Queer Black Author - Hugo Award Winner - I picked this book for our library as part of our effort to focus on under-represented authors in our collection.

Things I liked in this novella - the word based magic system was really interesting, not something I’d seen done a lot before, magical disappearing tattoos, interesting and horrifying take on demonic possession, and overthrow of toxic corporations.

This novella took on a huge task of building an entire complex fantasy world and political system in a very short space. I applaud it for the ideas that clearly went into it, but it was a little too much to fit into such a compressed space. This story was more suited for a novel length book, I was left struggling a lot to remember a lot of unfamiliar places and names of different factions and actors. I really wanted to know more about the magic system and the little pieces we got of characters backgrounds felt a little bit rushed and under developed.

The whole idea of demonic possession to create a super soldier was really original. I don’t think I’ve read that anywhere and it was so well done! I saw on the author’s website that this might just be the first of a novella series and I am interested enough to read the next one.

Read this if: you loved “This is How You Lose the Time War” and want to see a queer black male take on it, love political sci fi thrillers and don’t mind some not quite baked world building, Love Enemies to Rivals to Lovers, like a “I’ve been lied to my whole life and now it’s time to make it right” moment.