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For a moment only she allowed herself to be irritated that the woods could take as much of her blood as they liked, while she was not permitted to take even a drop of theirs; it wasn’t fair, nothing in here was fair. That was how it worked. No different without than within.

Forced into a second journey into a magic forest that nobody has ever gotten out (but her), Veris is tasked with going back and retrieving a tyrant's two children before the day is done and they are lost forever. It opens strong, with Veris being kidnapped from her home and forced into this very unwanted task. The forest is deeply creepy in a way that manages to feel fresh--there's dead sentinel deer corpses; a floating "cloth" manages to be one of the most terrifying monsters; there's also bargains, games, and tricks galore. I quite enjoyed this novella.

“In exchange? You dare, you worm, filth, you ask anything of me? If you do not recover my children your village will be razed to the ground and burnt, and we will roast your people alive upon it and eat them.”

Many pieces of fiction also have fey creatures ask "are we truly the cruel ones, given the action of humans", but I quite enjoyed the parallel that this book makes about the unfairness of power dynamics within and without the magical realm. Veris must play the games and take the deals of the fey creatures, but she also is forced into taking whatever deal the Tyrant forces upon her too. When the reader discovers later that one of the rules of the forest is to never try to negotiate deals, it echoes the way the book opens with Veris's attempt at negotiating with the tyrant.

Moon of the Crusted Snow is a story about a small, remote Anishinaabe community surviving through the beginning of an apocalypse. Power goes out, communication is down, and they turn inward to try to take care of their community, through leadership struggles, limited food, and the chaos of taking in strangers. I read this as a part of July's #SFFBookClub book.

I quite enjoyed the smaller focused story of survival here, where the outside world is at the margins. It centers a small Anishinaabe community, and about its dread and uncertainty and adaptation as everything starts to slowly unravel when winter sets in.

For me, the part that set the tone of the entire story was the conversation that Evan Whitesky has with the elder Aileen Jones, about halfway through the book. She says that there's no word for apocalypse in Ojibwe. But more than that, she says that their world already ended much earlier when they were forced out of their original land, and ended again when their children were stolen. That they've seen disaster over and over and have always been resilient and survived.

To me, that conversation feels directly juxtaposed with Evan's musing a few pages later about the phrase the moon of the crusted snow--he remembers teachers having a disagreement about whether that phrase referred to the month at the peak of winter or a month where it alternated between freezing and mild temperatures. In the context of Aileen's conversation, it feels like the title itself is about ambivalent ways of looking at disaster--one perception of it being the worst thing that's ever happened, and another saying that this is not the first time this has happened, and providing some future-looking hope for milder times.

Fathomfolk is the first book in a fantasy politics duology, set in a partially flooded city where humans and magical sea creatures called fathomfolk (sirens and sea witches and kelpies) try to live together in the city of Tiankawi. It's a story about rebellion, power dynamics, and exploitation.

I quite enjoyed all the various perspectives in this book. There's Mira the half-siren captain of the guard, who is trying to make it in the human world but gets disdained as the airquotes diversity candidate. There's Nami the rebellious dragon child who gets exiled to Tiankawi and gets caught up in the currents of rebellion there. Finally, there's Cordelia the sea witch who is mostly out for herself, making bargains and pulling strings.

The ending sets up quite a bit for the final book in terms of large scale changes and future plot hooks that will need to be dealt with, and I'm very curious to see how everything will shake out.

I have some more spoilerly rambling thoughts in this post.

Rebecca Thorne's Can't Spell Treason Without Tea is a cozy sapphic romance fantasy, explicitly in the vein of Travis Baldree's work. The book focuses on the (prexisting, and secret) relationship between a palace guard and a powerful mage. When the queen pushes too far, they treasonously abandon responsibility to set up a combination teashop/bookshop in a small town, like you do. It feels like there's larger stakes here than in similar books, but they're still personal and local ones. I'd also argue that these two are so competent in their own domains that any conflict feels much more about the potential emotional impact than a true worrisome threat.

I appreciated the amount of worldbuilding heft here. I am always a sucker for anything that opens with a fantasy map, and I felt like small bordertown Tawney was interestingly situated both geographically and politically. It's caught between three countries, and has two local governers who butt heads over who actually is in charge. It's just got the sense of place that I want out of a fantasy book. The book also has some magic system details that had more depth than I was expecting from this sort of book.

Overall, this was quite the cozy read, and it's definitely the kind of treat my brain needed right now. I'm looking forward to more novels in this series, as it felt like there were quite a few hooks for future complications. I laughed at the in-world explanation for why the biggest of these hooks lands itself in the "quite important but not at all urgent" category, which seems perfect for ongoing fantasy hijinks.

I wanted Archangels of Funk to work for me, but I struggled with its prose. Some of it was the rhythm of short choppy sentences; however, a lot of it was that it felt "no show" and all "third person omniscient tell" that provided details in a jarring manner.

It's got a really unique style (and I truly mean that positively) and I enjoyed the way that it gets into resisting capitalism and post-apocalyptic despair through theater and magical technology, but this book just wasn't for me.

(Also, this is on me, but I only realized belatedly that this is a sequel to Will Do Magic for Small Change and not a standalone book, and maybe this would have stood better for me if it had? To my credit, this is not mentioned anywhere on either side of the dust jacket or in any of the copy, and I think it's mostly intended to stand alone.)

(Reposting this here to keep all my book reviews in one place, sorry!)

David Mogo Godhunter is a urban fantasy book about a demigod living in post-apocalyptic Nigeria. Gods and godlings have invaded and taken over and destroyed large parts of Lagos, and David is scraping out a living capturing wayward godlings that are causing trouble.

The strongest part of the book for me was the Lagos setting, of its island and mainland, and its observations about culture even in a post-apocalyptic world. It's just got such a solid sense of place running through the whole book.

The beginning of the book hooked me with David getting forced into a job he doesn't want to take, but the middle and end got very muddy plot-wise and character-wise. Some of this is that due to some plot it felt like David became a different (and less likeable) character. I think also maybe this story hewed too close to some shonen anime-esque superhero conflict arc for my tastes.

(Also, and this is minor and petty, but cis authors stop making references to the transphobic wizard lady books challenge [impossible])

The Thursday Murder Club is a murder mystery book that centers a group of people from a posh retirement community who take it upon themselves to try to solve local mysteries. The characters are a delight and the mystery is solid: red herrings, bonus mysteries, and satisfying answers.

The best part about this book is the characters themselves and their retirement community. It felt like a real portrayal of folks who might live there and what they're dealing with--grief around death of loved ones and friends, the possibilities (and realities) of senility and disability, and also just the complications of younger family. All of the characters felt like unique and interesting people, and it was quite fun to see the murder club team in action playing off of each other.

(All that said, there are some minor unintended things in this book that rubbed me the wrong way that I'll put in its own comment here.)