I hope everyone had a fantastic spooky month! I had lots of fun participating in the Gothtober readathon, where I learned that OH BOY my brain is not in the mood to read classics right now. But I read some really fantastic books this month so the good won out over the bad!
I am going to be a little quieter on here next month, as I have some very exciting news!! I am a judge for both the British Fantasy Awards AND the Aurealis Awards (the SFF awards here in Australia!) So I have a ton of things to read for judging and need to focus my time on that. I’ll have a few reviews I’ve already written, and I’ll be here for #5OnMyTBR every week but that’s it. I’ll be back in December with lots of best of 2020 lists, and some most anticipated lists for 2021!
Books read
I had a pretty good October, managing 9 books and 2 novellas. And yes I counted Phoenix Extravagant last month and I’m also counting it this month, but that is because I read half of it in each month. My favourite book of the month is definitely Mostly Dead Things by Kristen Arnett, but I also loved White is for Witching, The Ghost Bride and Fingersmith!
Another batch of books from the library this month (first row)! Someone please stop me, I need to read the books I own (like the second row, which all arrived this month….)
It was another awesome month in the blogging sphere, I was particularly excited to see some very unique and fun content between bloggers and some very amazing authors this month!
We all know I love gothic books and I love gay books so The Alliterates post about gay gothic books made my day and there are so many favourites (and hopefully soon to be favourites!) on their list!
Okay yes I love gothic books so here’s another post all about them! Kristen (@Kristen Kraves Books) posted about some favourite gothic books as well as some on their TBR!
I always love Laura’s (@The Book Corps) recommendation posts because their taste in books is SO GOOD, and this month they spoke about 2021 releases they’re exited for! Bring on a new year! (Please god just make it not be 2020 anymore).
In addition to all the books I need to read for judging in November, I’m also going to be loosely participating in the Clear Your Shit readathon! I probably won’t be following the prompts, but just generally pushing myself to try clear some of the books I have on my physical TBR.
A few weeks ago I made about a post about some of my favourite gothic novels, and also featured some of the gothic novels releasing in the future. I really liked doing it so I’m thinking I might make a regular feature of it? 5 favourites and 5 future? I need to think of a better name… But since it’s Halloween this week, I thought I’d do one on horror! So here are five of my favourite horror books, and five I’m excited to read in the next few years!
I read Into the Drowning Deep during spooky month last year. It was my first adult horror and I absolutely fell in love. This book was just so terrifying?! It’s about a company who send a bunch of scienctists to investigate the existence of mermaids after a ship and all its crew members are mysteriously (and gruesomely) killed. Of course when they find the mermaids, they aren’t like the fairytales: these mermaids will literally tear off your face and eat it. This is a very sciencey heavy book, but I loved that about it as it really added a layer of reality to it which I think really helps make books scarier.
The Luminous Dead is very much a psychological horror/thriller novel. It’s set inside a caving system, where a woman, Gyre, gets trapped. The entire novel takes place inside this caving system as Gyre tries to escape; the only other character is her handler, Em, who is looking after her suit and body from the outside. But Gyre keeps discovering more and more lies from Em, and then she finds bodies….and soon she doesn’t know whether what’s happening is real or not. It’s such a brilliant book, and the use of the unreliable narrator here is excellent, as see Gyre descend further and further into madness, the longer she is trapped alone, underground. It’s such a phenomenally creepy novel, and I finall picked up a hard copy of it last month so I can’t wait to reread it!
Okay yes, I had Mexican Gothic on my gothic list as well, but it is also very much a horror novel and it is so thrillingly creepy that I had to mention it again this week in case anyone was still unaware that I adore it. It’s about a woman who goes to rescue her cousin from an old manor house in Mexico and gets trapped there herself in a very fucked up mushroom world.
Definitely on the lighter side of horror, The Scapegracers is a witchy sapphic delight with one of the best portrayals of female friendship I’ve ever read in YA. It follows Sideways, an outcast lesbian teen who is paid to perform some magic at a party thrown by three popular girls. But instead of being the usual bitchy girl trope, Sideways is welcomed into their group and they form their own coven as they try to fight off attacks from witch hunters.
The Year of the Witching was one of my most anticipated books of the year, and it certainly lived up to everything I dreamed of it! It’s so dark and full of evil, set in a puritannical, cult like society called Bethel. A young woman, the daughter of a witch, finds herself being called to the dangerous woods, where the witches live. She tries to hold them off but as she discovers move about the church and the history of Bethel, she’s unsure she even wants to hold the witches back… It’s dark and bloody and gorey and so so witchy, I love it!!
A book about one of the most prolific female serial killers in American history? Yes please. Pub date: 19 January 2021
Synopsis: An audacious novel of feminine rage about one of the most prolific female serial killers in American history–and the men who drove her to it.
They whisper about her in Chicago. Men come to her with their hopes, their dreams–their fortunes. But no one sees them leave. No one sees them at all after they come to call on the Widow of La Porte. The good people of Indiana may have their suspicions, but if those fools knew what she’d given up, what was taken from her, how she’d suffered, surely they’d understand. Belle Gunness learned a long time ago that a woman has to make her own way in this world. That’s all it is. A bloody means to an end. A glorious enterprise meant to raise her from the bleak, colorless drudgery of her childhood to the life she deserves. After all, vermin always survive.
If I had to choose only one single book that has been announced that I want to read immediately, it would be this one. The level of excitement I have for this knows no bounds. Pub date: 2022
Synopsis: Gretchen Felker-Martin’s MANHUNT, about trans women scavenging for estrogen in a post-apocalyptic world where a viral plague has transformed all cis men into feral monstrosities, fighting tooth and nail against a menace they’ll join if they miss a dose, and on the run from an authoritarian faction of cis women who see them as a dangerous liability, pitched as a trans woman’s response to Y: THE LAST MAN, plus another standalone horror novel, to Kelly Lonesome at Nightfire, in a very nice deal, in an exclusive submission, in a two-book deal, for publication in March 2022, by Connor Goldsmith at Fuse Literary (world).
This is a horror written by a queer Black man about a queer Black kid who is being haunted by the ghost of a school shooter! And it sounds so phenomenal. Pub date: 13 July 2021
Synopsis: It’s hard being the one of the few Black kids at St. Clair Prep, especially when you’re routinely harassed by the dead. This year, sixteen-year-old loner Jake Livingston plans to make real friends, which means paying less attention to dead world and more to reality.
But when a series of murders breaks out in Jake’s neighborhood, he discovers they may be linked to Sawyer Doon—a vengeful spirit who carried out a school shooting a year prior and then killed himself. Sawyer is back, determined to wreak havoc on new targets from beyond the grave.
Now, Jake’s home isn’t safe. School isn’t safe. The more he tries to ignore Sawyer, the more he feels the ghost boy’s impact on his psyche. And the closer he comes to understanding who Sawyer was, the more he realizes how similar he may be to the boy once bullied relentlessly for his sexuality, now hell-bent on taking power back from a world that took it from him.
To protect himself from possession, Jake will have to master his power over both dead world and reality and discover his own reason to live.
So obviously since my favourite book of the year was Mexican Gothic, I am extremely excited for the release of Moreno-Garcia’s vampire horror duology by Tor next year! Pub date: 11 May 2021
Synopsis: From the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic comes a pulse-pounding neo-noir that reimagines vampire lore.
Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is just trying to survive its heavily policed streets when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life. Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers, is smart, beautiful, and dangerous. Domingo is mesmerized.
Atl needs to quickly escape the city, far from the rival narco-vampire clan relentlessly pursuing her. Her plan doesn’t include Domingo, but little by little, Atl finds herself warming up to the scrappy young man and his undeniable charm. As the trail of corpses stretches behind her, local cops and crime bosses both start closing in.
Vampires, humans, cops, and criminals collide in the dark streets of Mexico City. Do Atl and Domingo even stand a chance of making it out alive? Or will the city devour them all?
I was mega excited for a horror spaceship book this year and it really did not live up to what I hoped so I am crossing all my fingers that this one gives me the terrifying spaceship horror of my dreams! Pub date: February 2022
Synopsis: At the edge of the solar system, no one can hear you scream.
The Aurora, a luxury space-liner destined for a cruise of the solar system, has been missing for twenty years. Among the hundreds of presumed dead were passengers from society’s finest – celebrities, tech giants, influencers. Every last one… vanished.
So when Claire’s crew picks up an emergency signal in deep space, the long-lost Aurora is the last ship they expect to find. The salvage claim could be their best chance at extraordinary wealth, but it might mean missing their transport back home, and nobody can stand another minute out in the darkest corner of the universe – nobody, except Claire.
Once onboard the ship, the crew realizes something is terribly wrong. Unspeakable horrors lurk in every shadow of the massive ship, and soon they each start experiencing violent hallucinations.
Claire must fight to keep her sanity and get her crew back to safety – before they all meet the same ghastly fate as the Aurora passengers.
Blessed we are by the new Tor Nightfire horror imprint that is bringing us diverse horror!! I can’t wait for all their books (Manhunt, Certain Dark Things and Dead Silence are all being released under this imprint). What horror books are you looking forward to reading soon? Let me know in the comments!
One morning, Jessa-Lynn Morton walks into the family taxidermy shop to find that her father has committed suicide, right there on one of the metal tables. Shocked and grieving, Jessa steps up to manage the failing business, while the rest of the Morton family crumbles. Her mother starts sneaking into the shop to make aggressively lewd art with the taxidermied animals. Her brother Milo withdraws, struggling to function. And Brynn, Milo’s wife—and the only person Jessa’s ever been in love with—walks out without a word. As Jessa seeks out less-than-legal ways of generating income, her mother’s art escalates—picture a figure of her dead husband and a stuffed buffalo in an uncomfortably sexual pose—and the Mortons reach a tipping point. For the first time, Jessa has no choice but to learn who these people truly are, and ultimately how she fits alongside them.
Content warnings: suicide (graphic description in prologue, mentioned throughout), animal death, graphic description of dead animals, killing animals (on page and mentioned), blood and gore (related to taxidermy work), cheating, brief scene of underage sexual assaultbetween Bryce’s mother and Jessa, teen pregnancy
Do you ever read a book that you just look at the Goodreads rating and go ‘what the actual fuck were all these other people reading?’ The award for the Everyone Else on Goodreads is Wrong award this year goes to Mostly Dead Things! Oh my god, I loved it so much?! Why does it have such a low rating?!
Mostly Dead Things is a very strange book, about a taxidermist whose father commits suicide, and mother starts making erotic art out of her taxidermy animals in response. It follows a family in the wake of this tragedy, but a family which is also still reeling from a tragedy years earlier: Bryce, wife to a brother and sleeping with his sister, who left the family and her children and never returned.
Our three main characters are:
Bryce: I’m starting with Bryce because although she is by no means the main character (in fact, she does even appear on page in the present time), she is the thread that holds these characters together. She is the girl who loved a sister and a brother, married and had kids with one, and then ran away one day, leaving her children behind. She is the one who still has such a tight grip around each member of this family, who have never healed from when she left them behind.
Milo: the brother of the family, the one who turned away from the family taxidermy business because he threw up at the sight of his father working on the animal carcasses. He is the one who, to Jessa, came into her friendship with Bryce and took her away, married her, and loved her in a way that Jessa couldn’t provide.
And finally we have Jessa: we follow the book from Jessa’s POV. She is the taxidermist of the family, and the one who has to hold the family together. She must do this, because her father designed his suicide so she would be the one to find him, because he knew she would be able to handle it, and so it is his last request to her, in a way. But Jessa is stuck in the past. In between the present story, we get short extracts from the past, when Jessa was a teen and fell in love with her best friend, Bryce. We see glimpses of this childhood and see the hold that Bryce still has over this family, even after she left years before. Jessa is so deeply scarred and broken from this love affair that she effectively destroys everyone around her, even as she tries to hold them all together. I thought Jessa was just perfectly written: the raw pain she feels on every single page binds this story together expertly and despite her many, many flaws, you can’t help but hope that she is able to heal and move on.
Mostly Dead Things is a book about pain and grief and love. It’s a hard book to feel happy as you read, because there is so much raw pain in this novel. Following a family that has been broken, this book doesn’t shy away from creating powerful, hugely gutrenching moments that felt like someone was clawing me open. It has been so long since I’ve had such an intense reading experience. This book is so sensual and visceral and it creates such an intensity that you feel as cut open as these characters are. It just sucks you into the hot muggy world of Florida and you feel as if you’ve been transplanted there, as if the writing actually transports you to the swamps of Florida.
The fact that these characters are such horrible people and that I loved them all the same is just? Amazing? The fact that I was rooting for the family to find each other again, rooting for them to tear each other open in agony so they could heal in the wake of such a tragedy. The way this family were broken and torn apart juxtaposed with the way the animals were broken and torn apart and then lovingly were healed again was just *chef’s kiss*
GOD THIS WAS JUST SO FUCKING GOOD, Goodreads reviewers whhhyyyyyy?! I loved this one so much. It is intense and visceral and I had one of the best reading experiences of the year. What a fucking fantastic debut novel.
#5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @Local Bee Hunter’s Nook and you can learn more about it here or in the post announcing it. It occurs every Monday when we post about 5 books on our TBR. Thank you E. for the awesome graphic for these posts as well!
Hi everyone,
Another week of lockdown has gone by, and this week we had a public holiday weekend in Melbourne. Since I can’t leave the house still, I instead spent it making prosecco cupcakes and drinking cocktails by myself (well my partner was with me too so I wasn’t quite all alone!) I hope you all had a more interesting week than me! This week’s #5OnMyTBR theme is a Halloween freebie so I thought I’d just talk about some of the spooky/horror/vaguely Halloweeny books on my shelf right now.
Tender is the Flesh was my most anticipated book on my October TBR but then Australia Post lost my parcel and I’ve only just got them to give me confirmation that it’s lost so still haven’t got a copy of this yet…. Probably going to be at least another week or two until Attempt 2 arrives so spooky month will be long over, but I really want to read this book this year! It’s a translated novel about a world where a virus made animal meat poisonous to humans so production of human meat is legalised. Yeah it’s all about cannibals and sounds highly fucked up.
I really liked the creepy atmosphere and body horror in Power’s first novel, Wilder Girls, so of course I’m very excited to read her second novel which released earlier this year. Burn Our Bodies Down is about a girl who knows nothing about her past and returns to her mother’s hometown to try find out about it. But, obviously, things aren’t quite right in the hometown…
I haven’t read Susanna Clarke’s much loved and lengthy Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell, but I was very intrigued by the sound of her second novel, Piranesi, which released last month. It’s a gothic, magical tale set in a house that’s actually a labyrinth and follows Piranesi as he explores the house. I don’t know much about this one as several reviewers have said it’s best to go on in knowing as little as possible! I love gothic books so fingers crossed this atmosphere is as wonderful as I’m hoping it will be.
Like Tender is the Flesh, this book is another which has had many shipping difficulties getting to me. I preordered The Silence of Bones back in March but it finally reached me this month and I couldn’t be more excited!! It’s a murder mystery novel set in 1800s Korea and promises a spooky and mysterious atmosphere that is perfect for Halloween!
And ending on another translated novel, Hurricane Season was recently shortlisted for the International Man Booker prize. It’s about the murder of a witch in a small village in Mexico, and the investigation that follows after. I’ve been wanting to read this since I first got a copy, back at the start of the pandemic, but my literary fiction brain has really struggled concentrating throughout the pandemic, and I want to save this one for a time when I know I’ll enjoy it. Which will hopefully be SOON.
And those are five vaguely-Halloweeny books on my TBR right now! All of these are ones I’d love to read before the end of the year but given how much I’ve failed at reading my owned books this year, I am rather pessimistic about whether or not that will actually happen.
So it’s October which means it’s the annual time of year where I listen and watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show on repeat. It is just the perfect time of year for this incredible queer cult classic film. And as I was dancing along to the music this month, I thought it would be fun to create a book tag to go along with the film! I’ve used the songs as prompts because I absolutely adore the music from this film, it is one of the most catchiest musicals ever and I know every word. I have never ever created a book tag before and tagging people without knowing if they want tagged gives me so much anxiety so who knows how much attention this will actually get. But I hope you enjoy this, and if you love the film as much as I do, please consider yourself tagged! Please feel free to use all the artwork as well.
For full transparency, I did have a search to see if anyone had done one of these, and BookTuber Sophie Holden had created a book tag based on the characters from Rocky Horror in 2014, you can check out their video here!
1. Science fiction, double feature: Rocky Horror is a parody film of scifi and horror films from the 70s, so let’s start with a book that has been made into a TV show or film!
2020 has been pretty shit, but it has also given us the announcement of several amazing books which are going to be made into TV! Not only are we getting Mexican Gothic and The City of Brass, but we’re also getting the absolutely legendary gangster fantasy Jade City by Fonda Lee. This book has the best fight scenes I’ve read, characters who you would give your life for, and such interesting family dynamics that I know this show is going to be outstanding.
2. Damnit, Janet: Damnit, Janet is the song where we first meet Brad and Janet, two innocent young lovebirds who are about to go on the awakening of a lifetime. So this prompt is for a YA romance book!
For this prompt, I thought I’d talk about one of my favourite YA romances of the year, It Sounded Better in my Head by Nina Kenwood. And it surprised me that I loved this as much as I did because there are no queer people ANYWHERE. BUT! Have faith my friends, this one heterosexual YA book has rights. This was just such a funny book, I love sarcastic, self-deprecating characters and Natalie is both of these things. This book literally just felt like a hug, it was happy and full of joy, which I needed so badly this year!
3. Over at the Frankenstein Place: In Over at the Frankenstein Place, we see the towering castle in the rain where Brad and Janet take refuge, so what’s your favourite gothic fiction?
We all know what book I’m going to mention don’t we? Of course Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia is my favourite gothic fiction. This book destroyed me when I first read it earlier this year. The atmosphere is so foreboding and so creepy, there’s just such a sense of darkness in this house, and then it gets so so so fucked up. I read this every night before bed when I first read it, and boy DO I REGRET THAT. This is a daytime book only, or your dreams will be HAUNTED.
4. Time Warp: In Time Warp, we first meet Columbia, the character who wears just an incredible amount of glitter and sequins. So for this prompt, what is the prettiest book cover you own?
As a side note, I actually dressed up as Columbia for Halloween one year, and spent many painstaking hours sewing on sequin fabric to a black blazer. The only picture I have is with a cat (because I am an introvert stereotype at parties) and you can’t really see the blazer but check it out!
There have been some incredible book covers this year, Felix Ever After, The Mermaid, the Witch and the Sea and Mexican Gothic being some of my favourites. But the prettiest book cover I own has to go to The Animals at Lockwood Manor. Not only is it such an intricate, delicate illustratrated cover, but I have a special edition which comes with beautifully patterned sprayed edges and special endpapers and so this book is just GORGEOUS.
5. Sweet Transvestite: Frank N Furter, is just one of the most iconic characters in film, so for this prompt, give us an iconic queer book!
I had lots of ideas for what book to choose for this prompt, but in the end I’ve gone with The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon because I think this book has really done a lot in changing the way the fantasy genre is viewed. It’s a fantasy world completely free of many of the elements so common in adult fantasy (rape etc…), and it really sort of shows you how ingrained a lot of opinions are. There were so many moments I read this, where you are introduced to a new character and are shocked when it turns out the character is a woman. And I’m someone who reads a lot of fantasy written by not white men, and so I was so shocked at how this book challenged subconscious expectations I hadn’t been aware I held. So I think this is definitely an iconic queer book because it completely subverts your expectations for the genre, and it’s just incredible to see an 800 page fantasy book actually feature queer women at the helm.
6. I Can Make You a Man: Parodying the classic Frankenstein, Dr Frank N Furter makes us a man in this number, so give us a book set in a medical setting/about medicine/with a doctor or nurse main character etc.
Wow, go Rachel at making a prompt I seriously struggled to actually think of a book for… Turns out I don’t read many books that have healing/medicine as a core feature? But! I did manage to think of one. In Missing, Presumed Dead by Emma Berquist the main character really struggles with her mental health thanks to the horrific lonliness she suffers from thanks to her magic power, that allows her to see a person’s death if she touches them. So she checks herself into a mental health ward in the book when things get too much. It’s such a brilliant book and I really love that it explored the negative side of having magic and really looked at the impact of having such an awful power.
7. Hot Patootie: Hot Patootie is my favourite song in the musical, and it’s sing by none other than Meatloaf! So let’s go back in time, with a novel set in the 1970s or 80s (when Meatloaf was at his peak!)
Like a Love Story by Abdi Nazemian just fits into the 80s, as it’s set in 1989 in New York during the AIDS crisis. Not many books have brought me to tears, but this one did. Every page is just so full of emotion. Even at the darkest moments of loss and grief in this book, there is still an undercurrent of hope and love. This book felt like a little slice of history and is such a powerful and unflinching look at a really awful time in queer history.
8. Toucha Toucha Touch Me:Toucha Toucha Touch Me is all about Janet losing her innocence and becoming a more confident woman. What’s a book with a character who loses their innocence, in whatever way that means to you?
Losing your innocence can mean so many different things to different people, but I decided to go with Crier from the duology Crier’s War/Iron Heart by Nina Varela. In Crier’s War, Crier is a very privileged and naive princess who isn’t really aware of what is going on in the human world. But by Iron Heart, she had to face up to the mistreatment of the humans and has had to learn how to take care of herself as she goes on the run.
9. Eddie: Eddie, the character who sings my favourite song, of course does not make it to the end. So what’s a book where a character you love dies?
I feel like this is such a mean prompt, but ALAS. I did consider choosing The Song of Achilles for this prompt, because that book broke me, especially the first time I read it where I hadn’t actually known how the myth ended. But I decided to go with The City of Brass by S.A Chakraborty! This series is one of my favourite fantasy series (even if I’ve been too scared to read the final book yet…) The worldbuilding, the history, the politics, it is so detailed and so interesting and I just found the whole world fascinating. AND THE ENDING! That was certainly a rough wait for book 2….
10. Rose Tint My World: To wear rose tinted glasses is to have an optimistic and idealistic outlook, keeping you safe from the trouble and pain in the world. So what’s a book that keeps you happy and distracted from trouble and pain?
I read The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J Klune back when the pandemic was just starting to ramp and the terrifiying uncertainty of the future was a newer feeling and this book just provided so much joy in such a dark time. It is such a comforting, cosy book full of found family and love and with a main character who is so full of hopelessness finally finding the people that give him hope. It’s just beautiful and so full of love. I really need to reread it, because I need something hopeful right now!
11. Don’t Dream It, Be It: The creator of Rocky Horror says the line “don’t dream it, be it” came from an underwear advert in a magazine that was known to cater to trans women and crossdressers. So for this prompt, give us a book by a trans, nonbinary or gender diverse author!
I never give up a chance to talk about my favourite book! Victoria Lee is the bigender author of The Fever King series (and also one of my most anticiapted books of 2021, A Lesson in Vengeance). This book just blew me away, I am in awe of how much this book just destroyed me. It’s set in a world with a virus wiped out the population and those who survive wake up with magic. It’s also about overcoming trauma and overthrowing the government and everything about it is just excellent.
12. Wild and Untamed Thing: For all the wild and untamed energy in this song, what’s a book that makes your heart race?
Most recently, the book that made my heart absolutely race is The Ikessar Falcon by K.S. Villoso. I need more people to talk about this series!! It is so anxiety inducing. My favourite thing about K.S Villoso is that you’re reading her books and thinking ‘okay, this is it, this is rock bottom, nothing else awful can possibly happen to these characters that I love”. And then of course it does. It’s a rollercoaster of feelings and anxiety as Tali the Bitch Queen fights to get back to her son, and when I say she’ll do whatever it takes, I really do mean that (even when the thing she has to do is HEARTBREAKING).
13. I’m Going Home: I’m Going Home is the song where Frank N Furter thinks he’s going home, to the place and people he has always dreamed of returning to, the family he’s longed for. So for this prompt, give us a book with the found family trope!
I usually talk about The House in the Cerulean Sea and The Weight of the Stars when asked about found family because those two are some of my favourites. But I thought I’d change things up by talking about Dangerous Remedy by Kat Dunn! This is such a fun historical fantasy about a group of disaster queers who are trying to free people from the guillotine in revolution France. Disaster after disaster happens to this group as they try to outsmart both the revolutionaries and the nobles looking to get back into power.
14. Superheroes: The last song of the musical has such dark lyrics when you listen to it, so for this prompt, what’s a book with one of your favourite villains or monsters?
I am a big fan of villain narratives and monster romances because villains always seem to be way more interesting characters to me? But for this prompt, I wanted to talk about a villain I found really scary, which is in The City We Became by N.K Jemisin! This is the first book in a new trilogy by Jemisin and it’s set in our world, in New York, where cities can have souls and when they “wake up”, they smash through several universes, destroying other worlds during their birth. So this enemy wants to stop New York City from waking up, and it uses this terrifying, really insidious way of manipulating New Yorkers susceptible to bigotry to twist them into their control. The way the enemy works with Aislyn, the character with the soul of Staten Island, was such a terrifying analogy for the way white supremacy and right wing ideaolgy sneaks it’s way into the minds of white people, and how social structures can be used to uphold white supremacy. Utterly terrifying and an absolute must read!!
And that’s the tag!! For ease of copy and pasting, here’s the questions again below in a nice list. Please feel free to use the artwork I’ve created, that’s totally fine. If you could also link back to my post to credit me so I can read your answers, I would love to see your posts!
As I mentioned above, tagging people when I don’t know if they want tagged gives me MUCH ANXIETY so thank you to those who showed interest/support in getting on Twitter – so I tag Justine from I Should Read That, Kal from Reader Voracious and Kait from Kaitlyn’s Cosy Reading Corner. (Obviously, no pressure to do anything, especially if I misinterpreted your interest!)
And if you liked this tag, or love Rocky Horror, please do consider yourself tagged in this!!
Prompts
Science fiction, double feature: a book that has been made into a TV show or film
Damnit, Janet: a YA romance
Over at the Frankenstein Place: your favourite gothic fiction
Time Warp: your prettiest book cover
Sweet Transvestite: an iconic queer book
I Can Make You a Man: a book set in a medical setting/about medicine/with a doctor or nurse mani character
Hot Patootie: a book set in the 1970s or 80s
Toucha Toucha Touch Me: a book where a character loses their innocence
Eddie: a book where one of your favourite characters die
Rose Tint My World: a book that makes you happy
Don’t Dream It, Be It: a book by a trans, nonbinary or gender diverse author
Wild and Untamed Thing: a book that makes your heart race
I’m Going Home: a book with the found family trope
Superheros: a book with one of your favourite villains or monsters
Gyen Jebi isn’t a fighter or a subversive. They just want to paint.
One day they’re jobless and desperate; the next, Jebi finds themself recruited by the Ministry of Armor to paint the mystical sigils that animate the occupying government’s automaton soldiers.
But when Jebi discovers the depths of the Razanei government’s horrifying crimes—and the awful source of the magical pigments they use—they find they can no longer stay out of politics.
What they can do is steal Arazi, the ministry’s mighty dragon automaton, and find a way to fight…
This was my first foray into Yoon Ha Lee’s work and all I can say is I can’t wait to explore more of his work because I really loved this! It is so very different to much of the other fantasy I’ve read, but because of that it felt so refreshing and new. And the nonbinary/female enemies to lovers relationship at the core of this story SPARKED SO MUCH JOY OMG I LOVE TO SEE IT.
Phoenix Extravagant is not your usual fantasy. We don’t follow a hero: instead, we follow an artist, slightly naive, oblivious to the world outside their art, and really just wanting to get on with their life outside of war. This passivity isn’t usually something you see in fantasy, particularly in a fantasy book about colonisation and rebellion. The book follows this artist, Gyen Jebi, as they are hired by the ruling Razanei Ministry of Armour to paint sigils that power their army of automaton. But after they discover how the paint is created, they feel forced to act, by stealing the Ministry of Armour’s automaton dragon of course!
This is a book full of very contrasting elements, and it made for a very unusual read, but one that felt so new and unique, fun and fresh. We see the book from the perspective of someone who doesn’t want to get involved in a rebellion, who doesn’t want to fight or kill and kind of just wants to get on with their life, so they get a job with the enemy to pay their bills. This is contrasted with the exploration of identity, colonisation and war, bringing us the unusual story of someone from the conquered class who doesn’t want to fight back themselves to get their country back. We see in Jebi the way the conquering nation are able to assimilate, manipulating the Hwaguk into giving up their names and their culture. The horrific nature of the magic system really exemplifies this, using cultural erasure to create the very weapon used to enforce the rule over Hwaguk is just horrific on so many different levels. So instead of in the main character, it is in Jebi’s sister, Bongsunga, that we see the rebel fighter who is willing to die to her country back. This makes for a very interesting and complex sibling relationship at the heart of this book, one that involves betrayal on both sides.
Alongside Jebi, we have another pacifist at the centre of this novel, who is of course Arazi the automaton dragon. Arazi, a war machine built by the Razan to destroy their enemies, who wants nothing to do with it. Arazi is such a sweet dragon for a creature created for such monstrosities and I adored the emphasis put on his consent and choice, and Jebi’s efforts to allow the dragon choice and free will as much as possible.
I really loved the juxtaposition of the steampunky, scifi nature of this fantasy alongside this more mystical, fairytale sense of freedom in the story. The contrast of this automaton dragon, and the mystical way he can fly; this felt most especially freeing in the way this book ended. I won’t say anything for spoilers, but I loved that we ended on a more fairytale-esque note than other elements of the book would suggest.
I want to end with talking about the relationship between Jebi and the prime duelist, Vei, because I just loved it. I think I must’ve been smiling like a fool the whole way through at seeing such a brilliant nb/f relationship at the heart of a fantasy book, it just made me so full of joy!! These two start with a mainly physical relationship but then grow to trust each other and suddenly the fire with which they fight for the other, the lack of control when the other is in danger, I just love to see it. Lee writes with such a simple style of writing I feel, it’s not full of huge detailed paragraphs about worldbuilding, about magic, about politics, or about the relationship. And this more simple style of writing somehow felt more powerful than if we’d had pages and pages of relationship development. Instead, the simplest sentences held the most power. It makes you pay attention to actions and what’s actually happening to see what is most important, and this felt particularly well done when showing off the relationship between Jebi and Vei.
I really loved this book. It looks at colonisation and war from a very different perspective than you usually see in fantasy. Instead of following a hero, we follow one of the bystanders impacted by war. It felt so fresh and unique and it really emphasised some of the mechanisms colonisers use to control those they conquer.
#5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @Local Bee Hunter’s Nook and you can learn more about it here or in the post announcing it. It occurs every Monday when we post about 5 books on our TBR. Thank you E. for the awesome graphic for these posts as well!
Hi everyone,
If you followed this blog during Pride month, it is probably no surprise to know that enemies to lovers is one of my favourite tropes (in fact I posted a recommendation list for amazing queer enemies to lovers books that you can check out here!) There’s just something about that line between hatred and love, that overwhelming passion that comes with both hatred and love, that make this trope so full of yearning and pain. So here’s five on my TBR!
Book I am most guilty and ashamed of not reading yet? THIS ONE. This was one of my top 5 most anticipated books of the year. I have no excuses for why I haven’t read it yet. But I am vowing to read it before the end of the year! It’s about a genderfluid pirate and the hostage noblewoman they fall in love with. And mermaids and witches I guess.
Okay a dark sapphic Beauty and the Beast retelling where the beast is a dragon?! This is pretty much the best pitch ever. I finally picked up an eBook copy a few months ago so I can finally read it. Enemies to lovers + monster romance = A BOOK MADE FOR ME.
This is another book I feel enormously guilty about not reading yet, because I preordered it in JANUARY and it is now OCTOBER. It’s a retelling of the Count of Monte Cristo with lots of queer rep and a girl on the cover who I want to stab me so should be a great read which I eventually read it.
So yes, I have already read this book. But I recently bought a physical copy of it so I really want to reread it now. It’s this incredible, creepy scifi set in caving system where someone is trapped and trying to escape, and the only person she can talk to is her handler, who is guiding her from a control room. But she doesn’t know whether to believe her because she keeps seeing strange things. Anyway it’s BRILLIANT and one of my favourite books so I can’t wait to reread.
There’s only one month to go until one of THE YA books of the year is released, These Violent Delights. I think this might be more lovers to enemies than enemies to lovers (or maybe both??) but either way it is sure to be excellent! It’s a retelling of Romeo and Juliet set in 1920s Shanghai and there’s lots of knives which is all I need to know to want to read this!
I’m excited to read everyone’s lists this week because I love this trope and want to add more books to my TBR (a totally sensible idea given the stack I already have of course…) Do you like this trope? What’s your favourite book with enemies to lovers? Let me know in the comments!
In 1893, there’s no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.
But when the Eastwood sisters–James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna–join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women’s movement into the witch’s movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote-and perhaps not even to live-the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.
There’s no such thing as witches. But there will be.
The Once and Future Witches was my first foray into Harrow’s lyrical, poetic prose, as I haven’t read her debut novel, The Ten Thousand Doors of January. I don’t always have the best time with this kind of prose, I tend to either love it or hate it. But in The Once and Future Witches, I loved it and I’m very excited to read Harrow’s debut now as well!
The Once and Futute Witches is set during 1893 suffragette America, where three sisters who have been seperated by time and betrayal, meet again when a spell that makes an old tower appear in the middle of New Salem pulls them together. The three sisters end up embroiled in a quest to bring back magic that will allow women to stand up to the world that has pushed them so far down.
It’s difficult to know where to start with this beautiful book. The prose was just wonderful: so haunting and so full of imagery, it just completely envelops you. Despite the heavy detail and poetic prose, which can sometimes really slow down a book, it didn’t feel slow at all. This prose just sucked me in and I wanted to stay reading this book for hours at a time. It’s very reminiscent of Erin Morgenstern’s work, who has the same ability to create this delicate, beautiful language that makes you never want to leave.
One of my favourite things about this world was the history regarding the magic. In order to stay hidden, magic is passed down through “women’s things”: children’s nursery rhymes, fairytale stories, sewn into fabric. Each chapter starts with a spell, many of which will be familiar, twists on different rhymes we may have heard. Alongside these spells, there are occasional breaks for short fairytales that really help add to the sense of beauty and magic in this book, alongside a sense of darkness that comes with the original fairytales.
Are the three main characters a little one dimensional? Yes. James, the youngest sister, is the wild, uncontrollable one; Beatrice, the old crone obsessed with books and knowledge; and Agnes the beautiful warrior mother. They are a little surface level, I felt like Agnes was the only one that really got to explore her personality a bit more. She has a bit more depth as the sister who isn’t fully on board with bringing back witches, as the one who is deep set in her bitterness at the betrayal years ago, and so I found her journey more interesting than the others.
What I loved most about the characters in this book is not therefore the three sisters. Instead, it’s the small, insightful moments we get with the host of secondary characters in this world. To me, this is where the emotion and heart of this book really sang. There was such a depth of emotion in such small moments that really touched me, and really emphasised this fight to defeat the darkness of men. There’s Jeannie, the trans woman too scared to tell her friends she’s trans until the end of the book when she reveals her shorn head inflicted on her by the prison system, who clenched her fists in meetings as the women talked about the uselessness of men’s magic, when it was the only kind she knew. There’s the moment when Mr Lee, his face radiant and fierce, stands as the only barrier between Agnes and men who seek to burn her. There’s Cleo Quinn, Beatrice’s love interest, a Black journalist who in a moment of absolute power stuns you with her sharp words that the Black people living in New Cairo, her people, are always the ones to suffer most for others’ fights. It is these small moments and glimpses into these other characters lives that felt the most powerful to me.
Incidentally, it is these secondary characters lives that felt the most inclusionary and diverse as well. Without them, this book is token white feminism trying to beat down the man, the three white women tearing down structures of society with no thought to who actually gets hurt most by their actions. Which is why I wish there had been more focus on these other characters. It’s like Harrow tried to make her feminism more open and inclusive but she didn’t quite go far enough: these characters did feel a little like side offerings to the main quest of these three sisters, used to help them reach their full power and take down the villain. I wish we’d seen more importance placed on those putting themselves at risk for the sisters because these characters really were the heart and soul of this book and gave this book its most powerful moments.
But overall, I did find this book very enchanting. There is no question that Alix E. Harrow writes absolutely beautifully, in a way that makes you completely entranced in a world. I appreciate her efforts to attempt a more inclusive fight for feminism but I do feel it could have gone a lot further. The best part of this book were the small moments with the characters around the sisters, the moments where other characters got to show their world and their hopes and their dreams and why they were fighting and I wish we’d had more importance and focus placed on these (at times infinitely more) interesting characters.
Beatrice Clayborn is a sorceress who practices magic in secret, terrified of the day she will be locked into a marital collar that will cut off her powers to protect her unborn children. She dreams of becoming a full-fledged Magus and pursuing magic as her calling as men do, but her family has staked everything to equip her for Bargaining Season, when young men and women of means descend upon the city to negotiate the best marriages. The Clayborns are in severe debt, and only she can save them, by securing an advantageous match before their creditors come calling.
In a stroke of luck, Beatrice finds a grimoire that contains the key to becoming a Magus, but before she can purchase it, a rival sorceress swindles the book right out of her hands. Beatrice summons a spirit to help her get it back, but her new ally exacts a price: Beatrice’s first kiss . . . with her adversary’s brother, the handsome, compassionate, and fabulously wealthy Ianthe Lavan.
The more Beatrice is entangled with the Lavan siblings, the harder her decision becomes: If she casts the spell to become a Magus, she will devastate her family and lose the only man to ever see her for who she is; but if she marries—even for love—she will sacrifice her magic, her identity, and her dreams. But how can she choose just one, knowing she will forever regret the path not taken?
C.L Polk is the author of one of the books, Witchmark, that got me back into reading and blogging after several years without it. So I was inordinately excited to read her new book, The Midnight Bargain. I was a little wary during the first 20%, but after that, the plot and characters really begin to shine and I couldn’t stop reading!
The Midnight Bargain follows Beatrice, a young ingenue in her first bargaining season, whereby gentlemen try to woo and win over women for marriage. Beatrice needs a good match, as her father’s fortunes were decimated by a bad investment and now the family is close to ruin. But if she marries, Beatrice is forced into a binding collar, which removes all her magic in order to protect any unborn child who might be possessed by a spirit. Beatrice is torn between wanting to help her family and wanting to pursue her dreams of freedom without a binding collar. It becomes an even harder decision when she falls in love with one of the gentlemen, Ianthe. But she has found someone who understands her desires in Ianthe’s sister, Ysbeta, who also does not want to marry. The two plan to help each other bind a greater spirit which will prevent anyone from marrying them.
The first 20% of this book I did struggle. C.L Polk, along with V.E Schwab, is one of those authors that I really struggle to care about their female characters because they are just so annoying. I felt this in Witchmark with Grace, a character we’re supposed to care about when she wants to enslave her brother for her own power? Yeah no thanks (it’s why I haven’t ever read the sequel to Witchmark despite how much I adored that book). And I worried during the first 20% of the book because Beatrice, our main character, starts out a little bratty and whiny. It really isn’t clear why she wants to pursue magic, and thus the initial conflict between magic and marriage that will save her family doesn’t feel particularly strong. It seems like a whiny selfish girl not wanting to help her family. Which is fine if that was who Beatrice was! But she was portrayed as really wanting to save her family and give up her life for them, so it felt very contradictory when you can’t really see any strong reasons for why she wants magic at such great expense to her family. Add that to the insufferable Harriet, Beatrice’s sister who seems to care naught a single bit for her sister, doesn’t care what Beatrice might desire or more importantly, what Beatrice might suffer. So I did spend the first 20% thinking oh god not another book with insufferable female characters.
BUT! PUSH THROUGH! Because after about 20%, everything really changes. As Beatrice meets Ysbeta and Ianthe, we really see her personality blossom, along with her two desires: saving her family and being a mage. I really loved this exploration of individualistic vs collective goals in this society, and to see Beatrice’s struggle to reconcile her wish to save her family with her wish to not be shackled and sold off in a marriage contract, no matter how much she loved Ianthe. I really appreciated the emphasis on Beatrice’s family and the strength of her love for them throughout the book, no matter what happened. A lot of other books exploring this, the struggle never really feels fully real – you always kind of know of course the person is going to pick themselves. And I loved that that feeling wasn’t there. I had no idea what Beatrice would do and I think that’s down to the strength in the second half of portraying this sense of selfish, more individualistic style of living alongside the hopes of her family who have bankrupted themselves for her.
I adored the friendship with Ysbeta. The fire in these two as they try to find a way out of marriage really helps bring Beatrice’s desires into a much stronger and clearer light, and thus my initial problem with her characterisation in the first 20% disappears. They have such a strong friendship and I really appreciated Ysbeta’s character. In a book so focused on marriage and tying yourself away to someone, Ysbeta was a breath of fresh air as someone who knows she doesn’t ever want to get married. I very much read her as somewhere on the ace spectrum, though it isn’t on page rep, as her desires to not get married felt like they went beyond just her wishes to be a mage and travel the world.
I’m also a huge Ianthe fan. In a society such as this, he of course does not start off perfect. I loved that Beatrice was unafraid to stand up to him and the two had so many fierce discussions around the morals and ethics surrounding Chasland society and culture. The way she challenges him made the relationship feel so much more positive and really makes you root for them because Ianthe is so willing to change and grow for Beatrice.
I really enjoyed this book. Despite my intial concerns during the first 20%, they were completely blown away by the rest of the book. I loved the emphasis on friendship, Ysbeta is pretty much one of the best female characters I’ve read all year and the relationship was very sweet.
#5OnMyTBR is a bookish meme hosted by E. @Local Bee Hunter’s Nook and you can learn more about it here or in the post announcing it. It occurs every Monday when we post about 5 books on our TBR. Thank you E. for the awesome graphic for these posts as well!
Hi everyone,
This week we’re talking all about historical fiction! This isn’t a genre I’ve read a lot of until this year, and now some of my favourite books of the year are historical fiction! The key determining factor that has resulted in my new found enjoyment of these books? Only reading the queer ones! So here’s five historical fiction novels that are on my TBR.
I’ve been saying I need to read my first Sarah Waters book for months now, but I swear it might actually happen this month. Fingersmith is one of the books on my Gothtober readathon TBR so fingers crossed October is finally the month to read this lesbian thief falling in love with their noblewoman mark. It’s described as Dickensian lesbians which sounds much more exciting than actual Dickens.
Another author I’ve been saying I’ll read for the past year is Carolina De Robertis. I have two of her novels on my shelf, but Cantoras is a book I have been absolutely dying to read so I’ll probably read this one first. It’s set in 1977 Uruguay, where homosexuality is still punishable, and follows five queer woman over 35 years of their lives.
Swimming in the Dark is set in 1980s Poland, and is the love story of two queer men who end up on opposite sides of politics. One ends up with a high ranking position in government, while the other turns to protest in the face of the economic situation in the country, and the two are torn apart in their fight to survive in the country.
Random anecdote but the cover of this book is so soft, I don’t know what’s different about it to other matt lam covers, but it is so. soft. The Pull of the Stars is a novel about three queer women at a hospital in 1918 Ireland during the Great Spanish Influenza pandemic: a nurse, a doctor and a volunteer who all work on the ward where pregnant mothers who have caught the flu are placed.
As described by the author, The Spy with the Red Balloon is ‘Queer Jewish Kids Punch Nazis While Doing Science and Sabotaging Hitler’. Not sure what I can say to improve that description, but basically it’s about two kids who can do magic and are blackmailed into service during WW2, one helping America make an atom bomb, and the other trying to sabotage Hitler’s nuclear program within Germany.
History was queer, folks, that’s all I have to say. Bring me all the queer historical fiction because I have read some incredible ones this year and I can’t wait to read some more!
Anxious Nachos 