metallic_sweet | Entries tagged with sci-fi

Books I Finished

Molka by Monika Kim

This is an unsettling and occasionally disgusting horror novel centred around molka, hidden cameras used to secretly collect pornographic images of women without their consent. While this isn’t a new phenomenon, molka and secret camera use has become much more prevalent in the digital age, particularly in South Korea and Japan. This story centres around two characters: Dahye, a young office worker currently secretly dating a company heir, and Junyoung, an IT technician at her office. Junyoung’s office-wide network of molka give him a sense of power over others, and Dahye hopes her secret relationship will finally allow her to move away from her parents and childhood bedroom, which is also a timelocked shrine to her deceased older sister.

I really liked the pacing of this novel. There’s very little wasted space aside from the reveal regarding Dahye’s boyfriend taking a bit too long when it could be seen a mile away. There’s a firm element of claustrophobia arising from the limited POVs and the constant feeling of being watched by not just molka but by society and the characters engaging in self-surveilling themselves. I also loved the supernatural element to this, which bumped up the rating at least a full star for me. I really suggest this book as one the reader goes into with only basic knowledge as its twists and turns become much more exciting as it progresses.

I have mixed feelings about how the POVs were handled in this. Junyoung at times outshines Dahye, particularly in the first quarter of the book where Dahye is largely innocent of the larger forces at play. Unlike Kim’s first novel, which was a complex family drama, side characters are flat and function as archetypes of common people in South Korean society. This novel comes off as an extended modern parable that hits the majority of its points but occasionally misses the mark when they involve those basic side characters. Overall, this is one of the best horror books I’ve read this year, and I could easily see it made into a successful movie.

Rating: ★★★★☆

The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones by Lex Croucher

I received this as an ARC through a Goodreads giveaway (and this review is copied there). This is a solidly written, somewhat nostalgic in tone dark academia fantasy in the burgeoning magical school genre. The twist here is the main character, Briar Jones, is not magical nor a student at the school. They take a temporary manual labour position at the Temple School of Thaumaturgy during their gap year before starting normal university, partly to satisfy their childhood desire to attend Temple and also because they don’t particularly want to go to university. Briar is a relatable protagonist in a fairly unrelatable atmosphere, and the story centres upon the mysteries of Temple and Briar’s unresolved relationship with Sebastian Wolfe, commonly either called Seb or Bastian, their former childhood best friend and, in many ways except formality, soulmate.

Overall, this book’s strengths are in creating strong, interesting characters and the tension generated by Briar and Seb’s broken relationship. Briar, despite being technically a staff member at Temple, quickly becomes absorbed into a student group of misfits and outsiders, and they’re immediately horrified by the sadistic and abusive social life and initiation rituals of Temple. The best social commentary is on systemic bullying and abuse of power, both by status in larger society as well as with magic, here referred to as the Work. Things escalate quickly, and Briar is forced to examine their own morality and what they really want out of their time at Temple.

This book makes very liberal use of the tropes “adults are useless” and “power corrupts”, but it lacks bite on its social commentary due to no one older or younger than Briar and Co. having much character development, and the plethora of side characters feel largely irrelevant to the plot. Most of the book is spent at Temple, which is very isolated from the outside world, so the information we learn about the Work in wider society is spoonfed via dialogue to the reader. I also never bought into the idea that Briar, while they’re the same age as the final year Temple students, would be allowed to be so friendly with them as a temporary worker, attending house parties and turning up to work hungover and moody what felt like the majority of the time. I never felt very close to any of the other characters aside from Briar, Seb, and Westby, since everyone else felt distinctly like they’re meant to serve a plot purpose, particularly Hadley and Alistar. In a way, the “unmagical” part of the title is the best way to describe the overarching plot for better and for worse.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

A Long and Speaking Silence by Nghi Vo

Seventh novella in The Singing Hills Cycle

This is a lovely adventure of Cleric Chih and Almost Brilliant in a novella series rich in mythology and imagery. This story takes place very early in Chih’s career as they work at a restaurant to pay off a minor debt after they lost their purse during the lead up to Lutien’s annual festival at the start of the rainy season. As with other entries in this series, Chih works to collect stories and legends from the people she encounters and inevitably becomes embroiled in solving a minor crisis. Vo’s excellent prose breathes life into both the main story and the ones Chih collects.

Much of the conflict in this arises from the arrival of refugees from an ongoing war and local hostility towards foreigners. This part of the story was particularly compelling. While it takes place in a fairly short amount of words, it offers a lot of emotional impact through true to life details and surprisingly well-developed characters. Mixing family drama and poignant insights into the difficulties of being outsiders in an established society, Vo strikes an excellent balance between parable and on the nose social commentary.

The stories that Chih and Almost Brilliant collect are shorter than in some of the previous novellas and are tied to how similar yet different legends and tales can be across different geographies and social backgrounds. I didn’t find these to be as compelling as the main action but completely understood their function. Overall, this was yet another good standalone outing for this beloved pair, and it was really fun to see Chih earlier on in their career.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

The Girl with a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean

This is a really enjoyable standalone novel that follows Mercy Chen, a middle-aged ghost talker who washed up in Victoria Harbor during WWII as a young woman with only her name cut into her arm and no memory of her life before. While this is marketed as a gothic tale, I would argue that this is a Chinese ghost story very much in the vein of that specific Chinese subgenre with gods, demons, and spirits all at play. Dean weaves the story of three women whose fates become entwined due to a mysterious and tragic drowning incident in the 1920s.

I have given this an extra half-star for its informed and compelling portrayal of Hong Kong during the Japanese occupation in WWII as this is rarely accessible in English, let alone told from the complex Hong Kong perspective. It was of particular pleasure to read about the resistance efforts in Hong Kong through the lens of resistance fighters as I have rarely seen in an English language publication. Dean’s Hong Kong is lusciously detailed, making great use of iconic HK geography and landmarks, and is full of compelling, complex characters both human and supernatural.

Dean makes some interesting and occasionally confusing choices in narrative perspective to distinguish her narrating characters. This works for most of the book, but the final third has multiple sections where the perspectives rapidly shift between each other, creating a frenetic, confusing reading experience that detracts from the impact of the climax. I also have mixed feelings about how the second half of the book is essentially a generational family drama that I didn’t always feel invested in. Overall, I think this book does a great job with telling a compelling ghost story but doesn’t entirely stick the landing.

Rating: ★★★½☆

The Eye of the Bedlam Bride and This Inevitable Ruin by Matt Dinniman

Sixth and seventh book in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series

The chaos and drama of this series continues! With these two installments, both gigantic in their word count, Dinniman goes all in on the galactic politics and powerplays between massive intergalactic companies and dysfunctional leadership. At the same time, the main story still focuses primarily on Carl and Donut, who both remain excellent protagonists in a madcap and increasingly chaotic LitRPG series. The cast of secondary characters is massive and, overall, rewarding to readers who have kept up with the series.

Dinniman really shines as a writer and storyteller in Bedlam Bride, which drills heavily down into Carl’s mentality and his background and broken family while pushing Donut into situations where she has to step to the fore and demonstrate actual leadership and her own brand of taking responsibility. This is a long time coming as Carl has had steady and consistent character growth, but Donut has occasionally faded into the background to make that happen. I personally really liked the card game mechanic of the floor and the new characters who were introduced felt like they were relevant to the story and brought a lot of new elements into play. This was one of the better paced and edited entries in the series, despite the increasing introduction of other POVs aside from Carl and Donut. I also loved the two "villains" of this book, both unhinged female characters who presented very different challenges for our heroes.

This Inevitable Ruin had a ton of build up to it, as it focuses on the Faction Wars and pulls many of the “outside the dungeon” universe players in. Unfortunately, I felt that this was one of the weaker entries in the series, since the vast majority of the storylines come to a head and have at least partial conclusions here. Many of these transitions and conclusions are satisfying, setting up the trajectory for what is likely the grand finale, likely taking place on the twelfth floor. I personally found the trench warfare segments to be more cliche than usual, particularly because of Carl’s mental commentary, but I am biased on this as a historian whose speciality is WWI. I did, however, absolutely love where this book focused heavily on Donut’s character growth, and I feel like she really grew into her own while strengthening her and Carl’s bond. I also absolutely loved Baroness Victory and look forward to seeing her in the future.

The Eye of the Bedlam Bride rating: ★★★★½

This Inevitable Ruin rating: ★★★½☆

Books I Didn’t Finish

Blood Bound by Ellis Hunter

First book in the Cursed Covenant trilogy

I just could not get into this. On the surface, this has a lot going for it: witches, demons, dragons, secret identities, interesting side characters. In practice, this felt like a romantasy bingo board mishmash of ideas where no singular character or trope rises above the rest until much too late. Despite tons of action and intrigue from the get-go, I found this surprisingly boring, possibly because so much was going on that it all ended up feeling like nothing mattered. I let this go after struggling to about 100 pages in.

Books I Finished

Year of the Mer by L.D. Lewis

A dark sapphic retelling of The Little Mermaid in a high fantasy setting, this book had so much potential and unfortunately could not execute in just as many ways. Our protagonist and granddaughter of Queen Arielle, Yemi, heir to the throne of Ixia, is strong-willed and opinionated to a fault. Her good qualities, which are love and tenderness for those closest to her, are rapidly eclipsed by her pig-headedness and her own prejudices, and I started wondering very early on why her fiancée and bodyguard, Nova, could put up with her. Nova, who is the other POV character, is much more grounded and has a greater understanding of the world, but her loyalty to Yemi is blind and, towards the end of the book, actively eclipses her character’s core values.

This is a seemingly lush world that is hampered by very little world building and haphazard pacing driven less by action but by an overabundance of dialogue that somehow fails to facilitate anything useful because characters are chronically unable to listen to each other. Aside from Yemi, Nova, and Ursla, every other character is one dimensional, and the two major big reveals felt too obvious and deliberately manufactured. I didn’t buy that anyone in a position of authority knew what they were doing nor that the governments and rebels were playing chess with each other; rather, this felt like they were doing children’s fingerpainting but instead of paints it’s blood and gore.

I thought about DNF’ing this book about 20% in as nothing seemed to be happening, and I didn’t feel drawn to any of the characters. Despite a lot of characters and a lot of action, the plot itself doesn’t get going until halfway through and the pacing gets worse from there as characters are introduced rapidly, off-screened just as rapidly, and then brought back briefly to either meet their ends or serve as morality pets. I kept reading only because I felt oddly captivated to know where this trainwreck was going, and even with that mentality, I found myself disappointed with the ending, which was abrupt and felt a bit like a petulant “fuck you” by the author to the notion that love should conquer all.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

The Unmaking of June Farrow by Adrienne Young

This is a surprisingly grounded take on the time travel/portal fantasy genre that reads pleasantly although often without deep passion. June Farrow is the last living descendant of a line of women known for their oddities and, often, tragic endings. The book opens during the memorial service for Margaret Farrow, June’s grandmother and the woman who raised her as Susanna, June’s mother, vanished when June was seven months old. All June has of her mother is the mysteries she left behind and a locket watch that was tucked into the blanket she was found in. June herself has begun to experience some odd visions and sensations but has kept it secret aside from her family doctor.

Adrienne’s journey into the past takes a while to get going; half the book is set in her present, where she picks up clues regarding what’s behind the red door that has been appearing. This section of the novel is somewhat fluffy and drags, but, once she goes through the door to the early 1900s, details come fast and furious, and action picks up. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel like the relationships that June only begins to remember in the past had much weight to them, since we didn’t get to see them develop. This becomes particularly noticeable in the climax and the sole “spicy” scene; it was difficult for me to feel like what was happening had weight because we didn’t get time to grow attached to any of the characters aside from June.

Tonally, I was strongly and positively reminded of Caroline B. Cooney’s young adult series, Time Travels Quartet, which I hadn’t thought about in years. That series suffered at the end as Cooney couldn’t secure publishing interest in a final fifth book, and I feel like The Unmaking of June Farrow would have benefited from being longer or truncating the first half in favour of more detail and discovery in the second. Overall, I did enjoy this read because the prose is really pleasant, and I liked June, who is both open-minded and pragmatic, but I was left wishing I felt more connected to other characters and like their choices mattered.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

The Thorn Queen by Sasha Peyton Smith

Second book in The Rose Bargain duology

This sequel to The Rose Bargain was a huge disappointment for me. I found The Rose Bargain to be charming with a plucky protagonist in Ivy Benton and the relationships between side characters elevating the fairly cookie cutter experience of deadly marriage games in a fae-ruled England. I was excited to see how Ivy would deal with being married to Bram, who had exiled her true love, Emmett, and her sister, Lydia, to the faerie Otherworld. Unfortunately, The Thorn Queen committed character assassinations of all four of these main characters, and completely sidelined the side characters who had been such a delight in the first book.

There’s just a lot of Big No’s that make up this sequel that weren’t present in the first. Tonally, this is substantially darker than the first book with the addition of drug use/addiction, animal cruelty/death, grooming, and sexual coercion along with psychological torture and starvation. This isn’t something I usually complain about, but it felt excessive and out of nowhere in comparison to sometimes dark but distinctly tamer first book. The reading experience quickly becomes distinctly unfun and, with a new marriage game pitting Lydia and Ivy against each other to be Bram’s true wife (because he is apparently married to both and has been stalking them since early childhood), repetitive.

I didn’t like how any of the characters were treated, and I really disliked how Queen Mor, who was a bombastic, excellent villain who loved her son, was reduced to a simpering Boy Mom. The three new side characters really just act as minor plot devices and don't add much to the story outside of their function. In the very few moments where faerie nature magic is present, this book reminded me of what could have been, but the rising action, climax, and ending fell so solidly flat that it became cringeworthy. I’m honestly sad and disappointed with this book.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook, The Gate of the Feral Gods, and The Butcher’s Masquerade by Matt Dinniman

Books 3-5 in a 10 part series

Carl and Donut continue to be an excellent duo to follow through the deadly games of Dungeon Crawler World in this bombastic LitRPG series. Dinniman keeps things fresh with new settings and challenges to each level of the dungeon, introducing new and unique characters and building upon relationships that Carl and Donut cultivate with both fellow former Earthling Human crawlers and other individuals involved in the game. As the series progresses, Carl and Donut become more and more involved in the intergalactic politics and corporate machinations, which provides often scathing social commentary about capitalism, individual agency, and the concept of the other. Fundamentally this series asks the readers to think about what does it mean to be human, and what are our duties to our fellow human beings?

A new major secondary character, Katia, is introduced and plays a large role first as a member of Donut and Carl’s party and later as the leader of her own party. I was initially apprehensive about her addition, worried that she would become a new love interest for Carl, but Dinniman thankfully takes a much better route with this with Katia becoming a much needed foil to both Carl and Donut. I also appreciated the growth of other side characters, especially how they’re often voices of dissent and reason in our main characters’ oft hairbrained and luck-based plans. I like that they have their own dramas, and it’s so refreshing to see Carl and Donut grow as individuals as they interact and grow close to other people.

The writing sometimes suffers from how these were posted in installments on Dinniman’s Patreon. There is some information repetition and, more noticeably, Dinniman’s habit of skipping on-page communication of attack plans to build reader suspense. I don’t find this detracts from my enjoyment of the series as I’m well familiar with this as a fanfic writer and reader, but folks looking for a polished finished product will find this annoying. If these books were ever to be edited, they would probably reduce in size by about fifty pages. I continue to be very excited to be on what has very solidly become the "Carl and Donut Take On the Universe" show.

The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook rating: ★★★½☆

The Gate of the Feral Gods rating: ★★★★☆

The Butcher’s Masquerade rating: ★★★½☆

Books I Didn’t Finish

You Did Nothing Wrong by C.G. Drews

It’s been quite some time since I’ve had to DNF a book because of the content, and I do think this horror book is effective. Elodie is an obsessive, possessive, and deeply unhinged mother of Jude, a six-year-old boy who has clear developmental and behavioral issues that are certainly exacerbated by his mother and isolation from children his age. Elodie’s new husband is a seemingly affable manchild, who lovebombs Elodie and view her as a babymaker. I had to let this go about a quarter of a way in because the treatment of Jude was just excruciating to read. I would recommend folks looking for domestic horror built upon unreasonable expectations of girls and women to check this out.

Books I Finished

I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki by Baek Se-hee

This is a memoir told primarily through twelve recorded conversations with the author and her therapist, who she sought out for her depression. More than anything, this is a brave, frank book in which the author lays bare the parts of herself that make being successful in society and within herself difficult. Some of it is rooted in childhood trauma, and other parts stem from the author’s extremely low self-esteem and feelings of inferiority. Like most humans, she just wants to live well in society and sometimes feel like she’s loved and a little bit special for it.

The book ends with a collection of short reflections on different issues in life, similar to the short prose reflections at the end of each therapy session. In my opinion, these are the most moving parts of the book since the author’s reflections on her day to day life are rendered beautifully, relatable as her therapy sessions but without the cyclical nature of the dialogue. It’s distinctly melancholy in a way that I recognise, having struggled with chronic depression for the majority of my life. Baek Se-hee passed away in October 2025.

Rating: N/A

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews

First book in the Maggie the Undying trilogy

Maggie wakes up one evening naked and confused because she’s somehow inexplicably Kair Toren, the main town in the Kingdom of Rellas, the setting of her favourite, unfinished fantasy series. This is a delightful, isekai-esque start to a trilogy that reads like a love letter to high medieval and portal fantasies that mostly avoids getting bogged down in the oft extremely complicated worldbuilding of high fantasy because Maggie or other characters she quickly builds into a found family are able to explain what the reader needs to know. There’s a few points where explanations, often through dialogue, get to be somewhat unbelievable, but thankfully those instances are few.

There’s several interwoven plot lines, and, surprisingly, none of them centre upon Maggie attempting to return to the real world. I liked most of the plots aside from the one featuring a serial killer, but that’s because I am not particularly thrilled by that particular type of plot and felt like it was a fairly lazy way to build Maggie’s character and utilise her background in criminology. The impact of each plot line on the main story is all equally weighed and wrapped up within one book, which I appreciated, since I’m well-familiar with high fantasy and the tendency to have many plotlines of varying reader appeal spread over multiple books. It makes this first book feel sufficiently weighty and, with the very readable language, won’t alienate the majority of readers.

The romance aspect of this book is one gigantic spoiler, and I did like the twist that makes it so. I personally feel like this didn’t actually need to take place within this book, and I wouldn’t mind other potential love interests for Maggie in future books to test and strengthen the main couple. The ending of this first book definitely points in that direction, which I found to be a kind of Big Shrug set up for an otherwise well-paced if somewhat predictable book. I’ll look forward to the next novel with hopes that we delve more into the mystery of how Maggie ended up in Rellas and possibly see more of Rellas than Kair Toren.

Rating: ★★★★☆

A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon

First book in a series

This is a clever and surprisingly grounded novella told from the POV of an unnamed female narrator who, as she contemplates suicide after her life hits rock bottom in credit card debt, is approached by Roa, claiming that the narrator is the super important magical girl of Time. At first, the narrator is skeptical, but she realises that she both likes Roa’s enthusiasm, and it feels good to be told that she’s somehow special and needed. Overall, this is character-driven social commentary and a distinctly feminist take on the place of women in society and magical girl tropes.

I found the magical girl element to be both well and under used. The narrator doesn’t come into her own powers until the climax of the book, which works well rather than being boring, and I really enjoyed how other magical girl’s powers functioned in this. The magical girl union aspect was also satisfying as it’s not perfect but makes complete sense for a world where magical girls are of all ages, not just young girls. I found the mission to save Heathrow Airport to be rather farfetched because surely England’s magical girls would have called on their counterparts in other parts of the British Isles first, and, since this is the only mission the narrator gets to participate in before the novella’s plot moves forward, it felt somewhat out of place.

The social commentary is fairly simple, which is why it works in the novella format. I really like that it dealt with both the relatively young age of some magical girls and the prevalence of domestic violence against women and girls. The climate change aspect felt a little esoteric, and even the narrator acknowledges how it’s discussed seems like a far-fetched doom’s day scenario. I think that this novella sets up well for the sequel coming out in English late this year, and I’m interested to see how the narrator grows into her powers and learns to test their limits.

Rating: ★★★½☆

As the Villianness, I Reject These Happy-Bad Endings! by Iota Aiue, Kuroyuki, and Molly Lee

An unremarkable thirty-year-old woman awakens without explanation in her favourite otome game, and she’s specifically awakened as the villainness, Iris! It’s a winning and well-trodden combination for an isekai, and this one benefits from only being one volume. For a magic school-focused isekai, it has a surprisingly small cast of characters and only three love interest options—the second prince, Reseda, Iris’s brother, Nigel, and the “hidden/true route” magician, Cytisus. The impetus for Iris working to change the natural progression of the story is even the so-called good endings for both herself and the game’s protagonist, Camille, there’s darkness in the form of isolation and domestic abuse in their futures, something I myself find off-putting about a lot of otome games. This makes for a strong start to the story, which quickly becomes bogged down in surface-level plotlines and you can see it from a mile away plot twists.

This is definitely one of the better translated light novels I’ve read, and props to Molly Lee for making a lot of the exclamatory asides by Iris and the jumping POVs of other characters feel both cohesive and distinctive. Iris, who caught essentially the in-world version of smallpox as a young child, is visibly scarred and the bulk of the first third of the book is dedicated to a plot of hers to produce a magical vaccine. While I found this all to be very hamfisted, the characters, especially Iris and Reseda, get to grow a lot, and I appreciated Lee’s translation as it helped manage the rapid introduction of characters and plotlines. It gave Iris a chance to apply her real world knowledge to the benefit of the in game world, even though I found the fairies who help give Iris magic to be annoying.

The rest of the book focuses on the events of the game, which primarily take place at a magic academy and focus on Camille and Iris’s candidacies for the title of Holy Maiden. It’s very trope-driven and extremely predictable, but the light-hearted tone carries the otherwise fairly ridiculous antics in a way that would be easily translatable to a low to mid budget 13 episode anime. There isn’t much to write home about, but it’s an easy read between other things, and I did like Camille and Iris’s relationship. This will please fans of this particular sub-subgenre of isekai.

Rating: ★★½☆☆

The Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehnmann

Anne Boleyn, freshly executed, wakes up in her coffin and escapes, quickly stealing a new cap and sewing kit to sew her head back on. An excellent premise and opening, this book is a detailed take on “what if Anne Boleyn survived?” with a supernatural premise rooted in folktales and Arthurian legend. This book is at once historical fiction, supernatural urban fantasy, and an Arthurian-esque fairy tale. The success and enjoyment of this hinges upon whether you picked up the book thinking it was historically accurate (think supernatural Wolf Hall) or not.

From a historical perspective, this is an odd one. Anne spends substantial time in reflection on her life, especially her relationship with Henry, and her recollections draw heavily from the well-written, well-researched historical narrative of their lives. Sometimes this works well, offering insight into Anne’s feelings and her interpretation of events, and other times it comes off like an information dump. The strongest part of this book is when Anne meets Alice, a sometimes-sex worker, and they spend time trying to escape London. Unfortunately, I found Anne’s time in the fens with Alice and her family to be unbelievable and more reflective of the author’s modern opinions than anything Anne or someone from Tudor England would ever think or do. I know this is a book that asks “what if Anne sewed her head back on after waking up dead?” but the whole fens section severely challenged my suspension of disbelief.

Overall, I have extremely mixed feelings about how this was executed (hah). As a concept and a revenge tale, I really wanted to love this Anne, but the meandering narrative filled with contemporary social commentary and the usage of pretty much every character besides Anne leaves much to be desired. I did, however, really like Lehnmann’s writing style; it’s lyrical but easy to follow, and her imagery and settings capture the imagination. I don’t know who I would recommend this book to except for die-hard fans of headless ghosts and those who want men like Henry VIII to suffer for his crimes.

Rating: ★★½☆☆

Perspective(s) by Laurent Binet

It’s New Years Day 1557 in Florence, Italy, and the painter Pomtormo has been found stabbed through the chest at the base of his unfinished frescoes in the Basilica of Saint Lorenzo. During the initial investigation, a scandalous painting of Venus and Cupid is discovered, with Venus’s face clearly that of Maria de’ Medici. This book is a delight, especially for fans of epistolary storytelling, and the letters going back and forth between characters are funny and full of personality specific to each person. Binet’s detailed and well-researched foundation overall helps him to tell a unique and imaginative story, although he does take some creative liberties that can take a reader familiar with the period and players out of the moment.

I really loved the action-packed pace of this story with some characters trying to direct others, and other characters running amok trying to get a hold of the painting to destroy, preserve, or use as blackmail. Binet’s uses this madcap adventure to examine perspectives on art, morality, and human nature, which I felt mostly hit the mark, particularly the tongue in cheek treatment of religious zealotry and the obvious hypocrisy of the nobility. The real victim of this is Maria, who is young and just in the blossom of womanhood, and her fate is tragic as an unwitting pawn in the schemes of those who should have protected her.

Overall, I do agree with other reviewers that there are moments, particularly in the first half, where the sheer number of people involved can get confusing, even though Binet does provide a detailed character sheet at the beginning. As an author, he generally assumes that the audience is entering his stories with some frame of reference, and he himself provides a framing device, pretending here that he discovered all these letters himself and is just translating them. This would make for a good movie or stageplay, although both would probably have to cut or combine a few characters.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Dungeon-Crawler Carl and Carl's Doomsday Scenario by Matt Dinniman

First two books in a ten-part series

Oops! Carl and champion Persian cat Donut have unwittingly managed to survive the hostile alien-takeover of Earth! Forced to die or compete in a highly violent, universe-viewed television show where the remaining citizens of Earth have to dungeon crawl down through ever increasingly dangerous levels, this book is an extraordinarily fun and smart take on the apocalypse and survival horror show genre. Carl is a morally sound meathead whose saving grace is being able to think on his feet, which allows him to circumvent his very mediocre Intelligence stat. Donut, who quickly becomes sentient thanks to the roulette Legendary Pet Biscuit, is truly delightful: she's still very much a cat, prone to whims, and acts as both Carl’s main comic relief and, by the end of Doomsday Scenario, a fully-fledged secondary main character.

In all honesty, I was extremely pleased with how these books execute themselves. I had been mildly curious since seeing few folks I know mention the series positively, but my library only recently picked the first two. This first book starts off with a bang and doesn’t lose speed: it makes great use of Carl’s singular perspective, and it feels a lot like playing a dungeon crawler video game itself while taking care to give plot and emotional weight to the inevitable grinding; it does get repetitive, especially when they reach the second level of the dungeon, but luckily Dinniman manages to move things along. He slows things down with the second book, focusing more on character development and leveraging the most interesting of his recurring characters. Most of these are the various archetypes you’d expect in a fantasy video game but with enough personality and personal motivations to make them unique and fun.

The scene early on that sold this to me was the first boss that Carl and Donut encounter, the Hoarder. Carl’s reaction to this poor woman, whose pain and suffering has been grossly exploited by the alien overlords, made me both like him as a character and feel palpable resentment towards the Earth’s hostile takeover. Most boss battles aren't as emotionally driven, but all carry consequences for how Carl and Donut perceive the dungeons, the people they meet, and the alien corporations. The use of live audience participation and corporate competition is some of the best social commentary in the books on par with The Hunger Games and Squid Games. Carl’s intimate and growing awareness of how little control he has, his dedication to staying true to himself despite everything, and his adaptability make him and Donut, who easily could have become a morality pet or joke machine rather than a dynamic second, a duo to root for.

Dungeon-Crawler Carl rating: ★★★★½

Carl's Doomsday Scenario rating: ★★★★☆

Books I Didn’t Finish

Prodigal Tiger by Samantha Chong

A supernatural and action-packed young adult romp set in Malaysia and based on Malaysian magic and folktales, I really wanted to like this, but I ultimately struggled to feel much for the main characters and certainly less for the people around her. The ghosts and undead are very interesting, but the tone of the narrative is uneven and, aside from the strong opening chapter, nearly everything is over-explained. This is far too dialogue heavy with very little space for the reader to become immersed in the story and its characters. I got about a third in and had to admit that I wasn’t going to complete this.

The Raven Scholar by Antonia Hodgson

First book in the Eternal Path trilogy

I am legitimately disappointed with this book because it started off so well, introducing a unique religious system and a high fantasy setting that immediately introduced interesting characters with juicy conflicts, and then it sent everyone offscreen to jump eight years later. Everything falls apart from there: a murder mystery is introduced and then shuttled aside for a violent, winner-takes-the-throne tournament, which is also shuttled aside for another plot that supposedly introduces more intrigue but all together has the effect of making everything feel very flimsy and of little weight. The characters all act like you would expect a cast of a YA fantasy novel to, but they're in their late 20s to 60 plus. This book does the dark academia magic academy but instead of academy, it's a kingdom, and it does it poorly. I haven't been this disappointed with a book in a while.

Books I Finished

The Hacienda by Isabel Cañas

This is a good novel by Cañas and a solid debut for her back in 2022. A gothic house story set directly following the Mexican War of Independence, Beatriz is newly wedded to Rodolpho and has moved to his family estate, Hacienda San Isidro. The house has fallen into disrepair during the war, and the staff is reduced, but Beatriz is happy to take on the renovations and make the place her own. Very quickly, the house is revealed to be sinister, and no one around Beatriz, including standoffish Rodolpho’s sister, Juana, and the mysterious Padre Andrés, is exactly who they seem.

I really liked the relationship between Beatriz and Andrés. The circumstances that draw them together to try to solve the haunting of San Isidro make sense: Beatriz wants to be safe and in control in her new home, and Andrés has a family connection to the house and land. The tension between them is doubtlessly romantic, but they are both more focused on their own goals, standing in society, and interpersonal relationships. In a way, this is a story of both of them learning to claim their own identities and agency, even if it goes against the grain.

Cañas’s writing is tight although somewhat simplistic, which supports fast-paced action but leaves some of the environment and side characters behind. The interior of the house is hard to imagine since it’s at once very large yet also very small with most action taking place in a small handful of rooms. Beatriz starts the novel working on the gardens, but this is quickly dropped as the spectral and violent happenings pick up in the house. I didn’t find this book to be particularly scary, rather a good romp with likeable main characters and a satisfying ending.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

The Legend of the Nine-Tailed Fox by Katrina Kwan

A spirited East Asian folklore inspired tale in the vein of Kwan’s previous work, The Last Dragon of the East, Yue is a nine-tailed fox spirit who is captured by the famed demon hunter, Sonam. Through a series of unfortunate events, they along with Sonam’s two companions become trapped in Hell where they must face trials set by mercurial gods and, ultimately, their own pasts and faults. This is a focused and not overly complex adventure, action-packed and full of heart and imagination.

At the same time, the pace can be too fast-paced with characters zipping from trial to trial, and I never felt like the characters are truly in danger except when the actual major villain is involved. Most twists and turns can be seen from a mile away, and there’s elements of dungeon crawling through Hell, which only works if tension exists. The POVs switching between Yue and Sonam are pretty well-balanced until that major villain fully comes into play, and then we’re locked into Sonam’s POV to build tension. I felt like the choice weakened Yue’s strong character to make her a more appealing romantic partner.

Throughout the novel there are intermittent chapters that tell a modified version of the Chang’e and Hon Yi folktale and integrates it into the story. I found these short bits to be what I looked forward to the most, and I ended up wishing we could spend more time and detail on them as the information shared there really added to the main story. Overall, this is a nice romp of a book that would be satisfying to younger YA readers or as a vacation read.

Rating: ★★½☆☆

Weavingshaw by Heba Al-Wasity

First book in a trilogy

This is Al-Wasity’s debut, a sometimes too ambitious gothic romantasy that speaks to Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Reylo. Leena, desperate to obtain an expensive cure for her sick brother, goes to the Saint of Silence, St. Silas, to sell her great secret: she can see and, to a certain extent, communicate with the restless dead. A genre-aware novel that excels in its characters and certain environmental details, it does a great job with the ghosts and Leena being realistically afraid and drawn to their plights. It does rather less well with the awkward political asides that introduce slews of additional characters, end up driving the plot, and in which Leena is almost always off-screen.

For me, the romantic tension between Leena and St. Silas both came out of nowhere and was utterly foreseeable. They function as enemies working together for mutual gain until suddenly they don’t: Leena’s resentment of St. Silas seems to conveniently evaporate and his reserve is peeled back less like layers on an onion and more like it was put in a food processor and rapidly pulsed. I hate to say it, but I felt like St. Silas was gradually woobified, and, predictably, once that began happening, we had to be introduced to a true predator to Leena’s safety. This ends up straddling grimdark and gothic in its details but solidly reads as a toxic romance overall.

I did like the atmosphere of Weavingshaw, and, if I read the next book in the series, I am eager to see Leena return there. I am also interested in the mysteries surrounding Leena’s family, broken and separated first by civil war and then the many disadvantages of being refugees. I liked that relationships between Leena and her surviving family members are fraught and rooted in how trauma and systematic oppression can warp people even when they have the best intentions. Based upon the ending, the next book should deal more deeply with those family issues and possibly offer Leena some character growth not driven by a man. Overall, there’s a lot of meat on the bones of this one, but it could have been longer in the oven.

Rating: ★★½☆☆

Vampires of El Norte by Isabel Cañas

Cañas offers a unique take on the vampire genre, interweaving the Mexican American War and class tension between ranchers and vaqueros. The main characters, Nena and Néstor are childhood friends who were on the cusp of youthful love when they’re attacked by a mysterious creature, giving Nena a seemingly fatal injury and forcing Néstor to flee. When they reunite years later with war on their doorstep, Nena has become a healer but lives with the threat of marriage to a wealthy business partner of her family looming over her head; meanwhile, Néstor has come into his own as a successful and respected vaquero, but he remains haunted by the events of the night back when they were thirteen. Obviously, misunderstandings and many, occasionally convoluted action sequences ensue.

Out of Cañas’s novels, this one has the oddest pacing, especially at the beginning after the opening chapter and midway as Nena and Néstor travel together. While both of these sections are full of tension-building content as Nena and Néstor’s relationship continually shifts, both characters suffer from their inability to say anything straight to each other except when under duress from outside forces. It’s not as frustrating as it could be as either Americans or vampires inevitably appear and get them to move along with their emotional constipation, and I did find the finale to be a good pay off with both characters becoming extremely self-aware.

I really liked how the vampire tropes were played with in this, and I loved the twist in the second half as to why the vampire attacks had so noticeably increased. The twist also gave both Néstor and Nena an opportunity to shine, since they both come with their own knowledge of how to deal with the vampires, and the creatures give them a common enemy even when the two of them are being excessively petty. Cañas also did a great job with the setting in this, using the difficult terrain and hot, intense climate to make the story tangible and immersive. Overall, I enjoyed this, and I’m glad I returned to it after I shelved it a few chapters in a couple years ago.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Cinder House by Freya Marske

This is a truly lovely novella that takes a fun spin with the Cinderella tale. Ella, killed by her stepmother, Patrice, at sixteen along with her father, has become a ghost bound to the house she died in. Only Patrice and her daughters, Greta and Danica, who live in the house, and a fairy in the nearby city named Quaint can see her. For the next six years, Ella learns how to be a ghost and, more importantly, how to push the boundaries of her haunting to gradually leave the house and explore the world around her until she’s forced to return home at the stroke of midnight.

I think what made this retelling really work for me was how Prince Jule’s ball is three evenings long, and each night offers Ella more opportunities to explore his world and get to know him as well as building mystery around the foreign princess Nadia. As this is a novella, every mystery progresses quickly and reveals are made night to night, but it’s well-paced and new twists lead directly to new conclusions. I really enjoyed how Ella grew so much in this section of the novel, like the magic around her helps her in taking control of her own destiny rather than the other way around.

The machinations of Patrice and Greta are refreshingly realistic: Patrice, like many women who have gone through hardship, ultimately seeks security, and Greta serves as an example of what happens to a child who is spoiled rotten. Details are well-spent with the limited space of the novella, and I personally enjoyed the ending, even though it’s a bit self-indulgent. Why not? It’s a fairy tale after all.

Rating: ★★★★★

The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan

Second book in The Memoirs of Lady Trent series

Taking place about three years after the first book, we join Isabella as she prepares to go on a new expedition to study dragons, this time to Eriga, a pseudo-African country that is in a precarious political position. Despite itself and even its own protagonist’s desires, this entry in the series has much more to say politically and socially than on the topic of dragons themselves. Some of the commentary and thinly veiled parallels to real world history hits the mark, while others range from eye-rolling to deeply cringe-worthy.

This book shines in its environment details along with the delightful occasional drawing. I absolutely loved the lush descriptions of the various locales and animals encountered in Eriga, which is also why I wished there was more time spent on the dragons. When Isabella gets to actually talk about dragons and certain flora and fauna, her characteristic enthusiasm and raw wonder is infectious and feels very real. She has also grown a great deal from the first book, and the trials and tribulations in this make her continue to grow as a person, as a naturalist, and as a citizen of the world. Her character journey is satisfying, rewarding, and, when focused on the natural world, extremely fun.

Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy how some of the overarching themes of colonialism and racism were handled. The design of some of the Eriga characters, especially those in authority positions, raised some questions and more than a few eyebrows for me regarding the writer’s own understanding of the cultures being meshed together. There were a lot of important plot points that get wrapped up in the sense of the event itself but have notably wider-reaching consequences. Most of these are in the vein of political turmoil and unrest, which stretches beyond the current boundaries of the first two novels. I rated this three stars because there are a number of threads started here that I am curious to see progress in the next book, but I’m not sure if I’m up for more hamfisted pseudo-Victorian nonsense.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata

This book is hard to classify: it’s social commentary more than anything else with elements of horror, fantasy, and sci-fi to give structure to the narrative, which is all told through the extremely unreliable lens of the main character, Natsuki. The overall tone is bizarrely light-hearted as Natsuki goes through her life with an increasing amount of detachment and delusion, often utterly alone and only occasionally surrounded by her few supporters: her cousin, Yuu, with whom she has an incestuous relationship with starting in their preteens, and her husband, Tomoya, who she met through a matchmaking website and married based upon his desire for a sexless marriage. Murata’s narrative construction is masterful, dividing the majority of entwined events into two parts: the first in Natsuki’s preteen years, the second during the third year of her marriage.

Natsuki’s upbringing is abusive, particularly from her mother who pits her two daughters against each other and verbally and physically abuses Natsuki. At cram school, Natsuki is sexually abused by a well-liked teacher, and her attempts to seek help are viciously turned back on her by family and friends. It’s distressingly easy to see why Natsuki would spend the majority of her time daydreaming she’s a magician, who will one day be saved by her magical powers or aliens, and how she becomes attached to Yuu, her gentle cousin who is the only person in her life who listens to her and who she only sees once a year when their families visit their grandparents in the mountain village of Akishina. Family, friends, and society routinely fail to meet Natsuki’s needs and push her to try any avenue to defend herself, trying to fulfil the most important promise Yuu and her make: survive at all costs.

None of this happens in isolation: by the time Natsuki and Tomoya are married, they know they’re just cogs in the machine, or, as they call it, the Factory. After the loss of both of their jobs, they go to Akishina where Yuu is temporarily living after also losing his job. The events that pan out from there become progressively more wild and eventually pass beyond the pale, which both enforces and loses some of the message about the tragedy and impossibility of perfect conformity that Murata goes to all lengths to explain. In a weird way, Natsuki could never be anything else but an alien in a world where women are to blame for the mistakes and cruelties of others, and the real question is who is truly responsible for the consequences?

Rating: ★★★★☆

Innamorata by Ava Reid

First book in The House of Teeth duology

This is Reid’s adult novel debut, a dark gothic fantasy that is essentially a reskinned Gormenghast world populated with morally grey to bankrupt characters. Our main POV character is Agnes, the silent cousin of the current head of the House of Teeth, Marioza. She travels with her cousin to be her companion in her betrothal to Prince Liuprand and to fulfil the mission her grandmother gave her to recover and restore their House’s ancestral magic from the books in the palace library. Once at Castle Peake, Agnes begins swiftly to learn that even the best laid plans go awry: Marioza and Agnes have always been unnaturally close, and Liuprand’s entrance in their carefully balanced lives is the least of their worries.

For all the other reviewers I’ve seen complaining about the lack of content warnings, I’m complaining about how this book does a disservice to Reid’s own strengths. Reid is particularly good at developing complex, morally grey characters and lushly atmospheric settings, which is why I’ve read a number of her books. Unfortunately, Innamorata feels like a repetitively remixed ASOIAF Red Wedding combined with the insular and self-indulgent foundation (and trappings, and character archetypes, etc, etc) of Gormenghast. Subsequently, this book tips beyond darkly gothic into grimdark, which wouldn’t bother me if it was appropriately marketed as such. The inherent grimdark marker of on-screen major taboos is very much present, and the horror waffles from gross to eye-rolling to even cringe-worthy rather than evoking the macabre.

While I did like Agnes as a main character, it’s extremely hard to like literally anything else. I found the most tension-ridden scene to be a birthing sequence in the middle of the book because it is the most focused, making great use of the most interesting characters and finally revealing some of their true functions. The rest of the story is bogged down with too many characters of little consequence and Reid’s verbosity, which is a strength of her other novels but confusing to excruciating here. In the past I’ve forgiven and even praised Reid for how some of her books read like self-indulgent fic of specific literary and pop culture touchstones, but I can’t forgive this messily structured and ultimately boring book.

Rating: ★☆☆☆☆

Wolf-Worm by T. Kingfisher

This is an excellent outing by Kingfisher that plays to her strengths: a dynamic, well-crafted main narrator, lush environmental details, and a fairly straightforward plot take allows the linear plot to progress without impediment. The year is 1899 and Sonia Wilson, a scientific illustrator, has just arrived in Chatham, North Carolina, to start her new job for Dr. Halder, who is working on a manuscript about parasitic insects. Sonia is the embodiment of “anxious but managing” and her financial need for this job makes her set aside obvious red flags even as she acknowledges their existence. She’s relatable and, while not fallible, has her heart in the right place, which makes up for Kingfisher’s very modern dialogue for the purported historical setting.

The plot takes a while to get going and doesn’t really pick up until halfway in when there’s a possum incident that is pretty creepy. This didn’t hold my enjoyment of the story back, though, because of all the lush and surprisingly informed detail regarding Harder’s research on insects and Sonia’s own expertise in plants. I also enjoyed the cast of side characters, who felt like the types of folks you probably would meet on a large but oddly depopulated estate. Kingfisher handles racial and post-Reconstruction tensions in a matter of fact manner, and characters are overall more concerned with their day to day lives than overarching issues largely outside of their control. I felt like this worked for the pace and the themes of this book, although I can also see some feeling like it’s too conveniently handled.

The real joy is this is a proper horror book with the parasitic insects truly gross and the danger that builds quietly exploding very satisfyingly. There isn’t a great deal of mystery, but Kingfisher’s descriptions of the parasites’ behaviour and how they affect the host don’t skimp on detail and feel realistic for the circumstances. Sonia’s position as an outsider to the status quo is used to great effect, allowing the reader to discover the various horrors along with her without overly long asides by other characters. Wolf-Worm straddles the burgeoning subgenre of cosy horror without falling into the trap of coddling the reader.

Rating: ★★★★½

The Black Hunger by Nicholas Pullen

I had gotten this book for my birthday last year and had tried to start it at least three times before I finally finished it this week. Pullen’s debut is a slow starter, giving vibes of a Dracula meets cannibalistic The Historian horror extravaganza. In my opinion, this is less gothic and more historical horror with much of the narrative hinging upon how the black hunger and the undead have tried to rise to power over the centuries. It’s dense and, particularly for the first half of the book, quite academic for better and for worse.

The story has essentially two narrators: a main narrator with John Sackville, the son of the Earl of Dorset and who is writing his memoirs of his life and love for his manservant,Garrett Benson, from a prison cell; and Dr. Samuel Abravanel, who is a Jewish doctor hired to investigate the madness of a woman he loves but cannot marry, Clara. John’s narration is extremely slow paced as he and Garrett go to Oxford and develop an interest in Buddhism and “the Orient” with great attention paid to long conversations between characters essentially engaging in political and religious dialogue through the Socratic method. While some of this is John’s narrative voice, I’m unsure if Pullen subverted or played into colonial stereotypes, and I also got the impression that he wrote this book because he thinks himself very smart and educated. I felt like I was reading something modern and excessively dated at the same time.

Once Abravanel is introduced, the pace of the story picks up and the horror elements truly begin to take shape. I honestly wish he was the main character and the epistolary elements employed in his section were particularly effective, especially with demonstrating the onset of the black hunger. The details of the demons, dark rituals, and violence were delightful, which thankfully carried over when the story returned to John’s memoir. The finale of the book is chaotic and unbalanced, although it hits its main emotional note well. Overall, this is an uneven novel that seems to have struggled to figure out exactly how it wanted to tell its own story.

Rating: ★★½☆☆

Books I Did Not Finish

The Buffalo Buffalo Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones

This was my second time attempting this book, which I originally thought would be a home run for me. I really, really tried, juggling the very different, often unappealing multiple POVs and their associated timelines. I liked the life-like quality of all of the narrating characters, but I found some of the style of narration to be confusing with deluges of additional characters appearing all at once. I ultimately decided to let this go about a quarter of the way in: the narration introduced the vampiric creature and I actually became less invested.

The Book That Broke the World by Mark Lawrence

Second book in The Library Trilogy

I was uncertain if I’d finish this book based on my mixed feelings about the first in the series. In some ways, Lawrence picks up exactly where he left off, but he also adds another set of characters in yet another time period into the equation. While I do like the two new main characters, and this is shorter than the first book, I found we were back to the plodding pace that bogged down the first book but without the mystery of the library to tantalise the reader. I let this go about halfway through because I wasn’t motivated to keep reading.

The Bruising of Qilwa by Naseem Jamnia

A queer novella about blood magic, plague, and belonging, this looked like a slamdunk for me. Unfortunately, I found the actual plot around the plague to be pretty dull and a distraction from the complex and dense worldbuilding, which made the plodding pace confusing and unsatisfying. While I know that the plot will pick up after where I left off half way through (it has to, this is a novella after all), I'm not motivated to keep going since what has made me interested is the structure of Qilwa and not the characters themselves.

Books I Finished

Colin Gets Promoted and Dooms the World by Mark Waddell

Colin works for Dark Enterprises, a beyond shady it is literally Hell multinational corporation, and he’s a lowly pleb in the shittiest Human Resources department imaginable. Certain he’s about to be terminated, which means literal death here, he strikes a deal with a mysterious dark… thing he meets in the elevator one day and subsequently gets promoted and heralds the apocalypse. But Colin isn’t the antichrist: he’s just an ambitious corporate climber, just like anyone else, and what’s the point of getting promoted if the world ends before he can reap the benefits?

This is a very funny book that mixes a bunch of eldritch end times tropes with the mundanity of corporate bullshit like toxic bosses, endless ethics violations, and the fallacy of work-life balance. Colin seems like an everyday man, but it becomes clearer and clearer as New York City becomes ground zero for the devouring of the world that he’s just as sociopathic as everyone else: imagine The Devil Wears Prada but with blood sacrifice. Supported by a cast of distinctive, often queer, and equally morally bankrupt individuals, the only thing holding Colin’s oopsie apocalypse back is the slow first half of the book where people outside of the executive suite try to act like normal human beings.

I personally didn’t buy into Colin’s relationship with Eric; it’s at once too convenient and too complicated. Eric himself operates more as a plot device until late in the novel, and Colin had more chemistry for most of the book with the… thing he unleashed upon the world. I personally wished we had more of the executive suite because everyone is delightfully awful, and I want to see how they function to run Dark Enterprises, both as a Hell on Earth and as a shady and likely publicly traded company.

Rating: ★★★½☆

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence

First book in The Library Trilogy

A well-written and deeply unhurried book that made me feel like I was doing my PhD research again and dragging myself through unvisited, poorly maintained archives full of repetitive mundanity interspersed with moments of discovery. Telling the entwined stories of Evar, who has lived his whole life in an astoundingly vast library, and Livira, whose mundane, difficult life in a harsh arid land called Dust, this is a love story to books, libraries, and the knowledge they contain, restrain, and explain.

The time travel aspects of this were really well done, and I really loved how all of the questions behind how Evar and Livira were meeting were revealed in due time. The gigantic, seemingly sentient library was a delight to explore with the two of them, and it reminded me of an epic dungeon crawler combined with Yddrasil and Tolkien’s First Age gigantic tree kingdoms. The supporting cast to Evar and Livira’s separate yet entwined lives are all distinct and thankfully not too many to keep track of, which is great with the density of detail in this novel.

Unfortunately, this book is held back from being great by its plodding, sometimes navel-gazing pace. Despite spurts of action, this reminded me of the long worldbuilding asides in Dune but without quite as much world building. I also found the elements of fantastic racism throughout the novel to be clunky and very tell not show; some of this can be excused by the main characters, particularly Livira, being quite young for most of the novel. The library is the most intriguing aspect of the novel, and I actively wanted to learn more about it and how it functions. The rest of the world was substantially less interesting to me, and, since Evar doesn’t exist outside of the library narratively, there were times in Livira’s narrative when I was just desperate to get through whatever was going on in the city and get back to the library.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

The Dragon and the Sun Lotus by Amélie Wen Zhao

Second book in The Three Realms duology

Taking place a handful of years after the end of the last book, we rejoin Àn'yīng in the depths of the war between the immortal and mortal realms against the demon realms. She’s working closely and harmoniously with Hào’yáng, her “boy in the jade” and something of a morality pet, to try to turn the ties, but her heart still desires Yù’chén, the half mó, half human, who captured Àn'yīng’s heart in the previous book. Yù’chén, fascinatingly, is also a morality pet, teaching Àn'yīng about sacrifice and suffering at a level beyond her own understanding.

Look, I love melodrama, but this got to be too much, particularly in the “trapped in the demon realm” segment. Yù’chén is suffering in all sense and form, and Àn'yīng, who isn’t a very sympathetic person to begin with, just doesn’t get it until it’s literally shoved directly in her face as she witnesses one of Yù’chén’s frequent torture sessions. Àn'yīng’s strong sense of justice guided her well in the first book, which had substantially more characters to focus on. In this, her black and white way of engaging with the world became grating and, especially in the second half, self-defeating.

This could easily have been a M/F/M novel, but Àn'yīng apparently can’t fathom having both of her boys because she can’t get over her conviction that anything mó is inherently evil. Narratively, Zhao goes out of her way to point out that the mó are more complex, and Yù’chén becoming a POV character offers further insight into his motivations and proves his innate goodness. Once we got to the tacked on dragon realm sectionl, I started to wish that this was an Elizabeth Lim novel because, while her duologies can be protracted, her protagonists learn from their misjudgments. Unfortunately, Àn'yīng has a default setting of subborn black and white morality in the fashion of Katniss Everdeen, and it makes her hard to root for in this otherwise lushly detailed and imaginative romantasy.

Rating: ★½☆☆☆

Strange Buildings by Uketsu

Second in a series

I had gotten the impression with Strange Houses that there would be a sequel, and I was pleasantly surprised that this is more of a follow up to the previous book with the narrator investigating odd homes and buildings brought to him by people who read his in-universe book on the events of the previous mystery. The narrator is more of the Watson to his friend Kurihara’s Sherlock, and this encourages the reader to try to make their own guesses and conclusions as the narrator interviews different people and collects various articles and ephemera throughout his investigation. It’s a set up that’s familiar to many readers and effectively executed.

Unlike Strange Houses, which focused on private domiciles, this mystery brings together twelve different buildings, each with their own tragedy associated with them. I particularly enjoyed trying to figure out how the religious cult and the odd dolls fit into the puzzle, and there’s a variety of types of people involved, which made going through the different case files and interviews to be rewarding. If readers are familiar with Japanese folklore and symbolism, they’ll get even more out of the story.

Once we got to Kurihara’s section, however, I was really disappointed by how repetitive the information rehashing got; it felt like Uketsu was trying to bulk out the page count rather than trusting the reader to remember what the case files contained. Unlike Strange Houses, where Kurihara is involved much earlier in the investigation, he feels like a convenient deus ex machina here, and I missed his eccentric personality playing off of the narrator. Overall, this is a solid installment to the series, just not as good as the first.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochhauser

This is a rare instance where the publisher’s comparison for a book, this time to Bridgerton and Circe, is on point in a positive way. A retelling of Cinderella but from the “evil” stepmother’s POV, Hochhauser presents a mature and well-crafted fairy tale that turns the rags to riches story about a virtuous girl winning the prince against all odds on its head. Lady Tremaine, whose extremely long name is quickly shorted to Ethel, is a strong, morally grey protagonist who loves her daughters, including Elin, the Cinderella of this story, but is up against a world that favours and excuses the bad behaviour in men and punishes women for wanting anything for themselves. In other words, a world much like our own.

This book succeeds where many others in the genre of fairy tale retellings do not in using the microcosm of the tale to commentate on society. The little kingdom they live in is an isolationist state which allows for very little upward mobility, and anyone who steps outside of their social roles is at risk for ostracisation or worse. Ethel chafes against the status quo but also perpetuates the same abuses to keep her daughter in line, a domineering figure who is ultimately only trying to find the stability for her family that her own tragic marriages failed to provide. It’s only once Elin is picked by the prince and it’s quickly obvious all is not well that she becomes motivated to challenge her own prejudices and take her own agency.

I felt for Ethel in her struggle: like many women, she’s been primed to fulfill her role as mother and caretaker without any real support in either. Her relationship with her daughters are all strained but for different reasons that have to do with their personalities and beliefs, and I particularly appreciated that all three of the younger women got to have their own voices. The only thing that holds this back from being five solid stars for me is that there’s minor moments where the numerous side characters act in ways that don’t make sense for the sake of the plot, but thankfully this isn’t too often and usually has consequences. Overall, I would highly recommend this book so long as sensitive readers check trigger warnings.

Rating: ★★★★½

The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan

This is an excellent debut novel, weaving together three distinct timelines to tell the story of an ill-fated hunt of the entity that would be remembered as Beast of Gévaudan by “Professor” Sebastian Grave. Sebastian himself is possessed by a demon, Sarmodel, and he’s been alive since the height of the Roman Empire. His presence at the trial and thrice burning of Jeanne d'Arc ties him to the rise of the Beast in France, which lead to the events of the Red Winter in Gévaudan and, twenty years later, the growing fervor of the French Revolution. From a historical perspective, this book is severely reductive of French history and the evolution of Jeanne d’Arc as a symbol of French national identity, but it makes a combination of familiar (and deeply nationalistic, although I’m unsure how well Cameron understands this) French tales exciting for the general reader.

I really enjoyed how morally grey to properly evil characters are in this. Pretty much everyone who is a main to important side character is out for themselves, and those who happen to have a demon or angel attached to them are on the more evil sliding scale. The demons and angels themselves are extremely interesting and distinct, as are the other spiritual and supernatural creatures that populate the world. I felt rewarded for knowing the history and folklore that supports this book because Cameron treats his source material very well, and Sebastian is a self-absorbed smarmy bastard of a narrator whose tone is consistent and makes the different timelines feel natural.

In a lot of ways, this book hinges on the concept “even evil has standards”, especially with its grimdark rising action and how it handles the complexities of love. Antoine and Sebastian’s romance is fraught, built on a lot of blind passion and the arrogance of powerful men, and it’s excellent for it. The eve of the French Revolution timeline lags severely at points because the focus isn’t on that messy romance for the first half of the book, but once the timelines begin to show how they overlap, the writing and action becomes well-paced and closely interconnected. While this particular story is wrapped up pretty well, I think there’s ample material with Sebastian and his sometimes business partner, Livia, to have another story. If Cameron does do more, I will be lined up for it.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Cabaret in Flames by Hache Pueyo

This is a great horror novella that packs a punch both in worldbuilding and in character development despite its relatively short length. Ariadne is an underground doctor and tattooist who provides services for those in need, including human-eating guls that live alongside humans. Her somewhat unremarkable day to day is upended by the appearance of Quaint, a gul who has connections to her predecessor and former carer Erik, who Ariande believed disappeared several years before. This sets into motion events that force Ariadne to reckon with her horrific past and face her demons in the present.

Ariadne is a delight of a main character: she’s cautious and somewhat curmudgeonly, and she’s willing to do what it takes to control her fate and figure out what actually happened with Erik. Quaint is a mysterious and intriguing character, and it’s fascinating to figure out what makes him tick as a person as well as a gul. The two of them make for a fun investigative team, and I liked the different side characters they meet as the mystery grows more complex. Ariadne’s past is revealed through the progress of the plot, and, horrific as it is, I was really pleased to see her face it and, ultimately, take control over her trauma and feelings. How this was executed was, in my opinion, masterful.

I suspect a lot of the guls and their culture is heavily inspired by the Tokyo Ghoul series, especially the Gourmet, Restaurant, and Auction arcs which focus on upperclass ghouls who have particular tastes in their human flesh consumption. While this might fly over the heads of most readers, I know those series well and the parallels are extremely hard to ignore, particularly with Quaint being a pretty obvious blend of qualities in Tsukiyama Shuu and Kaneki Ken. Like Tokyo Ghoul, Pueyo uses the idea of a cannibalistic monster to interrogate what actually makes a monster, and the idea that humans can be mixed with guls/ghouls through science or by producing a hybrid child is another commonality between these works. Cabaret in Flames does stand on its own, especially in its social commentary on Brazil and the wider human condition, and it’s a great romp of a novella.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Her Hidden Fire by Cliodhna O'Sullivan

First book in a trilogy

A solid debut and start to a trilogy, O'Sullivan leans into her knowledge of Ireland to craft a pseudo-medieval world full of magic and dragons and divided by severe classism. Éadha is in love with her childhood friend and the heir to the family she serves, Ionain. Discovering that she has a deep magical gift but he doesn't, she makes the choice to give substantial amounts of her power to Ionian secretly in hopes of preventing the family from becoming controlled by Huath, Ionian’s tyrannical and cruel uncle. At first the ruse is a success, and Éadha and Ionian both embark on the journey to Lambay where they’ll learn to use their power: Éadha as a Keeper and Ionian as a Channeller. The level of detail helps make the various island and coastal settings feel alive, and I particularly enjoyed that, while there were travel sections, they felt reasonable and added to the overall story.

More than anything else, this is about class, systemic oppression, and how power corrupts. O'Sullivan definitely found her horse and proceeds to use it for every part of it, including making glue. Éadha is essentially the usual extremely OP female main character in a romantasy, but she is absolutely her own worst enemy: her love for Ionian, who is a good person at heart, blinds her to his faults, and she herself is naive and narrow-minded, needing to be challenged and broken down until she sees others for who they are, including Guy, the enigmatic Keeper son of a very high ranking family. The execution of Éadha’s growth is uneven: she won’t listen to reason when other characters speak to her, but she will change her mind and views when she gets hurt or witnesses others suffering for her choices. This gets to be tedious, particularly in the middle of the novel where some of the conversations between Éadha and Guy become very explain-y.

Despite this, Éadha is a heroine that’s easy to root for: her heart is in the right place, and she does what she does out of the purity of love. I wish we could have gotten more with her interacting with dragons because I found those sparse sections to be so exciting, and it’s one of the only parts of the book where Éadha holds her own and isn’t thinking about a guy. It does look like they will be a much bigger part of the next book, and it bodes well that Ionian and Guy will both be getting POVs as they are interesting, especially with the finale of the first book leaving them in very interesting situations.

Rating: ★★★☆☆

A Stranger in the Citadel by Tobias Buckell

A story about the power of knowledge, literary, and reading in the fashion of Fahrenheit 451 and A Canticle for Leibowitz, Lilith is the youngest daughter of the Lord Musketer of the kingdom-city of Ninetha. Intrigued by the capture of a stranger at the fringes of the city walls, she intercedes for his life mostly out of curiosity as she has never met someone from beyond Ninetha. This puts her at odds with her mother figure and head of the guardians, Kira, and sets into motion the downfall of her own family as the stranger, Ishmael is revealed to be a librarian, which religion and law dictate must be killed.

The first part in Ninetha takes a while to get going as the reader has to follow Lilith through her days with many little interactions with her siblings that feel inconsequential. It isn't until a third of the way into the novel that the plot really picks up with Ishmael and Ninetha trying to find their way to safety from the violence they left behind: Lilith in Ninetha and Ishmael in his shadowed past. I enjoyed how well Buckell executed the issues of journeying on foot with limited supplies, and the continuous concern with starvation and dehydration grounded this in a way that often gets glossed over in both fantasy and sci-fi. I also liked the dynamic between Lilith and Ishmael because they're drawn to each other but also hold completely different world views, challenging each other just as much as they help each other.

This story is held back by incessant dialogue, which strays into severe melodrama and over-explanation of major plot points. This is particularly an issue with Kira, who talks so much for someone who is seemingly designed for immediate action. Aside from the main three, very few other characters get development, and it was hard to feel anything for them. The highlight of this story is the world building: I loved the mystery of the cornucopia and the archangel, and there's some real intrigue with the remnants of civilisation that are discovered as they traverse through and beyond the so-called Rim of the World. I liked the mystery of what exactly happened to humanity and how did strange, highly advanced technology survive, but a lot remains a mystery, which left me with mixed feelings at the end.

Rating: ★★½☆☆

Books I Didn’t Finish

The Devils by Joe Abercrombie

This was a creative, fast-paced, fun read that I just couldn’t get into once the ragtag group set off on their journey. It’s a shame because the set up with werewolves, demons, necromancers, etc. has so much promise, but I found myself unable to get attached to anyone, partly because the POVs jump around so quickly and between so many. I came back to this book for a second time and didn’t get much further than before, so it’s time to let it go.