HAMMERS ON BONE is a story about justice and protection for a kid who asked the detective for help, and the strange path to get there. I love the syllabic density in this story. The MC speaks like a noir detective, all “skirts” and “dames”, cigarette smoke and “look, sister”, but without talking down about it. This is a style which is filled with a bunch of words that I'm pretty sure aren't actually slurs but are at the edge of what one can say while being polite, and would get very strange looks either way. The book is canonically set in the 21st century, making a strange but very cool mix of cultural touchstones. The full effect is one of stepping knowingly into an uncomfortable linguistic space, just as many of the characters are viscerally uncomfortable in their skin due to spores, tentacles, or growing eyes. Everything builds that uncanny feeling to center the reader in the MC's head without taking them out of the modern world. Well worth reading, I enjoyed this one!

THE CITY & THE CITY is a detective story in a strange but non-magical setting which manages to feel as off-kilter and wondrous as some fantasy worlds, but without the level of vivid detail that would usually imply. 

I love the immersive world-building in THE CITY & THE CITY. This was my second time reading it, and I caught the little hints that I didn't know how to place or didn't understand the importance of the first time I read it. The interplay between the city and the city is too interesting of a thing to spoil here, suffice it to say that there is a definite sense of place in the book. I appreciated the finicky bureaucracy and red tape bound up in this premise. It has a singular focus on the MC and his understanding of events as he tries to solve a woman's murder in his city. My one quibble is that it feels like the book shifts away from trying to solve her murder and becomes focused on the circumstances in a way that felt like it decreased the importance of her death. It was easy to forget by the end that this was a murder mystery and not just a story of political intricacies and border crossings. Part of that is because her death isn't the central mystery, really, she's a catalyst for the real story of this guy and his place in the cities. The MC cares about her death the whole time, to be clear, he just has to deal with a lot of other stuff. Between that and the choices over who dies and lives in the confrontation at the end, it did leave a bit of a sour taste for me in how the secondary characters were treated. 

 

IRONSIDE is about self-loathing borne of receiving cruelty, and figuring out how to live even if you hate yourself. I feel like it spent so long trying to fix things that were messed up in TITHE that it didn't really get to shine, because it does have some pretty good stuff going on. The main quest is interesting, while the machinations and real goals of the antagonist are complex but understandable. 

The middle section felt rushed and pretty confusing, there were a lot of moving pieces and the plot is about various tricks and obfuscations, so it kind of fits the story but made for a hectic reading experience. This isn't necessarily good nor bad, but it is a thing. The MC has a major miscommunication and just doesn't get to fix it because the other character is really stubborn. In TITHE that character was also a point-of-view character, and if he'd been one here as well a lot of the confusing stuff could have been cleared up without destroying the contrivance which drives the plot (which is probably why he wasn't a POV character). I don't like it when books use miscommunications in order to drive plots, so your tastes may differ. I do recognize that there were a bunch of things contributing to the characters' decisions, even as I think they make for a weaker narrative.

This is the book in a trilogy, so it's time for the sequel checklist. It wraps up a major thing left hanging from the previous book. The main storyline started within the book and wasn't present in either of the prior books and includes a major thing which was introduced and resolved within the book. It did wrap up some hanging plot threads from the first two books. The MCs are different from the previous book but are returning from the first book, their voices are distinct and fit with what I remember from when they narrated previously. I don't think this would make sense if someone picked it up without knowing at least the first book, TITHE. I maintain that book two, VALIANT, is completely skippable, all of Luis's relevant backstory is explained in IRONSIDE so you'll be fine here if you didn't read VALIANT, but you'd have a rough time without TITHE.

This did a lot to address the Asian rep and queer rep issues which began in TITHE and continued in VALIANT, but some things were still a bit off. While it still mentioned the appearance of random Asian background characters, it also mentioned some other people's ethnicities. Whiteness was definitely treated as a default (only non-white ethnicities were mentioned when describing people), but it got away from the creepy connection between Asian features (eye shape, specifically) and being inhuman which was so troubling in TITHE. It also drops the hyper-focus on the female MC's half-Japanese appearance and works to remedy the situation where the only Japanese rep is someone who isn't even Japanese by bringing in the actually half-Japanese character who briefly appeared in TITHE. As for queer rep, we finally get the male MC being in consensual romantic/sexual situations and working through his trauma from the first book, so that was a major improvement.

Overall I think this did a lot to remedy the problems in TITHE while still doing its own thing. The characters mostly wind up in a better place than they started (the ones who live, anyway). They have a lot of character growth but not so much as to be unreasonable given the short timeframe of the book. 

 Go Tell It On The Mountain is about hypocrisy, loss, death, abuse, piety, pretense, denial, and self-delusion in a Pentecostal preacher’s household in 1930’s Harlem. The main story takes place in a day, with several vignettes reaching back.‬

John is navigating his sense of himself and his sexuality as a black teen in 1930’s Harlem. Because of when this was written there’s a lot that remains heavily implied, couched behind religious language and “holy” kisses. Some passages are shocking in their language, because the rest of the book is so carefully phrased, the few explicit sections have an impact that they might not have had otherwise.

John’s father (Gabriel) is a pastor whose religious devotion seems to have been unable to put a dent in his capacity to bring grief and pain to those around him. Indeed, the book seems to argue that it’s that very search for piety which created the ground for his abuses to flourish. I came to this book as an atheist and an ex-christian, and the depictions of the oscillating nature of Gabriel’s faith were familiar to me. He demanded reverence and piety from the women in his life, even while he was complicit with them (or was doing things they weren’t).

I read this book in under a day (today, in fact), and it’ll probably be one I read again. 

This anthology is a collection of retellings of stories by Edgar Allen Poe, where the second half of the book holds the original tales. Most of the originals I’d never read before because I don't really care about Poe, so I came in fresh for most of these. In each case I read the retelling and the original to compare them, but you could easily just read the retellings. I tended to better like the ones which were less of a re-skin and a setting update, but were the ones that fundamentally changed some aspect of the narrative, either by gender-swapping, exploring aspects like misogyny and various marginalizations, or changing the ending. That's mainly a reflection on me not specifically caring about Poe and should not be taken as a statement on the quality of the individual retellings, since they weren't all going for the same things (which is good, especially in an anthology). 

I'm going to highlight a few of my favorites. The one pretty straightforward retelling which pulled me in even when I wasn't expecting it to was "It's Carnival!" I like the updated setting, and I especially like how the MC’s motives are understandable just based on how the other person acts during the very short timeframe of the story. It also captures that feeling of overkill from the original, that this event is simultaneously horrific and relatable. "She Rode a Horse of Fire" is the only one I read before reading the original, and I like it a lot! The original felt boring and confusing (at least partly because of how I know I missed a bunch of the social context and implications of what happened), but the retelling is really vibrant and engaging, it captures the intriguing parts of the original while feeling like a new story, which is great. I particularly like how the narrator is a character instead of being a passive observer. Lygia is chilling and perfect, it makes all the words fall out of my head and I love it so. I would read a whole series set in the world of "A Drop of Stolen Ink", I love heists and retellings, and a retelling that turns a kind of boring description of an cool exploit into a sci-fi future story about identity, loss, and yearning is just awesome.

Honorable mentions go to "Night-Tide" for sapphic yearning, "The Glittering Death" for its handling of the MC, "Happy Days, Sweetheart" for its calm and calculating heroine, "The Oval Filter" for coolest technological update, "Red" for sheer baddassery, and "The Fall of the Bank of Usher" for making hacking feel like magic and fungus feel like technology. 

So I knew this was a retelling. I knew it was a Romeo and Juliet retelling set in 1920's Shanghai. This absolutely blew me away beyond anything I could have expected based on that description. I caught a few allusions and recognized enough characters from the original to feel that this is unquestionably a retelling. But, instead of feeling like the old play in a new skin this feels like it shattered the old version and built something wholly different from the pieces, reforming and rearranging them so that you recognize bits of familiar features in surprising places but could have never predicted what the whole would look like when you step back and take it all in. It's everything I could have wanted in a retelling with this premise and even more than I dared expect. The choices in which originally minor characters to elevate to major character status feel perfect. The fantasy twist gives a plot reason beyond sudden love for the MC's to actually have to work together, while still keeping elements of that young love and naïve passion in their history bleeding into the present. It's enemies-to-lovers without losing the reasons that they were and are enemies, making explicit all the reasons their mutual efforts are a terrible idea and a necessary thing.

I love the worldbuilding and characterization, especially the way which languages are spoken and when is used to flesh out the characters and give little hints as to their state of mind in any one moment. The MC's all have very different voices, making it pretty easy to keep track of who's narrating at any one time. The ending is great, except for the bit where the sequel isn't available yet, but time will remedy that. I love it but it hurts, which is definitely a theme in the book so it feels appropriate for that to be how I feel about the end. Juliette is loveably stabby, her rapport with Roma feels anguished, heartfelt, and very believable. 

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.  

This features someone in a new relationship after suddenly losing their partner, paired with someone who's never been married before, with the fate of the empire depending on their success. Both pairings were political, and the new partner has a passing familiarly with the former one, enough to know who they were but not how they were. Part of why I love this book so much is for the way it portrays someone in a relationship after an abusive (or at least controlling) one, after being gaslit and diminished, discounted until he couldn’t trust his own thoughts and barely dared to have opinions but wouldn’t dream of voicing any. Watching him come alive and grow throughout the book was wonderful, and the way his new partner tries to get to know him and figure out what he needs was really sweet. The dynamic between the two MC’s helps further the political and mystery bits of the plot while never losing focus on their relationship as the heart of the story. It’s powerful, cathartic, and very moving. 

The two MC's have very distinct voices and it was wonderful to feel them slowly falling in love with each other, to get descriptions through the other one's eyes. I especially love the parts when the POV character just switched and the new POV character is thinking about the other one as their turn to narrate begins. Going from being immersed in someone's thoughts to watching them through the eyes of someone who cares about them was really sweet.

My thoughts are a bit complicated about the gender coding in this book. I have a lot of respect for a story which explicitly includes nonbinary people in the list of genders, but also has multiple culturally-specific systems for gender coding and some comments about how the systems aren't actually as clear and useful as the people using them seem to think they are. It's a nice blend of inclusion and irreverence, and while (being agender) I would personally find a three-gender system as stifling as a two-gender one, I did appreciate it as world-building. It's also means there are several nonbinary secondary characters and at least one of them is recurring and plot-important, so that was very nice.

Speaking of world-building, I think my favorite random detail was the way animals are named in this world, it leads to a kind of an uncanny-valley feeling, where I don't always know what the creatures mentioned look like, but I know they're definitely not what my normal mental image would be.  

I love the diplomatic stuff and the mystery-solving bits, the two MC's focused on different parts of it because they're very different people and were in positions to figure out different bits of what was going on. It's tense in great ways, and the rather dramatic climax of the story is really great. Some parts of the world-building are very specific and laid out because a lot of it's complicated, especially what's needed to understand the political part of the plot. One thing that kept this from overwhelming the narrative (aside from how much I love interpersonal politics and highly specific diplomatic things) was that the two MC's think about the events in different ways and understand completely different bits of what was going on, which naturally let there be space to explain important things again in new ways without it feeling redundant. It's also a long enough book that if someone were to read this over a longer period of time than I did (I read it in a day) the bit of repetition that is there is spaced out enough to feel more like reminders of small but important details rather than rehashing the story. 

THE FEVER KING was engrossing, pulling me into the story as it stayed tightly wound around the MC’s unreliable narration. It introduced a lot of characters early on but then only really focused on a couple of them, breaking my early expectations for this as a "group of kids with powers bond in training story". It's definitely not that. They have powers, they have training, there are bonds, but being an immigrant who joins the clique late in a post-nuclear-event dystopian society with an immortal(?) leader who is the only one who remembers the history does not for a fun time make. What it does create is space for a quieter story about grooming, manipulation, brainwashing, and abuse in a situation where powers are secret, magic requires complex and detailed understanding, and the gatekeepers to knowledge also run the country. 

This book is definitely the "throw the reader in the world and they'll figure it out" kind of book. There are sections that explain how things connect and the implications of them, but they're woven in naturally as the character figures things out. Even the few infodumps which happen are telling the MC things they didn't know, or them thinking about stuff the secondary characters don't know, but in a way that informs the reader without feeling patronizing. What the MC notices and comments on it sometimes less important than what he dismisses or downplays, creating this feeling that while he's not trying to lie to the reader, he's also not picking up on things or not realizing their importance. This definitely feels like a book where a bunch of hints were there all along and then the end makes their importance suddenly resonant.

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.  

Defekt follows an employee trying to keep doing his best as his world cracks and gets stranger despite his efforts to fit in and follow the manual. I love the chapter openers from the employee manual. The overly cheery corporate-speak helps to establish the tone of the book, especially when the MC is very familiar with this document (or with others like it). It’s informing the world and the characters’ inner lives at the same time, and it’s very funny on top of all that. The MC is in the perfect middle zone between technically being an unreliable narrator and also never actually lying to the reader (and not trying to either). The book is so observant and the MC is so clueless, and it was so wonderful to view this strange hyper-corporate world through the eyes of someone who loves it because it's the only thing they know. The secondary characters were great counterpoints to the MC's perspective while also feeling like full people separate from his conception of them, it's great world-building (especially for such a short story). 

This is a sequel to FINNA (and contains a minor spoiler for it), but DEFEKT can completely stand alone. I'll do my normal sequel check but some of the answers might feel wonky because the author has said FINNA was intended to be stand-alone (and therefore wasn't trying to leave hanging threads for a sequel to grab on to). This doesn't wrap up anything left hanging from the previous book, but it does temporally situate the books in relation to each other very succinctly and I appreciated that touch. The whole story starts in this book and wasn't present in the first one, and it is its own story in a connected universe. I don't think it left anything in particular for additional sequels to pick up, but I would be very interested in more stories based in this location, especially given how DEFEKT ends. While I don't think anything was left open on purpose, the world is open enough to give room for more stories told here while being specific enough to be interesting. The MC is different from the first book and his voice feels distinct from the previous book's MC. Finally, this would absolutely make sense if you hadn't read the first one, but, again, it does open with a minor spoiler from FINNA so I do recommend reading FINNA first if you're planning on eventually having read both books. 

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.  

DNF 10% in. This is a political thriller/murder mystery which is detail-laden in an attempt to give context, but I don’t care enough about the political machinations being described in order to devote the mental energy to piecing together their importance. Also there’s a weird thread of subtle misogyny which isn’t confined to any one character but feels like a problem with the book as a whole (at least the part of it I got through). The police procedural bits were the most interesting so far but the prose even in those sections was so flat that it felt like it was trying to be boring on purpose and the conversations were closer to dialogue transcripts than full scenes. This might be for someone, but it’s not for me.