reading update 1/25/2022

Current TBR:

• The Councillor by E.J. Beaton
• The Lady or the Lion by Aamna Qureshi
• The Charm Offensive by Alison Cochrun
• Riot Baby by Tochi Onyebuchi
• A Darker Shade of Magic by V. E. Schwab
• The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
• The Queen of Ieflaria by Effie Calvin
• Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Saenz
• The Ruin of a Rake by Cat Sebastian

Current Library Haul:

• A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine

Read:

A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark

5/5. I loved this. This is another book that gave me something I don't think I really knew I wanted: Muslim fantasy! My relationship with books about Muslims has been, uh, fraught in the past. Clark's alternate, magical Cairo is an engrossing place and Fatma, our suit-wearing, sword-cane-wielding protag, is exactly the kind of protagonist I love: driven, brave, compassionate under a hard exterior. Sapphic romance, an alternate history that wrestles with colonialism and racism, and magic: it's got everything I wanted.

I'm definitely going to check out the author's other works in this universe!

Ice Planet Barbarians by Ruby Dixon

3/5. I feel very 'meh' about this book, to be honest. There is a big shift in tone from the set up, which is quite brutal, to the rest of the novel, which is a relatively fluffy romance between our heroine and a big blue alien. It was a bit jarring for me, and made me feel like the violence of the beginning of the book was gratuitous. The romance is cute, but not very interesting. I think if you're really into human/alien smut, this will land better for you than it did for me.

I will add, this is an aggressively hetero novel and I find it very strange that the author has a whole alien society to play with and she just recreates Earth gender roles. The basis of the romance is that all the aliens have a symbiote inside them that resonates with an opposite-sex person who is the only one who can bear their child. The whole idea of your soulmate being wholly based on your ability as a couple to procreate is, uh, not for me. At all. That said, this is a series with a lot of books, so it's possible all this stuff is addressed in later volumes. But I'm not invested enough to keep reading.

The Hellion's Waltz by Olivia Waite

The third and final Feminine Pursuits book! This was my least favorite of the lot, but still a 4/5 star read for me. I like everything that's there: the plot (which is about how if the government won't let you unionize you should commit crimes to drive your shitty boss out of town), the romance (instant, sweet, supportive), the smut (hot), and the world (well-researched and full of other queer people and non-white characters). I just wish the book was longer, because I felt like every element could have done with more pages. In particular the ending felt to me like it wasn't full resolved. If you liked the first two books in this series, I'd still recommend it, but if you haven't read this series I'd read this one last.

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

4/5. I don't know what to say about this book yet. I finished it earlier today and am still processing it. I love it when books bring something hyperspecific to the table, and Torrey Peters brings a slice of transfeminine culture to breathtaking life here. It's a deeply compelling novel--I was reading it in a parking lot where I sat for 2 hours because I could not put it down--and it has a lot of compassion for its characters, who are all wrestling with themselves and their futures and their identities and their conception of family.