I read largely sff, some romance and mystery, very little non-fiction. I'm trying to write at least a little review of everything I'm reading this year, but it's a little bit of an experiment in progress.
@screamsbeneath@bookwyrm.social I quite enjoyed the Foundryside books! They're a bit different in tone; Tainted Cup is obviously strongly in the mystery genre and Foundryside is more fantasy/heist with an even more industrial-era bent. "As good as" is hard to answer, but "extremely high on my fantasy book recommendation list" is definitely true.
Discover this creepy, charming monster-slaying fantasy romance—from the perspective of the monster—by Nebula Award-winning debut …
Someone You Can Build a Nest In
5 stars
This book was fantastic. The setup is that shapeshifting, people-eating, amorphous blob Shesheshen is rescued by overly kind Homily, believing Shesheshen to be a person. Ironically, Homily comes from a monstrously toxic family of wyrm hunters, who are all out to kill Shesheshen specifically, while not realizing that Shesheshen is said monster. (Hijinks ensue.)
It's a story that deals with passing and masking--Shesheshen works really hard at trying to be a person, physically and socially assembled from what she can scavenge. She's got a wry non-human perspective that's especially biology-focused, like how to form legs and have a humanish shape, the tricky mechanics of eating with your mouth closed, and the overwhelmingness of smells and noises.
This book also deals with physically and emotionally abusive family, and how hard it is to struggle through trauma, no matter how much you are being hurt Also, as you might expect, this …
This book was fantastic. The setup is that shapeshifting, people-eating, amorphous blob Shesheshen is rescued by overly kind Homily, believing Shesheshen to be a person. Ironically, Homily comes from a monstrously toxic family of wyrm hunters, who are all out to kill Shesheshen specifically, while not realizing that Shesheshen is said monster. (Hijinks ensue.)
It's a story that deals with passing and masking--Shesheshen works really hard at trying to be a person, physically and socially assembled from what she can scavenge. She's got a wry non-human perspective that's especially biology-focused, like how to form legs and have a humanish shape, the tricky mechanics of eating with your mouth closed, and the overwhelmingness of smells and noises.
This book also deals with physically and emotionally abusive family, and how hard it is to struggle through trauma, no matter how much you are being hurt Also, as you might expect, this book is also about family and royalty being the true monsters.
Normally, I am not keen on stories where a good bit of relationship tension comes from an intentional deception leading up to an eventual awkward reveal. Even if you ignore the self-protective reasons here, I think the setup in this book works partially for comedy reasons, as Shesheshen considers devouring Homily at the outset, but as she gets more entangled in Homily's family life, it also works as a deception told for protective reasons. It narratively worked for me enough to not be feeling "just tell her already!" throughout the book. The fact that there are a number of worse deceptions elsewhere also makes this feel more minor than you'd imagine it could be.
I devoured (pun not intended) the whole book in one day. Strong recommend from me.
Discover this creepy, charming monster-slaying fantasy romance—from the perspective of the monster—by Nebula Award-winning debut …
This was the same mistake so many humans made: believing someone would leap over trauma when it hurt them badly enough. That wasn't how it worked, and the monster knew it. All Shesheshen could do for Homily was be patient with her, and make space for her, and, eventually, one day behind her back, eat her mother.
I feel a little bit bad here because my overall conclusion for both of these books feels a bit like I kind of just "didn't get it", but maybe this is just an older work by an author whose newer work I've enjoyed quite a bit more.
In West Africa in 2070, after fifteen-year-old "shadow speaker" Ejii witnesses her father's beheading, she …
Shadow Speaker
3 stars
Shadow Speaker is the first book in a YA duology set in a future Africa where "peace bombs" have given people magic powers and changed the world in unexpected ways. Forests grow spontaneously, some tech has stopped working, other worlds are slowly merging into earth, plants are carnivorous, sentient whirlwinds attack people in the desert, and travelling alone has become especially dangerous.
I enjoyed reading this especially for the worldbuilding ideas, but it is also a YA travel romp--new places and people were constantly being introduced and I lost any greater sense of foreshadowing or closure as everything new and shiny shallowly whirled by. I'm interested to see where the second book's different perspective goes and if it can build a story that I find more satisfying on the grounds that the first one established.
Investigator Mossa and Scholar Pleiti reunite to solve a brand-new mystery in the follow-up to …
Was separation necessary for a romance? Were obstacles, real or illusory, a requirement? Was that why I could not feel satisfied when we were easy together (even if I was happier that way than when we were apart)?
Investigator Mossa and Scholar Pleiti reunite to solve a brand-new mystery in the follow-up to …
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles
3 stars
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is the second book in the Mossa & Pleiti series, set on in a future steampunk Jupiter.
It may just be because I have read some great mysteries this year (hi, Tainted Cup!) and so I'm coming in with a high bar, but the mystery of this book feels quite thin. Compared to the last book, this mystery is more telegraphed for the reader to be able to solve it themselves; however, the mystery unspools slowly with little tension, Pleiti solves too many puzzles off page, and the final confrontation is underwhelming.
I think this sounds more negative than I feel about this book. I thought it was fun, I continued to really dig the worldbuilding and the setting, and it was cozy to get back into it; I think my expectations were high and the parts I enjoyed weren't quite enough to satisfy this …
The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles is the second book in the Mossa & Pleiti series, set on in a future steampunk Jupiter.
It may just be because I have read some great mysteries this year (hi, Tainted Cup!) and so I'm coming in with a high bar, but the mystery of this book feels quite thin. Compared to the last book, this mystery is more telegraphed for the reader to be able to solve it themselves; however, the mystery unspools slowly with little tension, Pleiti solves too many puzzles off page, and the final confrontation is underwhelming.
I think this sounds more negative than I feel about this book. I thought it was fun, I continued to really dig the worldbuilding and the setting, and it was cozy to get back into it; I think my expectations were high and the parts I enjoyed weren't quite enough to satisfy this time around.
It was magic. In every world, it was a kind of magic. "No maids, no …
Siren Queen
5 stars
I suggested this for #SFFBookClub, and so I gave this a reread so I could enjoy it again. I love the way this novel takes Hollywood and its obsession with stars and all of its racism and homophobia, and mixes it with fey magical realism. Overall, it's definitely a book whose strengths are in its setting and its writing, rather than in a tight plot, but I still love the characters.
In particular, probably my favorite part of this book are the constant turns of phrase that bring in fey elements at unexpected times. You're just reading along and then you get hit with a line like "The cameras were better now, I told myself. They had tamed them down, fed them better." Silent movies steal people's voices. Film stars are (ambiguously but also maybe literally) stars in the sky and wield their star power. Names are sacrificed, or …
I suggested this for #SFFBookClub, and so I gave this a reread so I could enjoy it again. I love the way this novel takes Hollywood and its obsession with stars and all of its racism and homophobia, and mixes it with fey magical realism. Overall, it's definitely a book whose strengths are in its setting and its writing, rather than in a tight plot, but I still love the characters.
In particular, probably my favorite part of this book are the constant turns of phrase that bring in fey elements at unexpected times. You're just reading along and then you get hit with a line like "The cameras were better now, I told myself. They had tamed them down, fed them better." Silent movies steal people's voices. Film stars are (ambiguously but also maybe literally) stars in the sky and wield their star power. Names are sacrificed, or hidden for protection. These pieces give the story some extra teeth and a darker edge of danger that always feels present at the margins. The extra ambiguity over what's real in a story about movie magic is delicious.
I have mixed feelings about parts of the end, especially with the trip to San Francisco. I think this is probably the part where the novel loses me a little bit. The pieces work well, but the pacing is a little jarring. It's nice to have a moment to come full circle to Luli's sister, the reveal of art outside of Hollywood that Luli has been too tunnel-visioned to see, and the continuing contrast of the realness of Tara and other places with the fey world of movies. I like the depth that this journey adds, and I'm not sure where else arguably in the novel that it would go.
"What so great about being seen?" Tara demanded. "What's so important about that?"
She might have had the words for it, but I didn't. They locked up in my throat, about being invisible, about being alien and foreign and strange even in the place where I was born, and about the immortality that wove through my parents' lives but ultimately would fail them. Their immortality belonged to other people, and I hated that.
One thing I saw in this reread was how much the book played with "being seen": fey bargains to get seen in pictures; pressure about being seen in "wrong" ways; being mis-seen as Mexican instead of Venezuelan; being asked to make do things to be seen as straight and married; the fear of being seen as crossing class lines or being seen as queer and butch.
Will Darling is all right. His business is doing well, and so is his illicit …
Subtle Blood
4 stars
Subtle Blood is the final book in this KJ Charles romance trilogy, and this one is my favorite of all three.
I appreciate that this book deals more with Will's emotional issues, and how easily understood his inability to do anything but take one day at a time is a wartime coping mechanism. In the previous books, Kim took up a lot of space with his own emotional friction within their relationship, and it's nice to see that once Kim is in a place where he can trust more, that it creates space for Will to grow as well. There's just some excellent conversations in this book.
I said after I finished the first book that I really hoped to get more into the mysteries of Kim's professional and personal life; satisfyingly, I feel like book two got into the details of the former and book three is very involved …
Subtle Blood is the final book in this KJ Charles romance trilogy, and this one is my favorite of all three.
I appreciate that this book deals more with Will's emotional issues, and how easily understood his inability to do anything but take one day at a time is a wartime coping mechanism. In the previous books, Kim took up a lot of space with his own emotional friction within their relationship, and it's nice to see that once Kim is in a place where he can trust more, that it creates space for Will to grow as well. There's just some excellent conversations in this book.
I said after I finished the first book that I really hoped to get more into the mysteries of Kim's professional and personal life; satisfyingly, I feel like book two got into the details of the former and book three is very involved in the latter, and so this final book really added a nice sense of closure.
It’s been two months since bookseller Will Darling saw Kim Secretan and he doesn’t expect …
When people are obliged to keep an eye out for threats, their eyes tend to be sharp. That's what women's intuition means, if you ask me: being unconsciously alert for dangerous men.