Probably the fastest DNF of my life, plus one book that is too sad, and several that were too meh. (For me, anyway!)
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
Representation: F/F
PoV: First-person, past-tense
ISBN: B0CQHGYKML
Goodreads
A spellbinding rivalry unraveled by fate...A sapphic romance born from the ashes of prejudice…A Regency Era tale of lust and magic.
Iona's magic thrives in ways that defy explanation. The threads of fate pull Iona to Lysander College, an illustrious school for aristocratic witches of great renown. Though Iona is only a novice witch with no ancestral claim to old magic, her anomalous power garners the unwanted attention of imperious witches in her class.
Ariadne is a prodigy of magic descended from a prestigious bloodline of witches. Ariadne is her family’s one hope of maintaining their noble status in high society. When Iona arrives at college under mysterious circumstances, wielding magic that somehow rivals Ariadne’s, she makes it her vendetta to put Iona in her place.
The scholarly witches of Lysander College share one common goal: to claim the coveted pendant of Morgan Le Fay. Within the pendant's shimmering stones lies indomitable power, which can only be claimed by the witch who wins Morgan’s arcane trials in Spring. Ariadne must claim the pendant for her family or face the consequences should she fail. Ariadne will not let Iona steal her victory, though she might steal her heart.
Her Spell That Binds Me is an F/F rivals to lovers, dual POV, dark fantasy romance novel. Contains mature themes.
Welp: I made it exactly four pages in before I slammed the eject button.
That might be a record?
(It’s also why I’m not giving this a rating; I really don’t think it would be fair.)
One: witches in this world get their wands when their magic is finished developing. There is no set age for this, and there’s no external sign that a witch has come into their full power. Which means you just have to…look for your wand, with no idea whether it’s time for it to show up yet or not.
I wouldn’t mind this especially, except – how do they find their wands??? By walking through areas with a lot of sticks and…hoping. The MC’s wand is a branch that literally breaks off when she’s walking by and drops at her feet, and I just. That’s so stupid. And boring. And – that’s not how her mom gets her wand, so, do most witches just have to. You know. Pick up stick after stick after stick, hoping the next one will be their wand??? Stupid and boring and ridiculous, not in a good way (especially since this is not presented as intentionally comedic).
Two: the MC and her mother make money by…magicking up pearls.
Again, not inherently a problem! I was actually enchanted by this at first. Until there was a moment when the mother’s failing magic is shown by her not being able to make ‘perfect’ pearls – only sort of wobbly ones, and.
Wait.
Wait.
So, you sell…perfectly round, flawless pearls? Baskets of them at a time? And you tell people you just find them by luck – you’re not professional pearl-divers or anything?
Ma’am. Ma’am. Do you know how fast this would break the jewellery industry?! If you want people to NOT know you’re witches, then maybe don’t go selling a basket of impossibly perfect natural pearls semi-regularly?! Every jeweller in the COUNTRY would go nuts for perfect pearls (this being set before cultured pearls were a thing, evidently), and they would ALL want to know where you got them. Every other jeweller would be dying to know where the one you sold to got their pearls. Do you not understand how people would GAPE at the first duchess or whatever to swan in with a whole necklace of perfect pearls?! There would be a FRENZY.
I genuinely spent about two hours ranting about this to the hubby. And yes, I know, it is truly ridiculous that something this small could bother me so much – but it does, and I can’t pretend it doesn’t.
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Sapphic Dominican MC, F/F
PoV: First-person, past-tense
Published on: 13th August 2024
ISBN: 1250854326
Goodreads
“What would you do, given another universe, a do-over?”
Forty years ago, archeologist Raquel and her biologist wife Marlena once dreamed of the mysteries they would unlock in their respective fields using pocket universes— geographically small, hidden offshoots of reality, each with its own fast or slow time dilation relative to Earth time—and the future they would open up for their daughter.
But that was then.
Forty years later, Raquel is in disgrace, Marlena lives in a pocket universe Raquel wears around her neck and no longer speaks to her, what’s left of their daughter’s consciousness resides in a robotic dog, and time is a commodity controlled by corporations squeezing out every last penny they can.
So when a new pocket universe appears, one that might hold the key to her failed calling, Raquel seizes one last chance to redeem herself to her wife, live up to her own failed ideals, and confront what it means to save something—or someone—from time.
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 think Time’s Agent is a perfectly good book – it does what it sets out to do, and does it well, I think. But it was so depressing that I had to walk away from it. I made it a little past the half-way point, and…I’m just not built for this level of awfulness, okay??? Or maybe this particular flavour of awesomeness, which is families being destroyed AND the world being wrecked (in even more sickening ways than we manage in real life) by corporations AND a lot of really horrific non-human death (I was fucking gutted by the whole merpeople thing).
And when I skipped to the ending…well. I think it’s supposed to be what some people call hopeful endings, and I guess it’s technically a win, but from what I could make out nothing’s fixed so!!! No thank you. I’m going to do my best to forget this entire thing exists. There are some images that I really need scrubbed out of my brain, because every time they pop up they make me want to throw up or cry.
Time’s Agent isn’t bad. It’s very well written – I wouldn’t have had such visceral reactions to all the misery and awfulness otherwise. But show me how we fix or avoid the awfulness, if you want to give me a hellscape future. If you’re just going to marinate me in misery, I can’t handle it.
No rating for this one either; I don’t think I could possibly be objective.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC, F/F
PoV: First-person, past-tense; dual PoVs
ISBN: 0316501972
Goodreads
Sumptuous and addictive, An Education in Malice is a dark academia tale of blood, secrets and insatiable hungers from S.T. Gibson, author of the cult hit A Dowry of Blood.
Deep in the forgotten hills of Massachusetts stands Saint Perpetua’s College. Isolated and ancient, it is not a place for timid girls. Here, secrets are currency, ambition is lifeblood, and strange ceremonies welcome students into the fold.
On her first day of class, Laura Sheridan is thrust into an intense academic rivalry with the beautiful and enigmatic Carmilla. Together, they are drawn into the confidence of their demanding poetry professor, De Lafontaine, who holds her own dark obsession with Carmilla.
But as their rivalry blossoms into something far more delicious, Laura must confront her own strange hungers. Tangled in a sinister game of politics, bloodthirsty professors and magic, Laura and Carmilla must decide how much they are willing to sacrifice in their ruthless pursuit of knowledge.
I think it’s time I admit to myself that I have zero interest in finishing this book.
I adored Dowry of Blood, and I enjoyed Evocation fine, but this novel of Gibson’s is just not for me. I started reading it in February and still haven’t made it to the halfway mark, and it’s not that hard to see why. I love scholarship and learning and stories about those things, but the prestige that seems to go along with Dark Academia – that kind of aesthetic, that revelling in how exclusive and expensive something like a university is – is of no interest to me, and Gibson is very much into The Aesthetic. That’s not an insult; she’s amazing at writing vibes and atmosphere, and I’ve enjoyed it in her other work. It’s just that this particular aesthetic does nothing for me.
And as much as I like being in the head of a femme who’s massively into Domming, Laura as a character isn’t actually very interesting? And neither is Carmilla? De Lafontaine is so obviously manipulative that I’m bored by her too; maybe she gets interesting later, maybe the vampire thing becomes a bigger deal, but there’s just…no incentive for me to find out. I made myself read another chapter today, to see if I could get back into it, and nope, not gonna happen.
So. It’s fine??? But massively underwhelming, and nothing to really recommend it if you’re not already a fan of the aesthetic.
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Desi sapphic MC, Desi sapphic MC, F/F
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
Published on: 5th November 2024
ISBN: 1837862338
Goodreads
Looking for your one shot to rise to the "top of the pots" in the cutthroat world of interstellar cuisine? Look no further--you might have what it takes to be an Interstellar MegaChef!
Stepping off a long-haul star freighter from Earth, Saras Kaveri has one bag of clothes, her little flying robot Kili... and an invitation to compete in the galaxy's most watched, most prestigious cooking show. Interstellar MegaChef is the showcase of the planet Primus's austere, carefully synthesised cuisine. No one from Earth--where they're so incredibly primitive they still cook with fire--has ever graced its flowmetal cookstations before, or smiled awkwardly for its buzzing drone-cams. Until now.
Corporate prodigy Serenity Ko, inventor of the smash-hit sim SoundSpace, has just got messily drunk at a floating bar, narrowly escaped an angry mob and been put on two weeks' mandatory leave to rest and get her work-life balance back. Perfect time to start a new project! And she's got just the idea: a sim for food. Now she just needs someone to teach her how to cook.
A chance meeting in the back of a flying cab has Saras and Serenity Ko working together on a new technology that could change the future of food--and both their lives--forever...
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.
Welp, talk about a major disappointment. I was so excited for ‘Desi-dominant far-future anti-colonial foodie sci-fi’, but it was kind of like running smack into a wall. Face-first.
The worldbuilding…is a mess. Superficially, it’s very, very cool – humanity has spread throughout the galaxy, we’ve encountered aliens, and white people are DEFINITELY not in charge any more (about time). The centre of human civilisation – no longer Earth – is heavily socialist, extremely serious about protecting the environment, and populated by cities of constantly-shifting buildings. Massively intriguing!
But the ‘socialism’ is functionally indistinguishable from modern capitalism – supposedly no one owns property and the city assigns objects and possessions to whoever needs them, but there are people decked in jewels (who needs jewels???) and working in corporations that definitely don’t seem socialist in the slightest. Everyone on this planet – I kid you not – has one of nine names, which besides being objectively ridiculous and boring also makes it VERY hard to keep track of who’s who. And the cities of moving buildings are very cool, but how exactly people get around when maps etc are useless is hand-waved completely, and why are all the buildings in constant motion if they’re supposedly reacting to the needs of citizens? I don’t need my apartment to get bigger or smaller or change shape from minute to minute, only if something out of the ordinary happens. ??? Worst of all, Interstellar MegaChef is supposed to be two thousand years in the future, and, just – no. Not even a little. A few hundred years, maybe, but two thousand? I don’t think Lakshminarayan really thought about how much change occurs in two thousand years – look at how much the world has changed in just the last century! – because it’s definitely not reflected in the civilisation/s she’s created. You or I, fellow reader, could step onto planet Primus and get along just fine, if someone gave us a translator box – nothing about the culture is significantly different to the modern West at all.
Like… If you are going to write far-future fiction, can you PLEASE not do this? Far-future settings should be WEIRD. Or at least radically different to the world we know today. Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum does this incredibly well; Interstellar MegaChef really Does Not.
(And why, in two thousand years, is Earth still climate-destroyed? Did it get fixed but then wrecked again? We have the tech to terraform planets but not fix our own? What??? And if that’s the case, how is anyone still living on Earth at all?)
Plus, the aliens don’t feel like aliens. They read as humans in pretty costumes. That’s definitely a pet peeve of mine and I’m so sick of it. Don’t bring aliens into it unless they’re going to be alien, ffs! I get that inventing a new sapient species, one that doesn’t think like us because why would they, is very hard – that’s fine! Just don’t do it, then! No one said you had to!
Gah.
What’s going to be more important to most readers (I know most people aren’t as obsessed/nit-picky about worldbuilding as moi) is that none of the characters are very interesting – they’re all morally grey and unlikeable, but not in ways that make you intrigued – and this is really not a foodie book. The cooking competition is over almost before it starts; our chef character doesn’t even make it to the second episode, and there’s no lavish, delicious descriptions of the meals or food-prep at all. And despite the cheerful pink cover and too many people comping this book to the Great British Bake-Off, Interstellar MegaChef is really grim, actually – there are no fluffy, feel-good vibes here, which would be fine if this book had just been marketed more accurately instead of, you know, sending me in with completely wrong expectations.
When are publicity teams going to learn that that’s a fast way to make us hate a book? Sure, you made me buy it, but I’m going to tell all my friends and anyone who reads my blog that the marketing is a lie, so overall, I’m pretty sure this tactic is, in technical terms, fucking stupid actually.
The prose is very bland – some readers are going to enjoy it just fine, and I do think it’s very…accessibly written? But good luck figuring out how to picture…pretty much anything at all. There’s virtually no description – not even visuals, never mind things like taste and so on.
Is it anti-colonialist? Yep! Very, very heavy-handedly, I thought, but possibly it gets better with that later in the book. The first 20% was just embarrassing, honestly, like it needed to be SO obvious because what if readers didn’t get the message???
So yeah. This was a hard fail for me, but. If you go in KNOWING that it’s not a foodie book, nor a feel-good book – and if you don’t care about the worldbuilding – then I think it’s possible to enjoy this. (Lots of other early readers have!) But it’s an absolute NO THANK YOU from me.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: BIPOC and QBIPOC cast
ISBN: 9781982603748
Goodreads
In We Are the Crisis—the second book in the Convergence Saga from award-winning author Cadwell Turnbull—humans and monsters come into conflict in a magical and dangerous world as civil rights collide with preternatural forces.
In this highly anticipated sequel, set a few years after No Gods, No Monsters, humanity continues to grapple with the revelation that supernatural beings exist. A werewolf pack investigates the strange disappearances of former members and ends up unraveling a greater conspiracy, while back on St. Thomas, a hurricane approaches and a political debate over monster’s rights ignites tensions in the local community.
Meanwhile, New Era—a pro-monster activist group—works to build a network between monsters and humans, but their mission is threatened by hate crimes perpetrated by a human-supremacist group known as the Black Hand. And beneath it all two ancient orders escalate their conflict, revealing dangerous secrets about the gods and the very origins of magic in the universe.
Told backward and forward in time as events escalate and unravel, We Are the Crisis is a brilliant contemporary fantasy that takes readers on an immersive and thrilling journey.
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.
This one’s more a DNF-for-now; I loved book one, even if I didn’t understand all of it, but I’ve been trying to read We Are The Crisis since last year and I just don’t feel any desire to continue. What I need to do is restart it from the beginning, but…I don’t want to. Not right now. I’ve drifted away from it, and I think it was mostly due to being distracted by other things rather than We Are The Crisis actually being objectively bad or even boring, but I still don’t want to go back to it.
Maybe by the time Turnbull is talking about book three, I’ll be reading to give this another try – and end up loving it on my second attempt, hopefully!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy
Representation: Minor gay and sapphic characters
PoV: 1st-person past-tense; third-person past-tense; multiple PoVs
ISBN: 1913892476
Goodreads
All seems well in the Kingdom of Talodiac. King Edwild’s rule is strong, and his young Queen, Thalia, has just provided him with a son and heir.
Yet there is unease through the kingdom. The mysterious Redweavers, sorcerers from a land called Kanter, enter Talodiac through woven portals, and one desperate man has plans for the young prince.
Sergeant Hervan of the King’s Guard knows little of such issues. He does know that one wet night he and his men are asked to provide an escort for a young woman leaving the King’s quarters. Presumably His Majesty couldn’t wait for the Queen to recover from the birth, and was seeking diversion.
Little does Hervan know that this simple task will one day have profound consequences for himself, his family, the King, and the tangled lands of Talodiac and Kanter.
This is another one I sort of drifted away from, but when I made an effort to get back into it…well, it didn’t work at all. And I remembered that I drifted away because I was bored, not because I got distracted by other, shinier books. I made it to 80% and just did not care how things were going to be resolved; even the big reveal about the gods just made me shrug.
It’s especially disappointing because the first half of Tangled Lands is very solid; Larke’s prose is always super readable, her characters magnetic even when you don’t like them, and her worldbuilding interesting…except not really, this time? The worldbuilding specifically, I mean – the prose here is great and so are the characters. But I was disappointed by how minimal the worldbuilding was, and how we didn’t really get to focus on the parts I found most interesting – like how soldiers have to be gay or lesbians, not heterosexual or, presumably, bi or pan (and what ABOUT bisexual people in this world? No clue), or the really neat traders that brushed up against the edges of the kingdom, or even the fact that this world has no horses and has very aggressive deer instead.
The plot revolves around a kidnapped prince and a queen who’s gone MIA, with a central plotline following a young man locked in a tower, facing execution and writing his account of events before the big day comes. And ultimately, I just didn’t really care about the politics and plots part. The characters themselves, yes; what they were after, no. So I could force myself to finish it, I guess, but – why? When there are so many other things to read, stories where I’m RABID to find out how it all wraps up?
Here’s hoping for fewer DNFs in August.
Leave a Reply