I am officially back to work. Summer vacation has ended, which means things will be slowing down compared to how much I’ve been reading and writing over the past few months. This time of year is always a mix of excitement, nerves, and melancholy. This year I’ll get to revisit a high school genre fiction elective, which I’m very excited about. I keep dragging my feet on researching short stories that are going to work for my curriculum.
My reading went on a bit of an excursion due to a concussion early in the month. That led to a lot more audiobooks than even I normally go for, and I enjoyed some nice mindless stories that I could lay down and close my eyes to.
Longform Reviews
- The Language of Liars by SL Huang: an exceptional novella that tackles challenging questions and unfolds like a puzzle box.
- Open Era by Edward Schmit: a really delightful romance that focused on mental health in the sports world. Grounded characters kept me hooked to this one.
- Villain by Natalie Zina Walschots: this sequel had a disappointing start, but really hit the psychologically villainous beats I was hoping for.
- Chai and Charmcraft by Lynn Strong: a cozy political fantasy and slow burn romance. I loved the worldbuilding and how it treated gossip as politically nuanced as court intrigue
- The Girl With a Thousand Faces by Sunyi Dean: follows a ghost medium in Hong Kong. The aesthetics and craft are really high quality, but come expecting some nontraditional choices and structures.
- For Real by Alexis Hall: a remarkably fresh take on age gap and BDSM romance. Over a decade old, but still feels subversive, which tells you where the genre is at.
- The Dawnhounds by Sascha Stronach: a rebellious biopunk book exploring police corruption and brutality, mixed some wildly eldritch gods
- If We Cannot Go at the Speed of Light by Kim Cho-yeop: a short story collection that will appeal more to classic English Science Fiction fans, with a focus on concept over character.
- A Long and Speaking Silence by Nghi Vo: this was probably my least favorite Singing Hills novella, but it was still high quality (and short). Lots of delicious food descriptions!
- A Trade of Blood by Robert Jackson Bennett: my least favorite in the series of mysteries, but it was a fun time. Just wanted more thematic heft from it.
- The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos by James Tynion IV: a fun and straightforward YA superhero comic. It had more balls on it than most of the current YA fare, though
- Demigod 12 by Gail Carriger: the intergalactic Eurovision romance continues, though this one was very romance heavy. Excited to wrap up this series soon!
- The Odyssey: currently my only movie review? It was fine, but a little too much ‘things happen’ without depth of meaning. Wish it were a TV show.
- Mage Errant by John Bierce: my concussion audiobook series! Great fight scenes, fun worldbuilding extrapolating from magic. Not the highest quality prose out there.
- Cut and Run by Madeline Urban and Abigail Roux: this mid 2000s book was an early cult hit in the queer thriller scene. It was mindless and fun, and it was also a masterclass of things to avoid when writing queer men.
Mini Reviews
This Town Sleeps by Dennis E. Staples: gay male speculative fiction written by Native American authors is … rather difficult to find. So difficult that This Town Sleeps is the only thing I could locate, but it’s a magical realism story that hews so close to realistic fiction that it didn’t scratch the itch I was looking for. I don’t think it will satisfy most genre fiction fans. If you have suggestions, please throw them my way!
I really liked how this book handled internalized homophobia. A big part of the book is an out Ojibwe man struggling with his feelings towards a semi-regular white hookup who clearly isn’t at peace with himself. It was really heart wrenching for all involved, honestly. There’s also a ghost dog, the story of a young basketball star’s death, and a truly astounding number of POVs for a relatively short novel – 224 pages. Unfortunately, I think it spread itself too thin, leaving most plotlines underdeveloped. There was a lot of emotion here, frankness about Reservations (good and bad), grappling with your relationship with your racial and sexual identities, substance abuse, and more. However, no element got enough attention for me to grip onto it as a true through line. Maybe that’s the point though; the title tells you that the story is about the town, not any one person. I’m glad I read it, but I’ll keep hunting for something that’s a better fit for my tastes.
Of Wizards and Ravens by Charm and Fable: this is a web-serial published on Royal Road. I picked it up as something queer to read on my phone that was zero-effort. I can happily say that unless you enjoy Royal Road style writing, this book is absolutely not for you! The quality and organization just isn’t there, especially in the first few chapters. I’m having a lot of fun with it though.
The Demon of Beausoleil by Mari Costa: a fun little comic about a bratty twink half demon who becomes an exorcist after sleeping his way through half the men in Europe (including his sister’s fiancé) and his rather taciturn bodyguard. I read this one in an hour or two. Had it been any longer, it probably wouldn’t have been worth it, but it was short and enjoyable enough to read with a morning cup of chai. Lots of shallow, but fun, archetypical characters, with a plot that mostly serves as a way to connect sassy quips in different configurations
Mana Mirror: The Twin Trials by Tobias Begley: this slice of life progression fantasy by one of my favorite authors continues to be a bit of a disappointment. I was obsessed with book 1, but now it just feels like the story is nothing but an unending sequence of spells and ingredients and items. Where is the storrrrryyyyyyy???? I’ll probably keep reading, but I do so under duress! Begley can do better than this.
Misfit Mage by Michael Taggart: I probably should have DNF’d this one? It’s got a good number of fans who swear by it, but standard Urban Fantasy settings don’t really appeal to me. I also think this book struggled by stint of it not having a clear plot direction. Instead it focuses on progression/power gain elements, but in a relatively undefined system? This left it on shaky ground for me, but the author was also a fan of exaggerated characters. When the protagonists friends twirled with joy in multiple spots, I knew that this probably wasn’t for me.
Bingo Check In
My quest to do four r/fantasy bingo cards is coming along nicely! My Achillean card keeps getting tweaks as I bump off books I wasn’t as impressed with. Chai and Charmcraft is the most important add here, but I’m almost finished with George Falls Through Time, which has me in a bit of a chokehold.
The comics and graphic novels card continues to get the least love from me, and it also has a few books that I really wasn’t impressed with. Hoping to make some more concrete progress on it in September and October, but I’m not forcing anything.
The Novellas card remains mostly unchanged, and I anticipate it will remain that way. There’s a few books I wouldn’t mind getting rid of, but not so much I’m going to hunt down specific topics in novella format to do so.
Aaaand my no strings attached card is almost done! No immediate plans to read either a first contact or 1970s book. Maybe I’ll stumble across things that fit, but otherwise I’ll get to this in January and February.
Points of Interest
The Minnesota State fair is delightful as always! The big highlight for me this year were the Deep Fried Olives, as well as the entries in the Creative Arts Building. As the kid of a weaver, I am constantly in awe of what people do with fiber.
Not much (any?) gaming or TV this month, but I’m hoping to play some of Orbitals with my partner once it releases in september!
Ryka Aoki, author of the phenomenal Light From Uncommon Stars wrote a great essay in Uncanny magazine discussing the Turing Test, Artificial Intelligence, and Transphobia. It was an interesting read tracing the performance of gender and its many iterations, along with what transphobia says about humanity’s ability to treat extraterrestrial life with empathy and humanity.
DNFs
An unusually high amount of DNFs this month. Turns out having a concussion gave me a very low tolerance for anything that wasn’t immediately working. When you’re spending 10+ waking hours per day with a sleep mask on, the audiobook really needs to hit. As such, take it all with a grain of salt. Interestingly, almost all of these were both audiobooks and library checkouts, ie books that I would feel no guilt about dropping. After all, that means other people get to read them sooner! Had I purchased some of these books, I’m curious if I would have forced myself to stick out a less enjoyable experience because I spent the money already. Not my favorite trait, but at least I’m not in denial about it.
The Feywild Job by CL Polk: this one really hurt to abandon. However, I really wasn’t vibing with either the prologue or the first chapter. Something about the characters and dialogue felt off, which is so different from how I normally respond to Polk’s writing.
A Bone in His Teeth by Kellen Graves: a romantasy with fairly good reviews. I didn’t even get far enough to meet the love interest. There was a runaway indentured servant storyline at the start that really didn’t work for me, and everytheing was relentlessly mermaid themed from page 1. Just too heavy a hand for me. If you’re interested in MCs with mobility aids (cane), this might be worth a look?
Mercy by Ian Haramaki: I think this was maybe supposed to be an isekai romance from the POV of the person who has always lived in the magical world? The prose was painfully modern feeling, which felt at odds with the seemingly fantastical setting. Also too much discussion of the ‘boob hole’ in the protagonist’s priestly vestments. It was amusing once (and accurate, look at the cover!), but emphasized too much. The whole thing just felt … off.
Bite Marks and Broken Hearts by TJ Rose: in another month I’d have continued with this one. However, concussed me had no patience for ‘five pages of following you home but you refuse to explain anything’. Ten percent into the book and the protagonist was a stereotypical hot mess self-insert, the vampire had nothing more interesting going on than nice forearms, and a quirky doll receptionist wasn’t enough to keep me reading.
Green City Wars by Adrian Tchaikovsky: I was so excited for a racoon noir book! Sadly, there felt like a lot of worldbuilding setup that got repetitive, and I found myself less interested in the idea of a world where humans pump chemicals into animals for them to be invisible little helpers. I think I was imagining more of a pulpy Zootopia for adults vibe?
The Fake Divination Offense by Sara Raasch: I have concluded that Raasch just isn’t for me. To be fair, I DNF’d the first romance in this series, which didn’t set this one up for success because I cared not a whit for references to the previous romance. I was hunting for a fantasy sports romance (love a sports romance!), but I didn’t even get far enough for those elements to come into play. Something about Raasch’s characterization puts me off.
Not Your Sidekick by CB Lee: this is a YA superhero book that I was hoping to use for my Fantasy Book Club options. I realized last year I didn’t have any queer options, so that became one of my projects before I teach it again in April. This is a fine enough book, and I think some students will enjoy it. However, once I realized it wasn’t a good fit for my bookclub unit I didn’t have much of an interest in continuing. Middle Grade writing style with YA content made for a weird combination.
A Tapestry of Fate by S. A. Chakraborty: The sequel to The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi, I may try this one in visual form, as I think I just wasn’t jiving with Chakraborty’s writing in audio format. However, my physical reading is much more competitive than my audiobook time, so chances are pretty slim that I ever end up picking up this, even if I think it would be perfectly enjoyable.
Between Two Fires by Christopher Buehlman: I know this was written over a decade ago, but opening with an attempted rape as a way to establish grimdark vibes feels very dated. Otherwise, not much to say. After about two hours I thought the writing was nice, but myself wholly uninterested in what was happening. I did some quick googling to see what direction it was headed thematically, and decided it didn’t sound interesting enough to continue. Kind of surprised about this, to be honest. This was more apathy than dislike.
Upcoming Reads
With school starting up, I’m trying not to commit to too much. I’m almost finished with George Falls Through Time and have so many thoughts about it.
The Noss Saga is a gay epic fantasy I’ve been chipping my way through, and I just started listening to book 3. I have to give myself lots of space between entries, because it’s very dense in lore. I think this book will be the turning point to see if I continue with the series or let it rest. There’s just nothing else I’ve found that is properly gay epic fantasy other than this and The Spear Cuts Through Water (and even that’s stretching into Literary Fiction a bit). So I don’t know what else would fill this void.
The Private Eye is a cyberpunk noir comic I’ve eyed for a while. Only one chapter in, but really enjoying it.
Yours Celestially is a book club book I’m picking up! Going in a bit blind, but very excited for it.
World Trigger is supposed to be a nice little mindless action manga with a phenomenal tournament arc. Great for a new school year.
And finally, The Halls of the Dead, which I am shivering in excitement for! Will Hallow become one of my treasured few must-read authors? I am praying that the answer is yes and that I fall in love with this.
Marked for Plot 