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!

Two books where I didn’t know what to expect – but both ended up delighting me!

The Tinder Box by M.R. Carey
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Gay disabled MC
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; two main PoVs
ISBN: 0316595500
Goodreads

In a kingdom forgotten by history, a legend unfolds . . .

Wounded in his county's endless wars, former soldier Mag Tresti finds work in the home of a reclusive widow, Jannae Mirchella. But Jannae is more than she seems. A witch of great skill and might, she hides her powers and her deep-laid plans behind a mask of harmless respectability.

When a dead demon falls out of the sky, the fates of the soldier and the witch are irrevocably intertwined. On the demon's body Mag finds a tinderbox - an artefact of terrifying magical power that can not only grant his every wish, but also change the fate of nations.

This is a tale of spellcraft and devilry, of witchcraft and trickery - of the wickedness that resides within a few, the goodness that lies deep within us all, and the choices on which our lives turn.

Firstly: this turned out to be queer! I didn’t see that in any of the pre-release coverage, but the protagonist is gay, and he even has a…hm. Not a romance, but a crush? It’s very low-key, thoroughly overshadowed by the actual plot, but it was lovely, and a lovely surprise to have a queer protagonist at all where I wasn’t expecting one.

Anyway. I love the Tinder Box fairytale, and was excited to see what Carey would do with it. The answer: GREAT THINGS!

It’s set in Germany before it was Germany, the era of unreliable muskets and horse-drawn carriages. (I have a sneaking suspicion it’s set in the same world as Carey’s previous Fantasy novel, Once Was Willem, but don’t quote me on that, and anyway if they ARE the same world they’re taking place in different countries and times from each other.) The tone is pretty miserable to start with: not-Germany is struggling, all its resources going into an incredibly arrogant, greedy war, and a lot of people are starving. Others have joined the Ghost Army, a decentralised rebel army who want to overthrow the king (valid). Protagonist Mag is turned away from door after door after being discharged from the legal army, in part because everyone’s too poor to pay him for manual labour and in part because people are scared he could be a Ghost, and draw down trouble on them.

Luckily this part of the book doesn’t last too long; Mag finds a place with a woman, Jannae Mirchella, who wants him to fix up her house, and as the back of the book says, in the midst of this a demon falls out of the sky. This is where the titular tinder box comes from; it’s one of the dead demon’s magical gadgets. For very understandable reasons, Mag tries to keep the tinder box, and has to run for his life when Jannae learns of it.

Several things elevate Tinder Box from run-of-the-mill retellings: the worldbuilding around demons (and eventually angels) is really interesting and unique, and had me invested VERY quickly; the worldbuilding around magic and witchcraft, specifically how it works and the process of using it, is fascinating; the anti-royalist, anti-authoritarian, anti-war themes were brilliantly visceral; and the two main characters, Mag and Jannae, are absolutely wonderful. They’re both incredibly vivid characters – actually, I think every character who gets a name feels vivid and powerfully alive, which I especially appreciated with Jannae, who is very complex, and the ultimate villain. (I’m so bored of villains who don’t feel real.) And I was utterly delighted with the ending, which gave me everything I could possibly have asked for, and a lot I wouldn’t even have dreamt of asking for!

It’s difficult to talk about without spoilers, but I’m trying because I think the best way to go into this book is to go blind, knowing as little as possible about it. But I ended up really loving this one. The beginning is very slow – between the grim tone and the plodding pace I nearly DNFed – but that’s really my only critique. If you can last until Mag finds the tinder box (which really doesn’t take long, it only feels like it takes a while) then you’re golden, because this is a really unique, interesting story in its own right, and as a retelling, it updates the original story in ways that feel extremely appropriate for 2026. (ie, don’t expect a princess love interest!)

Really enjoyed it, hope plenty of others give it a try.

The Devil in the Dust (Outremer, #1) by Chaz Brenchley
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, High Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Minor M/M POV characters; possible MLM MC
PoV: Third-person, past-tense; dual PoVs
ISBN: 9781913892319
Goodreads

Outremer—a harsh and barren kingdom born of blood and at war with the world around it.

For forty years, the Order of the Knights Ransomer has been the sword-arm and conscience of the kingdom. Their stronghold, the Roq de Rançon, is the key to Outremer’s defence. But nomadic tribes on the kingdom’s borders threaten to reclaim this land that was once theirs.

Marron, a young man training to be a Ransomer, and Julianne, a noble-born girl betrothed to a man she’s never met, are journeying to the Roq. There each of them will be put to the test, as they become inextricably bound up in the coming upheaval that will decide the fate of Outremer.

The Outremer books have a slightly confusing history: the series was originally published in the 90s as three books in the UK, but as six in the US, and worse, the same titles showed up in both! Then in 2022, via Wizard’s Tower Press (awesome indie publisher, so far I’ve loved everything of theirs I’ve read!) Brenchley began publishing a ‘completely revised’ version of the series, which like the original US edition will be six books. (As I type right now, the first five books have been released.) So to be clear, I’m reviewing the 2022 edition of The Devil in the Dust, aka the revised version!

This has been on my radar for years for being old-school queer fantasy, but in this book that’s fairly subtle – I suspect I know which characters got this book tagged as M/M, but it’s clear that romance, if I’m right, is going to take a while to build up. This is not at all a complaint, I’m all for slow-burn. The other, more overt queer rep comes from two of the tribesmen mentioned in the book description, who do get POV passages, but not many. If you, too, are looking for queer fantasy here, adjust your expectations accordingly.

I loved this, though. It’s quite a short novel – not 300 pages on my ereader – and there’s a frankly bizarre sense that nothing has happened in it, but that’s not true: it’s a side-effect of Brenchley’s oddly hypnotising prose. The writing isn’t lush, but it feels lush somehow; it feels dreamy, soothing, even when you are simultaneously INCREDIBLY ANXIOUS because really tense things are happening. Please don’t ask me to explain how this is possible, because I have no freaking idea. Clearly Brenchley is a word-wizard.

So: the Crusades are not at all my wheelhouse, but Brenchley has created a set-up inspired by or at least reminiscent of them. The Ransomers are a holy order of soldiers, whose sole task is to eliminate those who deny the God. (I appreciate that the deity here is always referred to as ‘the God’, never just ‘God’; it helps distance the setting and characters from what I’m familiar with.) Marron and his unit have been sent to reinforce the Roq, a ridiculously sized, vitally important fortress near the border of the country Outremer. The Ransomers sure do remind me a lot of militant Christians, in styling and vibes and messaging; I found this tolerable because Brenchley is so clearly not painting them as the good guys. In fact, he doesn’t seem to be setting up ANYONE as clear and obvious good guys, which is my preference! But to get back to the point: the Ransomers are all referred to as brother so and so, they’re big on fasting and corporal punishment, there’s a whole lot of condemning any hint of original thought or curiosity.

Also at the Roq are Julianne, daughter of the man who runs the king’s spy networks, being sent off to marry someone to further her father’s goals. What makes this infuriating is that Julianne’s betrothed is of a culture that demands women wear veils wherever a man might see them, and never do anything that can’t be described as ‘demure’. The impending sense of a cage closing around Julianne is intense, especially when we first meet her on the road to the Roq. It would have been so easy to make Julianne a cliche, but she isn’t; she’s ruthlessly practical, especially with her own thoughts and emotions, and she’s very good at playing a role, being charming, making people like her. She hasn’t thrown a fit at being betrothed, and she isn’t going to.

On the way to the Roq, Julianne encounters a young woman who becomes her companion, Elisande – who (tries to) help her interact with the djinn they encounter on their way. (The titular devil in the dust.) Within the first few pages of her appearance, I liked Julianne quite a bit, though she was thoughtless with the djinn in a way that’s definitely coming back to bite her later. Marron, not so much: although technically we meet him already inside the Roq, a large chunk of his first chapter is a flashback to the previous day, when he and his unit slaughtered a village of alleged heretics. They were whipped up and unleashed by their confessor, Fra’ Piet, who I would really love to see burned at the stake, but…it’s kind of hard to lay all the blame at his feet. In quite graphic detail, we learn how Marron killed a baby during the frenzy, which weirdly enough did not endear him to me!

BUT. But. In the same way that there do not seem to be any obvious good guys in the conflict surrounding Outremer, the characters, too, are complicated. Marron spends most of the book obsessing over what he did, haunted by it, very deeply troubled by it. He has flashbacks, he grieves, he struggles to reconcile what happened with what he’s been taught (that the God is good, and everything for the God is also good). He’s a much more complex character than he seems at first, and killing the baby is arguably what drives his entire arc. I never felt like Brenchley was trying to make excuses for him, either – only acknowledging that group violence is real and awful and leaves scars not just on the victims but those who enact it. Marron’s development from first page to last…friends, I wanted to CHEER. I am in fact proud of him.

The worldbuilding has plenty of points of interest. Contributing to the Crusades-vibes is that the land around the Roq – and all of Outremer? – seem reminiscent of the Middle East in terms of climate. The culture of Outremer screams Medieval Western Europe in some ways, but not all, and their surroundings are nothing like. Outremer, we learn, has a province no one can access – some kind of conflict caused someone to, I don’t know, make a fold in the space-time continuum so that if you go to the border and take a step, you’re transported to the other side of the province with no in-between. It can’t be seen, even. And the king – is centuries old and almost nobody sees him ever? Plus, djinn! I really liked the djinn and can’t wait to learn/see more of them. But like – this is all painting a really interesting picture, even if thus far I am mostly being teased with it. It does have me curious about this setting, especially the magical elements. More, please!

A lot of the actual plot, the happenings, in Devil in the Dust are small-scale and personal, affecting only a few individuals – but that never makes them boring. Brenchley is really, REALLY great at getting us invested, winding the tension almost unbearably tight, so that it sure FEELS like the fate of the world is at stake sometimes! And this book is clearly laying a lot of groundwork: we’re being teased with all kinds of secrets in all directions, and you can almost count the seeds being planted, that will no doubt bloom into very big plot further down the line. If I laid out a timeline of what happens in each chapter, you might think it sounded dull, but it simply ISN’T – it’s just not as action-sequence heavy as I think we’re mostly used to, with Fantasy.

Part of me wishes Brenchley had made this new version of the series a trilogy, with Devil in the Dust and what would otherwise be the next book in one volume. Devil in the Dust is so short! But whatever way I spin it in my head, the book ends at an excellent stopping-point, and I’ve been left with all the incentive I need to dive into the next instalment. So that’s not really a critique, just my preference for doorstopper books talking, I think!

So yeah. Much recommended! And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to dive into book two, which is currently waiting on my ereader!

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