Several books that were objectively great, just not for me; several straight-up-stupids; some wonky prose; some boredom. But at least there were only twelve DNFs this month! So much better than May’s seventeen, eek. (Yeah, I’m still not over it!)

We Can Never Leave by H.E. Edgmon
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA, Horror, Contemporary Fantasy
Representation: Nonbinary MC, queer MC
PoV: Third-person, present-tense; multiple PoVs
ISBN: 1250853664
Goodreads

Sweet Tooth meets The Raven Boys in this queer young adult contemporary fantasy about what it means to belong from H.E. Edgmon.

You can never go home…

Every day, all across the world, inhuman creatures are waking up with no memory of who they are or where they came from–and the Caravan exists to help them. The traveling community is made up of these very creatures and their families who’ve acclimated to this new existence by finding refuge in each other. That is, until the morning five teenage travelers wake to find their community has disappeared around them overnight.

Those a half-human who only just ran back to the Caravan with their tail between their legs, two brothers–one who can’t seem to stay out of trouble and the other who’s never been brave enough to get in it, a venomous girl with blood on her hands and a heart of gold, and the Caravan’s newest addition, a disquieting shadow in the shape of a boy. They’ll have to work together to figure out what happened the night of the disappearance, but each one of the forsaken five is white-knuckling their own secrets. And with each truth forced to light, it becomes clear this isn’t really about what happened to their people–it’s about what happened to them.

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.

Blunt, plain prose, feels needlessly secretive, and I’m not even slightly interested in pinging back and forth between Before and Now, especially when Before gives me such important insight as one of these kids not knowing what pokemon is.

I should care why???

There’s no content warnings in the arc and I’m not interested in the fate of a community that ATE one of their kids.

But also, it’s taking forever to get anywhere and the bickering teenagers with all their naveI-gazing introspection are just plain boring. That makes We Can Never Leave a huge change for Edgmon, because their previous books have had excellent pacing, and were never boring. Whereas We Can Never Leave feels like it’s being needlessly secretive, refusing to tell the reader anything at all Just Because; it doesn’t come across as mysterious, just deeply annoying. Edgmon’s previous books all had vivid characters we were given reasons to care about almost immediately; not the case here, where they all seem defined by one or two traits max and are not interesting or sympathetic. Your characters don’t have to be both, but they do need to be one or the other!

And so I’m numb to it, which is making me bored and frustrated. I’ll happily check out Edgmon’s future books, but I’m tapping out of this one.

A Fate Forged in Fire (Bonded to Beasts, #1) by Hazel McBride
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
ISBN: 0593972953
Goodreads

The first queen in centuries must use her wits and fire magic to overthrow the corrupt powers ruling her kingdom—while also fighting her growing desire for one of her dragon-riding adversaries—in the first book of a sizzling Celtic-inspired fantasy romance duology.

Once a territory built on matriarchal rule and values, Tìr Teine has since grown frail from a long line of fruitless kings. The most recent of which have ruled under the influence of the True Religion, an oppressive group who have steadily poisoned the region with their anti-magic teachings.

Born to rule and blessed by fire, Aemyra Daercathian has begrudgingly lived in hiding rather than risk her life in court, waiting in anticipation for the current king’s death so she can bond to his dragon, claim her throne, and protect her people. But when the king dies and Aemyra is ready to take what is rightfully hers, her ambitious plan is foiled and she is thrust into a game of vicious politics and plots.

Her biggest adversary is Prince Fiorean, a dragon-rider and one of the most powerful fire wielders in the territory. Cold, arrogant, and blindly supportive of his corrupt family, he is everything Aemyra despises. But as chaos engulfs the court, they find themselves reluctantly entwined, forced to forge an uneasy alliance—one that quickly ignites into something more dangerous than either of them expected.

Behind enemy lines and slowly falling for her so-called adversary, Aemyra uncovers just how far the rot of corruption has spread, and what she may have to sacrifice to claim her throne.

It’s queer fantasy! they said. In an Irish-inspired setting! they said. With dragons!!! they said.

Well, that was my fastest DNF in a while! We went from this incredible opening line–

As Aemyra crouched in front of the laboring mother, she came to the sudden realization that she only enjoyed having her face between a woman’s legs when she was screaming out in pleasure, not in pain.

to this in a couple of pages–

[The laboring mother] screamed so loudly that Aemyra felt her soul respond with an echo in the very part of her that understood what it was to be a woman.

Hi, giving birth, or being able to, doesn’t make you a woman. This bs is transphobic as hell, and also excludes a whole lot of cis women who can’t give birth for various reasons. IT’S 2025, WHY AM I STILL RUNNING INTO THIS SHIT? In a queer fantasy, too! I expect better from the straights, I CERTAINLY expect better from a queer novel!

If that’s not enough for you, Fate Forged in Fire also wins the Straight-Up Stupid trophy by having Aemyra openly use the magic that identifies her as a hidden royal – in front of witnesses! For no reason at all! It’s one thing if you’re defending yourself from a murder attempt or something, that would be a very fair reason to reveal this power that Literally Only Royals Have – but to build up a fire??? A thing you can absolutely do by hand??? MA’AM.

Begone.

Voidwalker (Beasts of the Void #1) by S.A. MacLean
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC, bisexual love interest
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
Published on: 19th August 2025
ISBN: B0DPFM6Q48
Goodreads

Fionamara is a smuggler. Antal is the reason her people fear the dark.

Fi ferries contraband between worlds, stockpiling funds and stolen magic to keep her village self-sufficient - free from the blood sacrifices humans have paid to Antal's immortal species for centuries.

Only legends whispered through the pine forests recall a time when things were different, before one world shattered into many, and the flesh-devouring beasts crept from the cracks between realities, with their sable antlers and slender tails, lethal claws and gleaming fangs. Now, mortal lives are food to pacify their carnivorous overlords, exchanged for feudal protection, and the precious silver energy that fuels everything from transport to weaponry.

When Fi gets planted with a stash of smuggled energy, a long-lost flame recruits her for a reckless heist that escalates into a terrorist bombing - and a coup against the reigning immortals, with Fi's home caught in the crossfire.

She's always known the dangers of her trade - and of the power she's wielded since childhood, allowing her to see the secret doors between dimensions, to walk the Void itself. But nothing could have prepared her for crossing paths with Antal. For the deal she'll have to make with him, a forced partnership to reclaim his city that begins as a desperate bid for survival, only to grow into something far more dangerous.

A revolution.

And a temptation - for how sweet the monster's fangs might feel.

From the author of the instant Sunday Times-bestselling The Phoenix Keeper comes an era-defining new fantasy universe where spicy romantasy meets the Cosmere, unmissable for fans of the world-building scale of Sarah J. Maas and the world-shifting stakes of Rebecca Yarros.

Voidwalker will be your next romantasy obsession, a deliciously feral story that started with just two words: "bite me".

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 mean, I was Extremely Concerned when I saw this comped to Sarah J Maas and Rebecca Yarros, because hi, I hate both of those. But I really loved MacLean’s first book, The Phoenix Keeper! I have the illumicrate special edition and everything! Of course I should ignore my doubts and give Voidwalker a try!

Welp.

The worldbuilding is extremely basic (Cosmere? I don’t even like Brandon Sanderson, but comping this to his Cosmere is an insult) with four Planes that are each stuck in a single season: the Winter Plane, Spring Plane, and so on. Didn’t love that but fine, this wasn’t giving the vibes of a story that needs a lot of worldbuilding – as much as I nerd out for detailed worldbuilding, it is actually possible to be a great book without that.

But.

Our MC, Fi? Is an idiot.

It’s not difficult to justify characters taking huge, stupid risks: we see it all the time. The easiest motivator is usually something like money; we have a character in poverty, or in need of extremely expensive medical care, or desperate to pay the cruelly high cost to get a beloved sibling a good apprenticeship or a place at a posh school that’ll open all the doors for them. Something like that! And then, even though our mc has All The Doubts because something about the situation is Extremely Sus, they go ahead and do it anyway. Because they need to.

Fi doesn’t seem to need to: although she’s wide-eyed at the payment she’s offered for the job that kickstarts the plot, she’s also pretty indifferent to it, giving it away almost immediately. Specifically, she gives it away to her brother, and this would have been a great motivator! All you needed to do was establish that the brother is in desperate need of funds/resources, and Fi is desperate to help him. But no??? The exchange was clearly meaningful for the brother, but Fi is weirdly blase about it, and doesn’t spend any time thinking about her brother’s situation, or that of the tiny town he runs (which, again, was all set up to be in desperate need of Fi’s help, but then that was barely touched on). So if it’s not the money, why does Fi take the risks she takes? There’s a very vague, handwavey attempt to say that her reputation as a smuggler will be trashed if she ditches this clearly-dangerous job… But it’s like when you ask a misbehaving child for an explanation, and they give you a mumble: they know they don’t have a good explanation, and neither does MacLean for Fi’s behaviour.

(It’s literally revealed to us that Fi has a vanishingly rare superpower that makes her priceless as a smuggler, so??? She’s not going to stop getting jobs. PLUS, I’m pretty sure ditching a dangerous job that your clients lied to you about will only give you a reputation for…ditching jobs your clients lied to you about. Won’t that just make your future clients better behaved???)

And let’s be clear: Fi takes some absolutely nonsensical risks with this plot-starting job. First, she doesn’t cut and run despite the clients leading law enforcement to the meet. Then she doesn’t go ‘lol bye’ when she discovers that what she’s smuggling isn’t wine, it’s bombs. Then she doesn’t balk when she discovers that the bombs are going to a capital city (pretty sure these aren’t demolition bombs for a construction site so what legit use could they HAVE in a city Fi???) Then the clients pull a ‘well, actually’ and change the terms on her, and she still doesn’t tell them to go fuck themselves. Not even when they want her to play getaway driver for a heist that is clearly not a real heist. Not even when it becomes clear that the clients work for the immortal demony creatures who run the world here. (Fi genuinely thinks, oh wow, these guys have done their homework, because they wear the uniform so well, and know exactly where they’re going in the municipal building, NO FI IT’S BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT FAKING THEY DO WORK FOR THE DEMONS ACTUALLY GTFO OF THERE!) Not even when the demon lord they promised was on holiday shows up AND SEES HER FACE (and super distinctive rainbow-coloured hair). (I loved the rainbow hair right up until we learned, a few pages in, that Fi meets with clients in person, and therefore they can all describe her very distinctive hair to law enforcement.)

It is just beyond believable that Fi is not infinitely more suspicious of this Ridiculously Suspicious set of circumstances, and that she doesn’t cut and run long before everything actually goes wrong. Again: this would all have been fine if she’d BEEN suspicious BUT had a really good reason for needing the payment – I’ve seen characters take even bigger risks in other books and not thought it weird because they had very good reasons for taking those risks. But Fi doesn’t! She just has some vague thoughts of her smuggling reputation. MA’AM THAT IS NOT EVEN NEARLY A GOOD ENOUGH REASON FOR NOT RUNNING FOR THE HILLS, WTF.

So no, I’m not continuing with this one. Because I am deeply sceptical that this is going to be any good at all when the author couldn’t be bothered to give Fi a real reason to do what she does (seriously JUST GIVE HER A DECENT MOTIVATION, ffs! The brother and his town are right there!) And this is without getting into how I don’t, actually, see any benefit for the humans in letting the daeyari rule them (you sacrifice a member of your town to be EATEN ALIVE so your factory can get new parts, okay – but where the hells are the daeyari getting the parts? If your crops fail, how do the daeyari replace them? Do they have healing magic for when a town gets hit with a plague? You keep telling me the humans benefit so much but it doesn’t make SENSE!)

I’m definitely willing to read MacLean again, on the strength of Phoenix Keeper – but maybe not anything that gets comped liked Voidwalker did.

A Comfortable Corner by Vincent Virga
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Gay MCs
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
ISBN: 1608643387
Goodreads

Terence Strange and Christopher More had been lovers for many years, but at last Terence could take no more of the mess alcoholism was making of their lives. Where could he find counsel? Surely not in Judith and Gerald, whose once-happy marriage was crumbling, nor in Dominic Perrugio and William More, Christopher's father, whose doomed relationship seemed a portent of Terence's future.

All their lives were bound together, but Terence had to disentangle himself from the web of hatred and find a way free to love.

Urgh.

In fairness, this one’s mostly on me; I was so excited to see a back-in-print Vincent Virga book that I didn’t actually look at it – and then I was slapped in the face with something that was definitely not Gaywyck.

Over-written purple prose works super well for Gothic fiction like Gaywyck; it doesn’t work nearly as well for a misery-fest about Sad Gays and alcoholism, which is what Comfortable Corner is. This book triggered my brain-fog hard and made it so difficult to stay awake; it feels unbearably pretentious. Alcoholism is terrible, and I don’t know what the right way to write about it is (if there is one) but the indulgence of the misery here is really off-putting.

Plus I looked up the ending and wow. Wow. Really??? Why???

Gods I hope someone brings Vadriel Vail back into print. SOON. Why couldn’t we have had that instead of bringing back Comfortable Corner???

The Bloodless Queen by Joshua Phillip Johnson
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Sci Fi
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
Published on: 8th July 2025
ISBN: 0756419204
Goodreads

Part ecological Orpheus and Eurydice myth and part gothic thriller, discover this atmospheric near-future sci-fi novel about fae mysteries deep within strange nature preserves

Perfect for readers of Jeff VanderMeer, Chuck Wendig, and Sunyi Dean • “Richly imagined and beautifully written, with a highly original and very creepy magic system.” —R. F. Kuang (on Johnson's The Forever Sea)

On the autumnal equinox of 1987, after fencing off half of the Earth’s land for huge nature reserves called Harbors, the leaders of the world called on their peoples to celebrate. Then began the horror and the magic.

Everyone who died that day—all 132,329 of them—instead of going cold and still, turned odd and fae. They became mischievous and murderous, before disappearing into their nearest Harbor, never seen again. And each year after that on the autumnal equinox, the same terrible transformations would occur: the wretched dead not dying, but instead riddling and whispering of a faerie queen—bloodless and powerful—while fleeing into the wild confines of the Harbors.

In the present day, Evangeline and Calidore are working as fencers, government-employed protectors whose magical powers come from mysterious tattoos of prime numbers. When they aren’t fixing the fences of the Midwest Harbor that separates the human world from Faerie or patrolling on the equinox, they are parents of an almost-seven-year-old daughter named Winnie.

But as the new year’s autumnal equinox approaches, Evangeline and Calidore find themselves thrust into a vast conspiracy that stretches across governments, religions, and fencers worldwide. As they race to untangle this web of power and intrigue, they will need to confront the questions that have haunted the world since the fences were built:

What lies at the heart of the Harbors? Who waits there?

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’m really sick of storytellers using terms like ‘fae’ when they ought to be inventing new words of their own. What Johnson calls fae are more like zombies with magic; they don’t speak, they’re neither eerie-beautiful nor mythologically monstrous, and they can control you if they learn your true name. (I actually though that was an extremely cool detail, I just wish it had been used as the core of creating a new monster, rather than co-opting fae.)

The worldbuilding doesn’t hang together (I don’t care if he was under some supernatural influence, you cannot convince me that REAGAN decided we had to give half the planet back to nature, and that all other world leaders thought that was a great idea, and that even if they did, they could convince their populaces that it was a great idea. Nope, not a chance, the monsters make more sense) the prose is even drier and blunter than Johnson’s debut was (at least that had some wonderful imagery), and the characters were paper-thin, no life to them at all.

Having been let down by his debut and now dnfing Bloodless Queen, I’m satisfied that Johnson isn’t the author for me.

The Immeasurable Heaven by Caspar Geon
Genres: Adult, Sci Fi
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; first-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
Published on: 15th July 2025
ISBN: 1837864748
Goodreads

An entirely alien cast race across the multiverse in search of a priceless map of the realities in this thrilling cosmic space opera!

In Strile’s Depth, everything has been settled and named since time out of mind. The only frontier left is punching through the skins of universes to delve younger realities remotely in the bodies of those that live there.

Running through the many universes is the fabled Well, a fissure in existence into which horrors have been flung for millions of years – including an impossibly ancient king, cast down before history to the wastelands of a thousand apocalyptic worlds, never to return.

Until now.

Draebol Naeglis Zet Thurn, a hapless explorer in the service of an unknown patron, has charted more than seventeen thousand realities. Somewhere in his maps is the key to the Well, a map so valuable that a kaleidoscope of aliens will cross every universe to reach it. Racing, quite possibly, to their deaths.

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.

Extremely cool aesthetics and creature-design, massively undercut by the fact that all of these aliens are, psychologically/culturally, just humans playing dress-up. None of them felt alien; the strangeness, the Otherness, is entirely superficial. Surface-deep, if you will (a truly appalling pun, given the main setting is called Surface and the plot revolves around the existence of limitless layers of alternate realities). I am really, really tired of aliens like this. It doesn’t matter how weird you make them look if they’re functionally human! And I would argue that it’s bad writing, when your whole Thing for your book is ‘there are no humans here anywhere’.

I read a third of this book and simply didn’t care; I was way more interested in the worldbuilding than the plot, but Geon refused to give me worldbuilding, only fascinating little crumbs he refused to expand on. (Scents as currency! Pain as language! Fashion wherein you hire other aliens to follow you around and cover bits of your body! Epic ideas that we never get to explore.) Geon did an excellent job at creating an impression of a very full, very visually diverse universe, but it rang so hollow. The worldbuilding is decorative, not fundamental. It was so disappointing!

Plot-wise: everyone knows you can only pass down through the layers of reality; if you go down even one layer, you can’t come up again. But le gasp, something is coming up!!! What could it BE?! I mean, we know what it is, because the prologue/first chapter makes it pretty clear, and because of that there’s just no tension whatsoever. There’s no mystery. There’s no time to absorb The Way Things Are before the tables are flipped; one moment we’re told nothing can come up, then we’re told something is coming up. Which just makes me shrug: okay. Fine. It’s not shocking because I never had a chance to believe nothing can come up before you revealed that wasn’t the case.

Pretty much all the information we get is like that: just info-dumped at us, never shown. For all that Immeasurable Heaven feels very Hard SciFi, like we’ve been dropped into the middle of an incredibly complex setting – it’s not, and we haven’t. It’s pretty simple and straightforward, actually. Once you realise the weirdness is only an aesthetic, everything is very dull. Characters moving from point A to point B with nothing terribly unexpected happening on the way.

(To be fair, maybe there’s huge twists and whatnot after the 30% mark! Maybe it gets much better after the first third! But I’m not betting on it.)

Also, this is an issue of taste and not an objective flaw of the book, but Geon revels in the ick too much for me. One character has been stuck in his not-very-advanced spacesuit for too long, and we are not allowed to forget for even a moment that it’s full of urine and faeces up to the character’s eyes. Ew. You could just mention it once and then we know it, but nope, it’s drummed into us. Ick ick ick.

Red Rabbit Ghost by Jen Julian
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
Published on: 22nd July 2025
ISBN: 0316580570
Goodreads

An impulsive young outcast confronts his small town’s dark secrets in this atmospheric and haunting debut horror novel from brilliant new voice Jen Julian.
 
The town of Blacknot is not what it appears, and a place on its desolate edge known only as The Night House is calling... 

What remains of Jesse’s mother can fit inside an old jerky tin. Photos, postcards, a single, worn-out bracelet. But nothing that can explain why she was found dead eighteen years earlier on the bank of a river, her infant son left wailing by her side. When Jesse starts to receive anonymous messages promising him answers, he returns home to the regressive town of Blacknot, North Carolina so that his lifelong obsession can finally be laid to rest. 
  
But Jesse’s investigation is stirring up trouble with the locals, including his well-armed ex-boyfriend and the mysterious daughter of a local businessman, each with their own inscrutable agendas. They will soon find that this backwater town holds a power more volatile than any of them could have imagined, and that the answers they seek might be better left buried.
 

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’m just bored. At 24% I was skimming whole pages, waiting for something of interest to happen. The prose is nothing special, the characters are fine, the setting is (I think purposefully) dull. Horror-wise, there’s a dodgy vibe from the local church (I’m not convinced that means anything, I’m ex-Catholic and thus nearly every church gives me dodgy vibes) and I really didn’t need the (thankfully brief) look at pigs being manhandled to slaughter. And one character is using witchcraft which really works, but at the 24% mark we’ve barely seen that character. (And the witchcraft is not very cinematic, so don’t expect impressive creepiness or anything.)

The ‘well-armed ex-boyfriend’ of the synopsis is a deputy and also at least eight years older than Jesse, which, massive ick vibes (I’m hoping they didn’t actually hook up when Jesse was 14 and that it was just a one-sided crush then, but honestly, I can’t come up with a scenario where it wouldn’t be giving me ick given that I’m not sure Jesse is 20 yet by the time the book starts). Sure hope we’re not supposed to be hoping for them to get back together! (I didn’t get the impression that we were, to be fair.)

Your prose needs to be much prettier and/or your characters way more interesting if you’re going to still be denying me plot at a quarter of the way through your book. Red Rabbit Ghost feels needlessly, pretentiously mysterious – keeping secrets Just Because. (I have no idea how to articulate the difference between a mystery that feels legit versus one that feels forced and arbitrary, but this is most definitely the latter.) There’s certainly not any kind of tension to keep you turning pages.

I simply don’t care about one single aspect of it. Too slow, too dull, too plain. No thanks!

The Maiden and Her Monster by Maddie Martinez
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Jewish cast, F/F
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
Published on: 11th September 2025
ISBN: 1035048795
Goodreads

A gorgeous, atmospheric debut fantasy that reimagines the Jewish myth of golem in a tale rooted in history, folklore, and sapphic romance—perfect for fans of Katherine Arden, Ava Reid, Hannah Whitten, and Naomi Novik.

The forest eats the girls who wander out after dark.

As the healer’s daughter, Malka has seen how the curse of the woods has plagued her village, but when the Ozmini Church comes to collect their tithes, they don’t listen to the warnings about a monster lurking in the trees. After a clergy girl wanders too close to the forest and Malka’s mother is accused of her murder, Malka strikes a bargain with a zealot Ozmini priest. If she brings him the monster, he will spare her mother from execution.

When she ventures into the blood-soaked woods, Malka finds a monster, though not the one she expects: an inscrutable, disgraced golem who agrees to implicate herself, but only after Malka helps her free the imprisoned rabbi who created her.

But a deal easily made is not easily kept. And as their bargain begins to unravel a much more sinister threat, protecting her people may force Malka to endanger the one person she left home to save—and face her growing feelings for the very creature she was taught to fear.

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 don’t hate this, and I’m not willing to call it a bad book. But the prose started bothering me almost immediately, and I was already wary after a Goodreads friend reviewed it thusly (if you don’t want to go read their review: only the first third of the book is about the forest and the romance appears very jarringly towards the last third or so).

The writing…it’s like someone is working very hard to make their prose ‘pretty’, but the phrasing is always just a little odd, a little off. (The telling-not-showing is pretty heavy-handed, too.)

She did not cry even when the rope split her skin and her dress spoiled deep red.

‘spoiled deep red’? You know exactly what the author means here, but the wording makes me twitch.

the cleaver cut through Minton’s hand with a pop.

A pop?

Faces of sorrow had overtaken the villagers

Again, I understand what you mean, but why would you put it that way?

untamable as a bleating sheep adrift from its shepherd.

Ma’am. Ma’am sheep are tame though???

brazen and ready to make wine from water; to conjure up a connection when there was none.

See, I think this is a brilliant image, but it’s very jarring when that is so well-known as one of Jesus‘ miracles and the characters are Jewish.

Malka couldn’t look away from the bruises flowering on them, similar to the marks banding her own wrists

Why would you say ‘similar to’? Why not ‘just like’, or ‘so like’? Or break it into two sentences: ‘flowering on them. They looked very nearly the same as the ones on her own wrists’. Etc.

muddling thyme into paste with a stone

‘muddling’?

And so on.

If these quotes don’t bother you – and you know going in that the marketing for this one is kind of misleading – then you’re good! But I’m tapping out.

The Only Song Worth Singing by Randee Dawn
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary Fantasy
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
ISBN: 1647101581
Goodreads

"Dawn’s experience as a music writer comes through in her vibrant, authentic portrayal of the band’s sound and interpersonal dynamic. This fresh spin on favorite urban fantasy tropes will delight fans of Charles de Lint. "—Publishers Weekly

Childhood friends Patrick, Ciaran, and Malachi would've been happy to play music for coins on the streets of Dublin, but when their sound – a blend of traditional tunes and rock styling – lands them a record deal, they also get their first tour of America. As they gather fans, however, they also get the attention of three sídhe, fairies straight out of Irish tradition who play by their own rules.

Mal finds himself beleaguered by a prankster whose malicious tricks make him think he's losing his mind, while Ciaran falls hard for a hanger-on whose primal sexuality saps the life from him. Patrick can save them – if he's willing to trust the superstitions he learned during a painful childhood he thought he'd left behind long ago.

But the only thing that matters more than music to Patrick? His friends.

The Only Song Worth Singing is an upmarket mythic novel about blood, craic, and rock and roll. Set in the 90s at the height of the Celtic rock boom, it should appeal to fans of Alex Bledsoe and Alice Hoffman alike.

"The heart of Daisy Jones and the Six with the soul of A Court of Thorns and Roses…. A scintillating plot and an emotional wallop."—Aidan Prewett, author of Woodstock at 50: Anatomy of a Revolution

"Blends myth with the power of music and a brotherly bond to tell a story that's suspenseful and extremely romantic in all possible directions. I loved it!"—Delia Sherman, award-winning author of The Porcelain Dove

"Randee Dawn’s rich Hiberno-English narrative—interspersed with Irish Gaelic—brings The Only Song Worth Singing a vibrant dimension without affectation. Music is a living thing that makes magic feel real – and Dawn knocks this elusive aspect out of the park. Her story of a touring band provides an authentic illustration of the hardships and joys of the road, including the interpersonal tension between band members. Her story proves that whether in speech, song – or a work of fiction – words have tremendous power." —Beth W. Patterson, award-winning recording artist, road warrior, film music infiltrator

"A dark, parasitical fairy tale, The Only Song Worth Singing is sex, myth, and rock and roll all the way down to its bass-beating heart. It’s a story of faith, friendship, and brotherhood — of learning your roots, and finding your place, even if that means standing between one world and the next." — C. S. E. Cooney, World Fantasy Award-winning author of Saint Death’s Daughter

"With The Only Song Worth Singing, Dawn has crafted a sweeping epic that takes you from a thatched cottage in the countryside, to the bustle and glam of New York, to the green and magical place where it all began, against the backdrop of Irish folklore. Truly a magical, musical, must-read."—Jennifer Allis Provost, author of The Poison Garden

"When you hear a song you love so much that you wish you could live inside it for weeks, feeling it rush through you and touch you in ways only art can, this book can scratch that itch with long nails."—Meg Elison, award-winning author of Number One Fan

I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

This isn’t bad at all – I actually think it might be great! I really liked the prose (not lush or anything, but there’s something lovely about it) and man, the Irish accents made me homesick! Dawn did a good job at introducing the supernatural very quickly so we wouldn’t be bored by the ‘mundane’ plot (though I think a music tour is interesting enough on its own merit that I wouldn’t have been upset to have had to wait longer for the magic to start), and the characters are all impressively, immediately vivid.

Only Song just isn’t a me-book – the characters are mostly people I’d be happy to know in real life, but not that I’m very interested in reading about. I think I’d have happily read, and probably enjoyed, this a decade ago, but I’m struggling to focus on diverse reads enough as it is – I can’t really justify spending a lot of time on a book featuring three cishet white guys when nothing else about the book grabs me. (The Irish mythology will hopefully count as Interesting Enough for a lot of readers – and justifiably so! – but I grew up with these myths, so they’re not too new to me.)

I do want to give it four stars though – what I read seemed objectively great to me. I’m going to continue following Dawn’s writing career

Jade City (The Green Bone Saga, #1) by Fonda Lee
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Urban Fantasy
Representation: East Asian-coded cast and setting
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
Goodreads

Jade City is a gripping Godfather-esque saga of intergenerational blood feuds, vicious politics, magic, and kungfu.

The Kaul family is one of two crime syndicates that control the island of Kekon. It's the only place in the world that produces rare magical jade, which grants those with the right training and heritage superhuman abilities.

The Green Bone clans of honorable jade-wearing warriors once protected the island from foreign invasion--but nowadays, in a bustling post-war metropolis full of fast cars and foreign money, Green Bone families like the Kauls are primarily involved in commerce, construction, and the everyday upkeep of the districts under their protection.

When the simmering tension between the Kauls and their greatest rivals erupts into open violence in the streets, the outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones and the future of Kekon itself.

Gah. This must be the third or fourth time I’ve tried to read this, and I just can’t. I see so much that I appreciate intellectually – the setting, the magic system, the unrepentantly not-nice characters! – but wow, I hate reading it. The prose is so blunt (not bad, not in the slightest, but I want so much more description than this), the characters are not-nice but they’re also not interesting (it’s a crime family, it’s definitely possible to write interesting criminals but I don’t find crime family set-ups inherently interesting, not if it’s mafia and not if it’s East Asian-inspired urban fantasy, apparently) and then we got a sex scene that made me throw up in my mouth a little bit (not because of some disturbing fetish or anything, but the pov of a macho cishet dude during sex is NOT for me apparently, who could have guessed???)

And so I noped out.

AGAIN.

This is not a bad book – nothing I read was bad; the prose might not be lush like I like but it’s very polished, there’s no wonky phrasing or convoluted similes or anything; the worldbuilding was both interesting and cohesive; and if you like crime family stories then I don’t know why you wouldn’t enjoy this cast. But I don’t care about crime family stories one way or the other – I won’t refuse to read one, but it’s not something that makes a book appeal to me, and even the synopsis calls this a fantasy, East Asian Godfather. There’s nothing here that interests me, plot-wise, story-wise, and I would stick around if the prose was pretty enough (it’s how I got through all of Poppy Brite’s horror, the writing was just that decadent that I couldn’t resist despite the nightmares) but it’s not. It’s not meant to be, the writing style matches the tone Lee seems to be going for perfectly. She’s clearly good at what she does. I can see why so many people love this series.

I’m just not going to be one of them, methinks.

I did enjoy Lee’s novella, Untethered Sky, and I’m extremely interested in her forthcoming Last Contract of Isako (want!!!) So I do think it’s just an issue of: this trilogy isn’t for me.

The FOMO is so real, though.

Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino
Genres: Adult, Speculative Fiction
PoV: Third-person, present-tense
ISBN: 0374721890
Goodreads

From the acclaimed author of Parakeet, Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a wise, tender novel about a woman who doesn't feel at home on Earth.

At the moment when Voyager 1 is launched into space carrying its famous golden record, a baby of unusual perception is born to a single mother in Philadelphia. Adina Giorno is tiny and jaundiced, but she reaches for warmth and light. As a child, she recognizes that she is different: She possesses knowledge of a faraway planet. The arrival of a fax machine enables her to contact her extraterrestrial relatives, beings who have sent her to report on the oddities of Earthlings.

For years, as she moves through the world and makes a life for herself among humans, she dispatches transmissions on the terrors and surprising joys of their existence. Then, at a precarious moment, a beloved friend urges Adina to share her messages with the world. Is there a chance she is not alone?

Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland is a novel of startling originality about the fragility and resilience of life on our Earth and in our universe. It is a remarkable evocation of the feeling of being in exile at home, and it introduces a gentle, unforgettable alien for our times.

I’ve been trying to read this since LAST YEAR, and I am now admitting that I’m not going to finish it. Partly because it’s much more Lit Fic than it is Sci Fi, and that is both extremely boring and frustrating for me; and partly because I am filled with rage at the MC’s mom. Which is not fair! She is doing her best! She is poor and doing it alone and working incredibly hard to provide for and take care of her daughter and also retain her personhood!

But I hate her.

…I just think that 99.9% of us aren’t qualified to be parents, okay? I have strong, probably unreasonable opinions on this. ‘Doing their best’ fills me with rage when it’s not also ‘good enough’. This is not helped when the book is from the pov of a very young child and we’re EXPERIENCING all the ways in which things are Not Good Enough. It is heartbreaking and I am not okay!

Which, you know, means it’s written very well! It’s making me feel things! And care! And I really liked the musings on humanity, the ‘reports’ Adina sends back to the aliens. If you like lit fic, and everything else about the premise of Beautyland appeals to you, then you will probably enjoy this a lot!

Buuuuut this is not for me.

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater
Genres: Adult, Magical Realism
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
ISBN: 0593655516
Goodreads

As the U.S. joins World War II, the manager of a luxury hotel set in the remote West Virginia mountains finds herself charged with the care of detained Nazi diplomats—and the FBI agent looking for a spy among them, by the #1 New York Times bestselling novelist Maggie Stiefvater.

JANUARY 1942. THE AVALLON HOTEL AND SPA offers elegance and sophistication in an increasingly ugly world. Run with precision by June Hudson, the hotel's West Virginia born-and-bred general manager, the Avallon is where high society goes to see and be seen, and where the mountain sweetwater in the fountains and spas can wash away all your troubles.

June was trained by the Gilfoyles, the hotel's aristocratic owners, and she has guided the Avallon skillfully through the first pangs of war. Now, though, the Gilfoyle family heir has made a secret deal with the State Department to fill the hotel with captured Axis diplomats. June must convince her staff—many of whom have sons and husbands heading to the frontlines—to offer luxury to Nazis. With a smile.

She also must reckon with Tucker Minnick, the FBI agent whose coal tattoo hints at their shared past in the mountains, and whose search for the diplomats’ secrets disrupts the peace June is fighting so hard to maintain. Hers is a balancing act with dangerous consequences; the sweetwater beneath the hotel can threaten as well as heal, and only June can manage the springs. As dark alliances and unexpected attractions crack the polished veneer of the Avallon, June must calculate the true cost of luxury.

THE LISTENERS is a mesmerizing portrait of an irresistible heroine, an unlikely romance, and a hotel—and a world—in peril.

Yep, I hate it.

I was pretty sure I would, but I was hoping so hard, I ignored all my instincts, because – Maggie Stiefvater. Raven Boys! Scorpio Races! Curiosities! I even enjoyed the Shiver series back in the day! Surely it wasn’t possible that I would hate a book of hers???

Well. *gestures at This Mess*

I am trying to be mature and supportive of one of my favourite authors finding a passion I do not share, and that part of me thinks it was pretty brave of Stiefvater to switch tracks so dramatically without using a penname, because she has to know that a lot of her existing fans are not going to enjoy this. I want to be impressed by that; I want to cheer her on.

But most of me is just crushed. I’m not sure why, this is not an author I thought about every day or anything, and a lot of her books are among my favourites but not my top shelf favourites. I’ve never followed her on social media or read her interviews, and I’ve never been more than a lurker in any of the fandoms for her books. I don’t know her, and I’ve never felt like I knew her, we have no connection whatsoever. This shouldn’t matter to me in the least.

And yet.

I mean, leaving SFF for Adult General Fiction, of all things? (I did look it up; she’s said that’s what she’s writing from now on, so I guess Listeners will not be a one-off.) Like: good gods, why? Also, wailing a little bit: but WHY???

I can’t wrap my head around someone leaving SFF. Wanting to. SFF is best! It’s a law like gravity, sorry I don’t make the rules! But leaving for gen fic? I am contemptuous. Urgh. Why. Pathetic. Oddly insulting. I am offended. (Why am I offended?)

Anyway, this book! It is what it says it is, and that is: deeply boring. The prose is Stiefvater’s usual style, so it’s lovely and rhythmic and full of wryly clever moments. But it’s still about a hotel for the disgustingly rich, it’s still about that hotel getting conscripted to host war criminal wannabes, we still have to spend time in the heads of FBI agents. It feels ridiculously tone-deaf, not just for this moment in time but for always, really. Fundamentally these are all Normal People, even the hypercompetent ones who refuse to name their dogs (ew), and not a single one of them is interesting, not a single one of them are people I would like to know, I couldn’t care less about their stories. I cannot fucking fathom why anyone would want to read this story; I cannot fathom why anyone would want to write it.

Is it objectively bad? I’m not qualified to say; this isn’t my genre, I don’t know what makes good General Fiction. I don’t know why anyone reads it or writes it (and I don’t want to know, please don’t try and explain it to me). If you enjoy it, maybe you’ll enjoy Listeners? I really have no idea.

I’m kind of heartbroken, and a little angry, and annoyed at myself for both those things because it’s stupid and mean-spirited to feel this way, but you gotta feel what you feel, I guess. It’s how you express it that’s important, which is why I’m not posting this review to Goodreads or anywhere else; it can stay on my blog, where I can be as unreasonable as I like without anyone noticing.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go console myself with a brownie.

Did you have any DNFs this month?

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