Oh April, the best month of the year! Spring break, packing up winter coats, and diving into a new bingo challenge. It’s been a bit hectic on the work front (I’m so tired of writing curriculum! Summer break please arrive), and a headcold kept me from getting as much read at the end of the month as I’d like. I’m realizing that I was … perhaps too ambitious in what I thought I could accomplish this month. Lots of books I promised would be April reads got put by the wayside, and I continue to be in a constant war with my unwillingness to put books down if I’m not enjoying them. The hope on the horizon is that the r/fantasy Pride Month planning is well underway! It’s work, but good work.
One of the highlights of my month was spending a delightful hour discovering the work of Weston Wei, whose art has captured my imagination and soul. Do I want to do a monthly artist feature? I probably don’t have the expertise for that, but the vibes here are immaculate.
Anyways, here’s some book stuff. The favorites, the forgettables, and the unfinishables!
Favorites of the Month
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez – a reread for my in person book club and my favorite story of all time. I’m collecting my thoughts for a full post, but this is such a layered and nuanced book that I think I’ll get something new out of it every time I read it. Now I’m just nervous about whether my friends like it as much as me …
The Fall of Kings by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman – a story of medieval academia, and the final book of the core Riverside trilogy. I think this was my favorite of the lot, and they can all be read as standalones! If you want magic to be unknown and mysterious, this is a great option. See my full review here.
Monkey Meat: The First Batch by Juni Ba – a collection of five short comics set in the same world, Monkey Meat had a distinctive art style that matched a strong zany anticapitalist message. It’s dark, dystopian, and very funny. I can’t wait to read more by this author. See my full review here.
The Wolf and His King by Finn Longman – a Queer retelling of Bisclavret with thoughtful and unique prose, introspective character work, and a dreamlike quality that I adored. The ending let me down a book, but as a complete package, this convinced me that I’ll probably read most stuff Longman puts out. See my full review here.
Psycop by Jordan Castillo Price – a paranormal cop thriller. It was fun and gritty and had excessive sex scenes. I think it’s a pretty niche market for this book, but I’m it. See my full review of books 1-3 here.
Mini-Reviews
For those books whose assorted thoughts didn’t warrant a full post.
Mortal Skin by Lily Mayne
Pitched as a Dark Romance featuring the evil kind of fae, I was surprised by how … not dark this was? It follows a human kidnapped into the fae world where he learns that he’s actually half-fae. Everyone wants him to ‘shed his mortal skin’ (if I have to hear that phrase one more time I will throw my kindle against the wall), and while he tries to avoid that fate he learns to make potions and gets the hots for the assassin prince of the Unseelie Court.
There are objectively a lot of things I disliked about this book. It features a self-insert bottom who has mysterious chemistry with a hot guy despite us never seeing why they’re into each other. This is kind of the epitome of gay romance written by women for women, but at least it’s a well-written version of that. It’s got a heavy romance focus, quick pacing, a fun portrait of the Unseelie world, and lots of dramatic plot, romantic, and erotic scenes. Mayne kept things moving, has a good sense of prose that’s engaging and easy to parse. She also acknowledged the absurdity of trying to take leather pants off quickly, and I’ll forever thank her for that. I’ll read the sequels for sure, but only when I want a very tropey romance that’s less dark than it is edgy.
Chapel at Enders Ridge by Beckett Krane
This is a Wild West Urban Fantasy with pretty heavy Romance components. It follows a vampiric bartender living in a town of nonhumans. When the magical glamour that protects them from human sight and memory begins to wear thin, he and his ‘wife’ suspect the human preacher who moved in next door. This is one of the better Fantasy Westerns I’ve read that embraces the fact that the Wild West was super diverse and super queer. Our lead character is an immigrant from India (100 years before the story begins), the Lakota people’s resistance to oppression is noted several times, and you’ll find a huge range of queer characters. The human preacher is dealing with internalized homophobia, and the town’s troubles form a very small mystery plotline that ends in some dramatic battles.
This was an easy reading experience, but I think it wore its welcome out a bit in my mind. I had trouble pulling myself away from the establishing scenes of Decker sipping whiskey while bantering with the bandit kid who uses the bar as a regular hideout. He went hunting for humans to survive, but wasn’t happy about it. You saw the fae maidens from the Dance Hall wearing human’s feet into bloody messes. Just lots of fun setting details. As the plot began to take center stage, however, I wish the pacing had been notched up a bit. Some of the romance elements felt rote or cliche, the climax didn’t have the weight it was intended; the ending just didn’t quite hold together as well as the opening did. With how light of a book this is, these weren’t deal breakers, but I definitely wished the story was 50 pages shorter.
The Solstice Prince by S.J. Himes
If you’re looking for a utopian monarchy with an instalove story, this will fit the bill. It fits this month’s theme of not understanding why these two were interested in each other, especially since we don’t see any conversations that aren’t explicitly sappy romantic. They skipped the flirting stage altogether. Oddly, Himes decides to make one of our main characters a recently freed slave, engages with some of that trauma in the beginning, then mostly ignores the effects of lingering trauma beyond set dressing. This was a really strange choice in a story that pushes how happy and good and wonderful everything else is. I understand the desire to provide a sense of contrast between the ‘good’ country and the homophobic evil country of our lead’s past, but either take the psychological impact of being enslaved seriously or don’t. Engaging with the topic before abandoning it caused a lot of dissonance for me. This story was enjoyable enough, but I’m not going to continue with the series.
Shook! A Black Horror Anthology edited by Rodney Barnes
I had such high hopes for this anthology and walked away terribly disappointed. When you boast a cast of writers that have won and been nominated for a good bundle of awards, I anticipate a certain level of quality, even if I don’t enjoy it. Sadly, a lot of these shorts were meandering and vague. There were a few really delightful stories (my favorite focused on a dancer dying of AIDs and contemplating what the afterlife holds for her), but I got to the end of a good many and thought ‘that’s all?’. I also was generally unimpressed with the art. I just … I don’t know. I read about one per night, and there were enough good ones to keep me from giving up on the collection, but this was rough.
DNFs
Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman
I wanted to like this book so much, but I just kept zoning out and realized I wasn’t invested in anything happening. It’s very character focused, about a trans man going through the journals of his chosen father (also trans). In the end, I didn’t find the different voices distinct enough, and the setting felt invisible in a very jarring way. I also didn’t love Two Doctor’s Gorski, so I think Fellman may just not be the right author for me. Definitely worth a try for anyone who enjoys things on the more literary side of things.
City of Others by Jared Poon
This follows a city bureaucrat responsible for keeping the magical world secret. I DNFd at about the 10% mark. I found the characters flat, and there was far too much poor infodumping. I think there’s a way to make governmental acronyms fun to read about, but it’s tough when the main character simultaneously rags on them while also using them. Poon overexplained every detail, leaving the story in a constant state of tension between infodump and rushed plot. I wonder if I’d have liked this more in physical form; I didn’t find the narrator very dynamic, which put a focus on a lot of the parts of the story that were bugging me.
Red and the Wolves by Cherry Zong
This Little Red Riding Hood retelling had one too many strikes against it. The art style is one that I’m growing to dislike: blank backgrounds to allow a focus on main characters, shifts to Sunday morning cartoon style in comedic moments, and some overexaggerated art choices. It imitated a lot of manga elements without considering the greater context that makes those manga choices successful. The story seemed … fine enough, but I didn’t particularly find the sapphic pair of a wolf shifter and little red super compelling. The premise felt bland and full of plot holes – if Red and Grandma are the only two humans in the forest, why do they live so far apart? Red even complains about not having company. I get why it’s got an average of 4 on goodreads, but it wasn’t for me.
The Subtle Art of Folding Space by John Chu
I disliked … everything about reading this, but it did turn me on to the fantastic artist Weston Wei, whose work I now love. This novel featured a multiverse in peril and challenging family dynamics, which was wild because I just watched Everything Everywhere All At Once for the first time right before picking this up on cover art alone. Sadly, this book felt like it was pushing against itself. The Skunkworks, a pipe system that powers the universe is open knowledge, but also hidden. It gets monologues about how it functions, but is unknowable and quirky (analysis of a section can be manifested in food form to be eaten). Ellie’s sister tries to assassinate her through absurd methods (Greek wrestling teams!), but Ellie can’t help but think that her sister is just looking out for her. It felt exaggerated and cartoony in plot, setting, and characterization while trying for very somber themes. This can be done (see Everything Everywhere All At Once) but this just wasn’t executed at the level needed to marry the different elements together. Frankly, I’m astounded that TOR put their stamp of approval on this.
Upcoming Reads
I … did not get through nearly as many books from this month’s plan as I thought I would. And I had Spring Break to read nonstop! Sadly, motivation lowered, I got distracted by things on my Kindle, and I got sick right as I was settling into a time-sensitive read of The Spear Cuts Through Water
So, consider this list aspirational at best. Works of Vermin and The Red Winter are my only ‘must reads’, but I am really enjoying mood reading over forcing myself into books that I’m not excited for. It helps to have an expansive TBR to facilitate my flightiness.
Marked for Plot 