soupçon/ˈsuːpsɒn,ˈsuːpsɒ̃/ noun
1. a very small quantity of something; a slight trace, as of a particular taste or flavor

Sunday 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!

I don’t have the spoons or brain to write reviews worthy of these, so mini-reviews it is!

The Fifth House of the Heart by Ben Tripp
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Elderly gay MC
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
ISBN: 1476782644
Goodreads

Filled with characters as menacing as they are memorable, this chilling twist on vampire fiction packs a punch in the bestselling tradition of ’Salem’s Lot by Stephen King.

Asmodeus “Sax” Saxon-Tang, a vainglorious and well-established antiques dealer, has made a fortune over many years by globetrotting for the finest lost objects in the world. Only Sax knows the true secret to his at certain points of his life, he’s killed vampires for their priceless hoards of treasure.

But now Sax’s past actions are quite literally coming back to haunt him, and the lives of those he holds most dear are in mortal danger. To counter this unnatural threat, and with the blessing of the Holy Roman Church, a cowardly but cunning Sax must travel across Europe in pursuit of incalculable evil—and immeasurable wealth—with a ragtag team of mercenaries and vampire killers to hunt a terrifying, ageless monster…one who is hunting Sax in turn.

From author Ben Tripp, whose first horror novel Rise Again “raises the stakes so high that the book becomes nearly impossible to put down” (Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother), The Fifth House of the Heart is a powerful story that will haunt you long after its final pages.

This one was a reread, and I was delighted to discover that a) I’d forgotten a lot of details, which tends to make a reread more fun, and b) this was as excellent as I remembered, and I don’t have to remove it from my favourites shelf!

The Fifth House of the Heart follows an elderly gay antiquarian, who we learn gained the treasures that made his career by hunting vampires. Vampires, you see, hoard treasures a lot like dragons, which is one of the main reasons for killing them. (They’re also, you know, super evil and murdery, but that doesn’t get anyone but fanatics motivated. If you want the big guns, you need to incentivise them, and treasure often does that.) ‘Course, Sax hasn’t gone after vampires in years – he’s old now! But circumstances conspire, and he decides he’s going to try and go vampire-slaying one more time.

The book is divided into parts, alternating the present with Sax’s previous vampiric encounters. (The first one was an accident. For some reason, that still tickles me.) Sax-as-elderly-queen is a really fun character, and even in his younger incarnations he is fascinatingly Not Nice – cowardly and greedy and terribly selfish, all of which he freely admits to being. I don’t come across a lot of unlikeable characters in the kinds of stories I read, and even fewer elderly ones, and somehow the combination here makes Sax extremely endearing. I am so fond of this ridiculous man!

Besides the fabulous protagonist and the adoring descriptions of treasure, I think it’s Tripp’s vampire lore that makes Fifth House a stand-out. Vampires must be staked in the heart because it’s a tiny appendix-like organ attached to the heart that makes them immortal; they transform into what they eat over time, which can result in sex changes (if they switch from eating women to eating men) or horrifically warped bestial forms (if they eat bugs or animals). There’s a bunch of stuff about their venom, how bitten victims who escape a vampire are marked, and the SUPER GROSS way they reproduce (the latter being part of a wonderfully neat explanation as to why vampires are so much rarer than they used to be!) And of course, there’s the dragon-like hoarding, which isn’t something I’ve seen depicted as a inherently vampiric trait before. All of it made my worldbuilding-nerd self SO happy.

It’s viscerally gory, action/horror-movie levels of tense, and the amount of description feels luxurious without crossing the line into purple prose. I love it. I’m still surprised it’s not vastly more well-known, I really think it should be. It will not be coming down from my favourites shelf any time soon!

Of the Emperor's Kindness (Imperial Vices #1) by Chaz Brenchley
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World No Magic, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC, F/F, queernorm setting
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
ISBN: 1917950128
Goodreads

Feremendas is an age-old empire, settled and certain. Clath is an alliance of smaller kingdoms, upstart and expansive. They are the two great powers of the world.

Malance is from Verantha, one of the little countries caught between. She was in Feremendas-city, working as an interpreter and having the time of her life, when Clath invaded her homeland and swallowed it whole. Bereft and alone, as other Veranthans slip away from the imperium to seek their families or join the resistance, she’s ready to follow—except that the emperor forbids it.

So long as the embassy remains open, Verantha still survives, at least as an idea, a seed, a hope. But an embassy demands an ambassador, and the official appointee has gone. Everyone’s gone, except Malance…

For more than a year now, Her Excellency Malance Hermentine has been mourning her lost land and struggling to find some balance in this new and bewildering life of hers. Ambassador by imperial decree for a country that no longer exists, she has a large and decaying house to manage with a ramshackle and eccentric household, and no budget at all. She has allies and enemies at court; she has beloved friends throughout the city, and one brewing relationship in the palace itself.

And now the emperor warns her that things are about to get worse…

Emperors, of course, do nothing without a reason.

The review you should read for this book is KJ Charles’, which is over here, but if you want my thoughts…

I’m definitely not clever enough to have caught everything KJ Charles pointed out if I hadn’t read her review before picking up Of the Emperor’s Kindness – so I’m very glad I did read it first! Brenchley does a magnificent job of making us…kind of forget that a lot of what Malance does is awful, actually? The light, party-girl tone he portrays her thoughts in is alarmingly good at minimising or trivialising the fact that Malance is surrounded by slaves, and the way she thinks of them is chilling, all the more so because she genuinely believes that she loves them all and is making them all happy. The similarities between her situation and that of her slaves are powerful for the reader, but instead of that making her sympathetic towards slaves, she’s oblivious. There’s also her clear adoration of the Emperor; in her thoughts, she practically worships him, is so quick to assign the best possible motivations to his actions, and to interpret anything he does as the Right Course, even when he’s decided on something that to us, the readers, is obviously horrific.

None of which prevented me from being completely hooked by the story and prose; I was so sad this book wasn’t so much longer! (Not quite 300 pages on my kindle.) Brenchley’s writing here reminded me of Rachel Neumeier’s; it has that same soothing, addictive quality, turning story-moments that would sound so dull if I described them into something bright and lovely. Vivacious, that’s the word for this book, I think! Every one of the characters just bursts with personality, and I adored so many of this cast – Malance’s girlfriend, Vivi, is a wonderful whirlwind, and if you are not charmed by the imperial pages who run the palace behind the scenes, you’re not paying enough attention. Even Malance’s less plot-relevant friends are so lovely; the way they leap in to help, and the ways in which they help, when the Big Dramatic Thing happens, is just – so heartwarming and delightful. I wanted to hug them all!

Personally, I was very satisfied with the amount of political intrigue going on, though I can imagine some readers wanting more of it. In a lot of ways, Of the Emperor’s Kindness reminded me of Swordspoint, that same kind of no-magic mannerpunk feel – the casual queerness definitely helped connect them in my mind, I think! But also, the way in which so much of this book is about relationships (of all kinds) and the interplay between them, and the people who can pull on the threads of those relationships to achieve their ends. (Not really Malance, to be clear. She’s not much for scheming. I wouldn’t call her passive, but she’s also really not qualified for her position, either. It’s part of what makes the story so interesting!) I think readers who enjoyed Swordspoint could get a lot out of Of the Emperor’s Kindness too – the plots are wildly different, as are the aesthetics of each setting, but…they very much have the same kind of heart.

Instant new fave, and I’m already pining for the sequel!

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