What is there to say except: enjoy my suffering!
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Sapphic MCs
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; dual PoVs
ISBN: 0241646170
Goodreads
A new teen fantasy adventure series from bestselling author Connie Glynn, with hidden powers, budding romance and dark magic...
Astrid glanced up at the looming manor house with all its spires and creeping ivy. A refuge, or just another cage?
Astrid and Jonas have only ever had each other. As twins, they share a bond. But they also share something doctors have called twisted and demonic their entire flowers whisper instructions, trees sing of their histories. The siblings are kept away from nature by their caretakers, but it still calls to them.
Meanwhile, Gwen knows all about the shadow world of Bloom Bloods – people living among us who have magic running through their veins. They act under the instruction of the Queen, conserving fantastical creatures and studying the ancient melodies of magic to keep the mundane and mystic worlds in harmony. But Gwen failed her application to Fountains Abbey, the venerable school that trains up the next generation of Bloom Bloods, and she is now determined to prove her worth.
A mysterious evil is spreading throughout the world; unnatural monsters are appearing in hazardous places – monsters that weave discordant magic. When the twins and Gwen collide, their unique abilities are revealed. But will their combined powers be enough to stop what’s rising in the darkness?
If you enjoyed The Twin Crowns series, you'll love this!
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.
No. Nope. No thank you! This is what I get for being suckered by a cover.
The premise is really interesting: an orphaned pair of twins, raised in the human world when in fact they’re magical, cross paths with a girl raised in the magical world who can’t use her magic. This could have been EPIC! The juxtaposition of their wildly different experiences – the way they could have bonded over their very different relationships to magic!
But the clunky prose – especially the incredibly awful dialogue – nixed that almost immediately. The music-magic I was excited for just isn’t described, which is utterly baffling as a writing decision because blunt, lacking-in-description prose strips the magic out of the magic, as it were – at which point it doesn’t matter that your music-magic is a cool concept, because you’ve made it boring. The overabundance of dialogue tags made me wince, and the twins didn’t come off as spooky and mysterious, but more like unconvincing androids.
The worldbuilding had potential – I really liked that there were multiple ways of living in the magical world, either embracing it or living in more isolation in multi-family communes; it helped establish that the magical world is not homogenous. There are alternatives to the Hogwarts-esque magic schools available. But so much seemed muddled; if the twins’ affinity for plants is terribly unusual, why are magic-users called Bloom Bloods? And I was immediately bored by all the elemental spells: wow, we haven’t seen THAT before.
Welp. Don’t judge a book by its cover!
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
ISBN: 9798212186018
Goodreads
From bestselling authors Darkly Lem comes Transmentation Transience, the first book in a sweeping multiverse of adventure and intrigue perfect for fans of Jeff VanderMeer and The Expanse series.
Over thousands of years and thousands of worlds, universe-spanning societies of interdimensional travelers have arisen. Some seek to make the multiverse a better place, some seek power and glory, others knowledge, while still others simply want to write their own tale across the cosmos.
When a routine training mission goes very wrong, two competing societies are thrust into an unwanted confrontation. As intelligence officer Malculm Kilkeneade receives the blame within Burel Hird, Roamers of Tala Beinir and Shara find themselves inadvertently swept up in an assassination plot.
Meanwhile, factions within Burel Hird are vying for greater control over their society in a war of cutthroat machinations—at a heavy price. Elsewhere, two members of rival societies lay their own plans for insurrection—with ramifications that will ripple across the Many Worlds ...
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 is clearly a FREAKING EXCELLENT book – I am in AWE of the worldbuilding, and the writing is crisp and quick without sacrificing complexity.
But, uh. I am too dumb for this, basically.
It’s not that Transmentation | Transience is hard sci-fi, full of technical details that make no sense to us laypeople – it isn’t! But it does take the ‘swim or drown’ approach to explaining to us what’s going on, and while I do normally love that, I have realised that I love it when the water is much shallower than this. Here, the reader is dropped into the middle of – well, everything, and everything involves multiple alternate realities which each have (as they should!) wildly different societies/cultures/relationships to each other/etc. I found this dizzying, to be honest. There were so many proper nouns thrown at me immediately without explanation or even much context – just the character list at the beginning of the book is incredibly confusing! – that it rapidly became overwhelming.
There also wasn’t really any incentive to push through it and continue: I didn’t actually like any of the bits of worldbuilding I could make sense of, I didn’t find any of the characters especially interesting, and I can overlook all of that if I’m given really scrumptious prose, but that’s not the style here. I’m very impressed, but I wasn’t enjoying it, and it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which I would come back and try again.
On a technical, writerly level, I think this is amazing. I just don’t want to read it.
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Demisexual MC
Protagonist Age: Third-person, past-tense
ISBN: 1250322804
Goodreads
Inspired by an ominous Prague legend, What Wakes the Bells is a lavish gothic fantasy by debut author Elle Tesch.
Built by long-gone Saints, the city of Vaiwyn lives and breathes and bleeds. As a Keeper, Mina knows better than most what her care of Vaiwyn’s bells means for the sentient city. It’s the Strauss family’s thousand-year legacy―prevent the Vespers from ringing, or they will awake a slumbering evil.
One afternoon, to Mina's horror, her bell peals thirteen times, shattering the city’s tenuous peace. With so much of the city's history and lore lost in a long-ago disaster, no one knows the danger that has been unleashed―until the city begins to fight back. As the sun sets, stone gargoyles and bronze statues tear away from their buildings and plinths to hunt people through the streets. Trapped in Mina’s bell, the soul of a twisted and power-hungry Saint festered. Now free of his prison, he hides behind the face of one of Vaiwyn’s citizens, corrupting the city and turning it on itself.
Time is running out, and the only chance Mina has to stop the destruction and horrific killings is finding and destroying the Saint’s host. Everyone is a suspect, including Mina's closest loved ones. She will have to decide how far she’ll go to save her city―and who she’s willing to kill to do it.
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 got about five minutes into this before I noped out.
The prose is wonderful! I love the premise! Our MC is immensely relatable and interesting right away! But I’m sorry: you have to prevent the bells from ringing at a certain time every day…and instead of either a) unhanging the bell or b) wrapping the clapper in thick fabric, the protocol is…to use shears to cut the clapper off every day???
Or: you train the bell-keepers to serve in the buildings that house the bells (if you bell is in a bank then congrats, now you’re a banker!) with zero regards to a bell-keeper’s skills and personality? And you don’t expect disaster?
Why do so many storytellers go for this handwavey lack-of-logic??? I’m so tired of it.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Southwest Asian inspired cast and setting, bisexual MCs
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; dual PoVs
Published on: 8th July 2025
ISBN: 1835412858
Goodreads
The first in a stunning Southwest Asian-inspired epic fantasy trilogy brimming with morally ambiguous characters, terrifying ghouls and deadly monsters.
Combining cut-throat dynastic politics with expansive worldbuilding and slow-burning romance, this book is perfect for fans of Godkiller and Samantha Shannon.
Bataar was only a child when he killed a gryphon, making him a legend across the Red Steppe. As an adult, he is the formidable Bataar Rhah, chosen by god to rule the continent that once scorned his people. After a string of improbable victories, he turns his sights on the wealthy, powerful kingdom of Dumakra, whose princesses rule the skies from the backs of pegasuses.
When rumours reach the capital that the infamous warlord is moving on Dumakra, Nohra Zultama prepares to face him. She and her sisters are feared warriors, goddess-blessed and mounted on winged, man-eating horses. But as deceit and betrayal swirl through her father's court, Nohra soon learns the price of complacency. With her city under Bataar’s rule, Nohra vows to take revenge. But her growing closeness to Bataar’s wife, Qaira, threatens to undo her resolve.
When rioting breaks out and mythic beasts incite panic, Nohra must fight alongside Bataar to keep order, her mixed feelings towards the man she’s sworn to kill becoming ever more complicated. Old evils are rising. Only together will Nohra and Bataar stand a chance against the djinn, ghouls, and monsters that threaten to overrun their world.
Inspired by the diverse Turkic cultures of Southwest Asia, this gorgeously written fantasy is sure to sweep readers off their feet.
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.
Two things: a) this is an arc. So it’s possible all my issues with it will be fixed before the book is published. I’m pretty sure at least some of the lines that make me twitch are genuine typos and thus have a good chance of being smoothed away before release day.
b) I am unreasonably picky about prose. I think most readers will get along with Gryphon King just fine. I did not. If the quotes I quote don’t bother you, then you’re golden, because apart from the writing which is only what the whole book depends on, nbd, I think Gryphon King is okay: the characters aren’t bad, and the premise is very cool indeed!
The prose here is simple and direct, with word choice often striking a weirdly juvenile note. That’s not me saying this reads like YA, because it doesn’t; I’m saying that it’s a little odd to hear ‘the palace stunk’ from an adult author, because ‘stunk’ is not the word most adults would choose there. It’s not wrong. It’s just odd, jarring, and unfortunately, the writing is jarring a lot, to the point that I very quickly didn’t care about the story any more because the prose was bothering me so much. As if to compensate for the weirdly juvenile word choices, there were often moments that read as though the author had popped the normal word into a thesaurus and picked a synonym that doesn’t actually quite work.
the coolness of morning
Nohra and Safiya strode inside
whispers cresendoed to impassioned shouts
Wormy voices whispered that he ran [the district]
The other jarring thing, the much, much more prevalent one, is awkward or clunky phrasing.
Change came, and like waves breaking around her body, Nohra would have to keep wading forward, even if it was without [her friends].
What that sentence actually seems to be saying is that Nohra’s wading forward is like the waves breaking around her body – and that makes no sense. That’s not what the author is trying to say, but…that’s what they’ve said.
Before them spread a sea of patterned turbans and snowy beards, each man with a mouth he couldn’t keep shut for long.
‘A mouth he couldn’t keep shut for long’? Why would you phrase it like that?
Minister Lofri’s feathery eyebrows fluttered as he spoke
I’m sorry, his eyebrows what?
(Please enjoy the mental image of me spending several minutes trying to make my eyebrows flutter, in an effort to make this line make sense.)
Two more gryphons dove into the same horse.
They dove…inside the horse???
His mouth curled like a snake’s when the corners pulled up too high.
No it didn’t. His mouth did not curl like a snake’s mouth curls. You might have meant ‘his mouth curled like a snake’ – that would work! But it did not curl like a snake’s mouth curls. You know why? Because their mouths don’t curl.
(At certain angles a snake can open its mouth at you and be extremely cute! But its mouth is not curling.)
Bataar exited into the courtyard first. Inside the estate, suffocation had gripped him
You mean ‘house’. Inside the ‘house’. He hasn’t left the grounds, so he hasn’t left anybody’s ‘estate’, he’s just stepped outside!
The royal ornaments sparkled in light thrown from a tall window, signaling his station in the room of men. He was goddess-blessed, and they only wielded influence because he let them.
The ornaments only wield influence because he let them? And ‘signaling his station’ sounds so off. It’s not technically wrong! But you could say that so much better if you tried literally at all.
Speaking of ‘literally’, the dialogue is bizarrely modern – I know not every fantasy reader cares about this, but uh, if you do, it’s a problem here.
I’d literally rather practice sums or read Grandmother’s diary.”
“Yeah, yeah. Don’t get smart.”
For a fantasy that is all about war, the scenes of violence and/or gore are terrible. I’ve noticed before that if you don’t use sensory description for things like monsters, the description falls flat and they’re not scary. The same sort of thing happens here: the description is so minimal, or else odd, that the intended effect is not coming through. (And I say this as someone who is very sensitive to gore!)
Its body slammed so hard into one of the horses that bones broke and torn-open veins sprayed showers of red. Bataar had never seen something die as quickly as that horse’s soul spurted out of its body.
SPURTED? The soul SPURTED out of its body? Even if your minimal description didn’t leave me cold, this is just going to make me crack up during a scene you want me to take seriously.
SPURTED. Oh my gods.
Thick intestines like strings of sausages were strewn across the dirt
Listen: you’re not wrong! Sausages are made out of intestines! The intestines probably do actually look like sausages! But: sausages are not scary. Sausages are either neutral or outright cosy, depending on your reader’s preferences/experience with them. Food descriptors for gore do not work in text form, and I will explain why!
See, if I was standing where this character is standing, and saw gore, and my brain went ‘sausages’, I would probably be really grossed out! Possibly distressed! But I would be distressed at my own response to the gore, not the gore itself (in that moment). It’s like if you smell a burned human body, and it reminds you of cooked pork or something: you want to throw up because it is deeply disturbing that you could find that smell appetizing. The smell in and of itself is not horrifying: your own reaction to it is.
But if I am not standing there – if it is not my brain that thinks ‘sausages’ or ‘yummy pork’ or whatever – then there is no horror. The food descriptor just becomes…pretty dumb, actually. You want me to be icked out by sausages??? That’s. That’s not gonna happen, ma’am. I’m sorry. I’m just thinking about an English Breakfast now.
Oh, and the monsters don’t get described well either;
A clear membrane slid over the gryphon’s eyes. It looked like a huge lion, except for its beak and feathered back legs ending in taloned feet.
That is very plain, boring description, but also: the gryphon looks like a LION with a BEAK??? Are you sure? Are you sure that’s what you want me to picture? (And like, you can do what you want, obviously, it’s fantasy, but gryphons usually have the front half of eagles and the back half of lions and the mental image I have looks deeply weird with it the other way around.)(Also you might want to tell your cover artist that they got your gryphons wrong.)
This isn’t a prose issue, but: hi, your characters are stupid. In one early scene, our MMC orders his eagle to attack the hunting bird of a prince. The prince is upset. (The bird is fine. But like. I’d be upset too.) Possibly I am just being Very Autistic, but I have scrutinised this scene several times and I cannot work out why the hell the MMC did that. This prince is not an important person, exactly, but he is important to the MMC’s plans – and even if he wasn’t, what kind of idiot makes enemies when he doesn’t have to? You’re a terrible war-leader! Goodbye!
His two second-in-commands, who are his besties and clearly attracted to each other, also have this kind of banter, which I hate so much;
“Leave some women for the rest of us.”
“What woman wants you?” Shaza deadpanned.
“I can think of one.” He narrowed his eyes. “Or two.”
She shoved him. “Watch your tongue if you want to stay attached to it, louse.”
Ahh yes: the Badass Woman who is aggressive to the man she’s attracted to because gods forbid she display Feelings. Specifically, is aggressive to the man she’s attracted to who has done nothing wrong. What did he say that made him a louse? He said one woman ever might be attracted to him! MAYBE two women! That’s not a gross thing to say! If anything, it’s kind of funny, and very surprising, to hear a guy say only one or two women might be attracted to him! That’s very modest! It certainly isn’t rude.
I despise this kind of banter/dynamic. No. Go away.
I could go on – I could talk about how strange the timeskips are, in that they skip over some momentous events in the lives of each main character that we were set up to expect on-page (Nohra becoming a Harpy Knight, which her opening chapter made clear was the sole goal of her life; Bataar marrying Qaira whom he had no chemistry with when they were introduced); or the very strange way paragraphs keep going statement->not clearly related fact with no overt connection between them; or the wildly wrong use of the word hatpin – I could go on! But. I have gone on way too long already.
I really did want to love this. The premise is so cool. Alas.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bisexual MC with chronic illness, bisexual love interest, queernorm setting
PoV: First-person, past-tense
Published on: 20th May 2025
ISBN: 1250375096
Goodreads
A charming slow-burn romantasy featuring a duty-bound noblewoman with a chronic illness, a prince who would rather be in a library than on a throne, and a magical ride through a world of cozy enchantment
Bianca knows her duty comes before her heart. So when the threat of war looms, she agrees to marry the neighboring kingdom’s heir. But not all royal weddings are a fairytale, and Prince Aric, Bianca’s betrothed, is cold, aloof, and seems to hate her on sight.
To make matters worse, on their wedding night, an assassination attempt goes awry―leaving Aric magically transformed into a horse. Bianca does what any bride in this situation would do: she mounts her new husband and rides away to safety.
Sunset returns Aric to human form, but they soon discover the assassination attempt is part of a larger plot against the throne. Worse, Bianca has been framed for Aric’s murder, and she’s now saddled with a husband who is a horse by day and a frustratingly attractive man by night.
As an unexpected romance begins galloping away with their hearts, Bianca and Aric must rely on each other to unravel the curse and save the throne.
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.
Listen, I picked this one up EAGER to be charmed, okay? And I tried, I really did. But too much struck me as outright nonsense for me to put up with.
Let’s start with the greats: I straight-up ADORED Bianca – she is an incredible character and I love her. I was really pleasantly surprised that after a fairly meek first chapter – in which we see how eager she is to earn her parents’ approval – she reveals herself to be not just determined, but hyper-competent, confident, and possessed of a very spiky temper (which she is great at controlling when she needs to). Here is a noble-born woman who is GOOD at politicking and dancing and all the rest of it, and who enjoys being good at them and knows she’s good at them. I guess this shouldn’t be such a big deal, but it is, because somehow we rarely get to see characters who seem like they were raised in a real noble house. She can even use a sword and dagger, just to put the seal on her badassery!
(Obviously you don’t need to be good with a sword to be a badass, do I really need to make that caveat? But you know what I mean!)
The worldbuilding is thin as tissue paper, but that actually didn’t bother me so much – I wasn’t expecting Epic Fantasy levels of worldbuilding from a book marketed this way. The prose is…fine? It’s not bad, it’s nothing special (although there are occasional flashes of brilliance with similes). I am very hard to please with first-person, but Bianca’s voice was acceptable.
Unfortunately, pretty much nothing else worked for me. Specifically, because Stevenson doesn’t seem to feel the need to make things make sense.
Bianca’s older sister, Tatiana, has been quietly allowed to duck out of mage training – which is mandatory and takes nine years. But their parents have paid off the mage guild. Hi: are you high? If magic is so dangerous that it legally requires nine entire years of training, then under no circumstances ever would you let mages go untrained! Which honestly seems to prove itself with Tatiana, since one of the first things we learn about her is that she accidentally (?) let loose a whirlwind at a dinner party! WHAT THE HELLS.
Bianca is willing to go off and marry the crown prince of a neighbouring country in order to finalise an important treaty. No issues there. But almost her first thought is that she’ll have a much better life as queen: what??? Specifically
as a queen, I could choose my own appointments. Keep to my rooms, or my bed, when I was too sick to stand instead of making myself more ill by pushing through, and do so without dreading the rebuke I knew was coming at the first private moment.
Um – no, actually??? I realise your country no longer has a monarchy, but that is an unbelievably naive view (from a woman who at no other point, on no other topic, appears naive). You have no idea what your fiance is like: he could absolutely rebuke you (he could, in fact, be FURIOUS to learn your country has pawned him off with a chronically ill queen: why is no one concerned about this???), he could be an absolute asshole, and you have no idea what your duties are going to be. Control of your appointments is not at all guaranteed! If anything, I would imagine your presence is going to be much more vitally necessary at the events you’re scheduled to attend than it is in your life now – any event that requires the queen’s presence is going to be much higher-stakes than an event that wants a random noblewoman to attend. What???
The woman who makes Bianca’s tonics – the medicine for her condition – is known as her apothecary. But she also does Bianca’s hair and helps her dress? How do you have an apothecary’s skills AND a lady’s maid’s??? Those are both full-time gigs! I’d understand if her apothecary MASQUERADED as her lady’s maid, that might be a good way to let her be part of Bianca’s retinue without giving away Bianca’s illness – but she actually fills both roles? HOW?
On the ship to her new home, we learn that the leader of her new guard is Bianca’s EX. Why the hells did Bianca not get a say in who had that position?! Why was that allowed to happen? This is ridiculous, the last person you’d want in this situation is an ex!
And so on. It’s all tiny details like this. Bianca arrives at her fiance’s palace and is told the wedding is taking place the next day. A) what the fuck B) why C) how was the date not nailed down in the treaty this marriage is supposedly sealing?! Bonus: besides the ambassador, no one from her country is coming. Not her parents, not her sister, nobody. She’s about to be a QUEEN, her marriage is cementing an apparently VERY IMPORTANT treaty, and no one back home gives a fuck??? Why the hells not?
Bianca does not know when her fiance’s coronation is: what? That is such ridiculously basic information you would have if you were going away to marry an about-to-be king! (Are her family showing up for the coronation? That wasn’t answered by the 30% mark, which is when I stopped reading, but it seemed to be implied that they were not!) Bianca thinks she’s going to be Aric’s equal: why? Do queens have power in his country? In most European countries (which the setting seems mildly inspired by, in that generic Fantasy way) queens had a lot less power than kings, so it’s not guaranteed! Bianca does not see it as a red flag when the coronet she’s given is silver, as opposed to Aric’s golden one: ???
The wedding ceremony involves blood magic. Bianca did not know this ahead of time. HOW? HOW DID YOU NOT KNOW THIS? It’s apparently the norm for royal weddings (not clear whether non-royal weddings involve the same), so it shouldn’t come as any kind of surprise! You should have known about that before you ever got on the ship!
But the point at which I would have defenestrated this book, had I been reading a paper copy, was in the moments after Aric is turned into a horse.
Because.
Wait for it.
HE JUMPS OUT OF A SECOND STORY WINDOW.
AS A HORSE.
………………….IS THIS A JOKE?????????????
How did he not break all four of his legs? HE’S A HORSE! And he KNOWS he’s a horse, he’s not disoriented or anything – he tells Bianca to get on his back, he’s grasped the situation.
Does he not know horses??????? Why would it even OCCUR TO YOU to jump out a window in horse form??? Why on EARTH didn’t you just kick down the door and run off into the hallways and get outside that way? For that matter, why didn’t Stevenson just write them into a ground-floor room???
But reader, you should be proud of me, because I actually didn’t stop there! I kept reading! And I was not rewarded for it! Because Bianca and horse!Aric run away for no apparent reason. Later, they discover that only Bianca can hear Aric’s horse-telepathy, but at the point that they run away they don’t know that, so??? Why would you run away from your guards? Why didn’t you think Aric could talk to his soldiers and explain? You could have run away AFTER, when you realised that wasn’t possible, but running away before?
Bianca doesn’t even ask why they’re running away!!!
*screeches and tears my hair out*
I’m not even going to get into why the protection spell Tatiana gave her sister turned someone into a horse who could telepathically speak to her. I’ll be generous and assume Tatiana screwed up and that wasn’t what the spell was meant to do. ‘CAUS IT SURE LOOKS LIKE TATIANA THOUGHT TURNING SOMEONE INTO A TELEPATHIC HORSE WOULD BE A GREAT WAY TO DEAL WITH AN ASSASSIN! (Horses are dangerous, if you were going to turn an attacker into something why not a mouse or a ladybird or something else that can’t hurt you?!)
Behooved gave me such a headache. And the banter between horse!Aric and Bianca was not my idea of funny or charming. The glittery feeling that comes with the best Fun books just wasn’t here for me even aside from nothing making sense. Maybe it gets cute later on, I don’t know. I’ll never know, because I’m not reading any more of this.
Gah.
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Chinese-Canadian sapphic MC, Indigenous Canadian secondary character, F/F
PoV: First-person, present-tense
Published on: 18th March 2025
ISBN: B0D7GK6QC9
Goodreads
From debut author Emily Yu-Xuan Qin comes a snarky urban fantasy novel inspired by Chinese and First Nation mythology and bursting with wit, compelling characters, and LGBTQIA+ representation
Readers of Seanan McGuire, Ilona Andrews, and Ben Aaronovitch will devour this gory story—and the sweet-as-Canadian-maple-syrup sapphic romance at its monstrous heart
Tam hasn’t eaten anyone in years.
She is now Mama’s soft-spoken, vegan daughter—everything dangerous about her is cut out.
But when Tam’s estranged Aunt Tigress is found murdered and skinned, Tam inherits an undead fox in a shoebox, and an ensemble of old enemies.
The demons, the ghosts, the gods running coffee shops by the river? Fine. The tentacled thing stalking Tam across the city? Absolutely not. And when Tam realizes the girl she’s falling in love with might be yet another loose end from her past? That’s just the brassy, beautiful cherry on top.
Because no matter how quietly she lives, Tam can’t hide from her voracious upbringing, nor the suffering she caused. As she navigates romance, redemption, and the end of the world, she can’t help but wonder…
Do monsters even deserve happy endings?
With worldbuilding inspired by Chinese folklore and the Siksiká Nation in Canada, LGBTQIA+ representation, and a sapphic romance, Aunt Tigress is at once familiar and breathtakingly innovative.
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 was really enjoying myself for the first third of this, but once past that, I rapidly started losing interest. After the second third, the thought of continuing became exhausting, and that was the death knell.
The set-up is going to be familiar if you know Urban Fantasy: living among and just out of sight of humans are magical beings of all kinds, only some of whom interact with the human world. Aunt Tigress is unique, though, in populating itself with, not generic witches and werewolves, but figures from the mythologies of indigenous Canadians. Being set in Canada, this makes perfect sense! Our main character, though, is part tiger, descended from Chinese tigers and tricksters, and most of the conflict in the book comes from her eponymous tiger aunt fucking with the locals in an attempt to regain the power she had back in China.
This is all great! I know next to nothing about the mythologies the author is drawing from, so I can’t comment on the representation at all, but I was delighted and fascinated to be presented with beings and creatures I’d never come across before. There were also beasties I did recognise, but which the author has put her own spin on, like the incubus, who here is more of an adorable pixie creature of animal intelligence, rather than a human-sized sex demon.
The problem is that the incubus was my favourite character.
Tam Lin, our MC (who has the name of a Scottish ballad for some reason, maybe to make it clear that she and her love interest Janet – the heroine of the Tam Lin ballad also being named Janet – are fated to be together, or something. It drove me nuts that no one ever commented on this) is…kind of wishy-washy and flavourless. I had no real sense of her as an individual, except in the flashbacks of the times she spent with Aunt Tigress as a kid: in the now, she doesn’t seem to have any drive or desires, just kind of drifting along with the plot and/or with what Janet wants. She’s surrounded by distinct personalities – her mother and stepbrother, Miss Little, Aunt Tigress, even Janet – but doesn’t really have one of her own, and constantly lets those other personalities move and direct her. I still don’t understand how or why she abruptly decides she’s responsible for stopping her aunt, or how or why she goes from ignoring her heritage and abilities to reclaiming them; most of her decisions were really not articulated enough for me.
The plot moves pretty slowly, which would not bother me if the relationships we used that time to explore were less boringly awful. Tam’s mother is terrible: Aunt Tigress is a terrible person, but also terribly interesting, whereas Tam’s mom I just despised – despite knowingly marrying a tiger, she endlessly resents Tam’s unhumanness, wanting her to have nothing to do with her heritage or magic. That she spent years backing Tam’s militantly vegan stepdad in denying her meat – when she is literally a tiger! – meant I hated her way before she blithely tells Tam, to her face, that Tam is difficult to love. HI, GOODBYE.
Tam and Janet, on the other hand, are confusing in the way of badly-written romances everywhere: I never had a clue what drew them to each other, there’s a lot of tonally odd snark, and the dramatic betrayal-reveal that usually comes nearer the end of a book instead came out ten minutes into their relationship. It is then almost instantly forgotten about. (And please don’t get me started on the deeply disturbing tiger-y sex where the issue of wait did you really consent I don’t remember is never really resolved!!!)
The best bits were easily the glimpses we got of baby!Tam bonding/apprenticing with Aunt Tigress, a lot of which is also disturbing and creepy but a) it’s clearly meant to be and b) it’s really interesting. Disturbing is fine in fiction if it’s interesting, this is Writing Fiction 101, and it was really cool getting insight into what being a tiger means, what a terrible but compelling character Aunt Tigress is, and seeing and learning about the magical world, which Tam mostly learns about via her aunt. Aunt Tigress makes baby!Tam complicit in awful things, uses her for her own schemes, and tries to shape her in her own image. Does she actually care about Tam? If she does, it’s in a way I hope no one ever cares about me!
I think the author was trying to create a conflict between Tam’s ‘tiger self’ and her ‘human side’, but that was nonexistent except when it made for convenient drama. We don’t see her needing to resist the outlook or thinking her aunt tried to instil in her, or have any idea what her ‘tiger’ wants that her ‘human’ part does not want. There’s just this sense of nebulous guilt that is very dull to read about.
Plot-wise, I was bored and confused. The quest-objective Janet brings to the table was resolved very quickly and seemingly easily, with Tam suddenly displaying a skill in her father’s magic that wasn’t much hinted at previously. The conflict between Janet and Tam’s mother was eye-rollingly predictable. I’m still not sure who or what the suit monster was, or how we suddenly have an undead fox. Aunt Tigress was up to Major Fuckery, but I kept forgetting about it because it kept fading into the background (oh no the sunsets are extra-dramatic, everybody panic!!! what even). What is the in-between realm and why are we suddenly going there. How exactly does the demon’s pet jack-of-all-trades human help us? He’s very sweet but seriously, what is he doing here. Why are you bringing your human girlfriend to another realm when she can’t even SEE the supernatural (and refuses to be given the ability)? How is it that Tam has no one to reach out to for help except her aunt’s lawyer, and why doesn’t she bring the problem to the locals instead of playing outsider-saviour?
They get to the in-between realm and the functional, powerful non-human adults allegedly assisting immediately put the responsibility of finding what they’re looking for on the three barely-adults who have never been to this realm before. OKAY THAT MAKES SENSE FOR SURE.
TL;DR: Prose was great, worldbuilding was interesting, but the pixie and the villain were the only interesting characters and the plot was a mess.
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Bisexual Filipino-American MC
PoV: Third-person,
ISBN: 1250888557
Goodreads
From author Elisa A. Bonnin comes Lovely Dark and Deep, a YA dark academia novel exploring magic, loneliness, and the power of found family.
Hidden off the coast of Washington, veiled in mist, there is an island that does not appear on any map. And on that island is Ellery West.Ellery West has always been home for Faith. After an international move and a childhood spent adjusting to a new culture and a new language, the acclaimed school for magic feels like the only place she can be herself. That is, until Faith and another student walk into the forest, and only Faith walks out.
Marked with the red stripe across her uniform that designates all students deemed too dangerous to attend regular classes, Faith becomes a social pariah, an exile of Ellery West. But all she has to do is keep her head down for one more year to graduate, and she gets to keep her magic. Because when students fail out of Ellery West, they have their magic taken away. Forever. And Faith can't let that happen.
Except terrifying things are still happening to students, and the dark magic that was unleashed in the forest still seems to be at work. To stop it, Faith and the other Red Stripes will have to work together, risking expulsion from the magical world altogether.
If I say this is Extremely YA, do you know what I mean? It’s not bad, because it’s meant to be YA, so it is absolutely succeeding at what it wants to do! It is just not for me.
My first raised-eyebrow was learning that our MC’s fire-magic is very literal and simplistic – she can make fire, put it out, and shape it, no manipulation of heat or anything. This is an issue for me because I struggle to imagine how a normal person in our world – in the urbanised Western world – could get much use out of fire as a superpower. Fire’s great for combat, and for extremely niche hobbies/crafts like glassblowing or blacksmithing, but a random 17yo who does not have those hobbies…? She’s desperate not to lose her magic: why? What can she even do with it? I was expecting Bonnin to come up with creative uses for it, to show us why it’s a magical talent worth having – but that didn’t happen. We see Faith make a little candleflame on her finger to read in the dark – that’s it. It’s apparently not good for anything else except hurting people.
So why would you want to keep it? Why wouldn’t you be incredibly jealous of more versatile magics? Well, using it feels comforting!
…Kay.
This was not enough to convince me.
The other Red Stripes were great – I liked them as characters and their magics were really interesting, especially the two girls who’ve been Red Stripes since they enrolled (because their magics are too powerful to allow them to spend time around normal students). One of these was a nonverbal autistic character, and I had hopes she might be a love interest for Faith.
But the whole setup of the Red Stripes was baffling. Wait wait wait, you take the most dangerous, rule-breaking kids, and…house them together far from everyone else? Are you high? You separate troublemakers, you don’t stick them all together! There aren’t enough teachers to properly teach the Red Stripes magic: COOL, THAT DEFINITELY WON’T CAUSE ANY ISSUES. And because the not-secret societies/clubs that run the magic world aren’t interested in adopting Red Stripes, these kids are guaranteed to have a shitty life forever? How does that make sense? Especially since these societies are gagging for Super Powerful magic-users, most of whom are going to end up Red Stripes because this system demonises the magically powerful?
None of this makes sense, nor does it make no-sense in a way that feels organic. (Lots of stuff in the real world makes no sense, after all, unless you go dig into how things got that way, and then it’s lots of messy human nonsense happening sequentially until stuff is Like This Now.) The worldbuilding is barely skin-deep (why is the school built at the centre of a fucked-up forest the students can’t go into; how have you been attending here for three years but never seen the Red Stripes house; why do they judge you at 18 to decide whether you can keep your magic, who expects teenagers to have their lives and all together; if the magic drugs do not in fact boost your magic why does anyone use them – people get addicted to drugs that do things, like make them feel good, you don’t keep taking a drug that does nothing), the dead best friend is clearly not dead (and I’m fucking STAGGERED that the adults just decided she was with no body) and the hatred the student body has for Red Stripes makes zero sense to me.
If you like YA you’ll like this fine. If you’re a nitpicky sod like myself, you might want to skip.
Genres: Adult, Sci Fi
PoV: Third-person, past tense; multiple PoVs
ISBN: 0316525553
Goodreads
How humanity came to the planet called Anjiin is lost in the fog of history, but that history is about to end.
The Carryx – part empire, part hive – have waged wars of conquest for centuries, destroying or enslaving species across the galaxy. Now, they are facing a great and deathless enemy. The key to their survival may rest with the humans of Anjiin.
Caught up in academic intrigue and affairs of the heart, Dafyd Alkhor is pleased just to be an assistant to a brilliant scientist and his celebrated research team. Then the Carryx ships descend, decimating the human population and taking the best and brightest of Anjiin society away to serve on the Carryx homeworld, and Dafyd is swept along with them.
They are dropped in the middle of a struggle they barely understand, set in a competition against the other captive species with extinction as the price of failure. Only Dafyd and a handful of his companions see past the Darwinian contest to the deeper game that they must play to survive: learning to understand – and manipulate – the Carryx themselves.
With a noble but suicidal human rebellion on one hand and strange and murderous enemies on the other, the team pays a terrible price to become the trusted servants of their new rulers.
Dafyd Alkhor is a simple man swept up in events that are beyond his control and more vast than his imagination. He will become the champion of humanity and its betrayer, the most hated man in history and the guardian of his people.
This is where his story begins.
Thanks, I hate it.
I have no idea how someone who writes such mindblowingly incredible fantasy – Daniel Abraham, who is half of the penname James SA Corey – continuously co-writes sci fi that puts me to sleep.
Pages and pages and CHAPTERS of departmental drama? Really??? Are you kidding me? And are you seriously, for real, in actuality dropping me into the head of yet ANOTHER pathetic straight man pining after an unavailable woman who could not care less about his existence???
Why do people keep writing this character-type? It’s not sympathetic, it’s DEFINITELY not interesting, it’s just ick and vaguely stalkery and ew now you’re ‘stealing touches’ excuse me while I throw up in my mouth.
I came for the aliens!!! Where are my aliens!!!
(They did eventually show up but sorry-not-sorry, they were too late. Patient could not be revived. Pull the sheet over her face, she’s gone.)
Why do I keep trying to read white-boy sci fi. Why. Why do I do this to myself. Do I like suffering??? Clearly I must bring this up in my next therapy session.
Genres: Adult, Sci Fi
PoV: First-person, past-tense
Goodreads
The apocalypse will be televised!
A man. His ex-girlfriend's cat. A sadistic game show unlike anything in the universe: a dungeon crawl where survival depends on killing your prey in the most entertaining way possible.
In a flash, every human-erected construction on Earth—from Buckingham Palace to the tiniest of sheds—collapses in a heap, sinking into the ground.
The buildings and all the people inside have all been atomized and transformed into the dungeon: an 18-level labyrinth filled with traps, monsters, and loot. A dungeon so enormous, it circles the entire globe.Only a few dare venture inside. But once you're in, you can't get out. And what's worse, each level has a time limit. You have but days to find a staircase to the next level down, or it's game over. In this game, it's not about your strength or your dexterity. It's about your followers, your views. Your clout. It's about building an audience and killing those goblins with style.
You can't just survive here. You gotta survive big.
You gotta fight with vigor, with excitement. You gotta make them stand up and cheer. And if you do have that "it" factor, you may just find yourself with a following. That's the only way to truly survive in this game—with the help of the loot boxes dropped upon you by the generous benefactors watching from across the galaxy.
They call it Dungeon Crawler World. But for Carl, it's anything but a game.
I see the appeal! By which I mean, Dinniman’s writing and/or poor Carl’s voice is MASSIVELY readable; I was past the 1/3 mark before I know what hit me. It is so easy to keep turning pages!
…But the story is exactly as grim as it sounds. Don’t get me wrong, Dinniman does an excellent job at not making it a misery-fest (I’m genuinely impressed by how well-balanced the horror/misery is with a – not lightheartedness, exactly? That makes it sound shallow, and I don’t think it is; I never felt like the war-crime nature of it all was being downplayed or trivialised. But there’s something kind of upbeat about the tone despite that) but, uh. I can’t really enjoy a story about all this??? This just isn’t fun???
Whatever its fans are getting out of it, I am not. But since I didn’t expect to, I hoId no grudge against Carl. Or Princess Donut, who is exactly as epic as I was promised!
Not going to rate this one; I’m so unfamiliar with this genre that I have no idea how to judge it objectively, and with this dramatic a book/reader mismatch my experience with it is pretty irrelevant to its quality, methinks.
What did you DNF this month?
Noooooo, I had such high hopes for Behooved! (so high that I am still going to try it, but I will temper my expectations)
Lots of other people have loved it! I think it’s just if you’re as nitpicky with logic as I am…
I love when you pull out quotes that didn’t make sense, it’s very fun to see your take on wonky prose.
Thank you XD Sometimes I hesitate, because it feels kind of mean, but DAMN IT, SOMETIMES IT IS *SO* WONKY!