Shannon Moss. I will wonder at the possibilities in her life, the branching roads mapped out, hypothetical and real. This is the best time travel book I've ever read, the best mystery (simply because it has so many, unfolding like a rose), the best book about spaceflight and the apocalypse and sacrifice. Is anything really the end? The world keeps changing, blossoming, blooming. Everything is beautiful and simultaneously terrible. Time is an uroboros.

While this is undeniably a genre novel, it's also very much an adult contemporary novel, and I think it bridges the gap wonderfully, of interest for both crowds. If you like detective stories, stories about serious women solving serious crimes, this one's for you. If you like twisty pulpy benders with inexplicable unreality, this one's also for you. I am so glad I read this book.

I'll be thinking about the ending through all the recursions of my life, the echoes and the branching paths. Other reviews of this book compare it to Twin Peaks and True Detective. The prose does have a Lynchian flair for the bizarre, and the murder mystery is as gruesome, sad and violent as the first season of True Detective. However, it reminds me far more of the X-Files (in terms of setting, characters and location), Arrival (in terms of atmosphere), and perhaps the first season of Westworld (thematically, with its questions of personhood, the ravages of time, and the themes of impossible futures).

Yet the ending reminds me of nothing so much as Inception's ending-- something meant to be discussed, curled eternally in ambiguity. Yet unlike Inception, the entire book sets you up not to doubt every truth, but to experience and enjoy the multiplicity of endless conflicting truths, each equal and legitimate. In an age of 'mindfuck' twists and 'ending EXPLAINED' youtube diatribes, I find this extremely comforting. This book is not meant to be analyzed or picked apart (though not for lack of depth; the world of this story is as well-built and detailed as any of its more pulpy fantasy or science fiction contemporaries, while still being effortlessly understandable to anyone even glancingly familiar with the last 20 years of American history). The entire book could perhaps be seen as an effort to condition readers to accept dubiety; there are no easy answers. The journey is more important than the destination; time is a beauty meant to be experienced.

It doesn't matter if you're real. Be at peace. Keep going. Someone else would quit.

While this novel is searingly raw, absolutely none of it is undercooked. A testament to the work, considering how many incredible risks the writing takes, not just with form, but with content. This is a very specific book, about a very specific time, and a very specific experience. I don't know how people will understand this book if they're unfamiliar with how the internet treats trans people– the TERF ‘movement', mumsnet and #IStandWithMaya and trans widows and 4chan Nazis and sissy hypno. All of these things are real. All of these things are not parody. The book is about these things. Which is to say, fascism.

This book is a slap in the face from someone who loves you. Maybe you can forgive the violence. Maybe you can't. That's your choice. It might be the only choice you have.

I'm hesitant to mark this down as ‘Victorian', since the title is misleading; it deals exclusively and entirely with the lives of American women in the 1800s. Some people consider that the ‘American Victorian Era'. I consider them mad, maaaad I tell you. (I dislike naming any period of American history after a monarch, for my own priggish political reasons.)

That is my major complaint with the book. My minor complaint is how overly detailed it sometimes gets, turning vibrant prose suddenly dry. But beyond that? This book is excellent and highly recommended, even if you're like me and not someone hugely interested in the period it covers.

I like best how well it acknowledges the greater factors pressing on the lives of women. It never turns away from acknowledging the pervasive influence of sexism, racism and classism on the life of Americans past. That is the book's greatest strength, and it cannot be understated.

Having the distinction of being so retrograde that the author can presumably be found on the cover, The French Revolution: An Economic Interpretation is an invaluable window into the French revolution from the perspective of someone who was actually there. Florin Aftalion's experience during the revolution is an invaluable resource, and it tells modern readers a great deal about what hidebound public servants actually thought and felt at the time of such momentous calamity.

Coming from the Ancien Regime's magnificent splendor, where only kings and princes could move the world, how did they explain such a monumental shift caused by commoners and peasants? Aftalion is happy to put clawed and dessicated hand to pen and tell us in this fabulous memoir. The excellently preserved husk of what was once Aftalion explains, with magnificent charts and graphs, how the revolution had very little to do with political upheaval. It was all economic in nature! This perspective is especially reasonable given that the property values on Aftalion's crypt have no doubt fluctuated in the recent economic crises. Is another revolution on the rise? We'll have to find that shaman again and find out!

If you want a seasoned and reasonable account of the revolution that takes into account the importance of the individual and the social currents of the time, this may not be the necronomicon for you! But if you're looking for an archaic perspective on a fascinating subject, devoid of all the vital currents that make this period so fascinating, I highly recommend this eldritch tome.

Also, it's pretty short.

How disappointing! Really, I can't buy a book about the evils of slavery and human trafficking– and that was undeniably the point of the brothel characters– when the main character has a slave who learns to love him and stand by his side.

Pretty solid, but lacks analysis in several key places. While names and dates are interesting, there's little gathering of facts per capita. It's just all kinda laid out there, which is cool for historians intending to use this in research. However, I am not a historian; I want summaries and hypotheses.

This book on Nell Gwyn suffers an extreme surfeit of Nell Gwyn. Not surprising, given how little is known of Gwyn even today– a word of advice, don't be born poor in the 1700s– but disappointing all the same.

If you are looking to research slavery in Ancient Rome, and want to read about how slavery and imperialism are good things, actually, when you, like, really think about it, this is the book for you. A pro-colonial, pro-slavery apologia of imperial excess, this book is exactly the kind of thing I mean when I talk about how a lot of UK writing on Ancient Rome treats the Romans like they were direct antecedents of the British Empire (which was, of course, a good thing). I imagine this idea was more popular in a pre-Mussolini world (the book is from 1929), but that's no excuse.

This book is only useful as a testament to the way people used to think, convulsively twisting fact into fiction so they can better lick the boot of an uncaring imperial polity. Nationalism at its worst, this book is a relic of an era that I only wish was more bygone.

If you want an actually thoughtful, well-researched look into the history of Roman slavery, I highly recommend the works of Jerry Toner, who is both a better historian and a better writer.

This book is an absolute delight, and I can't recommend it highly enough. Reading about the French Revolution– or any revolution– will be hugely impacted. The symbolism and psychology of revolutions, and how a society deals with something so tumultuous, how that changes a culture, all of that is covered in depth in this book. While it has a very purposefully narrow and specific scope, the wider implications are easily seen and applied. A worthwhile read for anyone interested in the French Revolution, or any revolution.

This title gets five stars straight off the bat because Deadpool calls himself ‘dadpool' and dresses up as a ghostbuster (excuse me, alien buster) to take his daughter trick-or-treating. I am fully aware that I'm reading this series for the wrong reasons, but Marvel can have my money if they continue to sprinkle little details like that in. Oh! He doesn't want his daughter to see him hurt! Sure, I'll buy it. I'll buy two.

A truly magnificent book for anyone interested in the cultural impact of the French Revolution, from its symbols to its psychology. Too many books on this period focus only on the political culture, ignoring the entire point of the political movement: the people, and the upheaval of their everyday lives. This book effortlessly links them, making clear the two currents are inextricable. Highly recommended for anyone interested in understanding this period of history.

An excellent work that ties the sociological underpinnings of corsetry as well as the physical. I can't say if this is the best introduction to the subject– modern discussion of corsetry is such a turgid pit of argument that I don't know if there is such a thing as a good historical introduction– but the read was fascinating, and somehow managed to be lively and informative despite clearly being highly academic. Would recommend, but only to those with extremely specific interests on this subject. Also, strong stomachs for medical torture.

An excellent and comprehensive look at an underappreciated and rarely acknowledged people. While the book has a habit of repeating its conclusions, they bear repeating. Mercifully easy to read even if you aren't an academic– the work is dry but never obtuse. A must-read if you have any interest in the Roman non-elite.

This book absolutely shines with promise, but its parts are greater than their sum. I genuinely loved large portions of this book, but they often felt stitched together and oddly out of place. The prose quality would go from sublime to sub-par between chapters. Plot developments were shocking and intriguing, but also frequently rushed and jolting. The characters are likeable and memorable, but often their most memorable moments are rushed, without enough foreshadowing or internal characterization to justify a change of heart. The novel expects us to know the tropes inherent in the genre and expect them in kind; it often fails to put in the elbow grease to explain, for example, sudden changes of heart beyond the fact that this is the part in the gothic novel where the heroine changes her heart.

None of this makes the book not worth reading. In fact, I recommend it! I'll be keeping an eye out for this author in the future. House of Hunger is a wonderful, energetic gothic horror novel with sparkling prose, an excellent plot, and tons of memorable moments. The incredibly lush descriptions, the world the characters inhabit, all of it easily makes a story and world you could get lost in. It just needs a little more polish before it can be truly great.

Also, to those reviews saying the twists were ‘obvious', I strongly disagree.

I haven't really liked any straight up fantasy books (as opposed to fantasy horror or historical fantasy) in a few years. They just didn't vibe for me. I'm so glad I read this one, so glad it was published, because it's what I've been waiting for: someone using fantasy as an excuse to do an anthropological deep dive on a culture they made up, but without getting self-consciously pretentious about it like most Le Guin descendants tend to. Essentially, I applaud K. Ritz for having the determination to write something that is kind of unmarketable, and having read it, it's more than understandable to me why it came through a vanity publishing micropress.

To be clear, this book is great. I think it's amazing. I loved it. But I can readily admit it's not for everyone, and the necessities of its shape and style mean it loses the easy audience a more conventional novel would have. I'm not saying it's too deep for normies to understand– much the opposite, in fact. This book is fantasy, but it's not epic fantasy about world changing events, so it loses the Sandersonian crowd; there are stakes, but no battles and all the sex and violence is off screen, so it loses the ASOIAF crowd; it's fantasy about small events and bucolic experiences, but some very not cozy things happen in it, so it loses the Legends & Lattes crowd; it's got incredibly intricate aspirations in its construction, theme, and pacing, but it's written with very accessible and at times simplistic prose, so it's going to lose out on the literary fantasy crowd.

To be clear, of it changed any one of these things, it would fail to achieve its goals, but in doing so it makes itself very difficult to find a ready-made audience. I firmly believe if this was published ~20 years ago, it would have made a huge splash, but in the current landscape of over-genrefied marketing, it doesn't fit easily into a prescribed box.

What the fuck am I talking about?

Sheever's Journal is the journal about a man named Sheever, who is a poisoner, and it details a huge chunk of his life as he works in the kitchens of a noble house in a fantasy land of the author's creation. You would think this means it's a book about court politics and intrigue. It's not. It's about being Sheever, and what that means to Sheever, written as though it was a normal human's journal. I've read diary-fiction, and most of them cut corners with the diaryness to make themselves more literary; nobody has that good a memory, and almost nobody would write novelesque prose in their diary, but we expect it because we all know it's a novel and this is what we want to read, in the same way that even the most ‘grounded' movies still star the world's most beautiful people. K. Ritz has no interest in this. Her novel refuses to ever forget that it's Sheever's Journal– sentences are simple and short, written quickly, several scenes don't make sense, and things are frequently unexplained. The political situation of the world Sheever inhabits is extremely multilayered and complex, and you're not supposed to understand all of it– if someone from another world read your journal, would they know the difference between Christianity, Christ, a Christian, and Christina Aguilera? In this book, you'll meet Dyns, Drays, and a man called Dyn; good luck keeping them straight. In the end, you don't really need to. It's supposed to be confusing. Indeed, multiple questions the novel asks, mysteries the characters entertain, are unresolved. Is Sheever in love? Is the prophecy real (and what about his visions? His horocope)? Is magic real? How does Mearan culture work? What is Tiarn rebuilding from? Who is the man in the prologue? How was this journal discovered? Is Sheever even running from a real thing? These things are never revealed, either because Sheever doesn't know, because he already knows, or because it will be covered in the next book.

And that's what makes it great, for me. It's a book that's unflinchingly itself, and damn the consequences. It's also frequently heartbreaking and deeply evocative; some scenes in this book are going to be tattooed on my memory for years to come.

If any of this sounds remotely interesting to you, don't walk but run to read this novel. But if it sounds like it's not for you, don't force it. This book exists for itself, and in a world with an eternally shrinking quantity of midlist authors– especially in genre fiction– I think that's a fantastic accomplishment.

(Thank you to Netgalley for an advance digital copy of this book in return for a fair review.)

An author's first novel is always a little clunky, but I've never read one that shone with such promise as Wrath Goddess Sing. While the phrasing and pacing need a little polish, the story, characters, ideas, and raw emotions of the work shine through.

I think the most impressive thing about the story is how well Achilles works as a protagonist. Her perspective– flawed and obviously biased– somehow also makes the world feel more full. Nailing an unreliable narrator's point of view is a hard thing to do at the best of times, much less for an author's first go.

The blend of mythology, archaeology, classical paganism, and science weave a gripping story in a fully-realized world. Upping the stakes of the Trojan war is fantastic. The view of history this novel pulls out to include is excellent. This is a book I'll reread time and time again.

I think this book is, more than anything else, a fascinating snapshot into the world of literary criticism in an age gone past. I'm not sure how relevant it will be to someone who considers themselves a Wagnerian (I, myself, do not, I just really like the Ring Cycle). The theories Shaw proposes are rich and fascinating, but he undercuts them through his own need to prove that Wagner himself would agree. This is an aspect of being a Victorian writer, however, who existed before the principal of the death of the author concept. As such, one of the premier English-speaking authors of our time makes what we now consider an elementary mistake in literary criticism.

An incredible, evocative novel that puts to shame much of contemporary urban fantasy.

Absolutely excellent, this is my new reccomendation for anyone who wants an introduction or a review of the French Revolution. Unlike many books that cover this period, it isn't afraid of casting the obvious parallels between the events of the revolution and the modern era, showing how the French revolution was a first or at least codifying example of early socialism and early despotism. The book never forgets to track the progress of Haiti's independence, something that almost every review of the French Revolution conveniently ‘forgets', despite the fact that the two events are deeply intertwined. Popkin remembers the influence of woman and people of color in the movement, and how their lives were changed during different moments, how they contributed, triumphed and failed. The book isn't afraid to praise successes and criticize failings, treating all involved with an even hand, even when I, personally, would prefer it wouldn't. It gets into the grittier details with an agile ease, so those new to the period can follow along. A fresh and triumphant history overview of the revolution, I'll definitely be looking into Popkin's other works. Highly, highly recommended for any interested in the period.