soupçon/ˈsuːpsɒn,ˈsuːpsɒ̃/ noun
1. a very small quantity of something; a slight trace, as of a particular taste or flavorSunday Soupçons is where I scribble mini-reviews for books I don’t have the brainspace/eloquence/smarts to write about in depth – or if I just don’t have anything interesting to say beyond I LIKED IT AND YOU SHOULD READ IT TOO!
Two very different, and differently-magnificent, recent reads!
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M, minor polyamory
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; dual PoVs
ISBN: 1951293177
Goodreads
Award-winning author Carole Cummings really brings it with her newest gay romantic fantasy. Wartime, magic, and dragons!
Old Forge is known for its dragons— savage little things, more singe than snarl—and Milo Priddy is known for his way with them. But as rumblings of conflict appear on the horizon, the dragons start to disappear. As dragonkin, Milo knows what he must do. But it is an uneasy choice, one he dares not reveal even to his lover, Ellis.
As the leader of neighbouring Wellech, Ellis has his own hard choices. His skills are crucial to a secure homeland. And, more and more, the life he and Milo once hoped to share is under threat—not only from outside but within.For their own people are sowing mistrust of the magic users, seeding the betrayal of not only the dragons, but their kin.
I bounced off this book a couple of times, but between my book-bestie (who loves it) and this review, I was convinced to try it again.
AND I’M SO GLAD I DID! Because I adore it. New favourite, the biggest book-hangover, I am in awe, this is MAGNIFICENT!
It also doesn’t fit perfectly neatly into any easy trope or genre boxes (which I very much approve of): there’s a romantic element that’s incredibly important, but the two characters only see each other once a month; there are dragons, but this is definitely not any kind of dragon-rider story; there’s a lot of political conflict threatening to break out into war, but a lot of the local political conflict is tied up with awful family drama.
It’s a lot, is what I’m saying, and I love it for that.
(To be extra clear: calling this a romantic fantasy is pretty misleading. It’s definitely not Romantasy. Milo and Ellis’ relationship is foundational to the book, but I think ‘romantic fantasy’ gives the impression that a story is going to be relatively low-stakes, and that any other plotlines will be subservient to the romantic one, and neither is the case in Sonata Form.)
The setting is…a little bit like what you might get in a pre-WW2 Britain if Wales had conquered the rest of the UK. If the UK was made up of three islands. What that most immediately means is that there is a lot of Welsh; Welsh people-names, place-names, nouns, terminology, endearments, titles, and all the rest of it. If you’ve never encountered Welsh before…well, Welsh looks pretty intimidating, written down. The spelling (and phonetics) make almost no sense to an English-speaker. I can imagine some readers being put off by it, just like when an author has too many made-up fantasy terms in their book that it becomes impenetrable. But I implore you to stick with it, if the Welsh looks scary! It is so very worth it!
And the worldbuilding is fabulous, superficially simple but wonderfully detailed; there are three-person marriages and contracts for courting, the dragonkin, agricultural economics, and a religious/government body that can deny approval for marriages involving wealth, political influence, and/or magic. Trying to untangle the political hierarchies was honestly fun, because there are a bunch of positions that aren’t in the same chain-of-command (so to speak) but do interact or intersect, and some of the problems/issues that arise from that were extremely plot-relevant. And the magic! I LOVED that there were multiple magical practices, with their own histories and cultures and reputation; I loved that Milo could immediately tell what kind of practitioner someone was when he saw them cast. The main source of the it’s-going-to-be-war conflict was the growing persecution of one kind of magic-user, and it was fascinating to see this one kind of magic singled out for hatred. Awful, but fascinating, because – why not the other kinds too? Why not all magic? And it’s messy and terrible and tied up with a number of different prejudices (and some people are against all magic, at that, which is again Extremely Plot Relevant) and it was all…painfully believable.
I don’t even want to talk about the romance, really – I’m terrible at talking about romance: I’ll just say that it was beautiful and wonderful and left me emotionally devastated and leave it at that. But what most impressed was how…how freaking excellent a depiction this is of a country – mostly one region of a country – just…losing itself to hate. The slow, grinding descent into bigotry and stupidity and violence. And what happens when that happens. What it costs, what it takes to fix things (as much as they can be fixed). How some people can be redeemed, and some can’t. (Or won’t.) What kind of person is required to fight back against hate.
Which all makes Sonata Form sound very grim, and I didn’t find it grim. Heavy, at times, sure. Heartbreaking in parts. But I’d call it rich, rather than grim. Complex, deep, delicious. Unbelievably impressive! Cummings plays the reader’s heart the way Milo plays the violin; this is very much a book that makes you feel All The Things, from glittery delight to terror and back again. It was so easy to sink into this story, to lose myself in it; everything felt so immediate, so real, so realistic, even with the magic and the dragons. I wasn’t reading it; I was living it. I don’t know how to put it better than that.
This deserves a much longer, more in-depth, more elegant and polished and poetic review, but I am not up to it and I am sorry for that. (The book-hangover I have from this one, folx, I cannot EVEN.) I really hope I’ve convinced you to pick this one up, though. I can’t believe it’s so under the radar, when it’s such a freaking MASTERPIECE. Five stars, six stars, ALL THE STARS! I am officially declaring it a Crescent Classic.
(And just in case it needs saying: the dragons are amazing and I love them. Of course they are. Of course I did. No one is surprised!)
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Nonbinary trans MC, MLM MC, secondary BIPOC characters
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; multiple PoVs
Goodreads
Aimé Deverell, a depressed and lonely artist finishing up his degree in Dublin, watches the world go by, and paints it as it goes. Life is short, he thinks - and thank God!
He’s tired of living it.
That philosophy shatters like glass when his life is threatened by the beautiful Jean-Pierre, a Fallen angel.
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Powder and Feathers is a dark romance featuring a complex relationship between an immortal several centuries the senior of his new boyfriend. Note warnings for manipulation, non-consensual body modification, twisted power dynamics, gaslighting, infidelity, consent issues, and BDSM vibes somewhat removed from the realms of SSC. There are multiple explicit sex scenes, many of them kinky.
The MC of this story is not explicitly labelled as such within the narrative, but I normally label him as in line with borderline personality he experiences delusions, severe mood swings, emotional dysregulation, and other painful episodes.
There are other potentially triggering topics throughout. Please use your best judgement and remember to take a step back from the work, temporarily or permanently, if you find any themes are too much for you to read about at this time.
Powder and Feathers is one of those books for which self-publishing exists – no trad-publisher would be willing to print a book so long (the paperback edition had to be split into two volumes because it’s over 1000 pages), nor be willing to engage with a book that doesn’t have a conventional plot.
So I’m very, very glad self-publishing is an option, because missing out on this book would have sucked.
Powder and Feathers is a little reminiscent of a certain kind of fanfiction, in that it’s long, sprawling, and more slice-of-life-y than plot-driven. I LOVE this kind of thing and would happily read another thousand pages of these deeply messed-up characters just living their best lives; but this is definitely not for everyone, both because of the low-stakes (well, relatively low, for the Fantasy genre) and the, um, let’s call them challenging themes.
In the most superficial terms, this book is about a fallen angel named Jean-Pierre picking out a depressed artist to manipulate into falling in love with him – and said artist, Aimé, gaining a pretty epic found-family in the process, growing into a much happier, healthier person.
It’s complicated.
Look, another reason it’s great that self-publishing exists is because there’s much more leeway to push boundaries in self-pub. In fact, there are no boundaries at all, which allows storytellers to dive into and explore messed-up stuff trad-pub would flinch at. (Cowards.) Evans is one of those authors, and I think he does a fucking fantastic job of it; Powder and Feathers is packed full of characters you’d cross the street to avoid, manipulative and amoral, toxic and co-dependent, vicious and, by a lot of standards, villainous. Jean-Pierre, one of the two main PoVs, works as a kind of assassin when he’s not being a doctor, has an explosive temper, and plays everyone but his family like toys – at one point, he spells his boyfriend to be violently ill whenever he smokes in an effort to get said boyfriend to quit smoking. Because he hates the smell of cigarette smoke, and that trumps bodily autonomy and consent, obviously. He’s coded as having borderline personality disorder, and there is so much gaslighting, so much not-safe-sane-consensual sex-and-violence, so much that is just. Objectively awful about him!
But he’s also the one to tailor and enchant a bunch of clothes so a disabled friend can wear normal clothes that look good on him, instead of the ugly, self-conscious-making stuff that can accommodate his disability. (And yes, that scene will make you cry ugly tears.)
One of the things I loved about Powder and Feathers was that Evans doesn’t moralise at the reader for a minute. He’s not trying to convince you that Jean-Pierre is good underneath it all, actually; nor does he make a big deal of not condoning Jean-Pierre’s (or anyone else’s) behaviour. This is a book that trusts the reader to Get It, to not need spoon-feeding, to be able to wrap our minds around the idea that things can be fucked-up and complicated in fiction and we’re allowed to just enjoy that. Or be morbidly fascinated by it, whichever’s your wheelhouse, you do you. If you don’t like it, put the book down and walk away, no harm no foul, we’re all grown-ups here. Yes?
I hope I’m making some kind of sense here.
Alongside the Actually Dark romance (no, I don’t have a pet peeve about the kind of crap trad-pub labels as dark romance, why would you think that???) this book also acts as a thoughtful exploration of Evans’ worldbuilding. I think quite a lot of his works are set in the same world – which is ours plus magic – but we often don’t see a whole lot of it. Here we learn a fair bit more about it, especially the community/society of fallen angels and how they interact with the rest of the world. Said fallen angels have a loosely Judaic explanation/backstory, though none of them can remember the realm they came from, opening up a lot of very interesting potential in how they respond to human religion; Jean-Pierre and his brother Colm are very Catholic, but their third brother Asmodeus refuses even to sing Christmas carols because of the religion in them. Outside of the angels, we also have Greek gods running around, with fae and vampires and various other magicals further in the background, and even a sort of King Arthur and Merlin. (Fuck Merlin.) In the hands of a lesser writer it might feel like ‘everything but the kitchen sink’, but I really enjoyed it, and wanted even more of it!
This is a book about trauma and kink and found-family, about people with broken edges fitting together like puzzle pieces. It is not for everyone; I dare say it’s not for most people. But I loved it, and I hope we get more novels about these characters (although the author already has a few short stories and things set before and after the events of Powder and Feathers).
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