Sunyi's bookshelf: all en-US Mon, 24 Mar 2025 13:15:22 -0700 60 Sunyi's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg Seven Recipes for Revolution 217953677
Seventeen-year-old Paprick is a common butcher, carving slabs of meat from gargantuan monsters so elite chefs can prepare magic-granting meals for the rich. But Paprick’s true passion is cooking, and if he can learn the secret art, his dreams of liberating his people and sharing the monsters� magic with the world could come true. He steals the precious ingredients needed to practise recipes at home, but if he’s caught, he’ll be executed.

As his desperation grows, he ventures into the black market and uncovers a spice imported from unknown lands. Combining it with the last of his stolen meat, he cooks a dish the world has never tasted before, with side-effects he couldn’t have foreseen.

The dish’s magic grows Paprick to kaiju-size, and legends of his powers spread among the people. Immediately, the rulers arrest him, but Paprick convinces them to make him a chef’s apprentice―if they ever want to learn his Recipe. However, his exposure to the world of high cuisine reveals the rot at its centre, and with his new power, rebellion is only a few recipes away…]]> 480 Ryan Rose 1837840644 Sunyi 5
The book I read then wasn't the book you're about to read now; he has been through many manuscripts, with much perseverance, to reach this point. Ten years, many books, many hundreds of rejections.

I give this context because I want to convey how much, even then, he had a gift for turning tropes on their head, and possessed a startling tenacity. The grit you see in Paprick comes from its author. The socio-economic issues explored in these pages are a matter of experience (minus the kaiju, of course). The love of food, the sheer ambition of the worldbuilding scope, and delight in detail and maps and kingdoms and magic, are all testament to a dedicated reader who adores this genre, yet also wants to take it in fresh new directions.

If you're on the fence, let me encourage you to read "SEVEN RECIPES" and give it a chance. There is nothing else quite like it to hit shelves this year. It is a truly unique and imaginative work, from a incredibly dedicated and determined author.]]> 4.27 Seven Recipes for Revolution
author: Ryan Rose
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.27
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/03/23
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves:
review:
I encountered Ryan almost ten years ago, when we were both stumbling around on various writer forums as total newbies. He was kind enough to do a critique swap with me in those days, which I appreciated greatly.

The book I read then wasn't the book you're about to read now; he has been through many manuscripts, with much perseverance, to reach this point. Ten years, many books, many hundreds of rejections.

I give this context because I want to convey how much, even then, he had a gift for turning tropes on their head, and possessed a startling tenacity. The grit you see in Paprick comes from its author. The socio-economic issues explored in these pages are a matter of experience (minus the kaiju, of course). The love of food, the sheer ambition of the worldbuilding scope, and delight in detail and maps and kingdoms and magic, are all testament to a dedicated reader who adores this genre, yet also wants to take it in fresh new directions.

If you're on the fence, let me encourage you to read "SEVEN RECIPES" and give it a chance. There is nothing else quite like it to hit shelves this year. It is a truly unique and imaginative work, from a incredibly dedicated and determined author.
]]> <![CDATA[The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)]]> 195512668
In Daretana’s greatest mansion, a high imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree erupted from his body. Even here at the Empire’s borders, where contagions abound and the blood of the leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death both terrifying and impossible.

Assigned to investigate is Ana Dolabra, a detective whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities. Rumor has it that she wears a blindfold at all times, and that she can solve impossible cases without even stepping outside the walls of her home.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol, magically altered in ways that make him the perfect aide to Ana’s brilliance. Din is at turns scandalized, perplexed, and utterly infuriated by his new superior—but as the case unfolds and he watches Ana’s mind leap from one startling deduction to the next, he must admit that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

By an “endlessly inventive� (Vulture) author with a “wicked sense of humor� (NPR), The Tainted Cup mixes the charms of detective fiction with brilliant world-building to deliver a fiendishly clever mystery that’s at once instantly recognizable and thrillingly new.]]> 432 Robert Jackson Bennett 1399725378 Sunyi 5
I'm a crime fiction fan (my secondary love, after SFF) and this is infact a crime fantasy novel. A crime EPIC fantasy, actually, which is genuinely quite rare. Crime and fantasy usually has a humorous edge, which is completely fine and enjoyable, but epic fantasy and crime is hard to find. This is because epic level worldbuilding adds a high degree of complexity to the book, and so does a crime structure. Combining both means you have a book with often unwieldy levels of complications to navigate. Not only is there is a puzzle to unspool for the reader, but there is a world to weave around them.

Bennett is no novice, though, and has a good many books under his belt. Perhaps it is no surprise that he turns his hand to such a challenging book. There is a LOT going on in Tainted Cup, from Sanderson-levels of worldbuilding (big leviathans! yearly attacks! complex political and magic systems! Wonderful stuff) to the tricksy nature of the plot itself, which is couched in layer upon layer of intrigue.

The characters of course are fantastic. We have the Holmes-style (quirky, intelligent, uniquely disabled) detective, and her first-person watson-style sidekick with his own secrets and issues. They work brilliantly together, as one can hope for and expect in the best of crime fiction.

As a crime nerd there were some structural things I found interesting. For example, the timing of the bodies. The reveal of second and third bodies is a Thing in crime, and I found it fascinating that SPOILER all the bodies died at the same time in this story, yet were only discovered at different times. That had knock on effects for how the information was dug up and how the characters reacted. But this is me being a huge structure nerd and probably not an interesting fact for most readers.

The book has its flaws, as all books do. Nonetheless I unreservedly give it five stars (see breakdown below.)


Well-written and not problematic > three stars.
I enjoyed it and had a good experience reading it, fourth star.
The novel achieved what it set out to do > fifth star.

(Yes, I'm kinder about reviews now that I write. that's normal. I have a more rounded appreciation for weighign books against what they wish to achieve, and more sympathy for the publishing process in general.)


If you're interested in the flaws that caught my attention, but did not lower the star rating for me, they are as follows;

-- the m/m romance felt like it was written by someone who had once glimpsed a gay person at a great distance through a telescope. It was pretty flat. Since I don't give a flying rat's arse about romance in books, though, this didn't bother me at all. Romance is neither here nor there and I don't really care if it features in a story. This probably shows in my own weak attempts to write romance, so I can sympathise with authors who also dont nail it.

-- the amount of GRINNING that Ana does was driving me up the wall. She must grin about 5 times a page in every scene she's in. I'm hyper sensitive to dialogue tics like that, though, so this won't bother most.

-- the title is Not Good. It just doesn't do the book justice. There's SO MUCH this novel has to offer and none of it is conveyed through the title--not the scope of its complexity, the blending of its genres, nor its tone.


Pros - GREAT story, great world, fun characters, truly unique in lots of ways. Impressive structural craft on display and just generally, a lot of fun. I did not drag ass reading this book and was keen to return to it, reading big swathes in one sitting despite its length. Autistic detective and dyslexic sidekick too, and M/M rep even if anemically done.

]]> 4.48 2024 The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan, #1)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves:
review:
I did not know much about this book before starting it, except that several people I trust had really enjoyed it.

I'm a crime fiction fan (my secondary love, after SFF) and this is infact a crime fantasy novel. A crime EPIC fantasy, actually, which is genuinely quite rare. Crime and fantasy usually has a humorous edge, which is completely fine and enjoyable, but epic fantasy and crime is hard to find. This is because epic level worldbuilding adds a high degree of complexity to the book, and so does a crime structure. Combining both means you have a book with often unwieldy levels of complications to navigate. Not only is there is a puzzle to unspool for the reader, but there is a world to weave around them.

Bennett is no novice, though, and has a good many books under his belt. Perhaps it is no surprise that he turns his hand to such a challenging book. There is a LOT going on in Tainted Cup, from Sanderson-levels of worldbuilding (big leviathans! yearly attacks! complex political and magic systems! Wonderful stuff) to the tricksy nature of the plot itself, which is couched in layer upon layer of intrigue.

The characters of course are fantastic. We have the Holmes-style (quirky, intelligent, uniquely disabled) detective, and her first-person watson-style sidekick with his own secrets and issues. They work brilliantly together, as one can hope for and expect in the best of crime fiction.

As a crime nerd there were some structural things I found interesting. For example, the timing of the bodies. The reveal of second and third bodies is a Thing in crime, and I found it fascinating that SPOILER all the bodies died at the same time in this story, yet were only discovered at different times. That had knock on effects for how the information was dug up and how the characters reacted. But this is me being a huge structure nerd and probably not an interesting fact for most readers.

The book has its flaws, as all books do. Nonetheless I unreservedly give it five stars (see breakdown below.)


Well-written and not problematic > three stars.
I enjoyed it and had a good experience reading it, fourth star.
The novel achieved what it set out to do > fifth star.

(Yes, I'm kinder about reviews now that I write. that's normal. I have a more rounded appreciation for weighign books against what they wish to achieve, and more sympathy for the publishing process in general.)


If you're interested in the flaws that caught my attention, but did not lower the star rating for me, they are as follows;

-- the m/m romance felt like it was written by someone who had once glimpsed a gay person at a great distance through a telescope. It was pretty flat. Since I don't give a flying rat's arse about romance in books, though, this didn't bother me at all. Romance is neither here nor there and I don't really care if it features in a story. This probably shows in my own weak attempts to write romance, so I can sympathise with authors who also dont nail it.

-- the amount of GRINNING that Ana does was driving me up the wall. She must grin about 5 times a page in every scene she's in. I'm hyper sensitive to dialogue tics like that, though, so this won't bother most.

-- the title is Not Good. It just doesn't do the book justice. There's SO MUCH this novel has to offer and none of it is conveyed through the title--not the scope of its complexity, the blending of its genres, nor its tone.


Pros - GREAT story, great world, fun characters, truly unique in lots of ways. Impressive structural craft on display and just generally, a lot of fun. I did not drag ass reading this book and was keen to return to it, reading big swathes in one sitting despite its length. Autistic detective and dyslexic sidekick too, and M/M rep even if anemically done.


]]> For No Mortal Creature 223854584 A teen girl with the power of resurrection must venture into the afterlife, but to survive the death realm, she’ll need the help of her two mortal enemies–both of whom she is inexplicably drawn to–in this romantic, gothic fantasy inspired by Wuthering Heights.

When Jia Yi suddenly finds herself alive again after being stabbed through the heart by an enemy’s sword, she realizes she possesses a rare power: the ability to move between the living realm and the shrouded world of ghosts. Ghosts including Lin, her ex-best friend and former love, whose betrayal she still hasn’t recovered from.

At first, Jia wants nothing to do with Lin, or any ghosts–metaphorical or otherwise. But when her beloved grandmother abruptly passes away, Jia is forced to travel into the afterlife to save her.

To survive the treacherous death realm, Jia will need to rely on both Lin and her longtime enemy, the cold and enigmatic Prince Essien Lancaster. Only, she isn’t sure whether she can trust either of them. With tensions high and new and old connections blooming, Jia must confront the ghosts of her past…or risk becoming one herself.]]> 480 Keshe Chow 0593898478 Sunyi 5 4.78 2025 For No Mortal Creature
author: Keshe Chow
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.78
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2025/02/11
shelves:
review:

]]> I Who Have Never Known Men 11996 "As far back as I can recall, I have been in the bunker."

A young woman is kept in a cage underground with thirty-nine other females, guarded by armed men who never speak; her crimes unremembered... if indeed there were crimes.

The youngest of forty—a child with no name and no past—she survives for some purpose long forgotten in a world ravaged and wasted. In this reality where intimacy is forbidden—in the unrelenting sameness of the artificial days and nights—she knows nothing of books and time, of needs and feelings.

Then everything changes... and nothing changes.

A young woman who has never known men—a child who knows of no history before the bars and restraints—must now reinvent herself, piece by piece, in a place she has never been... and in the face of the most challenging and terrifying of unknowns: freedom.]]> 208 Jacqueline Harpman 0380731819 Sunyi 5
Eerie, desolate, thoughtful, and hopeless. I have described it to a few folks as feeling like the cross between a feminist answer to Albert Camus' L'ETRANGER, and Plato's parable of the prisoner. It is pure introspection, a story of insignificant yet deeply human experiences living out lives with no answers. You want so much for the answers to make sense, for rescue to arrive, for hope and purpose to match the spirit and passion of the main character, and they don't.

But isn't that life? We believe ourselves to be heroes of our own private stories, when really most of us are forgettable bit parts in a wider epic tale--one that, vast though it is in comparison to our own experiences, will still never amount to much.

Human life will eventually expire in all forms and ways, and the chances of our race being here in a few hundred thousand years is slim. I'm digressing now, but you can see the sort of mood that this story might put you into. ]]> 4.22 1995 I Who Have Never Known Men
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.22
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2025/01/09
date added: 2025/01/09
shelves:
review:
Bought and read on the recommendation of a friend.

Eerie, desolate, thoughtful, and hopeless. I have described it to a few folks as feeling like the cross between a feminist answer to Albert Camus' L'ETRANGER, and Plato's parable of the prisoner. It is pure introspection, a story of insignificant yet deeply human experiences living out lives with no answers. You want so much for the answers to make sense, for rescue to arrive, for hope and purpose to match the spirit and passion of the main character, and they don't.

But isn't that life? We believe ourselves to be heroes of our own private stories, when really most of us are forgettable bit parts in a wider epic tale--one that, vast though it is in comparison to our own experiences, will still never amount to much.

Human life will eventually expire in all forms and ways, and the chances of our race being here in a few hundred thousand years is slim. I'm digressing now, but you can see the sort of mood that this story might put you into.
]]> <![CDATA[The Girl With A Thousand Faces]]> 218589906 Sunyi Dean 0008479518 Sunyi 0
at the time of writing I'm not sure which one my publishers will choose to put out first - that will be a calculation based on which book they feel is closer to being in a "polished" state, I suspect, plus an assessment of market, trends, timing, and so on. It could go either way, and both books have been through a staggering amount of work and edits already.

Stay tuned for updates! I certainly will be :P

Edit: It's looking like The Girl With A Thousand Faces is almost certainly the next book. I'm genuinely so excited for this one.

For the kind folks who are asking, I can't yet give a sequel to Book Eaters, sorry! I know what that book would be and have an outline written down somewhere, but I need to finish my current contract first :) the good news is that the two books I've written should clear out that contract!]]> 5.00 2026 The Girl With A Thousand Faces
author: Sunyi Dean
name: Sunyi
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2026
rating: 0
read at: 2024/09/09
date added: 2024/10/22
shelves:
review:
After much fcking around and struggling over the past few years, including a lengthy process that involved redrafting many times from scratch, I've somehow ended up in a position where I've finished two manuscripts in the autumn of 2024. It's been 3 years since I've "handed in" a novel, good lord.

at the time of writing I'm not sure which one my publishers will choose to put out first - that will be a calculation based on which book they feel is closer to being in a "polished" state, I suspect, plus an assessment of market, trends, timing, and so on. It could go either way, and both books have been through a staggering amount of work and edits already.

Stay tuned for updates! I certainly will be :P

Edit: It's looking like The Girl With A Thousand Faces is almost certainly the next book. I'm genuinely so excited for this one.

For the kind folks who are asking, I can't yet give a sequel to Book Eaters, sorry! I know what that book would be and have an outline written down somewhere, but I need to finish my current contract first :) the good news is that the two books I've written should clear out that contract!
]]> Not So Stories 38231594 216 David Thomas Moore Sunyi 0 to-read 3.69 2018 Not So Stories
author: David Thomas Moore
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Dead Pig Collector (Kindle Single)]]> 18194449
DEAD PIG COLLECTOR introduces readers to Mister Sun, a very proficient businessman whose trade is the murder and spotless removal of human beings. Like any businessman, he knows each transaction is only as good as his client - and today's client, in Los Angeles, has turned out to be so dangerously stupid that Mister Sun's work and life are now in jeopardy...]]> 29 Warren Ellis 0374711879 Sunyi 5 3.89 2013 Dead Pig Collector (Kindle Single)
author: Warren Ellis
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/09/29
shelves:
review:

]]> An Academy for Liars 203956639 A student will find that the hardest lessons sometimes come outside the classroom in this stunning dark academia novel from the acclaimed author of The Year of the Witching and House of Hunger.

Lennon Carter’s life is falling apart.

Then she gets a mysterious phone call inviting her to take the entrance exam for Drayton College, a school of magic hidden in a secret pocket of Savannah. Lennon has been chosen because—like everyone else at the school—she has the innate gift of persuasion, the ability to wield her will like a weapon, using it to control others and, in rare cases, matter itself.

After passing the test, Lennon begins to learn how to master her devastating and unsettling power. But despite persuasion’s heavy toll on her body and mind, she is wholly captivated by her studies, by Drayton’s lush, moss-draped campus, and by her brilliant classmates. But even more captivating is her charismatic adviser, Dante, who both intimidates and enthralls her.

As Lennon continues in her studies her control grows, and she starts to uncover more about the secret world she has entered into, including the disquieting history of Drayton College, and the way her mentor’s tragic and violent past intertwines with it. She is increasingly disturbed by what she learns. For it seems that the ultimate test is to embrace absolute power without succumbing to corruption . . . and it's a test she's terrified she is going to fail.]]> 464 Alexis Henderson 0593638301 Sunyi 5
Dark Academia isn't usually my cup of tea, I'll be honest about that. However the description sounded intriguing so I thought I'd give it a try, and I'm glad I did! The writing style drew me in straight away.

###

Drayton College, the academy for which the book is named is almost certainly in conversation with our cultural obsession, Harry Potter (I'm not at all potterhead, but there were what looked like cynical, wry references here and there, plus those sodding books cast a LONG shadow.) It is much darker, though. The "persuasion" magic that the students learn at Dratyon is tied up with ethical issues of consent, and where the HP world distances itself from human society as much as possible, Drayton chooses to interfere wherever possible. It aligns itself with politics, with powerful people, with money and greed and corruption, using the magical talent of its students and staff as leverage.

Drayton does all this because it requires money to function, and to train its new students. The obvious ethical quandaries abound, of course--such as the knock-on impact of whatever wars and policies Drayton inadvertently or advertently fuels in the pursuit of financial security for its institution.

The other cost of Drayton is the toll it takes on those labouring to keep its metaphysical existence stable. Like HP, Drayton exists in its own dimension, sort of (it's complicated, and I won't attempt to sum up in a sentence what the book needs whole chapters to explain). Unlike Drayton, maintaining this state has a terrible human cost (more than that would be significant spoilers).

In all of these situations, Drayton justifies both its dubious social entanglements and ongoing psychological torture of staff/students by claiming that the magic it studies is not only greatly beneficial to humanity and therefore must continue, but also highly dangerous and only suitable for a select few. There are allegories and allusions to be drawn here between this philosophy and the elitism baked into real-life academia: knowledge is valuable, so the lower classes shouldn't have it, but we do expect their taxes to keep funding it.

FOr me, the central question surrounding Drayton was therefore this: at what point does the cost of maintaining something valuable, become too high to pay? For the staff who run Drayton, there is no limit.

But intriguing as Drayton is, what really sets this novel apart is the characters.

Enter Lennon Carter, the MC. Lennon is a deeply compelling person - flawed, complex, intelligent; she can be reckless and violent, manipulative and cruel, fickle and morally ambiguous. Yet she is also self-reflective and self-critical, forever analysing and examining herself with a detached gaze that spares none of her own feelings; this stops her being irritating or unlikeable, because she owns her mistakes and considers them at length. She is also loyal, and curiously naive at times--her instinct is to like the people she meets, and to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Like the other characters at Drayton, Lennon is glad to be at college. In Drayton, she can be someone special, instead of a depressed failure (how she views herself). Already damaged, she enters Drayton's distorting and morally ambiguous sphere and becomes equally distorted and confused as the story progresses; the challenges she faces demand that she constantly examine her own beliefs and positions, even as the situation and relationships she's in spiral into further complexity.

I give Lennon a lot of time here because I think she will make or break this novel for a lot of readers. She is NOT a cheerful good little Mary Sue; she's a brat, albeit a smart one. I love how complicated and slightly wicked she can be, but I don't need (or want) my MCs to be nice people.

There is nothing wrong with reading a story where the MC is nice, to be absolutely clear! But if that requirement is a crucial part of enjoying stories for you, then Lennon is likely going to be a source of frustration and shock. She's extremely messy, and not in the way folks mean on Book Twitter when they talk about mess; Lennon is VERY messy, as in "you soon understand why she's spent considerable time in psych wards" sort of messy.


Tldr; READ THIS FOR: complex, morally grey characters who make bad, violent decisions with good intentions, and whose twisted friendships redeem each other despite all the drama along the way. Plus a great atmosphere and interesting magic system that merges psychology with metaphysics.
]]> 3.45 2024 An Academy for Liars
author: Alexis Henderson
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/09/11
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves:
review:
A great book that really surprised me in lots of different ways. I was sent this as a blurb request originally, though due to various circumstances at both ends, by the time it arrived I was likely to late to blurb it (the book is out now, in trade paperback.)

Dark Academia isn't usually my cup of tea, I'll be honest about that. However the description sounded intriguing so I thought I'd give it a try, and I'm glad I did! The writing style drew me in straight away.

###

Drayton College, the academy for which the book is named is almost certainly in conversation with our cultural obsession, Harry Potter (I'm not at all potterhead, but there were what looked like cynical, wry references here and there, plus those sodding books cast a LONG shadow.) It is much darker, though. The "persuasion" magic that the students learn at Dratyon is tied up with ethical issues of consent, and where the HP world distances itself from human society as much as possible, Drayton chooses to interfere wherever possible. It aligns itself with politics, with powerful people, with money and greed and corruption, using the magical talent of its students and staff as leverage.

Drayton does all this because it requires money to function, and to train its new students. The obvious ethical quandaries abound, of course--such as the knock-on impact of whatever wars and policies Drayton inadvertently or advertently fuels in the pursuit of financial security for its institution.

The other cost of Drayton is the toll it takes on those labouring to keep its metaphysical existence stable. Like HP, Drayton exists in its own dimension, sort of (it's complicated, and I won't attempt to sum up in a sentence what the book needs whole chapters to explain). Unlike Drayton, maintaining this state has a terrible human cost (more than that would be significant spoilers).

In all of these situations, Drayton justifies both its dubious social entanglements and ongoing psychological torture of staff/students by claiming that the magic it studies is not only greatly beneficial to humanity and therefore must continue, but also highly dangerous and only suitable for a select few. There are allegories and allusions to be drawn here between this philosophy and the elitism baked into real-life academia: knowledge is valuable, so the lower classes shouldn't have it, but we do expect their taxes to keep funding it.

FOr me, the central question surrounding Drayton was therefore this: at what point does the cost of maintaining something valuable, become too high to pay? For the staff who run Drayton, there is no limit.

But intriguing as Drayton is, what really sets this novel apart is the characters.

Enter Lennon Carter, the MC. Lennon is a deeply compelling person - flawed, complex, intelligent; she can be reckless and violent, manipulative and cruel, fickle and morally ambiguous. Yet she is also self-reflective and self-critical, forever analysing and examining herself with a detached gaze that spares none of her own feelings; this stops her being irritating or unlikeable, because she owns her mistakes and considers them at length. She is also loyal, and curiously naive at times--her instinct is to like the people she meets, and to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Like the other characters at Drayton, Lennon is glad to be at college. In Drayton, she can be someone special, instead of a depressed failure (how she views herself). Already damaged, she enters Drayton's distorting and morally ambiguous sphere and becomes equally distorted and confused as the story progresses; the challenges she faces demand that she constantly examine her own beliefs and positions, even as the situation and relationships she's in spiral into further complexity.

I give Lennon a lot of time here because I think she will make or break this novel for a lot of readers. She is NOT a cheerful good little Mary Sue; she's a brat, albeit a smart one. I love how complicated and slightly wicked she can be, but I don't need (or want) my MCs to be nice people.

There is nothing wrong with reading a story where the MC is nice, to be absolutely clear! But if that requirement is a crucial part of enjoying stories for you, then Lennon is likely going to be a source of frustration and shock. She's extremely messy, and not in the way folks mean on Book Twitter when they talk about mess; Lennon is VERY messy, as in "you soon understand why she's spent considerable time in psych wards" sort of messy.


Tldr; READ THIS FOR: complex, morally grey characters who make bad, violent decisions with good intentions, and whose twisted friendships redeem each other despite all the drama along the way. Plus a great atmosphere and interesting magic system that merges psychology with metaphysics.

]]> We Kept Her in the Cellar 204294817
Eunice lives her life by three simple rules: One, always refer to Cinderella as family. Two, never let Cinderella gain access to rats or mice. Three, never look upon Cinderella between the hours of twelve and three a.m.

Cinderella has dark and terrifying powers. As her stepsister, Eunice is expected to care for her and keep the family’s secret. For years, Eunice has faithfully done so. Her childhood flew by in a blur of nightmares, tears, and near-misses with the monster living in the cellar. But when she befriends the handsome Prince Credence and secures an invitation to the ball, Eunice is determined to break free.

When her younger sister, Hortense, steps up to care for Cinderella, Eunice grabs her chance to dance the night away—until Cinderella escapes. With her eldritch powers, Cinderella attends the ball and sweeps Prince Credence off his feet, leaving behind a trail of carnage and destruction as well as a single green glass slipper.

With Cinderella unleashed, Eunice must determine how much of herself she is willing to sacrifice in order to stop Cinderella. Unsettling and macabre at every turn, this page-turning horror will bewitch horror fans and leave its readers anxiously checking the locks on their cellar doors.]]> 304 W.R. Gorman 1639109145 Sunyi 5 to-read
All that to say, I found WKHC at random, through a goodreads recommendation. The title and cover immediately intrigued me, and I was pleased to be given an advance copy from Netgalley when I requested it. (And this is why I keep my netgalley accounts open after all this time!)

WKHC is a Cinderella retelling, but it is not a retelling where the romance has been shuffled around, or the culture refitted from Western medieval to non-western. There is nothing wrong with those retellings (saying that for clarity!) but I must admit that my preference for fairytale-adjacent stories is one in which the roles of hero and villain are transposed, and in which questions are asked about *why* a story exists in the form that it does. To that end, WKHC was good bait for me. It is a 2024 debut, put out by a smallish indie press, and the story itself is a Cinderella retelling told from the POV of the "ugly stepsister".

In this version of the story, Cinderella is an eldritch monster of Lovecraftian bent, only barely concealing her form in human skin to appear like a beautiful young lady. For obvious reasons, Cinderella lives in the cellar where she cannot eat, harm, kill, or otherwise torment normal humans. Many references to the original tales/versions are included, with dark twists on the originals (eg Cinderella's influence over mice and rats, the magic of the pumpkin carriage, the glass slippers, and so on.) All of this is great fun, and interesting to see from the horror angle.

The main conceit of the story is that Cinderella is insanely powerful, but for reasons never fully unearthed, she will accept commands from people who she recognises as family. The MC, Eunice, becomes Cinderella's step-sister through the marriage of their parents, and as a result is required to carry the increasingly heavy burden of "caring" for Cinderella, along with her mother and step-father. She does this from the age of 11 onwards, with no rest or respite or thanks, suffering a terrible psychological and physical toll. The amount of trauma Eunice endures across the span of the book is quite staggering.

This theme is where I think the novel really shines. Because while you could nitpick the origins of Cinderella's nature or the rules surrounding her powers and interactions, they're almost not really the point. The real story, the true horror, is the experience of a child who is asked to grow up far faster than they should, to take on responsibilities that selfish adults have burdened her with, and to manage (effectively) the emotions and whims of a deeply abusive family member, mostly solo.

Read in that context, the novel has a lot to say about the complex ways in which we define family, and what those boundaries and bonds mean to us--both in the power they exert on our lives, and the prisons they become for people--like eunice--whose good natures are taken advantage of by others.

I thought this was a great little gem of a book, full of horror and gore and trauma and a fantastic portrayal of what it's like to grow up bearing the weight of abusive family (including family who are enablers of that abuse, as well as the perpetrator themselves.) It does, imo, exactly what you want from a fairytale exploration: engages with the original narrative to ask why the story was the way it was, and to wonder whether it could be seen in another light.

I also appreciated how the romance arc was handled at the end (not what you expect, especially in the current playing field of retelling novels).

If you're in the market for this kind of novel and have the time, do check it out!]]> 3.82 2024 We Kept Her in the Cellar
author: W.R. Gorman
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/07/19
date added: 2024/07/19
shelves: to-read
review:
WKHC joins the ranks of a handful of books I read this year, which were *not* blurb requests or market research reading. To clarify, I only read books I enjoy, and that includes books which make the blurb list, but it is nonetheless a different experience when you are reading with an eye for endorsement. It becomes impossibly to not scan the text with a view to weighing up its potential readership and the kind of blurb you can give which will most help the book, if you enjoy it.

All that to say, I found WKHC at random, through a goodreads recommendation. The title and cover immediately intrigued me, and I was pleased to be given an advance copy from Netgalley when I requested it. (And this is why I keep my netgalley accounts open after all this time!)

WKHC is a Cinderella retelling, but it is not a retelling where the romance has been shuffled around, or the culture refitted from Western medieval to non-western. There is nothing wrong with those retellings (saying that for clarity!) but I must admit that my preference for fairytale-adjacent stories is one in which the roles of hero and villain are transposed, and in which questions are asked about *why* a story exists in the form that it does. To that end, WKHC was good bait for me. It is a 2024 debut, put out by a smallish indie press, and the story itself is a Cinderella retelling told from the POV of the "ugly stepsister".

In this version of the story, Cinderella is an eldritch monster of Lovecraftian bent, only barely concealing her form in human skin to appear like a beautiful young lady. For obvious reasons, Cinderella lives in the cellar where she cannot eat, harm, kill, or otherwise torment normal humans. Many references to the original tales/versions are included, with dark twists on the originals (eg Cinderella's influence over mice and rats, the magic of the pumpkin carriage, the glass slippers, and so on.) All of this is great fun, and interesting to see from the horror angle.

The main conceit of the story is that Cinderella is insanely powerful, but for reasons never fully unearthed, she will accept commands from people who she recognises as family. The MC, Eunice, becomes Cinderella's step-sister through the marriage of their parents, and as a result is required to carry the increasingly heavy burden of "caring" for Cinderella, along with her mother and step-father. She does this from the age of 11 onwards, with no rest or respite or thanks, suffering a terrible psychological and physical toll. The amount of trauma Eunice endures across the span of the book is quite staggering.

This theme is where I think the novel really shines. Because while you could nitpick the origins of Cinderella's nature or the rules surrounding her powers and interactions, they're almost not really the point. The real story, the true horror, is the experience of a child who is asked to grow up far faster than they should, to take on responsibilities that selfish adults have burdened her with, and to manage (effectively) the emotions and whims of a deeply abusive family member, mostly solo.

Read in that context, the novel has a lot to say about the complex ways in which we define family, and what those boundaries and bonds mean to us--both in the power they exert on our lives, and the prisons they become for people--like eunice--whose good natures are taken advantage of by others.

I thought this was a great little gem of a book, full of horror and gore and trauma and a fantastic portrayal of what it's like to grow up bearing the weight of abusive family (including family who are enablers of that abuse, as well as the perpetrator themselves.) It does, imo, exactly what you want from a fairytale exploration: engages with the original narrative to ask why the story was the way it was, and to wonder whether it could be seen in another light.

I also appreciated how the romance arc was handled at the end (not what you expect, especially in the current playing field of retelling novels).

If you're in the market for this kind of novel and have the time, do check it out!
]]> <![CDATA[Lightfall (The Everlands Trilogy, #1)]]> 211003690 An epic fantasy of vampires, werewolves and sorcerers, Lightfall is the debut novel of Ed Crocker, for fans of Jay Kristoff’s Empire of the Vampire and Richard Swan’s The Justice of Kings.

No humans here. Just immortals: their politics, their feuds—and their long buried secrets.

For centuries, vampires freely roamed the land until the Grays came out of nowhere, wiping out half the population in a night. The survivors fled to the last vampire city of First Light, where the rules are simple. If you’re poor, you drink weak blood. If you’re nobility, you get the good stuff. And you can never, ever leave.

Palace maid Sam has had enough of these rules, and she’s definitely had enough of cleaning the bedpans of the lords who enforce them. When the son of the city’s ruler is murdered and she finds the only clue to his death, she seizes the chance to blackmail her way into a better class and better blood. She falls in with the Leeches, a group of rebel maids who rein in the worst of the Lords. Soon she’s in league with a sorcerer whose deductive skills make up for his lack of magic, a deadly werewolf assassin and a countess who knows a city’s worth of secrets.

There’s just one problem. What began as a murder investigation has uncovered a vast conspiracy by the ruling elite, and now Sam must find the truth before she becomes another victim. If she can avoid getting murdered, she might just live forever.]]> 368 Ed Crocker 1250287731 Sunyi 5 to-read 3.55 2025 Lightfall (The Everlands Trilogy, #1)
author: Ed Crocker
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/05/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Dark and Drowning Tide 174146852 A sharp-tongued folklorist must pair up with her academic rival to solve their mentor's murder in this lush and enthralling sapphic fantasy romance from the New York Times bestselling author of A Far Wilder Magic.

Lorelei Kaskel, a folklorist with a quick temper and an even quicker wit, is on an expedition with six eccentric nobles in search of a fabled spring. The magical spring promises untold power, which the king wants to harness to secure his reign of the embattled country of Brunnestaad. Lorelei is determined to use this opportunity to prove herself and make her wildest, most impossible dream come to become a naturalist, able to travel freely to lands she’s only ever read about.

The expedition gets off to a harrowing start when its leader—Lorelei’s beloved mentor—is murdered in her quarters aboard their ship. The suspects are her five remaining expedition mates, each with their own motive. The only person Lorelei knows must be innocent is her longtime academic rival, the insufferably gallant and maddeningly beautiful Sylvia von Wolff. Now in charge of the expedition, Lorelei must find the spring before the murderer strikes again—and a coup begins in earnest.

But there are other dangers lurking in the forests that rearrange themselves at night, rivers with slumbering dragons waiting beneath the water, and shapeshifting beasts out for blood.

As Lorelei and Sylvia grudgingly work together to uncover the truth—and resist their growing feelings for one another—they discover that their professor had secrets of her own. Secrets that make Lorelei question whether justice is worth pursuing, or if this kingdom is worth saving at all.]]> 384 Allison Saft 0593722345 Sunyi 5
Where ADDT really shines, though, is its exploration of privilege, class, and antiSemitism. The issues are nuanced and compassionately presented, while still hard-hitting, and Saft goes to some lengths to examine how trauma and a lifetime of bigotry have shaped Lorelei into a hard, damaged person, and what she does to not only heal from that damage, but build into someone happier and stronger.


]]> 3.59 2024 A Dark and Drowning Tide
author: Allison Saft
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2024/04/23
date added: 2024/04/23
shelves:
review:
I really enjoyed this murder-mystery-on-an-expedition story. I think fans of Frances White's "voyage of the damned" will find a lot to enjoy. It's not super funny/light hearted like VOTD but it has a lively and magical world, and a very well developed rivals to lovers arc. The world is layered and the relationships fraught. It is quite dark with a slightly gothicky vibe throughout.

Where ADDT really shines, though, is its exploration of privilege, class, and antiSemitism. The issues are nuanced and compassionately presented, while still hard-hitting, and Saft goes to some lengths to examine how trauma and a lifetime of bigotry have shaped Lorelei into a hard, damaged person, and what she does to not only heal from that damage, but build into someone happier and stronger.



]]> <![CDATA[The Hunters (Tales of the Plains, #1)]]> 95570525
But one day two groups of professional killers arrive in town, looking for a young girl and an older woman. A deadly chase through deserts, mountains, and mines begins. And Ree will have to discover her former self if she is to keep them both alive.]]> 384 David Wragg 0008533725 Sunyi 5
Ladies and gentlemen, we have for your reading pleasure a grimdark, no magic, thriller-paced western fantasy, filled with outrageous dark humor and razor-sharp prose, with a middle aged woman as the main character. It is just so much fun, in an era where fantasy often lacks any humor or levity. i think fans of Christopher Buelhman's BLACK TONGUE THIEF will find much to love with Javani and Ree and rest of this crew.]]> 3.91 2023 The Hunters (Tales of the Plains, #1)
author: David Wragg
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2024/03/11
shelves:
review:
It is a tragedy that this book has flown completely under most people’s radar, perhaps in large part because its publisher seemed unsure how to market it. (When books fly under the radar, this is often one of the root causes, if not the main culprit).

Ladies and gentlemen, we have for your reading pleasure a grimdark, no magic, thriller-paced western fantasy, filled with outrageous dark humor and razor-sharp prose, with a middle aged woman as the main character. It is just so much fun, in an era where fantasy often lacks any humor or levity. i think fans of Christopher Buelhman's BLACK TONGUE THIEF will find much to love with Javani and Ree and rest of this crew.
]]> <![CDATA[The Book of Strange New Things]]> 20697435
It begins with Peter, a devoted man of faith, as he is called to the mission of a lifetime, one that takes him galaxies away from his wife, Bea. Peter becomes immersed in the mysteries of an astonishing new environment, overseen by an enigmatic corporation known only as USIC. His work introduces him to a seemingly friendly native population struggling with a dangerous illness and hungry for Peter's teachings—his Bible is their "book of strange new things." But Peter is rattled when Bea's letters from home become increasingly desperate: typhoons and earthquakes are devastating whole countries, and governments are crumbling. Bea's faith, once the guiding light of their lives, begins to falter.

Suddenly, a separation measured by an otherworldly distance, and defined both by one newly discovered world and another in a state of collapse, is threatened by an ever-widening gulf that is much less quantifiable. While Peter is reconciling the needs of his congregation with the desires of his strange employer, Bea is struggling for survival. Their trials lay bare a profound meditation on faith, love tested beyond endurance, and our responsibility to those closest to us.

Marked by the same bravura storytelling and precise language that made The Crimson Petal and the White such an international success, The Book of Strange New Things is extraordinary, mesmerizing, and replete with emotional complexity and genuine pathos.]]> 500 Michel Faber 055341884X Sunyi 5
Content warning for animal torture and gruesome pet death.

Both BOSNT (which does my head in because I keep wanting to write BOTNS, book of the new sun) and Sparrow feature religious men who go on a mission to spread faith to alien forms on a new planet. I will talk about Sparrow in my review of it, but suffice to say they handle their executions quite differently, and I believe a different vein is running through the heart of each story.

BOSNT is arguably the weirder story. So many aspects about it are surreal, from the company funding the mission, to the people who participate in it, to the alien planet and aliens themselves, which have all the complexity (as a setting) of a Hollywood cardboard set. It reminded me, rather oddly, of Severance (where totally absurd things are presented as normal, suggesting dark undertones beneath). But it is not really anything like Severance, of course, aside from a vaguely similar tone.

The main weird thing is that the aliens are absolutely ravenous for Christianity. They can't get enough of it. The missionary has a grand time on "planet god" (as his wife, who he left behidn on collapsing Earth, later writes in one of her missives). The experience of being on Oasis, a word given to this planet that the locals cannot pronounce, is very hermit-finding-enlightenment in the desert.

In all aspects it looks like the wet dream of any scifi-reading Christian.

This perhaps all sounds very negative. It isn't, at least not for me. I found the story oddly riveting, despite so few "plot elements" happening; it's a novel told almost entirely in microtension and negative spaces. What isn't said matters more than what is. The narrative that the MC constructs for himself is less interesting than the shadow his actions and words are casting.

But above all, it works for me as a novel because it increasingly begins to feel, as you read through it, like a metaphor for the escapism religion offers. Earth is falling into ruin, Peter's wife is struggling in their marriage as she struggles to cope with pregnancy alone in a post apocalyptic world, terrible corporate exploitation is happening all around, and yet Peter retreats. He runs from the harsh realities of a world he cannot face and escapes to Planet God where the aliens learn to sing Amazing Grace and uncritically accept everything he tells them as literal truth.

There's something here about how religion has always offered that element of escapism. In original Judaism, there was no afterlife as Christians now believe in it; folks believed that God rewarded good people with good fortune and happy lives. (this is the importance of Job, the story; it was a sort of legendary metaphor for explaining why good people might sometimes inexplicably lose everything.) Heaven was where god lived, not where mortals retired to (similar to Greek and Chinese myths.)

When genocide and other terrible misfortunes tested those beliefs to the limit, the religious leaders (in the book of Maccabees, which is only in the catholic version of the bible and not the protestant one) began to stress the idea of an otherworld existence, where God's reward came not in this life, but in the next, in a fantastical sky paradise.

Modern Christianity is all about the promise of a fantastical sky paradise. Time on earth is temporary and fragmentary. Think of heaven. You're only passing through. Earth is a tourist stop. God is home. Heaven is the destination. Death is something we can run towards with open arms.

In BOSNT, Peter makes a literal trip to Sky Paradise on Planet God. He is in a place that paints a literal picture of the kind of escapism religion offers, and he loves it. For me, the book is therefore about PEter working through this, remembering his connection to Earth, and realising that what is here and now and present matters more to him than he realised.

What other readers will make of this book, I can't say. ]]> 3.65 2014 The Book of Strange New Things
author: Michel Faber
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.65
book published: 2014
rating: 5
read at: 2024/02/23
date added: 2024/02/23
shelves:
review:
Bought it for the trope I like (disillusioned priests in SFF settings) and read it very swiftly. I've since read The Sparrow, a novel with almost the exact same premise as this one, which nonetheless feels totally different.

Content warning for animal torture and gruesome pet death.

Both BOSNT (which does my head in because I keep wanting to write BOTNS, book of the new sun) and Sparrow feature religious men who go on a mission to spread faith to alien forms on a new planet. I will talk about Sparrow in my review of it, but suffice to say they handle their executions quite differently, and I believe a different vein is running through the heart of each story.

BOSNT is arguably the weirder story. So many aspects about it are surreal, from the company funding the mission, to the people who participate in it, to the alien planet and aliens themselves, which have all the complexity (as a setting) of a Hollywood cardboard set. It reminded me, rather oddly, of Severance (where totally absurd things are presented as normal, suggesting dark undertones beneath). But it is not really anything like Severance, of course, aside from a vaguely similar tone.

The main weird thing is that the aliens are absolutely ravenous for Christianity. They can't get enough of it. The missionary has a grand time on "planet god" (as his wife, who he left behidn on collapsing Earth, later writes in one of her missives). The experience of being on Oasis, a word given to this planet that the locals cannot pronounce, is very hermit-finding-enlightenment in the desert.

In all aspects it looks like the wet dream of any scifi-reading Christian.

This perhaps all sounds very negative. It isn't, at least not for me. I found the story oddly riveting, despite so few "plot elements" happening; it's a novel told almost entirely in microtension and negative spaces. What isn't said matters more than what is. The narrative that the MC constructs for himself is less interesting than the shadow his actions and words are casting.

But above all, it works for me as a novel because it increasingly begins to feel, as you read through it, like a metaphor for the escapism religion offers. Earth is falling into ruin, Peter's wife is struggling in their marriage as she struggles to cope with pregnancy alone in a post apocalyptic world, terrible corporate exploitation is happening all around, and yet Peter retreats. He runs from the harsh realities of a world he cannot face and escapes to Planet God where the aliens learn to sing Amazing Grace and uncritically accept everything he tells them as literal truth.

There's something here about how religion has always offered that element of escapism. In original Judaism, there was no afterlife as Christians now believe in it; folks believed that God rewarded good people with good fortune and happy lives. (this is the importance of Job, the story; it was a sort of legendary metaphor for explaining why good people might sometimes inexplicably lose everything.) Heaven was where god lived, not where mortals retired to (similar to Greek and Chinese myths.)

When genocide and other terrible misfortunes tested those beliefs to the limit, the religious leaders (in the book of Maccabees, which is only in the catholic version of the bible and not the protestant one) began to stress the idea of an otherworld existence, where God's reward came not in this life, but in the next, in a fantastical sky paradise.

Modern Christianity is all about the promise of a fantastical sky paradise. Time on earth is temporary and fragmentary. Think of heaven. You're only passing through. Earth is a tourist stop. God is home. Heaven is the destination. Death is something we can run towards with open arms.

In BOSNT, Peter makes a literal trip to Sky Paradise on Planet God. He is in a place that paints a literal picture of the kind of escapism religion offers, and he loves it. For me, the book is therefore about PEter working through this, remembering his connection to Earth, and realising that what is here and now and present matters more to him than he realised.

What other readers will make of this book, I can't say.
]]> Leech 59807968 In an isolated chateau, as far north as north goes, the baron’s doctor has died. The doctor’s replacement has a mystery to solve: discovering how the Institute lost track of one of its many bodies.

For hundreds of years the Interprovincial Medical Institute has grown by taking root in young minds and shaping them into doctors, replacing every human practitioner of medicine. The Institute is here to help humanity, to cure and to cut, to cradle and protect the species from the apocalyptic horrors their ancestors unleashed.

In the frozen north, the Institute's body will discover a competitor for its rung at the top of the evolutionary ladder. A parasite is spreading through the baron's castle, already a dark pit of secrets, lies, violence, and fear. The two will make war on the battlefield of the body. Whichever wins, humanity will lose again.]]> 323 Hiron Ennes 125081118X Sunyi 5
Like so many cross genre books that I love, LEECH has (to my eye) a somewhat disappointing response from readers. Not because the book is disappointing--it isn't--but because it demonstrates to me yet again that cross genre is always going to be a struggle. Moreso with fantasy readers than with mainstream readers, who oddly read rather more broadly than those in our home genre.

One of the main complaints levelled against LEECH is that the worldbuilding isn't laid out in exacting measures, or spoonfed carefully to the reader. A decade-plus long trend of gamified worldbuilding from the bigger epic fantasies is perhaps partly to blame for this mentality; we have been trained to expect every rule neatly laid out, like an RPG splat book.

For those old and decrepit enough to remember previous Weird and then New Weird fiction waves, though, we're treading on familiar ground. The world of LEECH is almost Wolfean in its complexity, and furthermore it is post-post-apocalyptic: a planet so far future that humanity has survived its own end and rebuilt, somewhat, into a society drastically changed and only thinly recognisable. I think this might be why readers who were skimming have assumed the book is a secondary world fantasy.

Fundamentally, though, you don't need to know the detailed ins and outs of worldbuilding in this case. The plot doesn't hinge on it. The main things that matter are how the institute works, what the mc is, and history of the individual characters.

At heart, LEECH isn't a novel about the world, fun though the world is. The focal character is ultimately someone other than the mc, someone who is barely on scene at the start. It is really a novel about systemic abuse, consent, ethical dilemmas both personal and medical, and the long term impact of trauma on individuals, as well as a very literal story about regaining bodily autonomy and voice. (Hurrah for a nonspeaking support character, too.)

The soul of the story is not the apocalypse that happened in the distant past, but the very real and personal apocalypse that is happening in the lives of a handful of its characters, and that's very much why I loved it. The worldbuilding is just a safe (albeit weird) space to explore that.

One of the things I found most deeply profound is that in the context of the story, the characters genuinely do not grasp, at first, the scale of what's been done to them, and I think that's incredibly relevant and realistic to all discussions around ptsd, abuse, and trauma. First you have to undergo the journey of realising the harm before you can even process it, let alone deal with it.

And finally, the fact that you don't even realise who the focal character is at the start, is kind of the point in a way.

Because it means that you, as the reader, are complicit in being blind to abuse. Just like everyone around them. YOU ignored them, like everyone else did, even though all the clues were there. YOU didn't seem them. Like the MC, your attention was focused on what appeared to be a greater problem, but was fundamentally the root cause of everything that was going wrong.

Pain happens under our noses every day and we don't see it.

I thought hiron did an amazing job of point this out.

###

Final notes:

LEECH cannot be accused of failing to live up to fantasy genre expectations, because it isn't aiming for them. This is the thing I find so frustrating about the reception to weird fiction, again and again: firstly, the complete lack of recognition from wide swathes of readers that a book might be trying to do something different from what they first assumed; and secondly, the collective reader blindness when it comes to discussing issues like genre.

Hoards of folks will claim that genre doesn't matter and that they'll read anything as long as it's good, but in fact this is generally untrue. Not only to readers tend to expect books that hit the rights beats of their favourite subgenres, they also have a tendency to punish books which move outside that.

I would advise authors to never fall for the trap of believing the lie that everyone is looking for highly original fiction, when all evidence points to the contrary. Most readers what precisely what they're used to, especially in a structural sense, but with only a few deviations from the expected to feel fresh. Definitely write the strange edge of bizzarity if it calls to you, but be prepared for a few reviewer tables to get flipped as a result.]]> 3.57 2022 Leech
author: Hiron Ennes
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.57
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2024/01/15
date added: 2024/01/15
shelves:
review:
Simply loved it. Profound, intricate, perfectly crafted.

Like so many cross genre books that I love, LEECH has (to my eye) a somewhat disappointing response from readers. Not because the book is disappointing--it isn't--but because it demonstrates to me yet again that cross genre is always going to be a struggle. Moreso with fantasy readers than with mainstream readers, who oddly read rather more broadly than those in our home genre.

One of the main complaints levelled against LEECH is that the worldbuilding isn't laid out in exacting measures, or spoonfed carefully to the reader. A decade-plus long trend of gamified worldbuilding from the bigger epic fantasies is perhaps partly to blame for this mentality; we have been trained to expect every rule neatly laid out, like an RPG splat book.

For those old and decrepit enough to remember previous Weird and then New Weird fiction waves, though, we're treading on familiar ground. The world of LEECH is almost Wolfean in its complexity, and furthermore it is post-post-apocalyptic: a planet so far future that humanity has survived its own end and rebuilt, somewhat, into a society drastically changed and only thinly recognisable. I think this might be why readers who were skimming have assumed the book is a secondary world fantasy.

Fundamentally, though, you don't need to know the detailed ins and outs of worldbuilding in this case. The plot doesn't hinge on it. The main things that matter are how the institute works, what the mc is, and history of the individual characters.

At heart, LEECH isn't a novel about the world, fun though the world is. The focal character is ultimately someone other than the mc, someone who is barely on scene at the start. It is really a novel about systemic abuse, consent, ethical dilemmas both personal and medical, and the long term impact of trauma on individuals, as well as a very literal story about regaining bodily autonomy and voice. (Hurrah for a nonspeaking support character, too.)

The soul of the story is not the apocalypse that happened in the distant past, but the very real and personal apocalypse that is happening in the lives of a handful of its characters, and that's very much why I loved it. The worldbuilding is just a safe (albeit weird) space to explore that.

One of the things I found most deeply profound is that in the context of the story, the characters genuinely do not grasp, at first, the scale of what's been done to them, and I think that's incredibly relevant and realistic to all discussions around ptsd, abuse, and trauma. First you have to undergo the journey of realising the harm before you can even process it, let alone deal with it.

And finally, the fact that you don't even realise who the focal character is at the start, is kind of the point in a way.

Because it means that you, as the reader, are complicit in being blind to abuse. Just like everyone around them. YOU ignored them, like everyone else did, even though all the clues were there. YOU didn't seem them. Like the MC, your attention was focused on what appeared to be a greater problem, but was fundamentally the root cause of everything that was going wrong.

Pain happens under our noses every day and we don't see it.

I thought hiron did an amazing job of point this out.

###

Final notes:

LEECH cannot be accused of failing to live up to fantasy genre expectations, because it isn't aiming for them. This is the thing I find so frustrating about the reception to weird fiction, again and again: firstly, the complete lack of recognition from wide swathes of readers that a book might be trying to do something different from what they first assumed; and secondly, the collective reader blindness when it comes to discussing issues like genre.

Hoards of folks will claim that genre doesn't matter and that they'll read anything as long as it's good, but in fact this is generally untrue. Not only to readers tend to expect books that hit the rights beats of their favourite subgenres, they also have a tendency to punish books which move outside that.

I would advise authors to never fall for the trap of believing the lie that everyone is looking for highly original fiction, when all evidence points to the contrary. Most readers what precisely what they're used to, especially in a structural sense, but with only a few deviations from the expected to feel fresh. Definitely write the strange edge of bizzarity if it calls to you, but be prepared for a few reviewer tables to get flipped as a result.
]]> The Book Eaters 58724745
Devon is part of The Family, an old and reclusive clan of book eaters. Her brothers grow up feasting on stories of valor and adventure, and Devon—like all other book eater women—is raised on a carefully curated diet of fairy tales and cautionary stories.

But real life doesn't always come with happy endings, as Devon learns when her son is born with a rare and darker kind of hunger—not for books, but for human minds.]]> 298 Sunyi Dean 1250810183 Sunyi 0
This is not the first novel I've written, only the first I managed to get published, and I did not start out in short fiction � I only began writing shorts a couple of years ago. The "read" dates are roughly the amount of time it took to write, revise, and hand in my completed edits on it. I'm super slow, sorry! I wrote this book while crawling through a very difficult period of my life, and though it is far from perfect I am still really happy to have seen it across the finish line.

This is not a novel I ever thought I'd write, but then this isn't the life I ever thought I'd lead, so maybe those things go hand in hand? Hope you enjoy, Dear Reader. My apologies if you don't.

I know that this book will not be for everyone, and that is completely okay! I hope your next book pleases you better <3

If you would like to see photos of some of the locations which feature in The Book Eaters, please click here or copy/paste (this link DOES contain spoilers):

Edited to add: general content warnings for those who benefit from them:
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Body horror, gore, explicit violence, domestic abuse, violence against children]]> 3.60 2022 The Book Eaters
author: Sunyi Dean
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.60
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2020/06/15
date added: 2024/01/13
shelves: science-fantasy, currently-reading
review:
Don't worry, I'm not going to star my own book. That would feel very strange! I'm just filling out this review form because YIKES, I have a novel on ŷ!

This is not the first novel I've written, only the first I managed to get published, and I did not start out in short fiction � I only began writing shorts a couple of years ago. The "read" dates are roughly the amount of time it took to write, revise, and hand in my completed edits on it. I'm super slow, sorry! I wrote this book while crawling through a very difficult period of my life, and though it is far from perfect I am still really happy to have seen it across the finish line.

This is not a novel I ever thought I'd write, but then this isn't the life I ever thought I'd lead, so maybe those things go hand in hand? Hope you enjoy, Dear Reader. My apologies if you don't.

I know that this book will not be for everyone, and that is completely okay! I hope your next book pleases you better <3

If you would like to see photos of some of the locations which feature in The Book Eaters, please click here or copy/paste (this link DOES contain spoilers):

Edited to add: general content warnings for those who benefit from them:
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Body horror, gore, explicit violence, domestic abuse, violence against children
]]> Voyage of the Damned 135802269
Aboard are the heirs of the twelve provinces of Concordia, each graced with a unique and secret magical ability known as a Blessing.

Except one: Ganymedes Piscero - class clown, slacker, and all-round disappointment.

When a beloved heir is murdered, everyone is a suspect. Stuck at sea and surrounded by powerful people without a Blessing to protect him, odds of survival are slim.

But as the bodies pile higher, Ganymedes must become the hero he was not born to be. Can he unmask the killer and their blessing before this bloody crusade reaches the shores of Concordia?

Or will the empire as he knows it fall?]]> 496 Frances White 0241640075 Sunyi 5 to-read
All that to say, I read Voyage of the Damned as a card-carrying member of the crime-fiction-lovers-squad, and enjoyed it very much. Dee was a fantastic character, funny and self-deprecating, sexy and sardonic. He is the perfect viewpoint to explore this chaotic, magically-rich world, populated by corrupt and beautiful aristocrats (mostly) and filled with complex lore. I did NOT guess the ending to the mystery (because this is a murder mystery, albeit a magical one), or rather i did guess and got it wrong. Perhaps you will fare better than me!

Above all, though, it's a genuinely uplifting story: about self acceptance, self esteem, having or finding a place in society, and redefining how people see you. I hope that this aspect of it, more than anything else, will resonate with the readers who pick it up. ]]> 4.03 2024 Voyage of the Damned
author: Frances White
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/06
date added: 2023/12/06
shelves: to-read
review:
There should be a highly specific German word for that very particular kind of joy you feel when someone you've known IRL for awhile writes a book, and you read it, and it's Very Good. Also bundled in a with a bit of a relief because you won't suddenly have to start studiously avoiding them at author events LOL.

All that to say, I read Voyage of the Damned as a card-carrying member of the crime-fiction-lovers-squad, and enjoyed it very much. Dee was a fantastic character, funny and self-deprecating, sexy and sardonic. He is the perfect viewpoint to explore this chaotic, magically-rich world, populated by corrupt and beautiful aristocrats (mostly) and filled with complex lore. I did NOT guess the ending to the mystery (because this is a murder mystery, albeit a magical one), or rather i did guess and got it wrong. Perhaps you will fare better than me!

Above all, though, it's a genuinely uplifting story: about self acceptance, self esteem, having or finding a place in society, and redefining how people see you. I hope that this aspect of it, more than anything else, will resonate with the readers who pick it up.
]]> Beowulf 41940267 Beowulf by the author of The Mere Wife.

Nearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf � and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world � there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements never before translated into English.

A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. These familiar components of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history. Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment � of powerful men seeking to become more powerful and one woman seeking justice for her child � but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation; her Beowulf is one for the twenty-first century.]]> 140 Unknown 0374110034 Sunyi 5
I would LOVE to see this done as a play or performance. I can envision it so easily in my head. Definitely going to read The Mere Wife.]]> 4.10 1000 Beowulf
author: Unknown
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.10
book published: 1000
rating: 5
read at: 2020/09/30
date added: 2023/10/27
shelves:
review:
Stunning, subversive, and beautiful. I loved Heaney's version of Beowulf but this was truly lovely and wild, with all the piss taking braggadaxious rollicking humor and bittersweet angry tragedy of the original. In an academic sense this is a brilliant translation. And in a literary sense it's an enormously enjoyable read.

I would LOVE to see this done as a play or performance. I can envision it so easily in my head. Definitely going to read The Mere Wife.
]]> Camp Damascus 61884782 A searing and earnest horror debut about the demons the queer community faces in America, the price of keeping secrets, and finding the courage to burn it all down.

They’ll scare you straight to hell.

Welcome to Neverton, Montana: home to a God-fearing community with a heart of gold.

Nestled high up in the mountains is Camp Damascus, the self-proclaimed “most effective� gay conversion camp in the country. Here, a life free from sin awaits. But the secret behind that success is anything but holy.]]> 246 Chuck Tingle 1250874629 Sunyi 5
I don't quite know what I was expecting with a 'serious' Chuck Tingle novel, which admittedly was half the fun in picking it up. (If you don't know who Chuck Tingle is, I suggest quickly googling him, and the Sad Puppies; it's an education!)

My thoughts are all over the place but here in brief are the two things that really made this novel stand out for me. the first was the protagonist's autistic perspective, which was so incredibly spot on and made my heart squeeze in a good way. That methodical assessment she makes in every conversation where she weighs up what people are literally saying, what they actually mean, what her instinctive response is, and then sifting all that to work out what they precisely what to hear, which is so often illogical and disconnected. He captures so perfectly the towering mountain of work that every social interaction can be for young autistic folk (and even some older ones.)

The other side of it is the portrait of evangelical thinking. How your whole psyche is steeped in that particular way of thinking, how it brackets every encounter or conversation. The way you see people and judge them, the way you watch shows and think "ugh, it's secular". The mindset that grips you as a young evangelical. Far be it from me to presume an author's background, but I feel that Tingle has either had deeply personal encounters with evangelical upbringing, or else done a ton of solid research. Both are great by me.

There's a really interesting intersection between autistic teens and religion. Religion imo has a strong draw for autistics; it has clear rules, a neat kind of logic, and all sorts of systems which are initially appealing. But the culture surrounding religion is often anathema to us (the resistance to questions or debate, among other things) and often backfires long term. That exact scenario plays out here, in Tingle's book, and is fascinating to read. It brought back a lot of memories, shall we say.

I also really appreciated the character who still kept their religion despite the things happening in the book, because I think that's realistic too (not everyone reacts the same way to these kinds of experiences).

So. Who is this book for? Queer exvangelicals who like horror, will probably eat this up. It has broader horror appeal to other horror folks, but I think that is the crowd--like me--who will truly enjoy this book for all its facets and strengths. (But if you're hoping for some quirky Tingle sex scenes, there aren't any in this one.)]]> 3.90 2023 Camp Damascus
author: Chuck Tingle
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/10/20
date added: 2023/10/20
shelves:
review:
I finished this book a few weeks ago (managed to find a signed copy! In the UK! at my local indie! wow haha) and thought it was genuinely a brilliant little gem, one that took me by surprise.

I don't quite know what I was expecting with a 'serious' Chuck Tingle novel, which admittedly was half the fun in picking it up. (If you don't know who Chuck Tingle is, I suggest quickly googling him, and the Sad Puppies; it's an education!)

My thoughts are all over the place but here in brief are the two things that really made this novel stand out for me. the first was the protagonist's autistic perspective, which was so incredibly spot on and made my heart squeeze in a good way. That methodical assessment she makes in every conversation where she weighs up what people are literally saying, what they actually mean, what her instinctive response is, and then sifting all that to work out what they precisely what to hear, which is so often illogical and disconnected. He captures so perfectly the towering mountain of work that every social interaction can be for young autistic folk (and even some older ones.)

The other side of it is the portrait of evangelical thinking. How your whole psyche is steeped in that particular way of thinking, how it brackets every encounter or conversation. The way you see people and judge them, the way you watch shows and think "ugh, it's secular". The mindset that grips you as a young evangelical. Far be it from me to presume an author's background, but I feel that Tingle has either had deeply personal encounters with evangelical upbringing, or else done a ton of solid research. Both are great by me.

There's a really interesting intersection between autistic teens and religion. Religion imo has a strong draw for autistics; it has clear rules, a neat kind of logic, and all sorts of systems which are initially appealing. But the culture surrounding religion is often anathema to us (the resistance to questions or debate, among other things) and often backfires long term. That exact scenario plays out here, in Tingle's book, and is fascinating to read. It brought back a lot of memories, shall we say.

I also really appreciated the character who still kept their religion despite the things happening in the book, because I think that's realistic too (not everyone reacts the same way to these kinds of experiences).

So. Who is this book for? Queer exvangelicals who like horror, will probably eat this up. It has broader horror appeal to other horror folks, but I think that is the crowd--like me--who will truly enjoy this book for all its facets and strengths. (But if you're hoping for some quirky Tingle sex scenes, there aren't any in this one.)
]]> <![CDATA[The Good Virus: The Amazing Story and Forgotten Promise of the Phage]]> 62586006

The Good Virus tells their strange, remarkable story for the first time, from their discovery by a renegade French Canadian scientist more than a century ago to their emergence in the present day as our unlikely allies in the struggle against antibiotic-resistant infections. We learn how this “phage therapy� was repeatedly shunned by Western medicine but flourished behind the Iron Curtain, and follow scientists now unlocking how phages shape evolution and life on our planet at large. Celebrating the paradoxical power of viruses to heal, not harm, The Good Virus will change how you see nature’s most maligned life forms.]]> 400 Tom Ireland 1324050837 Sunyi 5 4.39 2023 The Good Virus: The Amazing Story and Forgotten Promise of the Phage
author: Tom Ireland
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.39
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/09/23
shelves:
review:
PHENOMENAL nonfiction read! I got this as an audio and was totally entranced. My partner listened to some of it while we drove down to fantasycon and also found it fascinating. Incredible story of medicine we discovered against the odds, and then nearly lost for a century.
]]> The Mountain in the Sea 62856957 There are creatures in the water of Con Dao.
To the locals, they're monsters.
To the corporate owners of the island, an opportunity.
To the team of three sent to study them, a revelation.

Their minds are unlike ours.
Their bodies are malleable, transformable, shifting.
They can communicate.
And they want us to leave.

When pioneering marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen is offered the chance to travel to the remote Con Dao Archipelago to investigate a highly intelligent, dangerous octopus species, she doesn't pause long enough to look at the fine print. DIANIMA - a transnational tech corporation best known for its groundbreaking work in artificial intelligence - has purchased the islands, evacuated their population and sealed the archipelago off from the world so that Nguyen can focus on her research.

But the stakes are high: the octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence and there are vast fortunes to be made by whoever can take advantage of their advancements. And no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. And what they might do about it.]]> 464 Ray Nayler 1399600494 Sunyi 5
At a basic level, MITS is about a human scientist working with the world's only android assistant on a protected island, both of them attempting to study and understand a new species of octopus. As introduced to us, the scientist is a recluse, the android is socio-political exile, and the octopuses are a local myth.

In broad terms, the story depicts humanity grappling with two, brand-new types of intelligence: technological intelligence, built by humans (a true AI in the form of the android), and evolved intelligence, in the form of the octopuses who, due to the destruction of their habitat and other stressors, have begun to form complex societies.

That alone makes it a fascinating premise and an unexpected comparison. The android has perfect recall, unlike humans, meaning intelligence and memory are intersecting for them in ways which quickly deviate from standard human norms. The octopuses, meanwhile, have intelligence which is totally reframed by their different biology, origins, needs, and perceptions.

But what could be more illusory than the world we see? After all, in the darkness inside our skulls, nothing reaches us. There is no light, no sound—nothing. The brain dwells there alone, in a blackness as total as any cave’s, receiving only translations from outside, fed to it through its sensory apparatus.

—Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, Building Minds



At its heart, though, MITS is a book about communication and loneliness, and this is the emotional soul of the novel that draws me in. Every single character is deeply, resonantly lonely. For the whole of her life, Ha (the scientist in question) is both driven to try and connect with other people, even as she finds repeated psychological barriers.

As a girl, she is heartbroken when the boy she is obsessed with does not even really register her existence, has no concept that she is her own person with thoughts and feelings; a classic case of cognitive empathy failure on his part, though a common enough experience:


“It was the indifference of the world—the indifference of the boy I loved to me, the indifference of the guards to the suffering of the people in the cages, the indifference of all of it, that made me crazy. I couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t stand to be a part of it. I felt cut off from people. How could they just ignore what was going on around them? The suffering of others? The striving of others? Their feelings? It was like they were clad in armor, and I didn’t have that armor."



Throughout the story, we are shown snippets of a controversial nonfiction book which Ha, the MC, was infamous for writing. Her thoughts support and surround the rest of the story, anchoring its dramatic elements in its philosophic themes.

One such quote which stayed with me a long time:


I want to help my readers imagine how we might speak across an almost unbridgeable gap of differences, and end forever the loneliness of our species—and our own loneliness.


How starkly the author speaks to us, through a mirror darkly - fictional words attributed to a fictional character, folded inside a fictional story. If I could sum up THE MOUNTAIN IN THE SEA in a single quote, it would be that one.



]]> 4.11 2022 The Mountain in the Sea
author: Ray Nayler
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2023/07/30
date added: 2023/09/13
shelves:
review:
I read this book while travelling to Belize, and for a short period of time it utterly consumed me.

At a basic level, MITS is about a human scientist working with the world's only android assistant on a protected island, both of them attempting to study and understand a new species of octopus. As introduced to us, the scientist is a recluse, the android is socio-political exile, and the octopuses are a local myth.

In broad terms, the story depicts humanity grappling with two, brand-new types of intelligence: technological intelligence, built by humans (a true AI in the form of the android), and evolved intelligence, in the form of the octopuses who, due to the destruction of their habitat and other stressors, have begun to form complex societies.

That alone makes it a fascinating premise and an unexpected comparison. The android has perfect recall, unlike humans, meaning intelligence and memory are intersecting for them in ways which quickly deviate from standard human norms. The octopuses, meanwhile, have intelligence which is totally reframed by their different biology, origins, needs, and perceptions.

But what could be more illusory than the world we see? After all, in the darkness inside our skulls, nothing reaches us. There is no light, no sound—nothing. The brain dwells there alone, in a blackness as total as any cave’s, receiving only translations from outside, fed to it through its sensory apparatus.

—Dr. Arnkatla Mínervudóttir-Chan, Building Minds



At its heart, though, MITS is a book about communication and loneliness, and this is the emotional soul of the novel that draws me in. Every single character is deeply, resonantly lonely. For the whole of her life, Ha (the scientist in question) is both driven to try and connect with other people, even as she finds repeated psychological barriers.

As a girl, she is heartbroken when the boy she is obsessed with does not even really register her existence, has no concept that she is her own person with thoughts and feelings; a classic case of cognitive empathy failure on his part, though a common enough experience:


“It was the indifference of the world—the indifference of the boy I loved to me, the indifference of the guards to the suffering of the people in the cages, the indifference of all of it, that made me crazy. I couldn’t accept it. I couldn’t stand to be a part of it. I felt cut off from people. How could they just ignore what was going on around them? The suffering of others? The striving of others? Their feelings? It was like they were clad in armor, and I didn’t have that armor."



Throughout the story, we are shown snippets of a controversial nonfiction book which Ha, the MC, was infamous for writing. Her thoughts support and surround the rest of the story, anchoring its dramatic elements in its philosophic themes.

One such quote which stayed with me a long time:


I want to help my readers imagine how we might speak across an almost unbridgeable gap of differences, and end forever the loneliness of our species—and our own loneliness.


How starkly the author speaks to us, through a mirror darkly - fictional words attributed to a fictional character, folded inside a fictional story. If I could sum up THE MOUNTAIN IN THE SEA in a single quote, it would be that one.




]]> <![CDATA[The Sun and the Void (The Warring Gods #1)]]> 60568206
Reina is desperate.

Stuck living on the edges of society, her only salvation lies in an invitation from a grandmother she’s never known. But the journey is dangerous, and prayer can’t always avert disaster.

Attacked by creatures that stalk the region, Reina is on the verge of death until her grandmother, a dark sorceress, intervenes. Now dependent on the Doña’s magic for her life, Reina will do anything to earn—and keep—her favor. Even the bidding of an ancient god who whispers to her at night.

Eva Kesare is unwanted.

Illegitimate and of mixed heritage, Eva is her family’s shame. She tries her best to be perfect and to hide her oddities. But Eva is hiding a secret: magic calls to her.

Eva knows she should fight the temptation. Magic is the sign of the dark god, and using it is punishable by death. Yet, it’s hard to deny power when it has always been denied to you. Eva is walking a dangerous path, one that gets stranger every day. And, in the end, she’ll become something she never imagined.]]> 511 Gabriela Romero Lacruz 0316336440 Sunyi 5 to-read
Addendum (skip unless you're interested in drama)

###

I started reading about the same time as the 'discourse' on this novel started taking off, and cringed at the full scale campaign of bullying which developed.

I continue to be severely disappointed by Booktok's tendency to assume that any book which discusses an idea is somehow promoting it, and/or folks whose disturbing hunger for continuous internet-based validation drives them to build platforms based around denouncement.

Over and over, across the past couple of years, I've observed with distaste the feeding frenzy of pompous negativity surrounding bipoc queer debut books. Over and over I see folks say, "Publishing, do better!"

Physician, heal thyself! Because publishing is doing better. Really. Compare the selection of books we get now versus 10, 20, 30 years ago. Beautiful, diverse, interesting books come out every year. More and more care is put into representation, dissection, and discussion than ever before. Of course no piece of art is perfect, and of course there is always room for improvement, but that is the nature of art.

Reviewing, though... that isn't doing better, at least from the reader/influencer side. In fact, I'd say it's getting worse every day. Less nuance, less genuine reviews, more platform building from self-declared progressive experts, and a lot of throat clearing.

(Huge thanks and love to the reviewers who take it very seriously and aren't just in it for the likes, though - I LOVE YOU ALL, even the critical ones.)

Readers, WE need to do better. Or publishing will decide that it's a waste of time to put out diverse lit and it will be a sea of tolkien clones all over again.

I'm very glad to mostly be done with reviews save for the occasional one that I do on here, because the current reader culture around diverse/queer sff lit would have crushed all my joy in books.

And if you are one of those people using controversy to soullessly leverage your own booktok (or whatever sm) platform, I'm going to throw out this gentle reminder: followership built around negativity always backfires on the content creator in question. Always. If you deliberately cultivate that kind of hypercritical bullying fanbase, they will eventually turn on you the moment they perceive you, too, have put a foot wrong.

Live by the sword, die by the sword. But hey, it's your life.]]> 3.32 2023 The Sun and the Void (The Warring Gods #1)
author: Gabriela Romero Lacruz
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.32
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/09/13
date added: 2023/09/13
shelves: to-read
review:
I received a copy of this lush, slowburn, literary south american fantasy from daphne press. absolutely gorgeous edition, and you can tell the love that went into both the writing (including the almost Malazan levels of worldbuilding + unusual 'geomancia' magic system + quiet sapphic romance arc) and the production of the book itself, as an art object. Side note: I'm glad to see this trend of beautiful books returning so strong in the UK.

Addendum (skip unless you're interested in drama)

###

I started reading about the same time as the 'discourse' on this novel started taking off, and cringed at the full scale campaign of bullying which developed.

I continue to be severely disappointed by Booktok's tendency to assume that any book which discusses an idea is somehow promoting it, and/or folks whose disturbing hunger for continuous internet-based validation drives them to build platforms based around denouncement.

Over and over, across the past couple of years, I've observed with distaste the feeding frenzy of pompous negativity surrounding bipoc queer debut books. Over and over I see folks say, "Publishing, do better!"

Physician, heal thyself! Because publishing is doing better. Really. Compare the selection of books we get now versus 10, 20, 30 years ago. Beautiful, diverse, interesting books come out every year. More and more care is put into representation, dissection, and discussion than ever before. Of course no piece of art is perfect, and of course there is always room for improvement, but that is the nature of art.

Reviewing, though... that isn't doing better, at least from the reader/influencer side. In fact, I'd say it's getting worse every day. Less nuance, less genuine reviews, more platform building from self-declared progressive experts, and a lot of throat clearing.

(Huge thanks and love to the reviewers who take it very seriously and aren't just in it for the likes, though - I LOVE YOU ALL, even the critical ones.)

Readers, WE need to do better. Or publishing will decide that it's a waste of time to put out diverse lit and it will be a sea of tolkien clones all over again.

I'm very glad to mostly be done with reviews save for the occasional one that I do on here, because the current reader culture around diverse/queer sff lit would have crushed all my joy in books.

And if you are one of those people using controversy to soullessly leverage your own booktok (or whatever sm) platform, I'm going to throw out this gentle reminder: followership built around negativity always backfires on the content creator in question. Always. If you deliberately cultivate that kind of hypercritical bullying fanbase, they will eventually turn on you the moment they perceive you, too, have put a foot wrong.

Live by the sword, die by the sword. But hey, it's your life.
]]> The Surviving Sky (Rages #1) 61679390
High above a jungle-planet float the last refuges of humanity—plant-made civilizations held together by tradition, technology, and arcane science. Here, architects are revered deeply, with humanity’s survival reliant on a privileged few. If not for their abilities, the cities would plunge into the devastating earthrage storms below.

Charismatic and powerful, Iravan is one such architect. His abilities are his identity, but to Ahilya, his archeologist wife, they are a method to suppress non-architects. Their marriage is thorny and fraught—yet when a jungle expedition goes terribly wrong, jeopardizing their careers, Ahilya and Iravan must work together to save their reputations. But as their city begins to plummet, their discoveries threaten not only their marriage, but their entire civilization.]]> 416 Kritika H. Rao 0756418364 Sunyi 0 3.94 2023 The Surviving Sky (Rages #1)
author: Kritika H. Rao
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2022/04/19
date added: 2023/08/01
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)]]> 26114545
The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labeling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world's population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competition is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life.

And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destablize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life...]]> 432 Ada Palmer 0765378000 Sunyi 5 science-fantasy
That perhaps seems at odds given my rating, but it is fully immersive, carefully thought out and planned, densely written, complex, layered, intelligent, powerful. There aren't a lot of books where I need to stop every few chapters and review my mental notes; this is one of them.

It's certainly not for everyone, but nothing is, and what is (probably) lacks in pulp appeal it makes up for with lively discussion and intellectual engagement. The plot is surprisingly tight, but it takes awhile to emerge from the heaving morass of humanity as depicted. Stuck it with it though, and trust that the author knows what she is doing


It is something of a setting junkie book, and the plot takes awhile to get going. I was also dubious about the pacing--there's always something jarring to me about a book which takes longer to read than it does to "happen", by which I mean events occur in a matter of days during the novel. Meanwhile it took me weeks to read it.

But it pulls together brilliantly and justifies the time it takes, and there is simply nothing else like it in recent times. It is smart, sweeping, sad, nuanced, hopeful. We need more books like it.]]> 3.81 2016 Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)
author: Ada Palmer
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2016
rating: 5
read at: 2017/09/19
date added: 2023/07/16
shelves: science-fantasy
review:
If I could define Too Like the Lightning in a word, it would probably be "overwhelming".

That perhaps seems at odds given my rating, but it is fully immersive, carefully thought out and planned, densely written, complex, layered, intelligent, powerful. There aren't a lot of books where I need to stop every few chapters and review my mental notes; this is one of them.

It's certainly not for everyone, but nothing is, and what is (probably) lacks in pulp appeal it makes up for with lively discussion and intellectual engagement. The plot is surprisingly tight, but it takes awhile to emerge from the heaving morass of humanity as depicted. Stuck it with it though, and trust that the author knows what she is doing


It is something of a setting junkie book, and the plot takes awhile to get going. I was also dubious about the pacing--there's always something jarring to me about a book which takes longer to read than it does to "happen", by which I mean events occur in a matter of days during the novel. Meanwhile it took me weeks to read it.

But it pulls together brilliantly and justifies the time it takes, and there is simply nothing else like it in recent times. It is smart, sweeping, sad, nuanced, hopeful. We need more books like it.
]]> Britain: A Genetic Journey 16100803 272 Alistair Moffat 1780270755 Sunyi 3 3.50 2013 Britain: A Genetic Journey
author: Alistair Moffat
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.50
book published: 2013
rating: 3
read at:
date added: 2023/06/14
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)]]> 58724626
What they find there is a nightmare of fungal growths and possessed wildlife, surrounding a dark, pulsing lake. Madeline sleepwalks and speaks in strange voices at night, and her brother Roderick is consumed with a mysterious malady of the nerves.

Aided by a redoubtable British mycologist and a baffled American doctor, Alex must unravel the secret of the House of Usher before it consumes them all.]]> 165 T. Kingfisher 1250830753 Sunyi 0 to-read 3.86 2022 What Moves the Dead (Sworn Soldier, #1)
author: T. Kingfisher
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/06/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Golden Key and Other Stories]]> 1071835 Lilith and Phantastes are particularly famous, much of MacDonald’s best fantasy writing is found in his shorter stories. In this volume editor Glenn Sadler has compiled some of MacDonald’s finest short works—marvelous fairy tales and stories certain to delight readers familiar with MacDonald and those about to meet him for the first time.]]> 175 George MacDonald 0802818595 Sunyi 5 young-adult, science-fantasy 4.25 1867 The Golden Key and Other Stories
author: George MacDonald
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.25
book published: 1867
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/05/27
shelves: young-adult, science-fantasy
review:

]]> The Night Guest 126919419 The Night Guest is an eerie and ensnaring story set in contemporary Reykjavík that’s sure to keep you awake at night.

Iðunn is in yet another doctor's office. She knows her constant fatigue is a sign that something's not right, but practitioners dismiss her symptoms and blood tests haven't revealed any cause.

When she talks to friends and family about it, the refrain is the same � have you tried eating better? exercising more? establishing a nighttime routine? She tries to follow their advice, buying everything from vitamins to sleeping pills to a step-counting watch. Nothing helps.

Until one night Iðunn falls asleep with the watch on, and wakes up to find she’s walked over 40,000 steps in the night . . .

What is happening when she’s asleep? Why is she waking up with increasingly disturbing injuries? And why won’t anyone believe her?]]> 178 Hildur Knútsdóttir 1250322502 Sunyi 5
Get your hands on this wonderful, bittersweet, lonely, maddening, horrifying little novella as soon as you can.

There are a lot of things going on in The Night Guest, the main one being the premise: a woman who suffers from seemingly chronic exhaustion buys a fitness watch (as part of her plan to cope with the health problems) and discovers she is walking 40,000 steps in her sleep. Yikes. Nighttimes soon become a source of terror as the MC gradually works out what exactly she has been getting up to in the night.

But at its heart, this is a novella about the horror of not being believed: by your boss, your friends, your family, your lovers. About being ignored when you have concerns over health, when your safety is compromised, when you're slipping away and society doesn't seem to notice. ]]> 3.43 2021 The Night Guest
author: Hildur Knútsdóttir
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/05/17
shelves:
review:
I was so excited to see this added to ŷ so that I can finally rate it!

Get your hands on this wonderful, bittersweet, lonely, maddening, horrifying little novella as soon as you can.

There are a lot of things going on in The Night Guest, the main one being the premise: a woman who suffers from seemingly chronic exhaustion buys a fitness watch (as part of her plan to cope with the health problems) and discovers she is walking 40,000 steps in her sleep. Yikes. Nighttimes soon become a source of terror as the MC gradually works out what exactly she has been getting up to in the night.

But at its heart, this is a novella about the horror of not being believed: by your boss, your friends, your family, your lovers. About being ignored when you have concerns over health, when your safety is compromised, when you're slipping away and society doesn't seem to notice.
]]> <![CDATA[The Combat Codes (The Combat Codes Saga, #1)]]> 62874025
In a world long ago ravaged by war, the nations have sworn an armistice never to use weapons of mass destruction again. Instead, highly-skilled warriors known as Grievar Knights represent their nations� interests in brutal hand-to-hand combat.

Murray Pearson was once a famed Knight until he suffered a loss that crippled his homeland � but now he’s on the hunt to discover the next champion.

In underground and ruthless combat rings, an orphaned boy called Cego is making a name for himself. Murray believes Cego has what it takes to thrive in the world's most prestigious combat academy � but first, Cego must prove himself in the vicious arenas of the underworld. And survival isn’t guaranteed.]]> 419 Alexander Darwin 0316493007 Sunyi 5
I picked combat codes up shortly after starting to train Jujitsu, at the ripe old age of 35. I finished it the week before testing for my first belt. Oddly surreal experience! The story captured that unique bond between student and teacher, in this case between Murray and Cego, and the sense of ethics that underlies any martial arts learning, and I had huge appreciation for how every right scene was handled. I don't write fight scenes well myself. So I learnt a lot :)

If you don't know much about JJ there's still plenty of story to keep you engaged, and the science fantasy setting allows for some very dramatic plot twists throughout. If you are a martial arts fan, though, you'll get a whole extra layer out of it for sure. ]]> 3.84 2021 The Combat Codes (The Combat Codes Saga, #1)
author: Alexander Darwin
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.84
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2023/05/06
date added: 2023/05/06
shelves:
review:
A masterclass in action, set against a complex science fantasy world.

I picked combat codes up shortly after starting to train Jujitsu, at the ripe old age of 35. I finished it the week before testing for my first belt. Oddly surreal experience! The story captured that unique bond between student and teacher, in this case between Murray and Cego, and the sense of ethics that underlies any martial arts learning, and I had huge appreciation for how every right scene was handled. I don't write fight scenes well myself. So I learnt a lot :)

If you don't know much about JJ there's still plenty of story to keep you engaged, and the science fantasy setting allows for some very dramatic plot twists throughout. If you are a martial arts fan, though, you'll get a whole extra layer out of it for sure.
]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle]]> 50155982 Can you solve the mystery of Evelyn Hardcastle?

WINNER OF THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD
WINNER OF THE BOOKS ARE MY BAG NOVEL AWARD
A WATERSTONES THRILLER OF THE MONTH
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SPECSAVERS NATIONAL BOOK AWARDS
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS DEBUT OF THE YEAR
LONGLISTED FOR THE THEAKSTON OLD PECULIER CRIME NOVEL OF THE YEAR

Gosford Park meets Groundhog Day by way of Agatha Christie and Black Mirror - the most inventive story you'll read

Tonight, Evelyn Hardcastle will be killed ... Again

It is meant to be a celebration but it ends in tragedy. As fireworks explode overhead, Evelyn Hardcastle, the young and beautiful daughter of the house, is Evelyn will not die just once. Until Aiden - one of the guests summoned to Blackheath for the party - can solve her murder, the day will repeat itself, over and over again. Every time ending with the fateful pistol only way to break this cycle is to identify the killer. But each time the day begins again, Aiden wakes in the body of a different guest. And someone is determined to prevent him ever escaping AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE GUARDIAN, I PAPER, FINANCIAL TIMES AND DAILY TELEGRAPH AND CURRENTLY BEING ADAPTED BY NETFLIX INTO A SEVEN PART SERIES]]> 528 Stuart Turton Sunyi 5
I loved pretty much everything that went into this novel. This an Agatha Christie tribute on crack with out of this world weirdness, and also quadruple layered with stories within stories and so much wonderful complexity it will make your toes curl with writerly joy.

It was so much fun, the clues expertly layered, the body jumping mechanics painstakingly thought out with lots of juicy metaphysical interactions. I cannot fathom the plotting of this novel and I am not surprised to read that it took 3 years to write. I could write for 30 years and never produce a novel like this, so I'm dutifully and humbly awed.

As a point of craft, one specific thing fascinated me. It's general wisdom in writing that your character cannot just have conversations to acquire clues and move the plot forward, yet that happens repeatedly in this book. I believe that what makes this work is that the conversations can only happen if had in the right order, and that the main character's growing stash of knowledge is required to "unlock" crucial moments and conversations. Anyway, it works surprisingly well.

Go read it.


AND NOW FOR SOME SPOILERS.

I reckon this book is marmite, and my fb feed would agree that is so. A lot of complaints about the ending, and I think I know why.

7 Deaths cannot ever live up to the premise it offers. There is no possible ending which explains what is going on but doesn’t also feel cheap, because the explanations spoil the magic and also shift the focus to whatever dystopian society allowed this “prison� to exist, diluting the personal and historical feel of it.

I believe this is to do with how the speculative element has been positioned.

The speculative element is the part of your book (if you are writing spec fic or SFF is the bit that lifts it out of the real world and incorporates the fantastic. And it is something I have been grappling with A LOT in my own writing lately.

The ending of Seven Deaths is, IMO, what happens when you give full agency to your speculative element. By agency I mean, you make it a player character; it isn’t just “there are mystical trees in that forest over there�, it’s “there is a mystical dryad giving you dreams about the mystical trees in her forest.� In Seven Deaths, the MC isn’t just battling the mysterious landscape of Blackheath; he is in active confrontation with the Plague Doctor and various other characters who are effectively supernatural or speculative.

If that sounds confusing, let me put it this way for those who have read Seven Deaths. Hypothetically, how would the book feel different if there was no plague doctor? And the house just existed as an inanimate thing that couldn’t be reasoned with? It would be lonelier, but also more personal; no explanation would be possible.

Of course, that would created lots of plot problems, like who the fuck orchestrated all of this–which having a Plague Doctor solved. Direction and agency does that. But giving agency to the speculative element also required that the writer invent a hierarchy and order and the concept of Blackheath as a punishment arena, which in the end felt like deux ex machina. Hence unsatisfactory ending.

The reason this happens is that having agency embodied in a character makes them possible to reason with but also shifts the focus to the societies surrounding that person. Claire North runs into this problem in some of her novels; she tries to give a “face� to her speculative elements, encompassing them as individuals with reasoning who interact with the MC, which then means she ends up creating secret societies for them, which then means the books focus on the politics of said secret societies. The same thing (imo) happens here as the focus invariably shifts to Plague Doctor(s) and their squabbling.

Speculative Element, in short, is like a wild demon spirit. If it is not properly contained and caged within the narrative, it swells and expands and dominates and before you know it you’re in a dystopian scifi story about bizarre holographic prison realities and feeling very dubious indeed. Sometimes that’s what you want, but sometimes it takes your story and does a runner.

All that said, I still loved this book. I loved the experience of reading it (which is an inversion on a comment I’ve had from some publisher rejections � they “didn’t love the experience� of reading some of my stuff� now I know what they mean, though in reverse!) It’s great fun, brilliantly written, extensively plotted, wonderfully complex and layered.

As for the ending; well, it was an interesting and thought-provoking ending, for me, with ample opportunity to think about craft and speculative elements and scope.]]> 3.87 2018 The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
author: Stuart Turton
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2020/09/12
date added: 2023/04/18
shelves:
review:
Wow wow wow.

I loved pretty much everything that went into this novel. This an Agatha Christie tribute on crack with out of this world weirdness, and also quadruple layered with stories within stories and so much wonderful complexity it will make your toes curl with writerly joy.

It was so much fun, the clues expertly layered, the body jumping mechanics painstakingly thought out with lots of juicy metaphysical interactions. I cannot fathom the plotting of this novel and I am not surprised to read that it took 3 years to write. I could write for 30 years and never produce a novel like this, so I'm dutifully and humbly awed.

As a point of craft, one specific thing fascinated me. It's general wisdom in writing that your character cannot just have conversations to acquire clues and move the plot forward, yet that happens repeatedly in this book. I believe that what makes this work is that the conversations can only happen if had in the right order, and that the main character's growing stash of knowledge is required to "unlock" crucial moments and conversations. Anyway, it works surprisingly well.

Go read it.


AND NOW FOR SOME SPOILERS.

I reckon this book is marmite, and my fb feed would agree that is so. A lot of complaints about the ending, and I think I know why.

7 Deaths cannot ever live up to the premise it offers. There is no possible ending which explains what is going on but doesn’t also feel cheap, because the explanations spoil the magic and also shift the focus to whatever dystopian society allowed this “prison� to exist, diluting the personal and historical feel of it.

I believe this is to do with how the speculative element has been positioned.

The speculative element is the part of your book (if you are writing spec fic or SFF is the bit that lifts it out of the real world and incorporates the fantastic. And it is something I have been grappling with A LOT in my own writing lately.

The ending of Seven Deaths is, IMO, what happens when you give full agency to your speculative element. By agency I mean, you make it a player character; it isn’t just “there are mystical trees in that forest over there�, it’s “there is a mystical dryad giving you dreams about the mystical trees in her forest.� In Seven Deaths, the MC isn’t just battling the mysterious landscape of Blackheath; he is in active confrontation with the Plague Doctor and various other characters who are effectively supernatural or speculative.

If that sounds confusing, let me put it this way for those who have read Seven Deaths. Hypothetically, how would the book feel different if there was no plague doctor? And the house just existed as an inanimate thing that couldn’t be reasoned with? It would be lonelier, but also more personal; no explanation would be possible.

Of course, that would created lots of plot problems, like who the fuck orchestrated all of this–which having a Plague Doctor solved. Direction and agency does that. But giving agency to the speculative element also required that the writer invent a hierarchy and order and the concept of Blackheath as a punishment arena, which in the end felt like deux ex machina. Hence unsatisfactory ending.

The reason this happens is that having agency embodied in a character makes them possible to reason with but also shifts the focus to the societies surrounding that person. Claire North runs into this problem in some of her novels; she tries to give a “face� to her speculative elements, encompassing them as individuals with reasoning who interact with the MC, which then means she ends up creating secret societies for them, which then means the books focus on the politics of said secret societies. The same thing (imo) happens here as the focus invariably shifts to Plague Doctor(s) and their squabbling.

Speculative Element, in short, is like a wild demon spirit. If it is not properly contained and caged within the narrative, it swells and expands and dominates and before you know it you’re in a dystopian scifi story about bizarre holographic prison realities and feeling very dubious indeed. Sometimes that’s what you want, but sometimes it takes your story and does a runner.

All that said, I still loved this book. I loved the experience of reading it (which is an inversion on a comment I’ve had from some publisher rejections � they “didn’t love the experience� of reading some of my stuff� now I know what they mean, though in reverse!) It’s great fun, brilliantly written, extensively plotted, wonderfully complex and layered.

As for the ending; well, it was an interesting and thought-provoking ending, for me, with ample opportunity to think about craft and speculative elements and scope.
]]> Linghun 62109191
Follow Wenqi, Liam, and Mrs. in this modern gothic ghost story by Chinese-Canadian writer and immigrant, Ai Jiang. LINGHUN is set in the mysterious town of HOME, a place where the dead live again as spirits, conjured by the grief-sick population that refuses to let go.]]> 178 Ai Jiang Sunyi 5 3.91 2023 Linghun
author: Ai Jiang
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/04/11
shelves:
review:
Great little novella with bonus stories at the end. Fascinating, introspective, sad, thoughtful, melancholy. Not everyone's cup of tea but it suited me.
]]> <![CDATA[The Last House on Needless Street]]> 54621094
All these things are true. And yet they are all lies...

You think you know what's inside the last house on Needless Street. You think you've read this story before. That's where you're wrong.

In the dark forest at the end of Needless Street, lies something buried. But it's not what you think...]]> 337 Catriona Ward 1788166167 Sunyi 5 3.82 2021 The Last House on Needless Street
author: Catriona Ward
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/03/20
shelves:
review:

]]> Mereland 123193740
Beginning with the cold welcome of "I Am The Wilds" to those entering the seaside town, to the tale of its "Automaton", as Mereland tells its story to those reading]]> 54 Ed Near Sunyi 0 to-read 4.67 2022 Mereland
author: Ed Near
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.67
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2023/03/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tyranny of Faith (Empire of the Wolf, #2)]]> 60028919 From a major new debut author in epic fantasy comes the second book in a trilogy where action, intrigue, and magic collide. Sir Konrad Vonvalt is an Emperor's Justice: a detective, judge, and executioner all in one. But these are dangerous times to be a Justice....

A Justice's work is never done.

The Battle of Galen's Vale is over, but the war for the Empire's future has just begun. Concerned by rumors that the Magistratum's authority is waning, Sir Konrad Vonvalt returns to Sova to find the capital city gripped by intrigue and whispers of rebellion. In the Senate, patricians speak openly against the Emperor, while fanatics preach holy vengeance on the streets.

Yet facing down these threats to the throne will have to wait, for the Emperor's grandson has been kidnapped - and Vonvalt is charged with rescuing the missing prince. His quest will lead him - and his allies Helena, Bressinger and Sir Radomir - to the southern frontier, where they will once again face the puritanical fury of Bartholomew Claver and his templar knights - and a dark power far more terrifying than they could have imagined.

"Richard Swan's sophisticated take on the fantasy genre will leave readers hungry for more." - Sebastien de Castell on The Justice of Kings

"A fantastic debut." - Peter McLean on The Justice of Kings

Also by Richard Swan:

The Empire of the Wolf
The Justice of Kings
The Tyranny of Faith]]> 496 Richard Swan Sunyi 5
I must admit I get baffled by a few of the comments re the "age gap" mentor/ menter relationship, which I read for closely since I am, in fact, in an age relationship myself, although obviously we aren't mentor and mentee.

Spoilers: what on earth are folks upset about lol ]]> 4.27 2023 The Tyranny of Faith (Empire of the Wolf, #2)
author: Richard Swan
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2023/02/11
shelves:
review:
It is of course totally unsurprising that I loved the sequel, having loved the first book. All the same characters and world and nuanced intricacies that drew me in before were present, but amplified. The world is darker and grittier than ever, the choices more complicated as the stakes escalate, and Helena's growing presence and capability a fascinating arc to follow.

I must admit I get baffled by a few of the comments re the "age gap" mentor/ menter relationship, which I read for closely since I am, in fact, in an age relationship myself, although obviously we aren't mentor and mentee.

Spoilers: what on earth are folks upset about lol
]]> <![CDATA[Night's Edge (Night's Edge, #1)]]> 61884780
Having a mom like Izzy meant Mia had to grow up fast. No extracurriculars, no inviting friends over, and definitely no dating. The most important Tell no one of Izzy’s hunger � the kind only blood can satisfy.

But Mia is in her twenties now and longs for a life of her own. One where she doesn’t have to worry about anyone discovering their terrible secret, or breathing down her neck. When Mia meets rebellious musician Jade she dares to hope she’s found a way to leave her home � and her mom � behind.

It just might be Mia’s only chance of getting out alive.]]> 278 Liz Kerin 1250835674 Sunyi 5
Mia's mother Izzy is part of a wave of people who were infected by a new, incurable virus which effectively turns them into vampires. In particular, Izzy was 'turned' deliberately by an on-and-off ex boyfriend who is abusive, controlling, manipulative, and dangerous to her daughter.

This syndrome of course makes her, and others like her, dangerous to the general population, and provokes a harsh response from the government in the form of detention centres and detecting technology, as well as violent fear-based responses from the general public.

Bereft of options, confronted by a collective lack of compassion from society, Mia and Izzy retreat into a life of hiding, with Mia dependent on her mother emotionally and financially, while Izzy is dependent on Mia donating blood and managing daytime affairs to keep her alive, which also keeps Izzy from killing innocents for food.

What really makes the novel sing is its detailed, unflinching examination of codependency in relationships, something I'm unfortunately extremely familiar with, albeit without the vampirism. Mia has defined and built her life around caring for her mother, and derives most of her self-worth from this task. Like most enablers in a codependent dynamic, she has an overblown sense of her ability to make her mother happy, and figures out far too late what good boundaries look like in regards to someone else's emotional needs.

This is not a criticism of her as a person, only a tragic observation of her situation. Mia is 13 when her life is traumatically changed by her mother's misfortune, and all of her coping strategies, though maladaptive and ultimately dysfunctional, are necessary ones that she must adopt to survive.

Izzy, for her part, is a difficult character throughout most of the novel. Though often shown in unflattering lights, it is clear that she carries trauma and baggage from her upbringing, the effects of which are exponentially exacerbated by her unfortunate run-in with Devon (the vampire boyfriend who 'turns' her).** In narrative terms, Izzy's vampirism is effectively a stand-in for any number of real-world addictions. It's interesting anyway as an SFF interaction but what makes it stand-out is the way in which Izzy tips from "chaotic but loving parent" into "chaotic and monstrous creature". Her attempts to protect and preserve her daughter ultimately damage Mia far more than parting ways would have done.

A counsellor said to me once that people who are mentally unwell will sometimes make demands which are unreasonable, precisely because they are unwell and unable to recognise that those demands aren't fair. The responsibility of drawing boundaries for what is or isn't a reasonable demand therefore falls to those around them, and that can be a difficult thing to do--especially when it comes to family, and particularly when it comes to parents. Mia is asked to make those choices very young, under confusing circumstances, with no support, and great incentive to pick her mother over herself. This is perhaps the biggest tragedy of Night's Edge, and what makes it so effective as a book: it never feels as if the characters could have done much different, past a certain point.

Izzy and Mia are very much in this trap. Izzy's demands scale rapidly through the years (and they were never easy to begin with.) From unfair and burdensome, they escalate to outright deadly as Izzy becomes a danger both to her daughter and the population at large. Mia, who has built her life around being her mother's protector, feels beholden to keep trying to meet those needs, at extreme cost to herself, and sometimes to other people.

There's a lot of sticky, nuanced stuff going on, all of it well-handled and none of it shying away from difficult moments or interactions.

I fear for this book a little if Tik Tok ever finds it, because the current trend of "I don't like something, therefore I must invent moral reasons why it sucks" among some influencers can be pretty tough going for morally grey novels; such books, by their nature, inevitably provide a lot of fodder to construct a narrative that these stories are 'problematic'. Maybe one day this trend will end.

But regardless, I don't think it is problematic. Just an emotional gauntlet, which is a good thing. I really enjoyed it and would very much recommend it to anyone interested in difficult family relationships in SFF, and also for anyone keen on well-crafted psychological narratives with a queer slant and a young protagonist.


**Sidenote, it was weird reading a book with another Devon in it, possibly ironic given the content.]]> 3.88 2023 Night's Edge (Night's Edge, #1)
author: Liz Kerin
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2023/01/09
date added: 2023/01/30
shelves:
review:
Kerin's complex and nuanced novel is immersive, bleak, and twisted.

Mia's mother Izzy is part of a wave of people who were infected by a new, incurable virus which effectively turns them into vampires. In particular, Izzy was 'turned' deliberately by an on-and-off ex boyfriend who is abusive, controlling, manipulative, and dangerous to her daughter.

This syndrome of course makes her, and others like her, dangerous to the general population, and provokes a harsh response from the government in the form of detention centres and detecting technology, as well as violent fear-based responses from the general public.

Bereft of options, confronted by a collective lack of compassion from society, Mia and Izzy retreat into a life of hiding, with Mia dependent on her mother emotionally and financially, while Izzy is dependent on Mia donating blood and managing daytime affairs to keep her alive, which also keeps Izzy from killing innocents for food.

What really makes the novel sing is its detailed, unflinching examination of codependency in relationships, something I'm unfortunately extremely familiar with, albeit without the vampirism. Mia has defined and built her life around caring for her mother, and derives most of her self-worth from this task. Like most enablers in a codependent dynamic, she has an overblown sense of her ability to make her mother happy, and figures out far too late what good boundaries look like in regards to someone else's emotional needs.

This is not a criticism of her as a person, only a tragic observation of her situation. Mia is 13 when her life is traumatically changed by her mother's misfortune, and all of her coping strategies, though maladaptive and ultimately dysfunctional, are necessary ones that she must adopt to survive.

Izzy, for her part, is a difficult character throughout most of the novel. Though often shown in unflattering lights, it is clear that she carries trauma and baggage from her upbringing, the effects of which are exponentially exacerbated by her unfortunate run-in with Devon (the vampire boyfriend who 'turns' her).** In narrative terms, Izzy's vampirism is effectively a stand-in for any number of real-world addictions. It's interesting anyway as an SFF interaction but what makes it stand-out is the way in which Izzy tips from "chaotic but loving parent" into "chaotic and monstrous creature". Her attempts to protect and preserve her daughter ultimately damage Mia far more than parting ways would have done.

A counsellor said to me once that people who are mentally unwell will sometimes make demands which are unreasonable, precisely because they are unwell and unable to recognise that those demands aren't fair. The responsibility of drawing boundaries for what is or isn't a reasonable demand therefore falls to those around them, and that can be a difficult thing to do--especially when it comes to family, and particularly when it comes to parents. Mia is asked to make those choices very young, under confusing circumstances, with no support, and great incentive to pick her mother over herself. This is perhaps the biggest tragedy of Night's Edge, and what makes it so effective as a book: it never feels as if the characters could have done much different, past a certain point.

Izzy and Mia are very much in this trap. Izzy's demands scale rapidly through the years (and they were never easy to begin with.) From unfair and burdensome, they escalate to outright deadly as Izzy becomes a danger both to her daughter and the population at large. Mia, who has built her life around being her mother's protector, feels beholden to keep trying to meet those needs, at extreme cost to herself, and sometimes to other people.

There's a lot of sticky, nuanced stuff going on, all of it well-handled and none of it shying away from difficult moments or interactions.

I fear for this book a little if Tik Tok ever finds it, because the current trend of "I don't like something, therefore I must invent moral reasons why it sucks" among some influencers can be pretty tough going for morally grey novels; such books, by their nature, inevitably provide a lot of fodder to construct a narrative that these stories are 'problematic'. Maybe one day this trend will end.

But regardless, I don't think it is problematic. Just an emotional gauntlet, which is a good thing. I really enjoyed it and would very much recommend it to anyone interested in difficult family relationships in SFF, and also for anyone keen on well-crafted psychological narratives with a queer slant and a young protagonist.


**Sidenote, it was weird reading a book with another Devon in it, possibly ironic given the content.
]]> The Kingdoms 55880210 Come home, if you remember.

The postcard has been held at the sorting office for ninety-one years, waiting to be delivered to Joe Tournier. On the front is a lighthouse � Eilean Mor, in the Outer Hebrides.

Joe has never left England, never even left London. He is a British slave, one of thousands throughout the French Empire. He has a job, a wife, a baby daughter.

But he also has flashes of a life he cannot remember and of a world that never existed � a world where English is spoken in England, and not French.

And now he has a postcard of a lighthouse built just six months ago, that was first written nearly one hundred years ago, by a stranger who seems to know him very well.

Joe's journey to unravel the truth will take him from French-occupied London to a remote Scottish island, and back through time itself as he battles for his life � and for a very different future.]]> 448 Natasha Pulley 1526623137 Sunyi 0 to-read 4.15 2021 The Kingdoms
author: Natasha Pulley
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Break The Bodies, Haunt The Bones]]> 38393457 Swine Hill was full of the dead. Their ghosts were thickest near the abandoned downtown, where so many of the town’s hopes had died generation by generation. They lingered in the places that mattered to them, and people avoided those streets, locked those doors, stopped going into those rooms... They could hurt you. Worse, they could change you.

Jane is haunted. Since she was a child, she has carried a ghost girl that feeds on the secrets and fears of everyone around her, whispering to Jane what they are thinking and feeling, even when she doesn’t want to know. Henry, Jane’s brother, is ridden by a genius ghost that forces him to build strange and dangerous machines. Their mother is possessed by a lonely spirit that burns anyone she touches. In Swine Hill, a place of defeat and depletion, there are more dead than living.

When new arrivals begin scoring precious jobs at the last factory in town, both the living and the dead are furious. This insult on the end of a long economic decline sparks a conflagration. Buffeted by rage on all sides, Jane must find a way to save her haunted family and escape the town before it kills them.]]> 304 Micah Dean Hicks 1328566455 Sunyi 5
I miss reading New Weird. I spend so much time reading more commercial fiction for blurbs or research, and also writing in it. And I love it for the most part. But I was so happy to read new weird again, immersed in something unusual and relatively niche. This is my spiritual book home.

Trauma, memories, love, hate, mistakes, bigotry, violence, consent, selfishness. Cascading layers of brutalised humanity and the echos of lives unfulfilled.

Break the Bodies Haunt the Bones was badly let down by the publisher folding and taking the book with it. But it is truly fantastic and if you can get ahold of a copy, do try it.]]> 3.61 2019 Break The Bodies, Haunt The Bones
author: Micah Dean Hicks
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.61
book published: 2019
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/12/28
shelves:
review:
My standout book of the year. I loved everything about it from start to finish: the cross genre leaping, the decadent writing, the rotting collapse of swine hill, the oddly uplifting moments of joy.

I miss reading New Weird. I spend so much time reading more commercial fiction for blurbs or research, and also writing in it. And I love it for the most part. But I was so happy to read new weird again, immersed in something unusual and relatively niche. This is my spiritual book home.

Trauma, memories, love, hate, mistakes, bigotry, violence, consent, selfishness. Cascading layers of brutalised humanity and the echos of lives unfulfilled.

Break the Bodies Haunt the Bones was badly let down by the publisher folding and taking the book with it. But it is truly fantastic and if you can get ahold of a copy, do try it.
]]> Eversion 58727132
In the 1800s, a sailing ship crashes off the coast of Norway. In the 1900s, a Zepellin explores an icy canyon in Antarctica. In the far future, a spaceship sets out for an alien artifact. Each excursion goes horribly wrong. And on every journey, Dr. Silas Coade is the physician, but only Silas seems to realize that these events keep repeating themselves. And it's up to him to figure out why and how. And how to stop it all from happening again.]]> 304 Alastair Reynolds 0316462829 Sunyi 5 3.88 2022 Eversion
author: Alastair Reynolds
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/12/11
shelves:
review:
Probably my last book of the year since I'm so busy, but this was fantastic (in concept, prrmise, execution, and the brilliant ending). Loved it.
]]> The Hacienda 57840571 Mexican Gothic meets Rebecca in this debut supernatural suspense novel, set in the aftermath of the Mexican War of Independence, about a remote house, a sinister haunting, and the woman pulled into their clutches...

In the overthrow of the Mexican government, Beatriz’s father is executed and her home destroyed. When handsome Don Rodolfo Solórzano proposes, Beatriz ignores the rumors surrounding his first wife’s sudden demise, choosing instead to seize the security his estate in the countryside provides. She will have her own home again, no matter the cost.

But Hacienda San Isidro is not the sanctuary she imagined.

When Rodolfo returns to work in the capital, visions and voices invade Beatriz’s sleep. The weight of invisible eyes follows her every move. Rodolfo’s sister, Juana, scoffs at Beatriz’s fears—but why does she refuse to enter the house at night? Why does the cook burn copal incense at the edge of the kitchen and mark its doorway with strange symbols? What really happened to the first Doña Solórzano?

Beatriz only knows two things for certain: Something is wrong with the hacienda. And no one there will help her.

Desperate for help, she clings to the young priest, Padre Andrés, as an ally. No ordinary priest, Andrés will have to rely on his skills as a witch to fight off the malevolent presence haunting the hacienda and protect the woman for whom he feels a powerful, forbidden attraction. But even he might not be enough to battle the darkness.

Far from a refuge, San Isidro may be Beatriz’s doom.]]> 352 Isabel Cañas Sunyi 0 to-read 3.83 2022 The Hacienda
author: Isabel Cañas
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sundial 57693183 Sundial is a new, twisty psychological horror novel from Catriona Ward, internationally bestselling author of The Last House on Needless Street.

You can't escape what's in your blood...

All Rob wanted was a normal life. She almost got it, too: a husband, two kids, a nice house in the suburbs. But Rob fears for her oldest daughter, Callie, who collects tiny bones and whispers to imaginary friends. Rob sees a darkness in Callie, one that reminds her too much of the family she left behind. She decides to take Callie back to her childhood home, to Sundial, deep in the Mojave Desert. And there she will have to make a terrible choice.

Callie is worried about her mother. Rob has begun to look at her strangely, and speaks of past secrets. And Callie fears that only one of them will leave Sundial alive�

The mother and daughter embark on a dark, desert journey to the past in the hopes of redeeming their future.]]> 292 Catriona Ward 1250812682 Sunyi 0 to-read 3.77 2022 Sundial
author: Catriona Ward
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A River Enchanted (Elements of Cadence, #1)]]> 58132544
As Jack and Adaira reluctantly work together, they find they make better allies than rivals as their partnership turns into something more. But with each passing song, it becomes apparent the trouble with the spirits is far more sinister than they first expected, and an older, darker secret about Cadence lurks beneath the surface, threatening to undo them all.]]> 480 Rebecca Ross 0063055988 Sunyi 0 to-read 4.06 2022 A River Enchanted (Elements of Cadence, #1)
author: Rebecca Ross
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (The Road to Nowhere, #1)]]> 29806086 When she fell asleep, the world was doomed. When she awoke, it was dead.

In the wake of a fever that decimated the earth’s population—killing women and children and making childbirth deadly for the mother and infant—the midwife must pick her way through the bones of the world she once knew to find her place in this dangerous new one. Gone are the pillars of civilization. All that remains is power—and the strong who possess it.

A few women like her survived, though they are scarce. Even fewer are safe from the clans of men, who, driven by fear, seek to control those remaining. To preserve her freedom, she dons men’s clothing, goes by false names, and avoids as many people as possible. But as the world continues to grapple with its terrible circumstances, she’ll discover a role greater than chasing a pale imitation of independence.

After all, if humanity is to be reborn, someone must be its guide.]]> 291 Meg Elison 1503939111 Sunyi 3 science-fantasy 4.13 2014 The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (The Road to Nowhere, #1)
author: Meg Elison
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2014
rating: 3
read at: 2018/09/23
date added: 2022/11/26
shelves: science-fantasy
review:

]]> When Women Were Dragons 58783802 A rollicking feminist tale set in 1950s America where thousands of women have spontaneously transformed into dragons, exploding notions of a woman’s place in the world and expanding minds about accepting others for who they really are.

The first adult novel by the Newbery award-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon.

Alex Green is a young girl in a world much like ours, except for its most seminal event: the Mass Dragoning of 1955, when hundreds of thousands of ordinary wives and mothers sprouted wings, scales, and talons; left a trail of fiery destruction in their path; and took to the skies. Was it their choice? What will become of those left behind? Why did Alex’s beloved aunt Marla transform but her mother did not? Alex doesn’t know. It’s taboo to speak of.

Forced into silence, Alex nevertheless must face the consequences of this astonishing event: a mother more protective than ever; an absentee father; the upsetting insistence that her aunt never even existed; and watching her beloved cousin Bea become dangerously obsessed with the forbidden.

In this timely and timeless speculative novel, award-winning author Kelly Barnhill boldly explores rage, memory, and the tyranny of forced limitations. When Women Were Dragons exposes a world that wants to keep women small—their lives and their prospects—and examines what happens when they rise en masse and take up the space they deserve.]]> 367 Kelly Barnhill 0385548222 Sunyi 0 to-read 3.79 2022 When Women Were Dragons
author: Kelly Barnhill
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches]]> 60018635 A warm and uplifting novel about an isolated witch whose opportunity to embrace a quirky new family--and a new love--changes the course of her life.

As one of the few witches in Britain, Mika Moon knows she has to hide her magic, keep her head down, and stay away from other witches so their powers don't mingle and draw attention. And as an orphan who lost her parents at a young age and was raised by strangers, she's used to being alone and she follows the rules...with one exception: an online account, where she posts videos pretending to be a witch. She thinks no one will take it seriously.

But someone does. An unexpected message arrives, begging her to travel to the remote and mysterious Nowhere House to teach three young witches how to control their magic. It breaks all of the rules, but Mika goes anyway, and is immediately tangled up in the lives and secrets of not only her three charges, but also an absent archaeologist, a retired actor, two long-suffering caretakers, and...Jamie. The handsome and prickly librarian of Nowhere House would do anything to protect the children, and as far as he's concerned, a stranger like Mika is a threat. An irritatingly appealing threat.

As Mika begins to find her place at Nowhere House, the thought of belonging somewhere begins to feel like a real possibility. But magic isn't the only danger in the world, and when a threat comes knocking at their door, Mika will need to decide whether to risk everything to protect a found family she didn't know she was looking for....
]]> 318 Sangu Mandanna 059343935X Sunyi 0 to-read 4.04 2022 The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches
author: Sangu Mandanna
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Thistlefoot 60018639
Thistlefoot, as the house is called, has arrived from the Yagas' ancestral home in Russia--but not alone. A sinister figure known only as the Longshadow Man has tracked it to American shores, bearing with him violent secrets from the past: fiery memories that have hidden in Isaac and Bellatine's blood for generations. As the Yaga siblings embark with Thistlefoot on a final cross-country tour of their family's traveling theater show, the Longshadow Man follows in relentless pursuit, seeding destruction in his wake. Ultimately, time, magic, and legacy must collide--erupting in a powerful conflagration to determine who gets to remember the past and craft a new future.

An enchanted adventure illuminated by Jewish myth and adorned with lyrical prose as tantalizing and sweet as briar berries, Thistlefoot is an immersive modern fantasy saga by a bold new talent.]]> 448 GennaRose Nethercott 059346883X Sunyi 0 to-read 3.92 2022 Thistlefoot
author: GennaRose Nethercott
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes, #1)]]> 60314494 A Novel of High Fantasy and Low Stakes.

After a lifetime of bounties and bloodshed, Viv is hanging up her sword for the last time.

The battle-weary orc aims to start fresh, opening the first ever coffee shop in the city of Thune. But old and new rivals stand in the way of success—not to mention the fact that no one has the faintest idea what coffee actually is.

If Viv wants to put the blade behind her and make her plans a reality, she won't be able to go it alone.

But the true rewards of the uncharted path are the travelers you meet along the way. And whether drawn together by ancient magic, flaky pastry, or a freshly brewed cup, they may become partners, family, and something deeper than she ever could have dreamed.]]> 305 Travis Baldree Sunyi 0 to-read 4.13 2022 Legends & Lattes (Legends & Lattes, #1)
author: Travis Baldree
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Juniper & Thorn 58966216 From highly acclaimed, bestselling author Ava Reid comes a gothic horror retelling of The Juniper Tree, set in another time and place within the world of The Wolf and the Woodsman, where a young witch seeks to discover her identity and escape the domination of her abusive wizard father, perfect for fans of Shirley Jackson and Catherynne M. Valente.

A gruesome curse. A city in upheaval. A monster with unquenchable appetites.

Marlinchen and her two sisters live with their wizard father in a city shifting from magic to industry. As Oblya’s last true witches, she and her sisters are little more than a tourist trap as they treat their clients with archaic remedies and beguile them with nostalgic charm. Marlinchen spends her days divining secrets in exchange for rubles and trying to placate her tyrannical, xenophobic father, who keeps his daughters sequestered from the outside world. But at night, Marlinchen and her sisters sneak out to enjoy the city’s amenities and revel in its thrills, particularly the recently established ballet theater, where Marlinchen meets a dancer who quickly captures her heart.

As Marlinchen’s late-night trysts grow more fervent and frequent, so does the threat of her father’s rage and magic. And while Oblya flourishes with culture and bustles with enterprise, a monster lurks in its midst, borne of intolerance and resentment and suffused with old-world power. Caught between history and progress and blood and desire, Marlinchen must draw upon her own magic to keep her city safe and find her place within it.]]> 368 Ava Reid 0062973169 Sunyi 0 to-read 3.63 2022 Juniper & Thorn
author: Ava Reid
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/11/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Barrow of Winter (The Four Pillars, #3)]]> 60535949
In Duamel, Thray’s demi-god siblings rule under the northern lights, worshipped by arcane cults. An endless winter night cloaks the land, giving rise to strange beasts, terrible storms and a growing, desperate hunger. The people of Duamel teeter on the edge of violence, and Thray’s siblings, powerful and deathless, stand with them on the brink.

To earn her siblings� trust and find the answers she seeks, Thray will have to weather assassinations, conspiracies and icy wastelands. And as her siblings turn their gaze towards the warmer, brighter land she calls home, she must harness her own feral power and decide where her loyalties lie.

Because when the spring winds blow and the ice breaks up, the sons and daughters of Winter will bring her homeland to its knees.]]> 336 H.M. Long 180336002X Sunyi 5 3.99 2023 Barrow of Winter (The Four Pillars, #3)
author: H.M. Long
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/27
date added: 2022/11/01
shelves:
review:
Beautifully written ARC. Don't have to read preceeding novels to pick this one up.
]]> Ascension 61813107
An enormous snow-covered mountain has appeared in the Pacific Ocean. No one knows when exactly it showed up, precisely how big it might be, or how to explain its existence. When Harold Tunmore, a scientist of mysterious phenomena, is contacted by a shadowy organization to help investigate, he has no idea what he is getting into as he and his team set out for the mountain.

The higher Harold’s team ascends, the less things make sense. Time moves differently, turning minutes into hours, and hours into days. Amid the whipping cold of higher elevation, the climbers� limbs numb and memories of their lives before the mountain begin to fade. Paranoia quickly turns to violence among the crew, and slithering, ancient creatures pursue them in the snow. Still, as the dangers increase, the mystery of the mountain compels them to its peak, where they are certain they will find their answers. Have they stumbled upon the greatest scientific discovery known to man or the seeds of their own demise?

Framed by the discovery of Harold Tunmore’s unsent letters to his family and the chilling and provocative story they tell, Ascension considers the limitations of science and faith and examines both the beautiful and the unsettling sides of human nature.]]> 344 Nicholas Binge 0593539583 Sunyi 5 3.53 2023 Ascension
author: Nicholas Binge
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/17
date added: 2022/11/01
shelves:
review:
Read an arc - very much enjoyed. I suspect this will be a marmite book for some folks due to the themes and the metaphysical concepts touched on, but I really enjoyed it. Very unusual with a strong neurodivergent protagonist. I don't know if that was the author's intent but the MC is very, very autistic as written, and as described.
]]> Arch-Conspirator 60795459
Passing into the Archive should be cause for celebration, but Antigone’s parents were murdered, leaving her father’s throne vacant. As her militant uncle Kreon rises to claim it, all Antigone feels is rage. When he welcomes her and her siblings into his mansion, Antigone sees it for what it really is: a gilded cage, where she is a captive as well as a guest.

But her uncle will soon learn that no cage is unbreakable. And neither is he.

From dystopian visionary and bestselling phenomenon Veronica Roth comes a razor-sharp reimagining of Antigone. In Arch-Conspirator, Roth reaches back to the root of legend and delivers a world of tomorrow both timeless and unexpected.]]> 112 Veronica Roth 1250855462 Sunyi 5 3.43 2023 Arch-Conspirator
author: Veronica Roth
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.43
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2022/07/01
date added: 2022/11/01
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Her Majesty's Royal Coven (Her Majesty's Royal Coven, #1)]]> 59088433
At the dawn of their adolescence, on the eve of the summer solstice, four young girls--Helena, Leonie, Niamh and Elle--took the oath to join Her Majesty's Royal Coven, established by Queen Elizabeth I as a covert government department. Now, decades later, the witch community is still reeling from a civil war and Helena is now the reigning High Priestess of the organization. Yet Helena is the only one of her friend group still enmeshed in the stale bureaucracy of HMRC. Elle is trying to pretend she's a normal housewife, and Niamh has become a country vet, using her powers to heal sick animals. In what Helena perceives as the deepest betrayal, Leonie has defected to start her own more inclusive and intersectional coven, Diaspora. And now Helena has a bigger problem. A young warlock of extraordinary capabilities has been captured by authorities and seems to threaten the very existence of HMRC. With conflicting beliefs over the best course of action, the four friends must decide where their loyalties lie: with preserving tradition, or doing what is right.

Juno Dawson explores gender and the corrupting nature of power in a delightful and provocative story of magic and matriarchy, friendship and feminism. Dealing with all the aspects of contemporary womanhood, as well as being phenomenally powerful witches, Niamh, Helena, Leonie and Elle may have grown apart but they will always be bound by the sisterhood of the coven.]]> 448 Juno Dawson 014313714X Sunyi 0 3.79 2022 Her Majesty's Royal Coven (Her Majesty's Royal Coven, #1)
author: Juno Dawson
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2022/10/26
date added: 2022/10/26
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Three Years Eight Months: The Forgotten Struggle of Hong Kong's WWII]]> 48567739 111 Derek Pua 1947766104 Sunyi 5 4.64 Three Years Eight Months: The Forgotten Struggle of Hong Kong's WWII
author: Derek Pua
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.64
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2022/10/21
date added: 2022/10/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Her Majesty's Royal Coven (Her Majesty's Royal Coven, #1)]]> 61308160 A Discovery of Witches meets The Craft in this the first installment of this epic fantasy trilogy about a group of childhood friends who are also witches.

If you look hard enough at old photographs, we’re there in the background: healers in the trenches; Suffragettes; Bletchley Park oracles; land girls and resistance fighters. Why is it we help in times of crisis? We have a gift. We are stronger than Mundanes, plain and simple.

At the dawn of their adolescence, on the eve of the summer solstice, four young girls--Helena, Leonie, Niamh and Elle--took the oath to join Her Majesty's Royal Coven, established by Queen Elizabeth I as a covert government department. Now, decades later, the witch community is still reeling from a civil war and Helena is now the reigning High Priestess of the organization. Yet Helena is the only one of her friend group still enmeshed in the stale bureaucracy of HMRC. Elle is trying to pretend she's a normal housewife, and Niamh has become a country vet, using her powers to heal sick animals. In what Helena perceives as the deepest betrayal, Leonie has defected to start her own more inclusive and intersectional coven, Diaspora. And now Helena has a bigger problem. A young warlock of extraordinary capabilities has been captured by authorities and seems to threaten the very existence of HMRC. With conflicting beliefs over the best course of action, the four friends must decide where their loyalties lie: with preserving tradition, or doing what is right.

Juno Dawson explores gender and the corrupting nature of power in a delightful and provocative story of magic and matriarchy, friendship and feminism. Dealing with all the aspects of contemporary womanhood, as well as being phenomenally powerful witches, Niamh, Helena, Leonie and Elle may have grown apart but they will always be bound by the sisterhood of the coven.]]> 452 Juno Dawson Sunyi 5 science-fantasy 3.92 2022 Her Majesty's Royal Coven (Her Majesty's Royal Coven, #1)
author: Juno Dawson
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/10/20
shelves: science-fantasy
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Unspoken Name (The Serpent Gates, #1)]]> 45046552
Csorwe does. She will climb the mountain, enter the Shrine of the Unspoken, and gain the most honored title: sacrifice. On the day of her foretold death, however, a powerful mage offers her a new fate.

Csorwe leaves her home, her destiny, and her god to become the wizard's loyal sword-hand -- stealing, spying, and killing to help him reclaim his seat of power in the homeland from which he was exiled.

But Csorwe and the wizard will soon learn � gods remember, and if you live long enough, all debts come due.]]> 464 A.K. Larkwood 1250238900 Sunyi 5
Tal, though a dick, was my favorite character.]]> 3.70 2020 The Unspoken Name (The Serpent Gates, #1)
author: A.K. Larkwood
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.70
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2021/03/21
date added: 2022/10/13
shelves:
review:
A really intriguing epic sapphic fantasy. The pacing accelerates in the second half, as does the scope and the stakes. That surprised me in a good way.

Tal, though a dick, was my favorite character.
]]> Weyward 60654349 I am a Weyward, and wild inside.

2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.

1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family's grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives––and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart's Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.]]> 329 Emilia Hart 125028080X Sunyi 5
Beautifully written and intricate as a spider's web, Weyward weaves an intergenerational tale of sorrow, love, and strength. Though separated by decades or even centuries, these three Weyward women--Altha, Violet, and Kate--are each other's heritage and legacy, and the power they each possess pays tribute to the connections between women, nature, and family.]]> 4.03 2023 Weyward
author: Emilia Hart
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/08
date added: 2022/08/08
shelves:
review:
I was sent an arc of this for possible review/blurb and was a little dubious at first, because "witch" novels can be a hard sell for me sometimes. But the writing is gorgeous and the story very absorbing.

Beautifully written and intricate as a spider's web, Weyward weaves an intergenerational tale of sorrow, love, and strength. Though separated by decades or even centuries, these three Weyward women--Altha, Violet, and Kate--are each other's heritage and legacy, and the power they each possess pays tribute to the connections between women, nature, and family.
]]> Caraval (Caraval, #1) 28495773 Alternative Cover Edition #1

Remember, it’s only a game�

Scarlett Dragna has never left the tiny island where she and her sister, Tella, live with their powerful, and cruel, father. Now Scarlett’s father has arranged a marriage for her, and Scarlett thinks her dreams of seeing Caraval—the faraway, once-a-year performance where the audience participates in the show—are over.

But this year, Scarlett’s long-dreamt-of invitation finally arrives. With the help of a mysterious sailor, Tella whisks Scarlett away to the show. Only, as soon as they arrive, Tella is kidnapped by Caraval’s mastermind organizer, Legend. It turns out that this season’s Caraval revolves around Tella, and whoever finds her first is the winner.

Scarlett has been told that everything that happens during Caraval is only an elaborate performance. Nevertheless she becomes enmeshed in a game of love, heartbreak, and magic. And whether Caraval is real or not, Scarlett must find Tella before the five nights of the game are over or a dangerous domino effect of consequences will be set off, and her beloved sister will disappear forever.

Welcome, welcome to Caraval…beware of getting swept too far away.]]> 310 Stephanie Garber 1473629179 Sunyi 0
Although it had some interesting things going on, I didn't feel drawn to read on.]]> 3.93 2016 Caraval (Caraval, #1)
author: Stephanie Garber
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2017/05/29
date added: 2022/08/03
shelves:
review:
I only read the demo available to download.

Although it had some interesting things going on, I didn't feel drawn to read on.
]]> <![CDATA[Dead in Venice (Bella Tyson Mysteries, #1)]]> 52739834
Award-winning crime novelist Bella Tyson has it all: a successful career, devoted fans - and a bad case of writer's block. So when a fan sends her a book of Venetian ghost stories and offers her the use of an apartment near Piazza San Marco, Bella jumps at the chance to get her Eat Pray Love on, consume her bodyweight in gelato and explore the atmospheric canals of Venice.

She meets Will, a mild-mannered, middle class Interpol agent working in the city, and is swept away by him. And when a series of gruesome murders occur he's on the case - with Bella in tow.

Her writer's block is well and truly cured, her new novel is under way, and she's madly in love. But Bella realises that not everything in Venice is as it seems...

PRAISE FOR 'DEAD IN VENICE':
"Absolutely stonking book. Rom-com meets crime in such a fresh and refreshing way. Dirty laughed through half of the book and cried at the end. Amazing book."
"Bella is the kind of heroine most women would love to be and Will the kind of man we’d love to meet. Funny, loud-mouthed, mature protagonists with flaws, curves and the kind of wit that makes Fiona Leitch’s writing reminiscent of Richard Curtis� films."
"Oh what fun! Hilarious and witty protagonist in one of the best cities in the world. Suspenseful and kept me hooked."
"Ms Leitch's light tone contrasts with the very serious subject matter, which makes it all the more emotional and powerful. It is in turn horrifying, funny, tender, hopeful, or sad. This is a courageous book, devoid of sentimentality but full of sentiment."
"A combination of gritty crime thriller, hilarious rom-com, with a splash of the heart-wrenching emotions. And it works."
"An entertaining mash-up of rom-com and crime."
"DEAD IN VENICE made me fall in love with fiction again."]]> 213 Fiona Leitch Sunyi 0 to-read 3.96 Dead in Venice (Bella Tyson Mysteries, #1)
author: Fiona Leitch
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.96
book published:
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date added: 2022/08/01
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]]> Children of the Moon, 2 53328957
Garrett is at a loss as to why India changed her mind about them but isn’t willing to give up on her so easily and with her sister’s help he kidnaps her and whisks her off to a remote cabin in the snow-capped mountains. He is determined to keep her there until she admits her insane attraction to him and why she is running away from him. Garrett is coming home with a mate or she can tell him to leave her alone for good.

As they unravel the complications of their relationship and truly get to know each other they come face to face with bloodthirsty hunters and two wolf shifters who are barely more than children and desperately need their help. When his sister, Rylee, goes missing and his spoiled, entitled brother shows up in the compound, putting India in grave danger, Garrett needs to face the family he turned away from and discover who he truly is, and India gives him the most precious gift he will ever receive in his lifetime.]]> Yvonne Robertson Sunyi 0 to-read 4.75 Children of the Moon, 2
author: Yvonne Robertson
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.75
book published:
rating: 0
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]]> The Children of the Moon 50721684 291 Yvonne Robertson Sunyi 0 to-read 4.23 The Children of the Moon
author: Yvonne Robertson
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.23
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/01
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]]> Yearnings: Collected Poetry 43196934
This collection is unyielding in its examination of the emotions in people, often from the perspective of modern women. Ayo Gutierrez is an expert of poetic irony, meaning we are able to read about things that are seldom spoken. Her subjects range from religion to child birth to inter- and extra-personal relationships.

Gutierrez’s attention to detail in her writings enables us, the readers, to develop a greater understanding of the issues she captures. She brings us into the midst of a subject and wraps our minds in the comfort of her words, allowing us to steep in her perspective, disappearing with our evolution.

Gutierrez does not offer up traditional formats in her poetry. You will not find sonnets nor iambic pentameter; rather, you will find heightened, sometimes disjointed, free-form poetry that bites and caresses. Instead of works about the beauty of rainbows, you will read about the intense, complex molecules inside that rainbow.

Gutierrez and her contributors have created something special.

Josh Jones (Author of the novel Sheltered)]]> 161 Ayo Gutierrez 1790256631 Sunyi 0 to-read 4.80 2018 Yearnings: Collected Poetry
author: Ayo Gutierrez
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.80
book published: 2018
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Richer than Pride - An Ode to Womanhood]]> 46010590 183 Edentu Oroso Sunyi 0 to-read 4.80 2019 Richer than Pride - An Ode to Womanhood
author: Edentu Oroso
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.80
book published: 2019
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Trusting In God: Stories That Inspire]]> 48496600 177 Authors For Christ 1698605641 Sunyi 0 to-read 5.00 Trusting In God: Stories That Inspire
author: Authors For Christ
name: Sunyi
average rating: 5.00
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Dragon Mage: Red Dragon Chronicles]]> 53644661 236 Arisha Grabtchak 1733444882 Sunyi 0 to-read 4.80 Dragon Mage: Red Dragon Chronicles
author: Arisha Grabtchak
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.80
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The filthy Hands and other Poems]]> 53605057 REVIEWS ABOUT THE BOOK“After studying thirty-nine of the poems in the collection, The Filthy Hands & Other Poems, I am left with a feeling of joy, happiness, accomplishment, and peace. The journey took me to a faraway land in Nigeria. Words, images, culture, and dreams came to life in the poetry. The author did an amazing job of creating vivid scenes and colorful lives. The narration is well crafted and shows the versatility of the author as they were able to create many characters with varying character traits and ambitions. I would highly recommend reading the entire collection on more than one occasion. It has been an interesting ride through the poetic mind of Steve Anc.�Katina Woodruff Borgersen USA“I like poetry that makes me think and reason through the artist's mind, and that is exactly what Steve's poems urge us to do. His collection in this book presents a dare to discover and to embrace a moment in time that he wants the reader to mull over for a while and come to a conclusion after reflection. In my opinion, that is the mark of an excellent writer. I thoroughly enjoyed Steve's gift of poetry to evoke contemplation of life.� Cherie Leigh Sumner, North Carolina, United States of America“The Filthy hands exposes the true nature of situations in most areas of life. I can relate this message to the injustice and cruelty that affects our society today politically, economically, educationally, environmentally, health-wise and, so forth.� Utti Adaeze Ifeanyichukwu, Dubai, UAE“I loved all of his poems. He has the great taste of poetry and literature. Most of his poems reflect the nature of beauty, love, and romance. Steve Anc is an addition to the assets of literature. I wish his work get acceptance and attention it deserves. Best of luck.� Ahsan Siddiqui, Pakistan“I’ve never been attached to poems until I came across this series. It’s entertaining and very informative at the same time. My favorite poem in this book is “A joyful heart�. This poem is tailored to good people like you so that we can help make this world a better place. Understanding other people’s feelings and placing ourselves in their shoes can make them feel better. Steve Anc is indeed a lover of words.� Amos Gikunda, Kenya“I read all his poems and I’d say that poet Steve Anc is a beautiful addition in the world of literature. His poems inspire the reader more to know the modern way of poetry. Love as usual is the soul of every poetry and Steve Anc's poems are a blend of love, romance and also an attraction towards nature. In his first attempt, he has achieved what most poets don’t. He is a shining star in the world of poetry. May his work renowned & he make progress by leaps and bounds in his work.� Muhammad Azad, Pakistan“A deep and thoughtful writer. When first read I was not sure of its meaning until I rationalized it could be a rape victims� dilemma. You have a vast vocabulary that you draw upon. The deepness of the poem stems from hidden feelings that she cannot escape. It lives within her. Good work Steve.� Dennis Borgersen, United States of America“I enjoyed reading the poems by Steve Anc and look forward to seeing more from this talented writer.� Karl-Heinz Limberg, GermanyBOOK DESCRIPTIONThe inspiration for writing the collection came from my quest for a deep understanding of poetry. The desire to bring my numerous works to a unique collection came to me after immersing myself in the deep ocean of poetry and drenched by its beauty and joy of been called a poet.]]> 105 Steve Anc Sunyi 0 to-read 4.94 The filthy Hands and other Poems
author: Steve Anc
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.94
book published:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment]]> 6708 Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9781577314806.

To make the journey into the Now we will need to leave our analytical mind and its false created self, the ego, behind. From the very first page of Eckhart Tolle's extraordinary book, we move rapidly into a significantly higher altitude where we breathe a lighter air. We become connected to the indestructible essence of our Being, “The eternal, ever present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death.� Although the journey is challenging, Eckhart Tolle uses simple language and an easy question-and-answer format to guide us.

A word-of-mouth phenomenon since its first publication, The Power of Now is one of those rare books with the power to create an experience in readers, one that can radically change their lives for the better.]]> 229 Eckhart Tolle Sunyi 0 to-read 4.16 1997 The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment
author: Eckhart Tolle
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.16
book published: 1997
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/01
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]]> <![CDATA[The Boy King (The Seymour Saga, #3)]]> 55097644 One of Open Letters Review's Ten Best Historical Novels of 2020; First Place Winner, 2021 Chaucer Award for pre-1750s historical fiction"Highly recommend both as a standalone and series read. Wertman's work is among the best Tudor fiction on the market" - Historical Fiction ReaderHis mother, Jane Seymour, died at his birth. Now his father, King Henry VIII, has died as well. Nine-year old Edward Tudor ascends to the throne of England and quickly learns that he cannot trust anyone, even himself.Struggling to understand the political and religious turmoil that threatens the realm, Edward is at first relieved that his uncle, the new Duke of Somerset, will act on his behalf as Lord Protector, but this consolation evaporates as jealousy spreads through the court. Challengers arise on all sides to wrest control of the child king, and through him, England.While Edward can bring frustratingly little direction to the Council's policies, he refuses to abandon his one firm that Catholicism has no place in England. When Edward falls ill, this steadfast belief threatens England's best hope for a smooth the transfer of the throne to Edward's very Catholic half-sister, Mary Tudor, whose heart's desire is to return the realm to the way it worshipped in her mother's day.]]> 372 Janet Ambrosi Wertman 0997133864 Sunyi 0 to-read 4.43 2020 The Boy King (The Seymour Saga, #3)
author: Janet Ambrosi Wertman
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.43
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Lucid Dreams 55461570
Struggling to find work and running out of money, Bjorn is desperate for a break. So when a strange man offers him a job with a mysterious organization, he’s in no position to refuse. He is told that the Organization targets those who have had affairs, were involved in financial frauds, or have committed criminal acts. Although Bjorn suspects that the Organization’s activities may be illegal, he is eager for a new beginning, one that will solve his financial problems and provide him with a purpose in life. But he soon realizes that he has gotten himself in over his head. He needs a way out, but it won’t be that easy. The Organization has uncovered a secret from his past, one he hoped would never come to light. And if he doesn’t cooperate, the Organization will use it against him.

Thrown into a world of betrayals, secrets and lies, Bjorn must go to extremes to see that justice is done, even if that means breaking the law. Falling back on his hacking abilities, he knows the only way out is finding leverage against the Organization. But once he starts digging, he finds much more than he expected, and he begins to fear for his life. How far is he willing to go to end this nightmare?

Lucid Dreams is a suspenseful psychological thriller with lots of twists and turns that will keep you guessing until the very end.]]> 304 Ocean Bloom Sunyi 0 to-read 4.50 Lucid Dreams
author: Ocean Bloom
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> The South Croydon Poisonings 32886169 51 Jeannette Hensby Sunyi 0 to-read 3.88 2021 The South Croydon Poisonings
author: Jeannette Hensby
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/08/01
shelves: to-read
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]]> World Running Down 61152848
Once a powerful AI in Salt Lake City, Osric has been forced into an android body against his will and sent into the wasteland to offer Valentine a job on behalf of his new employer—an escort service seeking to retrieve their stolen androids. The reward is a visa into the city, and a chance at the life Valentine's always dreamed of. Finding the androids means navigating both pirate territory and Val and Osric's growing feelings for each other. And as they attempt to recover the "merchandise", they encounter a problem: the android ladies are becoming self-aware, and have no interest in returning to their old lives.

The prize is tempting, but carrying out the job would go against everything Valentine stands for, and would threaten the fragile found family that's kept him alive so far. He'll need to decide whether to risk his own dream in order to give the AI a chance to live theirs.]]> 335 Al Hess 1915202248 Sunyi 5
World Running Down hits that exquisite sweetspot: a piercing mix of relevant social commentary that is braided into a riveting scifi adventure.

Hess seizes the post apocalyptic landscape and transforms it into a canvas for exploring the complex intersection of technology and gender. Technology offers certain solutions for Valentine but a raft of complications for Osric. The parallels between Osric's (essentially) enslavement in an android body and Valentine's intense dysmorphia with his human body are beautifully drawn, creating a unique and touching bond between the characters.

While the social issues are front and centre, it's important to note that the book is never preachy, nor does Hess let its musings steer the narrative off-course. At the heart of WRD is a chilling, futuristic mystery story with escalating stakes, and some classic scifi themes (android personhood) thrown into the mix. ]]> 3.95 2023 World Running Down
author: Al Hess
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2022/08/01
date added: 2022/08/01
shelves:
review:
What a fantastic trade debut from Angry Robot <3

World Running Down hits that exquisite sweetspot: a piercing mix of relevant social commentary that is braided into a riveting scifi adventure.

Hess seizes the post apocalyptic landscape and transforms it into a canvas for exploring the complex intersection of technology and gender. Technology offers certain solutions for Valentine but a raft of complications for Osric. The parallels between Osric's (essentially) enslavement in an android body and Valentine's intense dysmorphia with his human body are beautifully drawn, creating a unique and touching bond between the characters.

While the social issues are front and centre, it's important to note that the book is never preachy, nor does Hess let its musings steer the narrative off-course. At the heart of WRD is a chilling, futuristic mystery story with escalating stakes, and some classic scifi themes (android personhood) thrown into the mix.
]]> <![CDATA[The Cabin at the End of the World]]> 40656891
Seven-year-old Wen and her parents, Eric and Andrew, are vacationing at a remote cabin on a quiet New Hampshire lake. Their closest neighbors are more than two miles in either direction along a rutted dirt road.

One afternoon, as Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, a stranger unexpectedly appears in the driveway. Leonard is the largest man Wen has ever seen but he is young, friendly, and he wins her over almost instantly. Leonard and Wen talk and play until Leonard abruptly apologizes and tells Wen, "None of what’s going to happen is your fault". Three more strangers then arrive at the cabin carrying unidentifiable, menacing objects. As Wen sprints inside to warn her parents, Leonard calls "Your dads won’t want to let us in, Wen. But they have to. We need your help to save the world."

Thus begins an unbearably tense, gripping tale of paranoia, sacrifice, apocalypse, and survival that escalates to a shattering conclusion, one in which the fate of a loving family and quite possibly all of humanity are entwined. The Cabin at the End of the World is a masterpiece of terror and suspense from the fantastically fertile imagination of Paul Tremblay.]]> 336 Paul Tremblay 1785657836 Sunyi 4 3.40 2018 The Cabin at the End of the World
author: Paul Tremblay
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2018
rating: 4
read at: 2022/07/01
date added: 2022/07/01
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]]> Survivor Song 51608179 325 Paul Tremblay 1785657879 Sunyi 4 3.69 2020 Survivor Song
author: Paul Tremblay
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2020
rating: 4
read at: 2022/06/13
date added: 2022/06/13
shelves:
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]]> Lies We Sing to the Sea 59470553
But when that fate comes for Leto, death is not what she thought it would be. Instead, she wakes on a mysterious island and meets a girl with green eyes and the power to command the sea. A girl named Melantho, who says one more death can stop a thousand.

The prince of Ithaca must die—or the tides of fate will drown them all.

Sarah Underwood weaves an epic tapestry of lies, love, and tragedy, perfect for fans of Madeline Miller, Alexandra Bracken, and Renée Ahdieh.]]> 432 Sarah Underwood Sunyi 0 to-read 3.42 2023 Lies We Sing to the Sea
author: Sarah Underwood
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.42
book published: 2023
rating: 0
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date added: 2022/06/13
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Head Full of Ghosts 31557884 311 Paul Tremblay 1785653687 Sunyi 5 Surprising and excellent

Layered, taut, surprising, and intriguing. I loved the puzzle boz aspect and failed to guess the twists but also never felt they were unearned, which means it felt perfectly done to me. The examination of horror tropes and staples was searing and thoughtful. ]]> 3.80 2015 A Head Full of Ghosts
author: Paul Tremblay
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2022/06/12
date added: 2022/06/12
shelves:
review:
Surprising and excellent

Layered, taut, surprising, and intriguing. I loved the puzzle boz aspect and failed to guess the twists but also never felt they were unearned, which means it felt perfectly done to me. The examination of horror tropes and staples was searing and thoughtful.
]]> Bullet Train (Assassins, #2) 56969543 A dark, satirical thriller by the bestselling Japanese author, following the perilous train ride of five highly motivated assassins—soon to be a major film from Sony

Nanao, nicknamed Lady Bird—the self-proclaimed “unluckiest assassin in the world”—boards a bullet train from Tokyo to Morioka with one simple task: grab a suitcase and get off at the next stop. Unbeknownst to him, the deadly duo Tangerine and Lemon are also after the very same suitcase—and they are not the only dangerous passengers onboard. Satoshi, “the Prince,� with the looks of an innocent schoolboy and the mind of a viciously cunning psychopath, is also in the mix and has history with some of the others. Risk fuels him as does a good philosophical debate . . . like, is killing really wrong? Chasing the Prince is another assassin with a score to settle for the time the Prince casually pushed a young boy off of a roof, leaving him comatose.

When the five assassins discover they are all on the same train, they realize their missions are not as unrelated as they first appear.

A massive bestseller in Japan, Bullet Train is an original and propulsive thriller that fizzes with an incredible energy and surprising humor as its complex net of double-crosses and twists unwind. Award-winning author Kotaro Isaka takes readers on a tension packed journey as the bullet train hurtles toward its final destination. Who will make it off the train alive—and what awaits them at the last stop?]]> 432 Kōtarō Isaka 1419756338 Sunyi 0 to-read 3.88 2010 Bullet Train (Assassins, #2)
author: Kōtarō Isaka
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.88
book published: 2010
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/06/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Final Strife (Ending Fire, #1)]]> 54440543 Red is the blood of the elite, of magic, of control.
Blue is the blood of the poor, of workers, of the resistance.
Clear is the blood of the slaves, of the crushed, of the invisible.

Sylah dreams of days growing up in the resistance, being told she would spark a revolution that would free the empire from the red-blooded ruling classes� tyranny. That spark was extinguished the day she watched her family murdered before her eyes.

Anoor has been told she’s nothing, no one, a disappointment, by the only person who matters: her mother, the most powerful ruler in the empire. But when Sylah and Anoor meet, a fire burns between them that could consume the kingdom—and their hearts.

Hassa moves through the world unseen by upper classes, so she knows what it means to be invisible. But invisibility has its uses: It can hide the most dangerous of secrets, secrets that can reignite a revolution. And when she joins forces with Sylah and Anoor, together these grains of sand will become a storm.

As the empire begins a set of trials of combat and skill designed to find its new leaders, the stage is set for blood to flow, power to shift, and cities to burn.

Book One of The Ending Fire Trilogy]]> 640 Saara El-Arifi Sunyi 5
Thanks so much to Netgalley / Harper for the e-arc! Can't wait to pick up the real thing next month.]]> 4.19 2022 The Final Strife (Ending Fire, #1)
author: Saara El-Arifi
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/05/30
date added: 2022/05/30
shelves:
review:
A brutal world that feels real and lived in; a traumatised MC (Sylah) who goes through absolute darkness and comes out the other side raging w/ fury; a sapphic enemies-to-lover interest (Anoor) with SO many layers. The language-based magic system also works really well for me. It feels intricate and unique, and also not super "gamey" at all. The queer rep is brilliant!

Thanks so much to Netgalley / Harper for the e-arc! Can't wait to pick up the real thing next month.
]]> <![CDATA[The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School]]> 58842731 A debut novel about a queer Mexican American girl navigating Catholic school, while falling in love and learning to celebrate her true self.

Sixteen-year-old Yamilet Flores prefers to be known for her killer eyeliner, not for being one of the only Mexican kids at her new, mostly white, very rich Catholic school. But at least here no one knows she's gay, and Yami intends to keep it that way.

After being outed by her crush and ex-best friend before transferring to Slayton Catholic, Yami has new priorities: keep her brother out of trouble, make her mom proud, and, most importantly, don't fall in love. Granted, she's never been great at any of those things, but that's a problem for Future Yami.

The thing is, it's hard to fake being straight when Bo, the only openly queer girl at school, is so annoyingly perfect. And smart. And talented. And cute. So cute. Either way, Yami isn't going to make the same mistake again. If word got back to her mom, she could face a lot worse than rejection. So she'll have to start asking, WWSGD: What would a straight girl do?]]> 385 Sonora Reyes 006306023X Sunyi 0 to-read 4.27 2022 The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School
author: Sonora Reyes
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Daughter of the Moon Goddess (The Celestial Kingdom, #1)]]> 57789637
“Epic, romantic, and enthralling from start to finish.”—Stephanie Garber, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Caraval series

“An all-consuming work of literary fantasy that is breathtaking both for its beauty and its suspense."—BookPage, starred review

A captivating and romantic debut epic fantasy inspired by the legend of the Chinese moon goddess, Chang’e, in which a young woman’s quest to free her mother pits her against the most powerful immortal in the realm.

Growing up on the moon, Xingyin is accustomed to solitude, unaware that she is being hidden from the feared Celestial Emperor who exiled her mother for stealing his elixir of immortality. But when Xingyin’s magic flares and her existence is discovered, she is forced to flee her home, leaving her mother behind.

Alone, powerless, and afraid, she makes her way to the Celestial Kingdom, a land of wonder and secrets. Disguising her identity, she seizes an opportunity to learn alongside the emperor’s son, mastering archery and magic, even as passion flames between her and the prince.

To save her mother, Xingyin embarks on a perilous quest, confronting legendary creatures and vicious enemies. But when treachery looms and forbidden magic threatens the kingdom, she must challenge the ruthless Celestial Emperor for her dream—striking a dangerous bargain in which she is torn between losing all she loves or plunging the realm into chaos.

Daughter of the Moon Goddess begins an enchanting duology which weaves ancient Chinese mythology into a sweeping adventure of immortals and magic, of loss and sacrifice—where love vies with honor, dreams are fraught with betrayal, and hope emerges triumphant.]]> 503 Sue Lynn Tan 0063031302 Sunyi 0 4.08 2022 Daughter of the Moon Goddess (The Celestial Kingdom, #1)
author: Sue Lynn Tan
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.08
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/24
shelves:
review:
Gorgeous, lyrical, and immersive ya fantasy with a fantastical setting (Chinese celestial heaven). Gods and immortals and court politics in a blend of my favorite myth (chang'e).
]]> The Sleepless 59805612
But everything goes awry when Jamie discovers that he was the last person who saw Simon alive. Not only do the police suspect him, Jamie himself has no memory of that night. Alarmingly, his memory loss may have to do with how he became Sleepless: not naturally, like other Sleepless people, but through a risky and illegal biohacking process.

As Jamie delves deeper into Simon’s final days, he tangles with extremist organizations and powerful corporate interests, all while confronting past traumas and unforeseen consequences of his medical experimentation. But Jamie soon faces the most dangerous decision of all as he uncovers a terrifying truth about Sleeplessness that imperils him—and all of humanity.]]> 400 Victor Manibo 164566046X Sunyi 0 to-read 3.49 2022 The Sleepless
author: Victor Manibo
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.49
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/05/23
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Coraline 11249827 The bewitching classic children's novel by Neil Gaiman, featuring spellbinding illustrations from Chris Riddell and an exclusive new introduction by the author'I was enthralled ... a marvellously strange and scary book' Philip Pullman'A masterpiece' Terry PratchettThere is something strange about Coraline's new home.It's not the mist, or the cat that always seems to be watching her, nor the signs of danger that Miss Spink and Miss Forcible, her new neighbours, read in the tea leaves. It's the other house � the one behind the old door in the drawing room.Another mother and father with black-button eyes and papery skin are waiting for Coraline to join them there. And they want her to stay with them. For ever. She knows that if she ventures through that door, she may never come back.This deliciously creepy, gripping novel is packed with glorious illustrations by Chris Riddell, and is guaranteed to delight and entrance readers of all ages.]]> 212 Neil Gaiman Sunyi 5 Lovely

Great book, read with my daughter and she enjoyed it a lot. It is dark so gauge your own kid carefully. ]]> 4.21 2002 Coraline
author: Neil Gaiman
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2002
rating: 5
read at: 2022/04/12
date added: 2022/04/12
shelves:
review:
Lovely

Great book, read with my daughter and she enjoyed it a lot. It is dark so gauge your own kid carefully.
]]> Kaikeyi 57127277 “I was born on the full moon under an auspicious constellation, the holiest of positions—much good it did me.�

So begins Kaikeyi’s story. The only daughter of the kingdom of Kekaya, she is raised on tales about the might and benevolence of the gods: how they churned the vast ocean to obtain the nectar of immortality, how they vanquish evil and ensure the land of Bharat prospers, and how they offer powerful boons to the worthy. Yet she watches as her father unceremoniously banishes her mother, listens as her own worth is reduced to the marriage alliance she can secure. And when she calls upon the gods for help, they never seem to hear.

Desperate for independence, she turns to the texts she once read with her mother and discovers a magic that is hers alone. With it, Kaikeyi transforms herself from an overlooked princess into a warrior, diplomat, and most favored queen.

But as the evil from her childhood stories threatens the cosmic order, the path she has forged clashes with the destiny the gods have chosen for her family. And Kaikeyi must decide if resistance is worth the destruction it will wreak—and what legacy she intends to leave behind.

The unforgettable tale of a woman determined to leave her mark in a world gods and men dictate the shape of things to come. "Patel's mesmerizing debut shines a brilliant light on the vilified queen from the Ramayana"
(Publishers Weekly, starred review).]]> 478 Vaishnavi Patel 0759557330 Sunyi 0 to-read 4.18 2022 Kaikeyi
author: Vaishnavi Patel
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/05
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Atomic Anna 58684535 Three generations of women work together and travel through time to prevent the Chernobyl disaster and right the wrongs of their past.

Three brilliant women.
Two life-changing mistakes.
One chance to reset the future.

In 1986, renowned nuclear scientist, Anna Berkova, is sleeping in her bed in the Soviet Union when Chernobyl’s reactor melts down. It’s the exact moment she tears through time—and it’s an accident. When she opens her eyes, she’s landed in 1992 only to discover Molly, her estranged daughter, shot in the chest. Molly, with her dying breath, begs Anna to go back in time and stop the disaster, to save Molly’s daughter Raisa, and put their family’s future on a better path.

In �60s Philadelphia, Molly is coming of age as an adopted refusenik. Her family is full of secrets and a past they won’t share. She finds solace in comic books, drawing her own series, Atomic Anna, and she’s determined to make it as an artist. When she meets the volatile, charismatic Viktor, their romance sets her life on a very different course.

In the �80s, Raisa, is a lonely teen and math prodigy, until a quiet, handsome boy moves in across the street and an odd old woman shows up claiming to be her biological grandmother. As Raisa finds new issues of Atomic Anna in unexpected places, she notices each comic challenges her to solve equations leading to one impossible conclusion: time travel. And she finally understands what she has to do.

As these remarkable women work together to prevent the greatest nuclear disaster of the 20th century, they grapple with the power their discoveries hold. Just because you can change the past, does it mean you should?]]> 433 Rachel Barenbaum 1538734869 Sunyi 0 to-read 3.76 2022 Atomic Anna
author: Rachel Barenbaum
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/04/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The First Binding (Tales of Tremaine, #1)]]> 57693381
I buried the village of Ampur under a mountain of ice and snow. Then I killed their god. I've stolen old magics and been cursed for it. I started a war with those that walked before mankind and lost the princess I loved, and wanted to save. I've called lightning and bound fire. I am legend. And I am a monster.

My name is Ari.

And this is the story of how I let loose the first evil.]]> 832 R.R. Virdi 1250796172 Sunyi 0 to-read 3.51 2022 The First Binding (Tales of Tremaine, #1)
author: R.R. Virdi
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/03/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Last Gifts of the Universe]]> 60103317 A dying universe.

When the Home worlds finally achieved the technology to venture out into the stars, they found a graveyard of dead civilizations, a sea of lifeless gray planets and their ruins. What befell them is unknown. All Home knows is that they are the last civilization left in the universe, and whatever came for the others will come for them next.

A search for answers.

Scout is an Archivist tasked with scouring the dead worlds of the cosmos for their last gifts: interesting technology, cultural rituals—anything left behind that might be useful to the Home worlds and their survival. During an excavation on a lifeless planet, Scout unearths something unbelievable: a surviving message from an alien who witnessed the world-ending entity thousands of years ago.

A past unraveled.

Blyreena was once a friend, a soul mate, and a respected leader of her people, the Stelhari. At the end of her world, she was the last one left. She survived to give one last message, one final hope to the future: instructions on how to save the universe.

An adventure at the end of a trillion lifetimes.

With the fate of everything at stake, Scout must overcome the dangers of the Stelhari’s ruined civilization while following Blyreena’s leads to collect its artifacts. If Scout can’t deliver these groundbreaking discoveries back to the Archivists, Home might not only be the last civilization to exist, but the last to finally fall.]]> 203 Rory August Sunyi 5 science-fantasy
Without too many spoilers, Scout and Kieran (who are basically space archaeologists) do achieve their objectives in the book but they have only scratched the surface for the larger plot, so I would imagine there are more books to come dealing directly with the revenants.

I received a free copy of this book from book siren.]]> 4.02 2022 The Last Gifts of the Universe
author: Rory August
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/03/13
date added: 2022/03/13
shelves: science-fantasy
review:
An elegant and melancholy musing on death, loss, and how to persevere even when life seems futile and bleak, wrapped up in a far-reaching story about humanity facing possible extinction from an unknown threat. Also, there is a space cat.

Without too many spoilers, Scout and Kieran (who are basically space archaeologists) do achieve their objectives in the book but they have only scratched the surface for the larger plot, so I would imagine there are more books to come dealing directly with the revenants.

I received a free copy of this book from book siren.
]]> Iron Widow (Iron Widow, #1) 52459864
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.�

To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia�. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.]]> 394 Xiran Jay Zhao 0735269939 Sunyi 0 4.03 2021 Iron Widow (Iron Widow, #1)
author: Xiran Jay Zhao
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at: 2021/07/07
date added: 2022/03/02
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic, #1)]]> 22055262
Kell was raised in Arnes—Red London—and officially serves the Maresh Empire as an ambassador, traveling between the frequent bloody regime changes in White London and the court of George III in the dullest of Londons, the one without any magic left to see.

Unofficially, Kell is a smuggler, servicing people willing to pay for even the smallest glimpses of a world they'll never see. It's a defiant hobby with dangerous consequences, which Kell is now seeing firsthand.

After an exchange goes awry, Kell escapes to Grey London and runs into Delilah Bard, a cut-purse with lofty aspirations. She first robs him, then saves him from a deadly enemy, and finally forces Kell to spirit her to another world for a proper adventure.

Now perilous magic is afoot, and treachery lurks at every turn. To save all of the worlds, they'll first need to stay alive.]]> 400 Victoria E. Schwab 0765376458 Sunyi 0 4.04 2015 A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic, #1)
author: Victoria E. Schwab
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/03/02
shelves:
review:

]]> The Book of M 36204070 Set in a dangerous near future world, The Book of M tells the captivating story of a group of ordinary people caught in an extraordinary catastrophe who risk everything to save the ones they love. It is a sweeping debut that illuminates the power that memories have not only on the heart, but on the world itself.

One afternoon at an outdoor market in India, a man’s shadow disappears—an occurrence science cannot explain. He is only the first. The phenomenon spreads like a plague, and while those afflicted gain a strange new power, it comes at a horrible price: the loss of all their memories.

Ory and his wife Max have escaped the Forgetting so far by hiding in an abandoned hotel deep in the woods. Their new life feels almost normal, until one day Max’s shadow disappears too.

Knowing that the more she forgets, the more dangerous she will become to Ory, Max runs away. But Ory refuses to give up the time they have left together. Desperate to find Max before her memory disappears completely, he follows her trail across a perilous, unrecognizable world, braving the threat of roaming bandits, the call to a new war being waged on the ruins of the capital, and the rise of a sinister cult that worships the shadowless.

As they journey, each searches for answers: for Ory, about love, about survival, about hope; and for Max, about a new force growing in the south that may hold the cure.]]> 485 Peng Shepherd 0062669605 Sunyi 0 to-read 3.67 2018 The Book of M
author: Peng Shepherd
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Cartographers 55004093 What is the purpose of a map?

Nell Young’s whole life and greatest passion is cartography. Her father, Dr. Daniel Young, is a legend in the field and Nell’s personal hero. But she hasn’t seen or spoken to him ever since he cruelly fired her and destroyed her reputation after an argument over an old, cheap gas station highway map.

But when Dr. Young is found dead in his office at the New York Public Library, with the very same seemingly worthless map hidden in his desk, Nell can’t resist investigating. To her surprise, she soon discovers that the map is incredibly valuable and exceedingly rare. In fact, she may now have the only copy left in existence... because a mysterious collector has been hunting down and destroying every last one—along with anyone who gets in the way.

But why?

To answer that question, Nell embarks on a dangerous journey to reveal a dark family secret and discovers the true power that lies in maps...

From the critically acclaimed author of The Book of M, a highly imaginative thriller about a young woman who discovers that a strange map in her deceased father’s belongings holds an incredible, deadly secret—one that will lead her on an extraordinary adventure and to the truth about her family’s dark history.]]> 392 Peng Shepherd 0062910698 Sunyi 0 to-read 3.62 2022 The Cartographers
author: Peng Shepherd
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sealskin 32713449 Sealskin is, nonetheless, a very human story, as relevant to our world as to the timeless place in which it is set.]]> 276 Su Bristow 1910633607 Sunyi 1
SPOILERS BELOW


.
.
.

The story opens with Donald, a socially awkward and socially ostracised young man who slips out at night, observes some seals turn into naked women, and oogles them from afar. They are frequently described as small and childlike, for extra creep factor. The seals eventually spot him and flee back to the water.

Except one seal, who Donald captures, violently rapes, impregnates, and drags back (naked and bleeding) to his mother's house. Donald wants to throw her back into the sea and can't satisfactorily explain why he didn't do so in the first place, other than the obvious fact the book wouldn't progress if he hadn't.

But his mother writes off his crime of rape as a kind of unfortunate mistake and forbids him from returning the girl to the ocean, believing that she can no longer be a seal now that Donald has got her pregnant, and any half human children she births will possibly drown (or at least, she will never get to have grandkids, and that is seemingly her biggest motivation in all this.)

Donald is then forced by his mother to marry the girl, not that she gets a fucking say in it of course, and to explain why she is clueless and nonverbal they pass her off as an intellectually disabled and mute semi cousin of his, which Donald moans about internally because he finds it burdensome and embarrassing and is aware that other people find it all a bit gross and creepy.

And it all goes on from there, telling this "love story" from the pov of a supposedly beleaguered rapist who we are meant to feel sorry for because he's awkward and has eczema.

I don't feel sorry him. I feel sorry for the girl who was ripped from her society and forced to live among humans, who are effectively predators of her kind, and be married against her will to her abuser. But it will all be okay because they fall in love despite a sexually violent meet cute and the town learns to appreciate both rapist and his "childlike" victim despite their oddities, or something.

Jeeeeesus.

I can't help thinking how much better this book would be if written from the girls point of view and then this stuff could be explores without the novel demanding that we feel sorry for such a pathetic asshole.

This novel is supposed to be about forgiveness or some shite, and maybe a different person could get that from this book. Maybe a different person could read it, find it uplifting, decide that it examines sexual violence and its fallout sensitively, or feels it is justified in it handling these things in the context of the culture and time period yadda yadda.

But you know what, I'm not that person. I'd rather Donald died in a fire.

##


PS, if I didn't like seals so much this might inky have been a two star. Also, if this didn't have such rave reviews for being literary fantasy, it might also have scraped a two star. But if you elevate my expectations to celestial levels and then smash them utterly, I'll be pissed.]]> 3.76 2016 Sealskin
author: Su Bristow
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2016
rating: 1
read at: 2022/02/17
date added: 2022/02/17
shelves:
review:
I love selkies. I love seals. I love the Hebrides. I love fantasy. But I'd throw this book off a cliff if I had a physical copy.

SPOILERS BELOW


.
.
.

The story opens with Donald, a socially awkward and socially ostracised young man who slips out at night, observes some seals turn into naked women, and oogles them from afar. They are frequently described as small and childlike, for extra creep factor. The seals eventually spot him and flee back to the water.

Except one seal, who Donald captures, violently rapes, impregnates, and drags back (naked and bleeding) to his mother's house. Donald wants to throw her back into the sea and can't satisfactorily explain why he didn't do so in the first place, other than the obvious fact the book wouldn't progress if he hadn't.

But his mother writes off his crime of rape as a kind of unfortunate mistake and forbids him from returning the girl to the ocean, believing that she can no longer be a seal now that Donald has got her pregnant, and any half human children she births will possibly drown (or at least, she will never get to have grandkids, and that is seemingly her biggest motivation in all this.)

Donald is then forced by his mother to marry the girl, not that she gets a fucking say in it of course, and to explain why she is clueless and nonverbal they pass her off as an intellectually disabled and mute semi cousin of his, which Donald moans about internally because he finds it burdensome and embarrassing and is aware that other people find it all a bit gross and creepy.

And it all goes on from there, telling this "love story" from the pov of a supposedly beleaguered rapist who we are meant to feel sorry for because he's awkward and has eczema.

I don't feel sorry him. I feel sorry for the girl who was ripped from her society and forced to live among humans, who are effectively predators of her kind, and be married against her will to her abuser. But it will all be okay because they fall in love despite a sexually violent meet cute and the town learns to appreciate both rapist and his "childlike" victim despite their oddities, or something.

Jeeeeesus.

I can't help thinking how much better this book would be if written from the girls point of view and then this stuff could be explores without the novel demanding that we feel sorry for such a pathetic asshole.

This novel is supposed to be about forgiveness or some shite, and maybe a different person could get that from this book. Maybe a different person could read it, find it uplifting, decide that it examines sexual violence and its fallout sensitively, or feels it is justified in it handling these things in the context of the culture and time period yadda yadda.

But you know what, I'm not that person. I'd rather Donald died in a fire.

##


PS, if I didn't like seals so much this might inky have been a two star. Also, if this didn't have such rave reviews for being literary fantasy, it might also have scraped a two star. But if you elevate my expectations to celestial levels and then smash them utterly, I'll be pissed.
]]> Hench (Hench, #1) 49867430
 As a temp, she’s just a cog in the machine. But when she finally gets a promising assignment, everything goes very wrong, and an encounter with the so-called “hero� leaves her badly injured.  And, to her horror, compared to the other bodies strewn about, she’s the lucky one.

So, of course, then she gets laid off.

With no money and no mobility, with only her anger and internet research acumen, she discovers her suffering at the hands of a hero is far from unique. When people start listening to the story that her data tells, she realizes she might not be as powerless as she thinks.

Because the key to everything is data: knowing how to collate it, how to manipulate it, and how to weaponize it. By tallying up the human cost these caped forces of nature wreak upon the world, she discovers that the line between good and evil is mostly marketing.  And with social media and viral videos, she can control that appearance.

It’s not too long before she’s employed once more, this time by one of the worst villains on earth. As she becomes an increasingly valuable lieutenant, she might just save the world.

A sharp, witty, modern debut, Hench explores the individual cost of justice through a fascinating mix of Millennial office politics, heroism measured through data science, body horror, and a profound misunderstanding of quantum mechanics. ]]> 403 Natalie Zina Walschots 0062978578 Sunyi 5
Craftwise, it is quite hard to do a story which relies on so much tell over show, because basically there is a lot of Internet research and computer use, but the author keeps that interesting and engaging. The villain plots are excellent and the internal justifications that Anna concocts are excellent.]]> 3.98 2020 Hench (Hench, #1)
author: Natalie Zina Walschots
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/02/13
date added: 2022/02/13
shelves:
review:
Strong concept, memorable story. Like a feminist version of THE BOYS but a supervillain origin story with a competent bisexual heroine. I know, we're all used to disaster bis. But I love competent bisexuals (sorry twitter) so yeah. Smart savvy geek girl who destroys the world, sort of. Critique of the superhero genre is always welcome.

Craftwise, it is quite hard to do a story which relies on so much tell over show, because basically there is a lot of Internet research and computer use, but the author keeps that interesting and engaging. The villain plots are excellent and the internal justifications that Anna concocts are excellent.
]]> A History of Fear 60321523
When Hale is found hanged in his prison cell, officers uncover a handwritten manuscript that promises to answer the question that’s haunted the nation for years: was Hale a lunatic, or had he been telling the truth all along?

Unnervingly, Hale doesn’t fit the bill of a killer. The first-person narrative that centers this novel reveals an acerbic young atheist, newly enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to carry on the legacy of his recently deceased father. In need of cash, he takes a job ghostwriting a mysterious book for a dark stranger, but has misgivings when the project begins to reawaken his satanophobia, a rare condition that causes him to live in terror that the Devil is after him. As he struggles to disentangle fact from fear, Grayson’s world is turned upside-down after events force him to confront his growing suspicion that he’s working for the one he has feared all this time—and that the book is only the beginning of their partnership.​�

A History of Fear is a propulsive foray into the darkness of the human psyche, marrying dread-inducing atmosphere and heart-palpitating storytelling.

An eerie literary suspense debut following the harrowing downfall of a tortured graduate student who’s been nicknamed the Devil’s Advocate for his sensational crime: murdering a classmate, then claiming the Devil made him do it.]]> 368 Luke Dumas 1982199024 Sunyi 0 to-read 3.69 2022 A History of Fear
author: Luke Dumas
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/02/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Rise of the Mages (The Age of Ire, #1)]]> 57693498
Emrael Ire is a student of war with lofty ambitions, despite being so poor his boots are more hole than leather. He and his talented younger brother Ban work hard to build themselves a better life at the Citadel, a school that specializes in both infusori Crafting and military arts.

Their lives are upended when the power-hungry Lord Governor of the neighboring province invades the school with the help of a sinister sect of priests devoted to the newly awakened Fallen God of Glory. Many of the infusori Crafter students are captured―Including Ban.

Though Emrael stands little chance against the Lord Governor and his armies, he’s desperate to save his brother―even if that means accepting the help of allies with uncertain motives, or becoming a practitioner of a forbidden magic. There is nothing he won't sacrifice to save his brother, but what happens when the cost of success is not his to pay?]]> 400 Scott Drakeford 1250820154 Sunyi 5
A fresh, fast paced, and intriguing fantasy debut following the story of Emrael Ire, an exiled young mage who carries a problematic family legacy and also has some serious baggage to resolve. There's a good mix of down-and-dirty family politicking and whirlwind battle/fight scenes, and the magic system (infusori) is very cool. The book has a science fantasy feel with subtle tech devices which work with the infusori or are powered by them, and crafting abilities are arguably as important as fighting and magic in the world (and ties into both). Do check it out!]]> 3.64 2022 Rise of the Mages (The Age of Ire, #1)
author: Scott Drakeford
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2022/02/07
shelves:
review:
(only minor spoilers)

A fresh, fast paced, and intriguing fantasy debut following the story of Emrael Ire, an exiled young mage who carries a problematic family legacy and also has some serious baggage to resolve. There's a good mix of down-and-dirty family politicking and whirlwind battle/fight scenes, and the magic system (infusori) is very cool. The book has a science fantasy feel with subtle tech devices which work with the infusori or are powered by them, and crafting abilities are arguably as important as fighting and magic in the world (and ties into both). Do check it out!
]]> Azura Ghost 56183838
Now with both siblings on the hunt for Caiden and his ship, Caiden must rescue his long-lost friend from their clutches and uncover the source of both his ship's power and his own origins in order to stop Abriss's plan to collapse the multiverse.]]> 480 Essa Hansen 0356515605 Sunyi 5 4.15 2022 Azura Ghost
author: Essa Hansen
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2021/04/01
date added: 2022/02/06
shelves:
review:
A cascading narrative of metaphysics, emotion, morality, consciousness, somehow interwoven with incendiary action and a fast paces, reality spanning plot. Essa's prose leaps across the page, with its trademark astonishing dew riptions, and her pacing is perfect in this one.
]]> Tao Te Ching 8192772 193 Lao Tzu Sunyi 5 Very good

I read this for research for a novel I am writing but I really enjoyed it. Profound and useful and well annotated. ]]> 3.91 -350 Tao Te Ching
author: Lao Tzu
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.91
book published: -350
rating: 5
read at: 2022/02/06
date added: 2022/02/06
shelves:
review:
Very good

I read this for research for a novel I am writing but I really enjoyed it. Profound and useful and well annotated.
]]> Upright Women Wanted 45320365
Esther is a stowaway. She’s hidden herself away in the Librarian’s book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her—a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda.

The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing. They'll bring the fight to you.

In Upright Women Wanted, award-winning author Sarah Gailey reinvents the pulp Western with an explicitly antifascist, near-future story of queer identity.]]> 176 Sarah Gailey 1250213584 Sunyi 0 science-fantasy
Going to dnf for now and hope to return to it later. ]]> 3.59 2020 Upright Women Wanted
author: Sarah Gailey
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2022/02/05
date added: 2022/02/05
shelves: science-fantasy
review:
Great premise and more of Gaileys amazing writing but I didn't click with the story for some reason, and genuinely can't figure out why. It has all the ingredients I like.

Going to dnf for now and hope to return to it later.
]]> The Night Circus 9361589
But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus performers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

Written in rich, seductive prose, this spell-casting novel is a feast for the senses and the heart.]]> 506 Erin Morgenstern Sunyi 4
My general habit is to try and rate books in relation to what they attempted to achieve. Otherwise, every children's book will be 1 star (for example) because it can't compete against an adult book for sheer complexity. This is also how I justify giving a David Gemmell book 5 stars but also Gene Wolfe; they are setting out to do fundamentally different things.

But here's the thing: I'm not sure WHAT night circus was aiming for, so that's what I'm struggling. Was it impassioned love story? Magical circus tale? Something else? It tried to be a lot of different things equally and I'm not sure it quite hit any of them precisely as aimed for. The writing and pacing and structure was magnificent, but the worldbuilding hazy and the character motivations as obfuscated as the magical tricks the characters performed. The illusionist was often as elusive to the reader as she was to the fictional audience in the story.

And I can't tell if that's deliberate, and therfore well executed (how ever frustrating I personally find it) or a mark missed, or maybe I'm missing the mark.

I finished the book. I read through it easily and loved the writing. But the experience was akin to watching an excellently acted murder mystery in a foreign language without subtitles: I think I know what happened and have the gist of why, but all the nuance and finer details felt perpetually out of grasp, or perhaps out of focus.]]> 4.00 2011 The Night Circus
author: Erin Morgenstern
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2011
rating: 4
read at: 2022/01/21
date added: 2022/01/22
shelves:
review:
I almost don't know how to rate this book. I feel it defies star ratings because its a mix of things that work and some that don't.

My general habit is to try and rate books in relation to what they attempted to achieve. Otherwise, every children's book will be 1 star (for example) because it can't compete against an adult book for sheer complexity. This is also how I justify giving a David Gemmell book 5 stars but also Gene Wolfe; they are setting out to do fundamentally different things.

But here's the thing: I'm not sure WHAT night circus was aiming for, so that's what I'm struggling. Was it impassioned love story? Magical circus tale? Something else? It tried to be a lot of different things equally and I'm not sure it quite hit any of them precisely as aimed for. The writing and pacing and structure was magnificent, but the worldbuilding hazy and the character motivations as obfuscated as the magical tricks the characters performed. The illusionist was often as elusive to the reader as she was to the fictional audience in the story.

And I can't tell if that's deliberate, and therfore well executed (how ever frustrating I personally find it) or a mark missed, or maybe I'm missing the mark.

I finished the book. I read through it easily and loved the writing. But the experience was akin to watching an excellently acted murder mystery in a foreign language without subtitles: I think I know what happened and have the gist of why, but all the nuance and finer details felt perpetually out of grasp, or perhaps out of focus.
]]> Woman, Eating 57504855 -- Ruth Ozeki, Booker-shortlisted author of A Tale for the Time Being

A young, mixed-race vampire must find a way to balance her deep-seated desire to live amongst humans with her incessant hunger in this stunning debut novel from a writer-to-watch.

Lydia is hungry. She's always wanted to try Japanese food. Sashimi, ramen, onigiri with sour plum stuffed inside - the food her Japanese father liked to eat. And then there is bubble tea and iced-coffee, ice cream and cake, and foraged herbs and plants, and the vegetables grown by the other young artists at the London studio space she is secretly squatting in. But, Lydia can't eat any of these things. Her body doesn't work like those of other people. The only thing she can digest is blood, and it turns out that sourcing fresh pigs' blood in London - where she is living away from her vampire mother for the first time - is much more difficult than she'd anticipated.

Then there are the humans - the other artists at the studio space, the people at the gallery she interns at, the strange men that follow her after dark, and Ben, a boyish, goofy-grinned artist she is developing feelings for. Lydia knows that they are her natural prey, but she can't bring herself to feed on them. In her windowless studio, where she paints and studies the work of other artists, binge-watches Buffy the Vampire Slayer and videos of people eating food on YouTube and Instagram, Lydia considers her place in the world. She has many of the things humans wish for - perpetual youth, near-invulnerability, immortality - but she is miserable; she is lonely; and she is hungry - always hungry.

As Lydia develops as a woman and an artist, she will learn that she must reconcile the conflicts within her - between her demon and human sides, her mixed ethnic heritage, and her relationship with food, and, in turn, humans - if she is to find a way to exist in the world. Before any of this, however, she must eat.]]> 272 Claire Kohda 006314090X Sunyi 3 3.45 2022 Woman, Eating
author: Claire Kohda
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.45
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2022/01/16
date added: 2022/01/16
shelves:
review:
3.5 for me. I really liked the writing style and introspection, and the many observations on food and eating. Lydia is extremely naive in a way. Many observations about culture and interactions. I don't mind the lack of explanation for vampirism related things because that isn't the focus of this book. But the novel seemed to end quite abruptly, just as I thought it was building towards a fresh layer in the story. I would say it felt more like women's fiction that litfic, which isnt meant as derogatory but more a comment on how it has been marketed atm. Lydia's turn was interesting but Im regretful we won't see her in her new life.
]]> The Circus Infinite 58187533
With no other options, Jes fulfills the requests: espionage, torture, demolition. But when the boss sets the circus up to take the fall for his about-to-get-busted narcotics operation, Jes and his friends decide to bring the mobster down together. And if Jes can also avoid going back to being the prize subject of a scientist who can’t wait to dissect him? Even better.]]> 408 Khan Wong 0857669680 Sunyi 5
The misfit is a grey-ace empath named Jes, on the run with a difficult (almost dystopian) past, and carrying many secrets (like his special abilities). The circus itself is set in a scifi universe with space travel and casino planets. Among the outcasts and misfits of those in the circus, Jes finds acceptance and family, but of course he can't run from his past forever :) ]]> 3.64 2022 The Circus Infinite
author: Khan Wong
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/16
date added: 2022/01/16
shelves:
review:
The circus infinite takes the classic story of a misfit who runs away to join the circus, and reworks it into a vibrant, sultry, and subversive piece of scifi.

The misfit is a grey-ace empath named Jes, on the run with a difficult (almost dystopian) past, and carrying many secrets (like his special abilities). The circus itself is set in a scifi universe with space travel and casino planets. Among the outcasts and misfits of those in the circus, Jes finds acceptance and family, but of course he can't run from his past forever :)
]]> Azura Ghost (The Graven, #2) 57303660
Now with both siblings on the hunt for Caiden and his ship, Caiden must rescue his long-lost friend from their clutches and uncover the source of both his ship's power and his own origins in order to stop Abriss's plan to collapse the multiverse.]]> 480 Essa Hansen 0356515591 Sunyi 5 4.07 2022 Azura Ghost (The Graven, #2)
author: Essa Hansen
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2022
rating: 5
read at: 2022/02/06
date added: 2022/01/13
shelves:
review:
Fantastic installment in this mindbending, genre pushing Scifi series. So much more than just a space opera, Azura Ghost is a treat for the senses and the intellect alike.
]]> <![CDATA[Archivist Wasp (Archivist Wasp Saga, #1)]]> 23282249
Archivist Wasp fears she is not the chosen one, that she won't survive the trip to the underworld, that the brutal life she has escaped might be better than where she is going. There is only one way to find out.]]> 268 Nicole Kornher-Stace 1618730975 Sunyi 0 to-read 3.72 2015 Archivist Wasp (Archivist Wasp Saga, #1)
author: Nicole Kornher-Stace
name: Sunyi
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2022/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Black Water Sister 58019669 This mischievous Malaysian-setnovel is an adventure featuring family, ghosts and local gods - from Hugo Award winning novelist Zen Cho.

Her grandmother may be dead, but she's not done with life . . . yet.

As Jessamyn packs for Malaysia, it’s not a good time to start hearing a bossy voice in her head. Broke, jobless and just graduated, she’s abandoning America to return ‘home�. But she last saw Malaysia as a toddler � and is completely unprepared for its ghosts, gods and her eccentric family’s shenanigans.

Jess soon learns her ‘voice� belongs to Ah Ma, her late grandmother. She worshipped the Black Water Sister, a local deity. And when a business magnate dared to offend her goddess, Ah Ma swore revenge. Now she’s decided Jess will help, whether she wants to or not.

As Ah Ma blackmails Jess into compliance, Jess fights to retain control. But her irrepressible relative isn’t going to let a little thing like death stop her, when she can simply borrow Jess’s body to make mischief. As Jess is drawn ever deeper into a world of peril and family secrets, getting a job becomes the least of her worries.]]> 385 Zen Cho 1509800026 Sunyi 4 Many complex thougths

I'm coming back for a long ass review write up later. Good book but also very complex reactions from me! ]]> 4.11 2021 Black Water Sister
author: Zen Cho
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2021
rating: 4
read at: 2021/12/29
date added: 2021/12/29
shelves:
review:
Many complex thougths

I'm coming back for a long ass review write up later. Good book but also very complex reactions from me!
]]> <![CDATA[Call of the Bone Ships (The Tide Child, #2)]]> 50637119
Dragons have returned to the Hundred Isles. But their return heralds only war and destruction. When a horde of dying slaves are discovered in the bowels of a ship, Shipwife Meas and the crew of the Tide Child find themselves drawn into a vicious plot that will leave them questioning their loyalties and fighting for their lives.]]> 512 R.J. Barker 0356511855 Sunyi 5 4.36 2020 Call of the Bone Ships (The Tide Child, #2)
author: R.J. Barker
name: Sunyi
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2021/01/07
date added: 2021/12/28
shelves:
review:

]]>