Rent My Heart in Twain: Asunder by Kerstin Hall
A deathspeaker in an exquisitely weird world is on the run with her shadow.
Category: Queer Lit
Alight With Joy: The Phoenix Keeper by S. A. MacLean
A MAGIC ZOO and WONDERFUL QUEER WOMEN and PHOENIXES, and it’s even better than I’d hoped!!!
I Love It, I Love It Not: The Palace of Eros by Caro De Robertis
I want to love it, but I don’t.
Built Like the Tardis: The Sunforge by Sascha Stronach
You know how most of the books that get comped to Gideon the Ninth really shouldn’t be?
This one fully deserves it.
Convicted of Meh: Talio’s Codex by J. Alexander Cohen
A legal-thriller in fantasy-land this is not.
July DNFs
Her Spell That Binds Me; Time’s Agent; An Education in Malice; Interstellar MegaChef; We Are the Crisis; The Tangled Lands.
Two Books I Should Have Skipped: The Lost Story and The Dollmakers
A portal fantasy for people who don’t like fantasy, and sentient dolls we’re not supposed to think are sentient.
The Only Wrath Is Mine: Between Dragons and Their Wrath by Devin Madson
The title’s a lie, the blurb’s a lie, and the truth is so boring.
Miracles and Mirabilia: The West Passage by Jared Pechaček
If you forced me to describe The West Passage’s aesthetic, my answer would probably be: Medieval marginalia meets Pliny’s Natural History with a dash of biblically accurate angels.
If Faith Were Fact: The Faithful Dark by Cate Baumer
‘Queer gothic fantasy with an ace healer, transmasc priest, and chaotic bisexual angel hunting a serial killer in fantasy Vatican’.