If you, like me, thought you might like SIA MARTINEZ AND THE MOONLIT BEGINNING OF EVERYTHING because ARISTOTLE AND DANE DISCOVER THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE by Benjamin Alire Sáenz was a comp title for this book... proceed with caution. They're very different books with very little in common, story-wise. Their main similarity is that they both deal with teenagers who are part of the Mexican-American diaspora, and their heritage matters to them. The plots are completely different, and I hope that someday there are so many books with superficial similarities like this that comp titles for authors of color don't have to revolve around their identities, but rather the content of their stories. Since we're not there yet, I'll proceed with the review.

I couldn't get into this one, it was just not for me. On the off chance that it is for you I will try to summarize what I think it did really well. It has a really cool blend of magic and the fantastic in both the extraterrestrial and the paranormal, building this world where her grandmother's ghost is just as real for her as her dad is, but also letting visitors from space be real too. It has cathartic and realistic handling of healing and shows the MC regaining a sense of agency after some sexual trauma which happened before the book began. The writing style is really beautiful and gives a gorgeous sense of the spaces involved, especially the desert. The MC has a distinct narrative voice and all the secondary characters were very well differentiated. The world-building for places was great, I enjoyed it a lot. I like the MCs relationship with her dad, it's not stress-free but it fits their situation really well. The fluctuating chapter lengths were used really well to help certain moments stand out or to make a point before going on to longer, more involved sections of the story. It helped either build or halt a sense of momentum, depending on what the pacing needed. It handled some pretty bleak real-world topics in ways that fit the story (details in the TWs below), they mattered to the plot but usually weren't played to hype up tension.

Now for the things that contributed towards my intense dislike of the book. If none of these seem like deal-breakers (or they sound great) then you might like this one. There's a lot of mood whiplash, really draining mood switches where you think something's going to be okay, and then it's not, not because of some big status change but just that a tiny thing shifted and now things are bad. The UFO-obsessed character felt weirdly out of place. He was constantly interrupting to just be very very wrong, usually several times in a single conversation, because details of the actual aliens almost never lined up with what the internet told him. I think this was supposed to be funny, but to me it just made the actual explanations drag on because they were filled with a bunch of misinformation that was rebutted or discarded almost immediately. It made it more confusing to track what the actual plot-relevant details were when they were back-to-back with incorrect information. I think it was trying to have the aliens be mysterious and powerful, but it ended up feeling like all their abilities were plot-convenient, so their limits were exactly how much would be needed to tie them to the plot, and their abilities were exactly enough to get things moving once the book began. Obviously that's kind of normal in fiction, but the aliens were so flat as characters that it was like the only thing to know about them was their powers, and those didn't have a theme or a through-line, they were like a fact-sheet that didn't tell me much about them at all. 

There were too many redemptions and not enough redemption arcs. This one is tricky because I think one of the points it was trying to make is that people don't need to do anything in order for you to decide to forgive them, it's not something you can earn. However, part of the mood whiplash I felt earlier is that something really bad would happen, then the book would list a bunch of really excellent reasons why, even if forgiveness could happen someday, it's really not time yet... and then the MC would forgive them. The main story takes place over a pretty short period of time, so fitting one of these arcs in would have felt like a lot, but they just kept coming. This happens with her love interest, the person who's been bullying her for years, and one more time almost at the very end of the book where there just wasn't time to get over the level of hurt and pain caused before the book is over, but she gets over it anyway just a few pages later. She starts the book having held a grudge against someone (very justifiably so) for years, which is why I think the number of times she forgives someone without anything really changing was on purpose to show a change in her character, but it just didn't work for me. I won't spoil the ending but I didn't like it. I felt like it undercut the poignancy of most of the wrap-up, returning me to a sense of unease because the book is over but what I thought was the resolution (while sad) wasn't really resolved and now I don't know how to feel. If this is a "to-be-continued" situation I won't be continuing, I'm not hooked and I don't want any more of this. 

YOU SHOULD SEE ME IN A CROWN is about a Black bi girl in small-town Indiana who needs to win Prom Queen in order to secure her scholarly dreams. With excellent characterization, a ticking clock which felt like noting time instead of playing up the deadline, and tender portrayals of platonic and romantic relationships, don't miss this one.

The way the timeline was handled was nice, since each section was a whole week it was a good reminder of how much time was left, but without feeling rushed. The MC has a lot of stuff to get done, but the days will take however long they take. Her relationships with her family conveyed a lot of depth even though the story was very focused on what was happening at school. I got a sense of their dynamic and it was nice. Her friendships in general are well-developed, with several of them changing (not always for the better) as the tension of the competition brought some things to light that had languished for far too long. 

I love the way the MC's relationship with her male best friend is handled. She's unafraid (especially later on) to say she loves him when describing her feelings about him. That's especially important when she's bi and it could so easily have been set up as "will she date a guy or a girl". Some of the bigoted reactions to her being bi do have that connotation, trying to set her up with him even though she already has a girl she likes, but the MC's view of their relationship is very clear. She likes him, loves him even, and is not trying to date him. The actual sapphic romance is sweet and earnest, with some really great moments and a lot of work put in later in the book to fix some broken communication from earlier on. It's realistically messy without being overwhelmingly stressful, and I love how it turns out. 

I was worried that her brother's illness (sickle cell) would be used as a plot device to derail her and that is Not what happens. He's just her younger brother who's living as best he can, and while it does affect him (and sometimes her) in the book it didn't feel like his illness was used for dramatic tension. I'm not qualified to speak on its nuances as disability rep, but at the very least it didn't seem like a gimmick to me.

As a Midwesterner I loved this portrayal of high school in the Midwest. I'm not from Indiana but there are enough similarities to my former Ohio home for this to feel very familiar. If you're also Midwestern a lot of this will probably spark recognition. If you're not Midwestern, yes it's really like this, especially outside of the scattered big cities. If anything, it could have held even more mentions of cornfields and still been spot on. The world-building is great, every new detail fit in to build this picture of a place I know well, and I think it was done in a way that would convey a sense of it to someone unfamiliar with this setting. Yes, I'm including the racism and queerphobia when I say it felt familiar, familiar isn't always nice. 

A LOCAL HABITATION picks up soon after ROSEMARY AND RUE with Toby sent to solve a communication problem for Sylvester, ending up desperately trying to keep a shrinking group of fae and changelings alive in a knowe stalked by death. If you liked ROSEMARY AND RUE you'll probably love this too, it has a different scope and pace while keeping the murder mystery core and faery capriciousness.

This is a strong sequel with a fantastic locked house murder mystery setup in a fae-centric version of the modern world. I figured out one of the mysteries involved because it happened to involve a trope I love very much, but the main story genuinely kept me guessing as to the identity of the killer all the way up past the 90% mark. The story is very well contained, with strong continuity from the first book, but not requiring someone to have read the first one recently enough to remember extremely well before starting this one. As with any sequel, certain things will be more impactful and way more interesting if this is a continuation of the series for you rather than your introduction. I love the MC, she has the feeling of someone who likes explaining things, and a casual manner of narration that means even her longer explanations didn’t feel like infodumps. Because I did read the first book, I noticed so many places where we could have just been handed detailed recaps of events from the first book and they would have slow down the story, instead the MC’s explanations stayed focused on the most essential features of those prior events, which usually was their emotional impact and not what literally happened. It was deftly done, very fun to read, and I think it was generally enough explanation that a reader could enjoy this book either randomly by itself or as an entry in a series (since it is book two), just as long as this isn’t their very first time reading a book starring fae.

Time for the sequel check! This doesn't really wrap up anything left hanging from the first book, but it does continue at least five key relationships which were previously introduced. They weren't really left hanging, but the continuity is welcome and I'm excited for the slow burn of the MC's relationships growing and changing. The main story (murder mystery) exists entirely in this book and wasn't present in the first one, and it's resolved here too. There aren't really events left to be wrapped up later, but it drops in a few teasing notes about an ongoing thing which feels like it'll take several more books before it's time to be properly addressed. The style of this series feels like it's headed for a "murder mystery every book" sort of cadence, which I quite enjoy, so the main threads of continuity are in the people Toby cares about in her life, the ones for whom she would drop everything and either solve or try to prevent murder. Toby is still the narrator and her voice is consistent with the first book. 

Because this is a long-running series and I intend to read the whole thing, I’ll keep an informal running tally of things which it’s useful to know for continuity between books, but aren’t re-explained. I’m not a wiki so this won't be exhaustive, but it’ll help me with my sequel check to figure out if a reader could pick up each book at random and still have a good time. This time around, the Major Things Which Are Present But Not Re-Explained are: how October is connected to Sylvester; and who Devin, Dare, and Manuel were. You can absolutely enjoy the book without this backstory, but there's an immensely cathartic scene which relies on one of these pieces of information, so I definitely recommend starting the series from the beginning rather than jumping in here on book two.

The story is marred slightly by some ableism from the MC which had a small presence in the first book and continues here, with minor but casual use of ableist slurs and an unfortunate speculative focus on the role insanity might have played in the actions of the eventually revealed killer. The motives and character background are really strong up until that ending, so it wasn’t enough to detract from the satisfying feeling of clues coming together, but saying “and also they weren’t mentally stable” mixed in with the rest of the reveal dampened it slightly for me. Either it’s obvious that they weren’t all right because they were killing people, and thus the book didn’t need to say that they’re “crazy”, or they were killing people without mental illness playing a role in their actions and so it’s just not applicable except in the colloquially ableist sense, and would be better not entering the discussion at all. I loved the story and found the characters, new and old, to be very engaging, despite this issue, so I’ll definitely be reading the next one. 

It is nearly impossible to discuss THE ELECTRIC HEIR without minor spoilers for THE FEVER KING, so here's the short version if you are trying to figure out whether this is the duology for you. THE FEVER KING is the story of Noam, an immigrant kid in a post-apocalyptic version of the former Carolinas in the USA where a plague is killing many and bestowing the few survivors with magic, gaining powers and favor from the ruler of the region as he slowly gets closer to him and becomes more and more entangled in his political games, while also learning how to use his new abilities. Along the way he gets close to the ruler's ward, Dara, and must decide what to do after a series of devastating revelations and some pretty brutal choices. THE ELECTRIC HEIR picks up six months later and deals with how Noam lives with himself and deals with the fallout from his actions in THE FEVER KING, with less of a focus on learning powers or building comradery with his fellow students, and more of a focus on figuring out that what is happening to him is abuse. If this sounds like a great story then I recommend pausing here and reading THE FEVER KING, because spoilers for that book will abound from here.

This is technically a story about revolution and toppling a dictator, but at its heart it's a story about two kids and their friends helping each other take down their abuser who's running the country. This series deals with child abuse (including but not limited to incest) where there is a massive power imbalance due to the age gap, mentor/student relationship, and the fact that the abuser is legally in charge of the government. There are many discussions between the previous and current victim where we see the viewpoint of someone who has escaped and never wants to be back there again, and someone who hasn't yet figured out how to leave. Some of my favorite sections were between these two characters, whether or not the particular conversation dealt with the abuse specifically, because it shows an immense amount of care from the author to spend so much time showing these characters trying to process and maybe even heal. 

Where THE FEVER KING appeared at first to be a heroic teamup/ensemble story before slowly becoming... not that, THE ELECTRIC HEIR has no pretense that Noam will maintain a normal existence. Its focus from his perspective is entirely on his personal interactions with the antagonist, his mentor/abuser, and his work with the resistance to try and topple that abuser from power. While he is technically going to classes and undergoing training, the mentions of these slices of normality gradually disappear, replaced with the descriptions of the flimsy excuses which are increasingly all he has to offer to his friends. The narrative bends towards his attempts to get back any sort of control in his life, and his sense of powerlessness when every attempt keeps being predicted, foiled, or somehow stymied. In the first book Noam was watching as what he thought might be abuse was happening to someone he was getting to know, here it becomes harder and harder to avoid the notion that he now occupies the same position Dara once did. Speaking of Dara, this time around we get Dara's perspective in alternating chapters with Noam. I love Dara as a narrator, he feels very different from Noam and helps to shake up the sense that Noam is right all the time, since he demonstrably is not but is so resolute that it can be easily to feel like he must be right since he's narrating. The dynamic between Noam and Dara is layered and complex, as Noam is torn between maintaining a pretense of loyalty to his abuser (who is not Dara, to be clear), and the unavoidable notion that he is helping his abuser exert power on others even as he is making moves to get out. It makes explicit the abuse first implied and partially shown in THE FEVER KING, and, just as importantly, discusses how the abuse is not his fault, it's neither his nor Dara's fault.

I found this to be empowering and cathartic without trying to be happy, which was welcome because it left space for things to be bad and then also hope that they could get better, but not pretending that everything is magically fixed when the abuse stops. Dara offers a vision of what Noam could look like with a little time free but still not all the way better yet, while Dara sees some of his past self in Noam and keeps trying to get him out. It's not sugar-coated or joyous, and they'll have a long road ahead when the book is done, but it feels like they have a chance.

The worldbuilding in NINEFOX GAMBIT is deep and immersive and very detailed in a way that sometimes was a little overwhelming, but the dynamic between the MC and her shadowy guide help to make sure that the importance of something was explained even if the details or dizzying and arcane and fantastic, the characters weren’t worried about making sure I would know what was going on, but the structure of the book itself and the setup for the main characters combined to make sure that even if I didn’t know what a word or detail meant in this world, I knew why it mattered. “Hard sci-fi“ is a phrase that almost feels appropriate here, but is wholly inadequate to summarize the way the little details makes this book shine. It’s hard sci-fi from a different universe, with all the precision and technical jargon from a world where the way someone stands in a formation aligns with their calendar to create devastating beauty and destruction in a battle, where manipulating holy days can change everything.

My favorite thing in this book is I now get to add “calendrical rot” to my vocabulary, I don’t know how I will use it after this but I’m very glad to have it now. My second favorite thing is the way that behavioral manipulation and mind games are shown in such a subtle and empathetic way. I was so immersed in the MC‘s perspective that while I trusted her as a narrator, my understanding of what was going on was very tied to how much she did or did not figure out about what her shadowy companion was doing, since we never get his perspective. Their conversations are fascinating, the way they jointly and separately have to navigate the MC’s ability to have conversations with other people led to some great moments, and it meant that wow there were times that had pretty straightforward delivery of a lot of information, they only technically fell in the category of info dump because they were things that naturally needed to be explained. Even the little moments where the companion comments on the way something has changed was used artfully so that the reader could care more about what it Is even though the MC needed to learn what it Was. 

I’m a big fan of interstitial chapters and the ones here are fantastic examples of world-building and subtle character development. They’re funny and add up to be very informative but the story will still make sense if you don’t pay attention to them. They’re a window into a perspective that’s very different from the MC, and this is used in a combination of explicit and implicit world-building to show literally what someone says about their actions and to demonstrate other ways of thinking about events shown in the main chapters.

THE GILDA STORIES spans two centuries in the life of a Black lesbian vampire, following her as she finds family, friends, and connections tethering her to life in the first stages of her journey as an immortal. 

The pace is slow, but purposeful. Every section lingers just as long as it needs to convey its piece of this story that spans two centuries. The book is undeniably queer but a lot of the queerness in the early sections is understated or implied because it’s taking place in years and times where it’s not safe to be a woman, to be Black, to be queer. By having the MC be a vampire it takes some of the danger away, transforming it. It’s not gone, not really, it’s not magically safer for her to exist in this world that hates people like her, but it does help as a reader, to know she has something to keep her safe. It’s explicitly about abuse and power and violence and vulnerability, figuring out how to be a creature who could easily survive through violence but not if she wants to keep her humanity, her love for life. The final section flips this and changes which facet of her identity puts her in danger.

The secondary characters come in and out of the MC‘s life, sometimes being gone for long sections before returning again, and sometimes leaving forever, or being left by the MC. But even those she leaves behind in time and by distance often stay in her thoughts. Her fellow vampires have a consistent presence throughout the book, whether just in her recollections of them, her summaries of what’s happened with them most recently, or a few moments in person where the narrative lens aligns with their visits. It conveys this tension between loneliness and community which is integral to the story as the MC figures out how to stay interested in life as the years stretch ever onward.

ACROSS THE GREEN GRASS FIELDS is the balm to my horse-kid soul, a caring story of wildness, hoofbeats, and the importance we place on something as fickle and illusory as destiny.

I love how the possible quest is secondary to the important task of helping the MC feel safe and watching her grow up. She's a human in the Hooflands and that means Important Things Must Someday Happen, but they don't have to happen today. In a series that has had many more straight-forward quests and presumably will have many more, this is a mostly calm break, a landing place after a lot of very intense events in the previous entry, COME TUMBLING DOWN. As one of the self-contained entries it doesn't try to comment on the universe which makes this story possible, but lets it exist unto itself while still being consistent with the broader narrative with which returning readers will be familiar. 

Now for my regular sequel check. This is part of the Wayward Children Series, but, just like its fellow even-numbered books, it can be read as a stand-alone. This one in particular has a MC who is either completely new or who I just don't remember from the previous books; I'm pretty sure she's a new character and this is her introduction. As a self-contained book with a completely new MC, it doesn't wrap up anything left hanging from previous books, its entire storyline begins in this book and wasn't present in the previous book. It definitely leaves things to be addressed, like, what will the MC do in any future installments in the series? This series has a strained relationship with linearity and a very specific premise tying everything together, so it doesn't actually spoil anything to say I hope I see her again. The MC is distinct from previous characters, but the omniscient narrator is a soothing, knowing voice I recognize from other books by this author, it's in keeping with the narrator's style in the previous installments in this particular series. That narrator remembers being a kid and conveys beautiful how the particular kids in the story think about the adults around them, all without ever diminishing their experiences as children. This would absolutely make sense if someone started with this book and didn't know about the series. They might wonder what's going on with the doors, but the MC doesn't know either and so someone could happily read this and then, energized and intrigued and even more in love with horse-creatures, go back for the previous entries (rest assured that they have just as much heart but sadly fewer horses). 

I was pulled in by the centaurs and the unicorns, but what absolutely made my day were the twin delights of the kelpie (my favorite murderous water horse in any fae-adjacent story) and the peryton (new to me and oh so welcome). I didn't know I needed a scavenging sky-deer in my life but now I don't know what ever I did without it. The social dynamics of centaurs was a treat I won't soon forget. Seanan is the author I read when I want to feel better without pretending not to be sad, and this was a great entry in a fantastic series.

WINGS OF EBONY is about family, home, and belonging, and the journey to embrace two worlds and help make them better instead of being torn between them.

This has a “keep running, I’ll explain on the way” kind of style, the book drops the reader straight into the middle of a very tense sequence then establishes the relevant backstory piecemeal through narration and alternating chapters between present and past. It works well, pulling me into the story quickly without getting too bogged down in details, then emphasizing the details later once I had a framework to anchor them. It prompted me to have questions then answers them just in time. I liked this style a lot, and it suits the story well. 

For the first half of the book I didn’t really get what it was doing. The flashback scenes were fun and informative, the pacing was fine, and I liked the MC, but I didn’t get “it”, where the book was going, why this story cared about itself and what I’d say to convey to someone why they should read it...and then just past halfway through it gets to the cave and the fire and it hooked me instantly. The first half sets up the MC as having been pulled from her home and everyone she loves to learn magic with a father she doesn’t know and people who see her as an outsider and a curiosity. It was harder to get into because (like the MC) I didn’t get why she should care about being there: she wanted to be home, they begrudged teaching her but also seemed to want something from her, so it needed something more, some piece which explained why she should care about anything in this place. There's some coercive structures keeping her there, but it felt like we were waiting to find out what she could possibly want from the magic world other than to just go home. And then... the cave happens (the actual cave is incidental, it’s just a spoiler-free way to note a before and after in the book). It starts a series of events and revelations which set up an actual reason for her to care about the magic world that doesn’t replace or retract all the reasons she felt displaced before, it validates them while also giving her something new. It turned her journey from one where she didn’t want what was happening but didn’t have a goal into one where she has the information she needs to choose what she cares about and what she’ll fight for. 

The secondary characters are distinct without cluttering the story, I was able to track the most important three or four people in each world and have a general sense of the rest. The narrative felt very focused on the MC and how she was reacting, which makes sense for this book but also meant that there were only a couple of secondary characters where I had a sense of who they were beyond what they literally did in the story. What this does very well is establish a sense of who the main groups are as communities, there isn't space in this book to infodump the MC's history with everyone as individuals (nor should it have attempted that), but it was very clear who the MC was in relation to those communities, whether and why she felt like she fit in, and then using that alternating discomfort and ease to propel her actions. I didn't need to know her whole history with any one person in her neighborhood because how she related to them conveyed immediately who they were to each other in a way that anchored everyone. We got a bit more history in the magic world via the flashbacks because it's newer to her and she's still learning about it.