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Foz Meadows, A Strange and Stubborn Endurance:Velasin, a minor noble, is about to be forced to marry a foreign princess as part of an attempt to heal political divisions, but when his preference for men is exposed (via a sexual assault by a former lover, which causes ongoing trauma), he’s married off to a foreign prince instead. In his home country, sexuality and gender are rigidly controlled, whereas the new place is progressive and accepting of all sexualities and genders, and also into consent. So his new husband, who is also very hot, does not want to force him into anything, but a lot of assassination attempts and other shenanigans get in the way of/end up facilitating their new relationship. It is nearly pure hurt-comfort with a side of palace politics.
M.A. Carrick, The Mask of Mirrors (book 1 of Rook and Rose):Really engaging fantasy about Ren, a con artist who comes to a city and pretends to be the daughter of an estranged member of a noble house. But the house has more problems and less money than she expected, and she quickly becomes tangled up in the politics of the city, which include ethnic tensions (between conquerer and conquered in particular). Meanwhile, a new drug is killing people, and poor children are dying from lack of sleep, and the mysterious Rook, who’s been fighting noble oppression for two hundred years, is also intersecting with the various figures around Ren. These include Leato, her putative cousin; Vargo, the crime lord who thinks he can use Ren to become respectable; and the turncoat guard who works for the rulers despite the contempt of his people. Also there’s magic—the dreaming world can become real; the different groups use magic differently and aren’t necessarily believers in the soundness of each other’s forms. I really enjoyed it.
Gretchen Felker-Martin, Manhunt: Is there a non-transphobic version of “all the men/XYs die”? This book sets out to offer that, though there is plenty of transphobia expressed within the narrative, as TERFs try to eradicate trans women as a biological threat. As with the X-Men-as-analogue-to-LGBTQ+ people, where many mutants are dangerous in unusual ways to others, the book’s virus means that anyone who naturally produces a significant amount of testosterone is in fact in danger of becoming a cannibalistic monster (a Man) who will rape to death anyone it hasn’t eaten first. That means that XXs with PCOS also turn, and pregnancy testosterone fluctuations can also mean a death sentence (in a sign about how much body horror there is in the book, the babies eating their ways out of the uterus are not the grossest things described). Trans women survive by consuming estrogen, which post-collapse-of-society is often most easily achieved by killing Men and eating their testicles, one source of the titular Manhunt. Cis men survive, if they do, by also consuming estrogen and, in TERF territory, by being castrated. The main characters are two trans women, a trans man they join up with under dangerous circumstances, the cis doctor whose skills make her valuable in the new order, and a cis woman who rises in the TERF army despite or because of her desire for non-cis sex. I found the narrative too crapsack world for my tastes, though not particularly implausible. Class oppression manages to survive at least some period beyond the death of 90% of people, and along with the horrors inflicted by Men, there is additional torture, rape, and forced medical experimentation. There was something striking about the fact that, on the East Coast at least, the majority of survivors appeared to be cityfolk, apparently more able to band together against Men than rural dwellers.
Greg Van Eekhout, California Bones: Osteomancy involves getting power by eating the bones of magically-imbued animals, including people. The main protagonists both had a parent eaten by the wizard in charge of the region around LA, who carved it away from the US about a century ago. One, Daniel, responded by becoming a thief and trying to stay out of sight, while the other—no osteomancer—worked as an enforcer for the regime. That he is therefore a murderer many times over is referenced but not really dealt with; he’s better than the worst people in the story, I guess. When he checks out a slave headed for the death penalty to help his investigation, he doesn’t make the enslaved man wear a collar or send him back to be killed, so. Most of the action is about the other protagonist, who is himself a powerful osteomancer, putting together a heist from the ruler’s bone stash. If you like magical heist stories, this could be fun, though one of the twists is signalled so often that my only question was when the protagonist actually knew about it. Purportedly, later than I assumed. It was interesting enough that I’ll read the sequel, but don’t look for anyone trying to do the right thing for people other than the particular people they personally love.
Greg Van Eekhout, Pacific Fire: After saving the Hierarch’s golem—a hugely valuable magical prize for anyone who could eat his bones—Daniel has been in hiding with him for years. But his old boss’s attempt to recreate a devastating magical weapon has him coming back to LA. Sam, the golem, is a major focus of this book, which involves more journeying/breaking and entering in a world that has Hollywood stars and airplanes but also apparently more limited tech than ours.
Greg Van Eekhout, Dragon Coast: Sam’s stuck in a dragon now and Daniel is trying to save him by pretending to be the golem/brother that he killed in the kingdom that is trying to turn the dragon into a controlled weapon. So more palace intrigue in this one, which I find a perfectly good place to leave the series. Never emotionally caught me but there was definitely interesting stuff going on with osteomancy as environmentally destructive use of a finite resource.
Kai Butler, Wormwood Summer: A fae PI and an alchemist cop fight crime in a human world that knows of but regularly discriminates against alchemists, witches, werewolves, etc. and especially fears fae. Fun m/m paranormal.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau: This retelling is my favorite of Moreno-Garcia’s work that I’ve read so far. You can probably guess the kinds of things that are updated—the perspectives of women and indigenous Mexicans in particular, even though one of the POV characters is the dissolute Englishman brought in to run the place so Dr. Moreau can concentrate on his experiments. It’s very humane despite the distressing things that happen, including hybrid suffering and death.
India Holton, The League of Gentlewoman Witches: Second book in this alternate world of magic and Austen references, this time focusing on a young lady in a competing group of witches from the first who meets-cute a dashing pirate by stealing his briefcase. I understand the erotics of constraint, including reputational constraint, but for whatever reason I found it a bit grating rather than charming here, though I think that’s a bit of an idiosyncratic reaction. If you like lady pirates flying houses around London and stealing from the richer-than-most, and pop culture jokes/easter eggs based on modern (or at least 1970s/1980s culture), this might work for you.
Tasha Suri, The Oleander Sword: Priya and Malini are now rulers in their respective polities, except that they both face challenges getting people to acknowledge that and desperately miss each other. Priya’s small nation is a client of Malini’s empire, but unwillingly on both sides, and old gods are returning in ways that are unexpectedly awful for their worshippers, while Malini’s brother is still trying to kill her or, better, get her to sacrifice herself to a death by burning. This is a middle book, so you can expect things to take some grim turns, but the worldbuilding continues to be interesting and the politics complicated: sometimes the enemy of your enemy is really no friend of yours, either.
The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, eds. Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe: All-star cast, including an early, short version of Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik; other authors are Charlie Jane Anders, Aliette de Bodard, Amal El-mohtar, Jeffrey Ford, Max Gladstone, Theodora Goss, Daryl Gregory, Kat Howard, Stephen Graham Jones, Margo Lanagan, Marjorie Liu, Seanan McGuire, Garth Nix, Sofia Samatar, Karin Tidbeck, Catherynne M. Valente, and Genevieve Valentine. Many of the tales from which the stories take inspiration are familiar from the Western canon, but the takes are mostly innovative and of course often push back on the misogyny encoded into so many of them. Well done.
M.A. Carrick, The Mask of Mirrors (book 1 of Rook and Rose):Really engaging fantasy about Ren, a con artist who comes to a city and pretends to be the daughter of an estranged member of a noble house. But the house has more problems and less money than she expected, and she quickly becomes tangled up in the politics of the city, which include ethnic tensions (between conquerer and conquered in particular). Meanwhile, a new drug is killing people, and poor children are dying from lack of sleep, and the mysterious Rook, who’s been fighting noble oppression for two hundred years, is also intersecting with the various figures around Ren. These include Leato, her putative cousin; Vargo, the crime lord who thinks he can use Ren to become respectable; and the turncoat guard who works for the rulers despite the contempt of his people. Also there’s magic—the dreaming world can become real; the different groups use magic differently and aren’t necessarily believers in the soundness of each other’s forms. I really enjoyed it.
Gretchen Felker-Martin, Manhunt: Is there a non-transphobic version of “all the men/XYs die”? This book sets out to offer that, though there is plenty of transphobia expressed within the narrative, as TERFs try to eradicate trans women as a biological threat. As with the X-Men-as-analogue-to-LGBTQ+ people, where many mutants are dangerous in unusual ways to others, the book’s virus means that anyone who naturally produces a significant amount of testosterone is in fact in danger of becoming a cannibalistic monster (a Man) who will rape to death anyone it hasn’t eaten first. That means that XXs with PCOS also turn, and pregnancy testosterone fluctuations can also mean a death sentence (in a sign about how much body horror there is in the book, the babies eating their ways out of the uterus are not the grossest things described). Trans women survive by consuming estrogen, which post-collapse-of-society is often most easily achieved by killing Men and eating their testicles, one source of the titular Manhunt. Cis men survive, if they do, by also consuming estrogen and, in TERF territory, by being castrated. The main characters are two trans women, a trans man they join up with under dangerous circumstances, the cis doctor whose skills make her valuable in the new order, and a cis woman who rises in the TERF army despite or because of her desire for non-cis sex. I found the narrative too crapsack world for my tastes, though not particularly implausible. Class oppression manages to survive at least some period beyond the death of 90% of people, and along with the horrors inflicted by Men, there is additional torture, rape, and forced medical experimentation. There was something striking about the fact that, on the East Coast at least, the majority of survivors appeared to be cityfolk, apparently more able to band together against Men than rural dwellers.
Greg Van Eekhout, California Bones: Osteomancy involves getting power by eating the bones of magically-imbued animals, including people. The main protagonists both had a parent eaten by the wizard in charge of the region around LA, who carved it away from the US about a century ago. One, Daniel, responded by becoming a thief and trying to stay out of sight, while the other—no osteomancer—worked as an enforcer for the regime. That he is therefore a murderer many times over is referenced but not really dealt with; he’s better than the worst people in the story, I guess. When he checks out a slave headed for the death penalty to help his investigation, he doesn’t make the enslaved man wear a collar or send him back to be killed, so. Most of the action is about the other protagonist, who is himself a powerful osteomancer, putting together a heist from the ruler’s bone stash. If you like magical heist stories, this could be fun, though one of the twists is signalled so often that my only question was when the protagonist actually knew about it. Purportedly, later than I assumed. It was interesting enough that I’ll read the sequel, but don’t look for anyone trying to do the right thing for people other than the particular people they personally love.
Greg Van Eekhout, Pacific Fire: After saving the Hierarch’s golem—a hugely valuable magical prize for anyone who could eat his bones—Daniel has been in hiding with him for years. But his old boss’s attempt to recreate a devastating magical weapon has him coming back to LA. Sam, the golem, is a major focus of this book, which involves more journeying/breaking and entering in a world that has Hollywood stars and airplanes but also apparently more limited tech than ours.
Greg Van Eekhout, Dragon Coast: Sam’s stuck in a dragon now and Daniel is trying to save him by pretending to be the golem/brother that he killed in the kingdom that is trying to turn the dragon into a controlled weapon. So more palace intrigue in this one, which I find a perfectly good place to leave the series. Never emotionally caught me but there was definitely interesting stuff going on with osteomancy as environmentally destructive use of a finite resource.
Kai Butler, Wormwood Summer: A fae PI and an alchemist cop fight crime in a human world that knows of but regularly discriminates against alchemists, witches, werewolves, etc. and especially fears fae. Fun m/m paranormal.
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Daughter of Doctor Moreau: This retelling is my favorite of Moreno-Garcia’s work that I’ve read so far. You can probably guess the kinds of things that are updated—the perspectives of women and indigenous Mexicans in particular, even though one of the POV characters is the dissolute Englishman brought in to run the place so Dr. Moreau can concentrate on his experiments. It’s very humane despite the distressing things that happen, including hybrid suffering and death.
India Holton, The League of Gentlewoman Witches: Second book in this alternate world of magic and Austen references, this time focusing on a young lady in a competing group of witches from the first who meets-cute a dashing pirate by stealing his briefcase. I understand the erotics of constraint, including reputational constraint, but for whatever reason I found it a bit grating rather than charming here, though I think that’s a bit of an idiosyncratic reaction. If you like lady pirates flying houses around London and stealing from the richer-than-most, and pop culture jokes/easter eggs based on modern (or at least 1970s/1980s culture), this might work for you.
Tasha Suri, The Oleander Sword: Priya and Malini are now rulers in their respective polities, except that they both face challenges getting people to acknowledge that and desperately miss each other. Priya’s small nation is a client of Malini’s empire, but unwillingly on both sides, and old gods are returning in ways that are unexpectedly awful for their worshippers, while Malini’s brother is still trying to kill her or, better, get her to sacrifice herself to a death by burning. This is a middle book, so you can expect things to take some grim turns, but the worldbuilding continues to be interesting and the politics complicated: sometimes the enemy of your enemy is really no friend of yours, either.
The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, eds. Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe: All-star cast, including an early, short version of Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik; other authors are Charlie Jane Anders, Aliette de Bodard, Amal El-mohtar, Jeffrey Ford, Max Gladstone, Theodora Goss, Daryl Gregory, Kat Howard, Stephen Graham Jones, Margo Lanagan, Marjorie Liu, Seanan McGuire, Garth Nix, Sofia Samatar, Karin Tidbeck, Catherynne M. Valente, and Genevieve Valentine. Many of the tales from which the stories take inspiration are familiar from the Western canon, but the takes are mostly innovative and of course often push back on the misogyny encoded into so many of them. Well done.