Reading was a struggle this month, which is probably why the number of DNFs has spiked again…
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Minor trans character, M/M main
Published on: 1st September 2024
ISBN: B0D4JMRLSB
Goodreads
"Finally we have a lovely, melancholic, sensual romance between two of the Bible's greatest villains—Judas Iscariot and the Devil. Between lush, decadent prose, Morgan Dante weaves together a queer love story, a gorgeous homage to The Divine Comedy, and thoughts on finding love in the damned shadow of God. A hellish, sacrilegious must-read." — rafael nicolás, author of Angels Before Man
Two of the Bible's greatest villains...
After his betrayal with a kiss, Judas Iscariot dies in despair and goes to Hell. When Christ saves other souls during the Harrowing of Hell, he leaves Judas behind—but not alone in the ninth circle, where the most detestable traitors go. Callous, resigned, and abandoned by God long ago, the Devil sees Judas as a pathetic wretch, but he soon finds a kindred spirit. As the centuries pass, they struggle to find even a sliver of happiness in Hell.
Doomed by the narrative, will they find happiness, or will their story continue to be a tragedy?
I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
I knew this book was doomed the second it was revealed that Judas didn’t really betray Yeshua – he didn’t know the Romans would kill him! That wasn’t supposed to happen!
And like – no. That’s such a cowardly change to make. That immediately means you’re not committed to wrestling with the ‘reality’ of these characters, you don’t want to deal with the complicated messiness of them. What kind of Judas isn’t the betrayer? What’s the point of examining the figure/character at all if you’re going to make him a – a milksop, a patsy?
And my GODS, why does he consider himself so evil when it was a naïve mistake, not intentional? Pathetic. Whiny. NOPE.
The opening chapters from Yeshua’s PoV were sublime, but the moment we left that, the prose became very dull and stilted. What a boring Satan; what a boring Hell.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Queer MC
PoV: 1st-person, past-tense; third-person, past tense
Published on: 3rd September 2024
Goodreads
Whoever rules the bees, rules the world. A dark fantasy adventure with a twist of Silvia Moreno-Garcia.
On a planet stripped of wind, entire ecosystems lie in ashes, leaving humans to the mercy of a sole surviving bee species on a remote isle. Whoever wins the Praxis to rule them as Keeper, rules the world.
When the next Keeper goes missing, her little sister must not only face her debilitating fear of bees, but compete in the Praxis to find her. As she braves the eerie fortress with sprawling wings of hives, murmuring murals, deceptive hedge mazes, and a host of leering gargoyles, she must also face the reigning Keeper, who’s guarding the darkest secret of all.
FLAME TREE PRESS is the imprint of long-standing independent Flame Tree Publishing, dedicated to full-length original fiction in the horror and suspense, science fiction & fantasy, and crime / mystery / thriller categories. The list brings together fantastic new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices. Learn more about Flame Tree Press at www.flametreepress.com and connect on social media @FlameTreePress
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
There’s something really great in here, but it’s lost under unpolished prose, which just got worse and worse until I couldn’t take it any more.
(It’s also exhausting to read. I was reading it this morning, as I write this, and my head got so sluggish and my eyes so heavy that I had to stop after a few chapters and go take a nap. NOT GREAT.)
To be clear, the prose isn’t constantly bad. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that the ideas in this story are sumptuous, and often gorgeous; there’s something very luxurious about it, and very Gothic indeed. And that comes through for a page or two, in lovely, rich writing…up until I’m slapped with an unbearably awkward sentence that jerks me out of the story.
eyes greedily combing over her damp skin
You can’t comb damp skin???
only caved me in more
I get what you’re trying to say, but…
“Steady,” pressed a husky voice.
How does a voice ‘press’?
One of them had to know what happened to Lenita. Maybe more. Maybe helped vanish her too.
The hum deepened to a resounding growl, vibrating the stone
That use of ‘vibrating’ sounds awful, although I’m not sure whether it’s grammatically incorrect …
Thousands of bees collected on the Keeper’s long train. So thick, one couldn’t tell it was even red.
‘one couldn’t tell it was even red’? really?
The worldbuilding is really interesting – post climate-collapse, the world is now divided into just seven countries, and also the wind is gone, which as you might guess makes pollinators even more important. A crevasse has opened up in the ocean, and monsters come out of it sometimes. There seems to be a whole new religion, with new figures that don’t map onto any I’m familiar with. Flocks of birds are harnessed to pull ships now? Some bits weren’t clear, but I think that was because I DNFed it so soon; I’m not faulting Keeper for that.
There’s also, in the only first-person narration in the book, a gargoyle…or a being currently trapped inside a gargoyle?…who has lost their memory and is desperate to find out who and what they are, since they are not of the same kind as the other sentient gargoyles. I don’t know how this was going to fit together with everything else, but what I’m saying is, there’s plenty here to like, and lots of little details to catch your interest on.
Memories were a heap of stained glass, shattered and shapeless without time’s brace.
heels clacking, long, crimson train frothing over cobbles like rapids of blood
See? Beautiful!
Not that every writing decision makes sense: Naokah, the mc, is afraid of bees. Okay, that’s fine – she only takes part in the Praxis to find her sister, right? NOPE. Turns out she competed in the previous Praxis with her sister, specifically against her sister…despite being terrified of bees. She was that desperate to prove she could do something better than her sister! And was disappointed that her sister won instead! Even though it would have meant…living the next 50 years surrounded by bees??? I’m sorry, what? Do you really think you could have been a great Keeper while terrified of the beasties you’re keeping? That is the dumbest thing. And immediately turns me against our main character – not so much for wanting to prove she was as good or better than her universally-adored older sister, I can understand that. But this is the hill you decided to die on? When so much depends on the Keeper doing their duties WELL? It was irresponsible and selfish as well as fucking stupid.
I probably would have stuck with Keeper despite Naokah, just for the worldbuilding and mostly-lovely writing. But I just couldn’t deal with those verbal slaps, and the sentences that didn’t make sense, and why are you calling foxgloves ‘cones’ at every opportunity??? They’re not cone-shaped!
Is this horribly nit-picky of me? Yes, it is, and if the excerpts I quoted don’t bother you, then I encourage you to give this one a try, because if you don’t mind the writing (and can ignore Naokah being an idiot in this one respect) then you might like it. Keeper is very original, very different, and even in the tiny bit I read was already shaping up to be something noteworthy. I may even try it again in the future (although no promises). It’s not that it’s a bad book; it’s that I’m overly critical/sensitive when it comes to prose. People who are normal about writing will have a much more positive experience, I suspect.
Genres: Adult, Science Fantasy
Published on: 15th October 2024
ISBN: 0063345765
Goodreads
Sturgeon, Nebula, Locus, and Ignyte awards finalist R.S.A. Garcia’s scifantasy debut novel—the first in a duology—in which Caribbean mythology meets The Witcher, introduces a world where women warrior-magicians rule, and a child princess and her bodyguard must flee an attempted coup and evade the wave of darkness sent to kill her.
For 500 years Gaiea’s Hand has stood as a ward against the Dark. The Age of Chaos is a faded memory. The Goddess has left Gailand and given her Blessing to the Queens to rule in her stead.
Princess Viella of the court of Hamber is the Spirit of Gaiea, presumptive heir to the throne and budding wielder of magic. And yet she’s still a child—not yet ten years old—and a day spent evading her teachers and her dutiful bodyguard, Luka, is much more satisfying than learning about telepathy, illusions, and other spells, or obeying even her mother, the Queen.
There is time enough…until there isn’t.
For the night the Queen hosts the Ceremony to confirm Viella as the next Hand of Gaiea, everything changes for her—in the most horrific way the assassination of Viella’s mother.
Now Viella is Queen.
Luka, despite resenting his position as royal babysitter, does not hesitate. He rushes his charge from the Court and vows to keep her safe. Yet he is unsure how to help a burgeoning Hand of Gaiea, let alone contend with his place as a man in a matriarchal world and the secret that is burning inside him.
Together, they are on the run from darkness in a world where the lines between magic and technology are blurring and it’s up to a child and her protector to bring clarity and light back to the Queendom.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
You know what? I just don’t want to read this any more. I’m a bit sad about it, because this was one of my most-anticipated books – I was RABID to read it! But. I’m bored, and I don’t care, and there are some objectively cool things going on that are just not grabbing me, for some reason. I made it to 38%; that’s a lot more than my usual cut-off point, at 20%. But the extra pages didn’t make a difference for me.
The writing is fine: very readable, very easy, but nothing special, and lacking the lushness I’m always hoping for. The magic is so simplistic. As is the matriarchy I was so excited about; women are warriors, men are oppressed (and also warriors), Oh No. (Not that we see said oppression? There’s some semi-nasty comments about men from literally one person, and it’s implied that men aren’t taught as much magic, but 38% of the way through this book I still didn’t know how men are oppressed – I was just told, not shown, that they were. Can they not inherit property? Are they banned from certain professions? Are they objectified, does the law not recognise that men can be raped by women, are they considered less intelligent, what???)(For that matter, I don’t get how this is a matriarchy; we have queens, and women warriors, but men are warriors too, and if you made all the women into men you’d never spot the difference from a generic Fantasy patriarchy, this is boring and also stupid.) Of course it’s an Evil Man who murders the queen and steals the throne (albeit not for himself); of course his partner is a woman who feels she was passed over as queen. And where is the Caribbean influence? So much of this set-up seems ripped directly from the (historically INaccurate) collective hallucination that is SFF’s idea of Medieval Europe. (Dressing characters in saris and having warrior women named after the Dahomey Amazons is just set-dressing, not fundamental worldbuilding.) And why do you even HAVE princesses/princes when the monarchy isn’t hereditary? Why is the Queen Mother a position of influence when she wasn’t chosen as queen, her daughter was? This whole set-up should be wildly different; the worldbuilding is so inconsistent, it doesn’t fit together, ARGH.
(And why Gaiea? Why? That’s such a fucking cliche. I disapprove of cringe culture immensely, but folx, anyone using Gaia/Gaiea as an All-Goddess figure in a secondary world setting makes me cringe so hard.)(I got excited for this book before there was a blurb, okay, I didn’t know.)
Bonus, stupid contradictory details, like someone moving ‘soundlessly’ despite being decked in anklets and bracelets. OKAY. Or – again, in a secondary world setting, where names I recognise SHOULD NOT EXIST – names like Sophia and Frances and Elise existing right alongside Viella and Valan. Or, supposedly experienced warriors thinking it’s better to remove an arrow still in the wound, when that is the thing you must absolutely not do until you’re with a doctor who can deal with it; and seriously suggesting that TWO PEOPLE are enough to get the queen where she needs to go while her queendom’s under threat
THAT BEING SAID.
It’s clear that there is a huge, world-changing mystery lying beneath Gailand’s history; the magical portals are actually teleportation technology, and the oraculars are something like mobile phones + holograms. ‘Property of Genetech’ is a gigantic clue that Something Is Up. Gailand’s legends have Gaiea overthrowing ‘the Masters’ – perhaps some corporation or other entity that set up Gailand as an experiment, or some kind of wildlife reserve, or something even stranger. And yet, the Dark is objectively real, so this IS a matter of demons and magic too. This should be SO INCREDIBLY INTERESTING, and for the right reader, it absolutely will be.
But not for me. The story moves quickly, but not in a direction I cared about; the clues for What Is Up were coming far too slowly to hold my interest. The worldbuilding does not hold up in my eyes, so I don’t really care about it for its own sake. And the characters are nice, sure, but bland. Nothing about them stands out: honourable warrior, honourable warrior, 9 year old whose maturity spikes and dips from moment to moment (although to be fair, she’s been through a lot recently, which would mess up most 9yos). I suspect Luka might not be cis, but it’s already clear that Gailand has no room for nonbinary people and I’m not interested in seeing Luka have to fight for acceptance on that front as well (he’s already lesser because, you know, man in a matriarchy).
It just…all fell so flat. Maybe Nightward becomes EPIC in the second half, maybe we would learn more about Genetech and the reveal will be SO COOL…but that’s just not enough of an incentive when the first half is so meh, when I don’t care about the cast, when the worldbuilding bores and annoys me.
Some readers will love this, undoubtedly. I’m sad I’m not one of them.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
ISBN: B07L9KLYPK
Goodreads
Magic is real.
Discovered in the 1970s, magic is now a bona fide field of engineering. There's magic in heavy industry and magic in your home. It's what's next after electricity.
Student mage Laura Ferno has designs on the future: her mother died trying to reach space using magic, and Laura wants to succeed where she failed. But first, she has to work out what went wrong. And who her mother really was.
And whether, indeed, she's dead at all...
This is a pretty great book with amazing worldbuilding, and a premise I really liked – magic being treated as/working like engineering! A world where magic is ‘just’ another science! Except for how it’s definitely not…
But I couldn’t keep up with the incredibly technical storytelling indefinitely, and unfortunately the character work seems to have been sacrificed in favour of the worldbuilding. Each character only had one or two personality traits, and there was nothing in any of them for me to connect to or care about. Even when the fate of the world was at stake, I felt very distanced from the characters, unable to experience any of the story emotionally.
And although the Things which were revealed were staggeringly cool… Out-of-nowhere reveals make me less interested in a story, regardless of what is being revealed. And we had those kind of reveals constantly. (It’s possible there were clues leading up to each reveal, but if there were, the clues were part of the super-technical stuff that I wasn’t smart enough to understand.) Eventually it didn’t matter how LE GASP was the Thing being revealed; I was just rolling my eyes because here we go again, another flip-the-table revelation… It loses impact after the fifth time, you know?
Called it quits around the 80% mark – reading it was just too much like work, instead of being fun. I still think it’s an incredible piece of writing, and I get why some people adore it – and I want to check out qntm’s other books, see if any of them might be more accessible for me, because the mind behind Ra is clearly…well, mind-blowing! But I doubt I’ll ever come back to Ra and try to finish it.
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Science Fantasy
Representation: Black MC, Black MLM MC, M/M
ISBN: 1473234220
Goodreads
Unmissable for fans of the spacefaring found family of Becky Chambers, the alternate London of V. E. Schwab, and the virtuosic climate-craft of N. K. Jemisin.
A century-spanning space fantasy novel that will take you on a whirlwind adventure, from a Regency Era love affair between a time-traveller and the prince waiting for him in the past, to a rescue mission in the 60th century, where a girl desperately races against time as she searches for the sister the emperor stole.
6066: In Emperor Thracin’s brave new galaxy, humans are not citizens. Instead, they are indentured labourers, working to repay the debt they unwittingly incurred when they settled on Gahraan - a desert planet already owned by the emperor himself. Asha Akindele knows she’s just another voiceless cog working the assembly lines that fuel his vast imperial war machine. Her only rebellion: studying stolen aeronautics manuals in the dead of night. But then a cloaked stranger arrives to deliver an impossible message, and her life changes in an instant.
1812: Obi Amadi is done with time-travelling. Never mind the fact he doesn’t know how to cure himself of the temporal sickness he caught whilst anchoring his soul to Regency London, the one that unmakes him further with every jump. Or if the prince he loves will ever love him back. Or why his father disappeared. He is done. Until he hears about the ghost of a girl in the British Museum. A girl from another time.
When Obi’s path tangles with Asha’s and a prophecy awakens in the cold darkness of space, they must voyage through the stars, racing against time, tyranny, and the legacy of three heroes from an ancient religion who may be awakening, reincarnated in ways beyond comprehension.
I’ve been pining for this book since it won the Gollancz and Rivers of London BAME SFF Award back in 2020, but alas, it ended up being a flop for me. I loved some aspects of the worldbuilding, but mostly I found the prose really blunt and kind of choppy, and the story managed to be quite breakneck-paced without actually going anywhere. The main characters were great, but all of the other relationships – friendships, various love interests, etc – were told-not-shown, so they never felt very real or impactful (which is a big problem when important emotional moments depend on them).
There was also a FUCKTON of typos, which I should be used to by now because Gollancz (the publisher) packs EVERY book they publish with typos. Who the FUCK does the copy-editing over there, and why haven’t they hired someone better??? It’s MADDENING! Literally no other trad-publisher is this bad! I’ve gotten to the point where I get upset if I see a book I’m excited for is coming out from them…
Seriously, fuck Gollancz.
Anyway, back to Principle: this is science-fantasy, which is a kinda niche genre that I love, but I have to admit that I don’t think the fantasy and sci fi elements meshed very well here. Less because I was bothered by how the magic worked in this setting (I wasn’t, I could just roll with it) than because the jump from Georgian England to far-future aliens was really jarring – and we jumped back and forth between the two settings quite a bit. The Georgian stuff was clearly trying to give historical drama/regency romance vibes, which…it did not, and again, it clashed pretty badly with all the on-the-run-Chosen-Ones stuff in the future parts. Maybe the two halves would have come together better later in the book, but I have no reason to think so.
And don’t get me started on the dialogue, which was so forced and fake the entire time.
I desperately wanted to love this book. Desperately. But…I didn’t. I doubt I’ll give it a second try; I definitely won’t be picking up the sequels.
Sigh.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC with fibromyalgia, brown sapphic MC, major bisexual character, major gay character
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
Published on: 24th September 2024
ISBN: B0CW1WJGFM
Goodreads
A witty, witchy fantasy murder mystery packed with ancient magic and fiendish puzzles. Mallory, Diana, Cornelia and Theodore are hired to solve a murder on a TV shoot by the victim herself. Perfect for fans of supernatural mysteries and cosy crime by authors such as Ben Aaronovitch, Josiah Bancroft and Tammie Painter.
Five months after the events of The Undetectables, business is booming – but finding cases that call for magical forensic investigators is not. So when Diana's ex, Taylor, asks them to solve a murder – her own – Diana, Mallory and Cornelia can't say no.
Called to investigate the set of Undead Complex, Diana re-enters the world of TV-show prop making – even in death, the show must go on. Even the appearance of a genuine-article Francine Leon dollhouse can't make up for the fact she's being pulled down a path of crime-solving she maybe doesn't want to walk forever.
Meanwhile, Theodore's coming apart at the seams – literally – in the aftermath of their last case, and Mallory is running out of ways to help him. Especially as he seems to be keeping secrets from her.
As the clues – and the bodies – keep piling up, each one making less and less sense, The Undetectables find themselves in a new race against the clock to find out what, exactly, the killer is up to – before they strike again...
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
I had a lot of fun with the first book in this series, but Undead Complex…I’m just bored. Now that the characters have been established, I’m not that interested, and again, it was fun to see the Undetectables figuring out magical forensics in book one, but now they have that down, the process of their investigation held no appeal for me. And it felt like Undead was taking forever to get anywhere – although I’m not sure if it actually was, or it it just felt like that because I wasn’t enjoying myself. I recognise that the new case – a dead body showing up with the face of someone still very much alive – is objectively weirder than a serial killer case (which is what we had in the first book), but still, I was bored. I didn’t care AT ALL about what was going on or who the killer might be, or how everything would resolve – I couldn’t care less about the tv set and the drama among the crew and cast. I just wanted it to be over – and then realised I could make that happen! So.
The fibro rep continues to be excellent, but I just don’t care about the story said rep is in, unfortunately.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic Jewish-coded MC
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
Published on: 17th September 2024
ISBN: 9780593722350
Goodreads
A sharp-tongued folklorist must pair up with her academic rival to solve their mentor's murder in this lush and enthralling sapphic fantasy romance from the New York Times bestselling author of A Far Wilder Magic.
Lorelei Kaskel, a folklorist with a quick temper and an even quicker wit, is on an expedition with six eccentric nobles in search of a fabled spring. The magical spring promises untold power, which the king wants to harness to secure his reign of the embattled country of Brunnestaad. Lorelei is determined to use this opportunity to prove herself and make her wildest, most impossible dream come true: to become a naturalist, able to travel freely to lands she’s only ever read about.
The expedition gets off to a harrowing start when its leader—Lorelei’s beloved mentor—is murdered in her quarters aboard their ship. The suspects are her five remaining expedition mates, each with their own motive. The only person Lorelei knows must be innocent is her longtime academic rival, the insufferably gallant and maddeningly beautiful Sylvia von Wolff. Now in charge of the expedition, Lorelei must find the spring before the murderer strikes again—and a coup begins in earnest.
But there are other dangers lurking in the dark: forests that rearrange themselves at night, rivers with slumbering dragons waiting beneath the water, and shapeshifting beasts out for blood.
As Lorelei and Sylvia grudgingly work together to uncover the truth—and resist their growing feelings for one another—they discover that their professor had secrets of her own. Secrets that make Lorelei question whether justice is worth pursuing, or if this kingdom is worth saving at all.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
I suspect I might have a better time will this if I tried it again later; I’m struggling to read anything right now, so I’m not convinced that my ambivalence is all the book’s fault.
On the other hand, I really hate the German-inspired setting. It’s completely petty, but all the German terms a) sound very ugly to me, and b) give me flashbacks to high school German lessons, which were hands-down the most awful of any classes I’ve ever had. (It’s possible a and b are related.) The magic system disappointed me – it seems really simple, and I don’t have any interest in water magic for its own sake. And the magical quest object…it all felt really basic and obvious – which isn’t very like Saft, so again, I’m wondering if the problem is more my headspace than the book. Maybe it wouldn’t feel as meh if I wasn’t feeling meh…?
I love that Saft has given us fantasy!Judaism again, but nothing else about our MC Lorelei interested me – her passion for natural history was told to us, but I wasn’t seeing it on the page, which is a shame because characters with passions are one of my favourite things. There’s also the problem of ‘wow, EVERYONE here is terrible!’ – and not in interesting ways, either. The ‘eccentric nobles’ are just privileged assholes, which is definitely realistic, but doesn’t get me invested in them.
I want to try this again sometime – maybe when it’s published – but right now I have no desire to keep reading, so I’m not going to.
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: F/F
Published on: 17th September 2024
Goodreads
St. Edah’s, a house without exit: Lethe and Petunia are mortal prisoners, servants to immortal creatures who unzip from their skin each night and party as skeletons.
Lethe has no memory of how she came to be trapped in this nightmare, only that despite the tenderness she feels for Petunia, she must escape. Together, they traverse the infinite house, searching for passage while finding evidence of their former lives—lives that are not what they believed them to be.
Lethe must decide: join the immortals in their revelry or escape St. Edah’s once and for all.
Lyndsie Manusos’s fiction has appeared in The Deadlands, Lightspeed Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and other publications. Born and raised across the Midwest, she now lives in Indianapolis with her family, works as a part-time indie bookseller, and writes for Book Riot. From These Dark Abodes is her first book.
Psychopomp is a Vermont-based small press that publishes otherworldly fiction and rad, gothy essays, as well as a little magazine about death called The Deadlands.
I received this book for free from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
I would quite like to try this one again eventually – the prose is gorgeous! But it – the prose, I mean – is also…sort of jangly? What I mean is, the word choices are exquisite, but the rhythm of the writing has me constantly twitching. I don’t know why – I can’t put my finger on it, even after going over the chapters I read with a magnifying glass. Which is why I think I might have a better time with this book if I tried it again later…
It’s dark, it’s creepy, there are indeed many mysteries that desperately need solving… It didn’t really read like horror to me – it wasn’t frightening – but I think it hit the note it was going for. The characters… I didn’t really connect with them, and I wish the one hadn’t been named Petunia, because the only time I’ve ever come across that is in The Series That Must Not Be Named, which is an unfortunate connection to make in my head and definitely didn’t help.
(Sometimes I think storytellers forget/don’t realise how important character names are. Or do most readers NOT think of other, more famous characters with the same name, when they meet new characters? Maybe it’s just me being weird.)
Definitely one I’d recommend to anyone intrigued by the blurb, though. If you DON’T have my weird ear for prose rhythm (and I’ve only ever met one other person who does) then you’ll probably enjoy this one.
Here’s hoping for fewer DNFs next month!
You can comb over someone’s damp skin you just shouldn’t because it’s gross! To comb over something means to go over a thing systematically searching out all the fine details. You can and should comb over financial reports for instance. Book sounds terrible though.
What I hate is how every one of these summaries does the “comp title” thing where “This book is just like Becky Chambers, VE Schwab and NK Jemisin!” No it’s not. Publishers need to be stopped, they’re doing so much more harm than good. None of those authors are the least bit like each other and if a fan of any one of them goes into that book hoping for say the cozy intimacy of a Chambers, the tense suspense of a Schwab, or the earth shattering revelations of a Jemisin they’re going to be disappointed. It’s just setting everyone up for failure.
Tell me about it! The dumbest comp I’ve seen recently was some sci fi that was for ‘fans of James SA Corey and Becky Chambers’. LIKE THOSE AREN’T AT COMPLETE OPPOSITE ENDS OF THE SPECTRUM!
Not to mention that comps almost NEVER take writing style into account, only very superficial similarities. Any magic circus is comped to Erin Morgenstern and probably Stephanie Garber too, and who cares that those are nothing like each other???
(A friend who works in publishing said that quite often the people writing the blurb haven’t read the book at all, or read it months before they summarise it, and I wish I could say that shocked me!)
Yikes – rough month. Keeper of Sorrows sounds like it could be an interesting read (I’ve come across worse prose lately), and you kind of had me hooked on The Nightward until you got to the SFF experiment aspects (which is where I’d immediately bail). Better luck next month!
It was, but there were some AMAZING books this month too! Thankfully. I really do think you should try out Keeper if the prose isn’t an issue, because the premise and worldbuilding seems very unique. And I’m glad you know to skip Nightward now if you don’t like that trope/set-up!
Thanks!