Strangers in Court is a novella set before the events of Rosemary and Rue, providing some welcome backstory and a chance to see some of the characters mentioned there while they're still around. 

This story was placed at the end of the first book in the series, Rosemary and Rue, and that’s definitely the right placement. It provides just enough context to make sense even if read separately, but the importance of many of the secondary details lies in how they inform the reader’s understanding of the first book. It fills in some interesting backstory which was hinted at in the main book, as well as providing some more history for the character relationships therein. It is complete enough to stand on its own, artfully balancing the need to focus on its own story while also informing the larger narrative. It was nice to meet this younger version of the MC and I definitely recommend it to anyone who’s reading the main series.

No Man of Woman Born by is a fantastic and much needed collection of short stories about prophecies, expectations, and societal assumptions. 

My absolute favorite is "Early To Rise", it was a refreshing retelling of a story I already know and yet I was blown away. The author did a fantastic job with that one in particular. I also love the titular story, "No Man of Woman Born". I love how it's more about the character's self-reflection in reference to the prophecy, making it feel like that story in particular continues after this snippet is over. A few of the stories had predictable twists, but I still loved them even when I wasn't surprised. I spend a lot of time thinking about pronouns, presentation, and gender expectations, so your mileage may vary on whether you see the endings coming. Just seeing this many subversive ways for gender-based prophecies to be fulfilled was a treat. The collection feels cohesive, and even though all the stories are about different ideas of gender no two solutions were alike. There's quite a bit of darkness there but it's handled with care in everything from the phrasing to the perspectives to putting CWs for individual chapters.

Definitely check this one out, it's a great collection of much-needed stories; may there be many more like it.

Strawberry Milkshake is a short and evocative comic about gaslighting, domestic abuse, and the ways that not being believed can warp your sense of reality.

The framing between sections had this strange tonal dissonance with the rest of the comic in a way that built a sense of dread even before it was clear what’s going on. The drawing style (especially the way certain characters’ images warped) was great and made it very clear what was happening while also keeping explicit violence to the minimum required to still convey the story.

Clear Your Shit Readathon 2020 prompt: Shortest Book

Thunderhead cuts a bloody swathe through your favorite characters while artfully pondering biases and death in a post-mortality dystopian society which still needs people to die. Sure to render your heart deadish.

Just like the first one, this book has a very high body count and no character is safe. I'm not saying your favorite character will die, but be prepared. The antagonist is great in a truly terrible way, I'm impressed by his depravity but also at how the author shields the reader so that we get the MC's reaction to the villain's awfulness, but we're insulated from some of how terrible it is. It's always very clear what happened, and that's it's awful, but because the MCs don't have the same language we do surrounding trauma and death there are in-universe euphemisms and language gaps which make it possible to read and enjoy what could (in the hands of a less caring author) feel like wading through blood to get to the plot. I was genuinely shocked by one of the plot twists, variously stressed out, and I hope the villain gets a comeuppance in the last book of the trilogy because goddamn I hate him, but I loved this book. It's grim and fantastic, pondering moral quandaries and the nature of existence via the quotes beginning each chapter, while also pairing that rumination with action in really great ways. 

Now I'll get to my usual book two check. It does wrap up a character arc left hanging from the first book. Oh boy does it wrap it up, ummmm, yeah, not saying any more about that. I didn't cry, it's fine, I repeat that the villain is hateable and terrible. There is a really cool storyline which starts in this book and wasn't present in the first one. I love the MC at the heart of it, and I'm very excited to see what happens with him in the third book. I think it's accurate to say something major was introduced and resolved within this volume, several things, actually. There might be more to discuss with them in the third book, but if we don't come back to them I'm content with their resolutions. There are so many things to be addressed in the third book, it's a trilogy so I feel pretty good about the balance of resolution and open-endedness in this middle book. It kept some of the POV characters from the first book as well as adding a couple of new ones, their voices are pretty distinct from the recurring narrators (each of whom are very different from each other). It was never confusing when the narrator changed for me, their settings, tone, and motivations are separate enough that it was easy to keep track. And finally, I don't think this would make much sense if you tried to start with this one. It's a futuristic setting with a lot of specific language which was naturally explained in the first book, and trying to start here without that grounding would probably be very frustrating. However, if you vaguely remembered those terms but just didn't remember what happened in the first book (maybe if it had been a while between reading them) you'd probably be fine, the connections with the first book are subtly referenced enough to keep that continuity without feeling like they're rehashing anything. 

I mentioned fatphobia in the first book, so I'm circling back in the second one to examine how it's addressed here. I think the portrayal of fatphobia is intended as one of the subtle (and occasionally not so subtle) ways to show that the society isn't, in fact, perfect. It's coupled here with some petty politics and a little bit of verbal bullying. I think it works, it's pretty mild but it gets the point across. 

I love the narrator for the quotes at the beginning of each chapter, getting their perspective was great and it added to the story and the world-building in a different way that the quotes from the first book did. 

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

Anya and the Nightingale is a moving and exciting fantasy which feels adventurous and often fun while also dealing with death and loss. A sequel even better than the original, don't miss it.

I loved this story, I actually like it more than the first one. It feels like it's settled into the feel of the series, it's more comfortable with the world. The ending make me laugh so much, it was just this perfect moment which was a great emotional resolution for the characters. The characters, old and new, work so well in this story. I appreciate the way it balances having a light and adventurous tone while still dealing with serious issues like death and loss. The MC deals with what looks like PTSD (including flashbacks) from trauma in the first book. It's handled pretty gently for the reader, making the MC's distress clear without dwelling in ideation which could be triggering. I liked how it's showing her trying to process what happened, it gives the previous book a gravitas that shows how she was affected without stopping this new adventure from happening. One of the secondary characters deals with dysmorphia from having his body transfigured, and his reaction to that was handled very well. The book spends an appropriately long time dealing with it, but balances it so it doesn't halt the main story.

This is a fantastic sequel which addresses the issue I had with the first book (unchallenged queerphobia) in a beautiful way, I'm very happy with it. As for the book itself, I'll run through my normal book two check. It makes progress on several major things left hanging from the first book. I wouldn't quite say it wraps them up, but I'm very satisfied with the developments in ongoing events, especially when it's very clear that there will be another book. The titular storyline in this book wasn't present in the first one (and I love it, it's so good!), and as part of that there are several major things which are introduced and resolved within this book which weren't part of the first one, even if some bits of the groundwork were set up earlier. I'm also pleased to report that there is at least one major thing for the next book to address, so I'm eagerly awaiting the next entry in the series. I think this book could make sense if you picked it up without reading book one... but this is book two so you should probably go read book one and then come back for this one, it'll make more sense.

Overall this is a great adventure in a well-developed setting and I'm excited to read more.

An Enchantment of Ravens is a human/faerie will-they/won't-they romance with great prose and light world-building. If that sounds fantastic to you, keep reading, this might be your ideal book. If I just described a terrible time for you, then feel free to move on. Looking at other reviews, this book seems split between people who just loved it for what it is and those who hated it for what it's not. 

The lens of this story is focused tightly on the two main characters as the MC is kidnapped by her eventual love interest and initially forced to travel with him. We learn a little about a couple of secondary characters by spending more time with them in the second half of the book, but it isn't really about them or about exploring the setting. It's a romance full of will-they/won't-they, with an interesting wrinkle that "will they" might actually be a bad option in this world. It created a decent sense of tension that complicated my feelings about whether I wanted them to be together and was very effective for gradually raising the stakes. 

While the book generally treated the secondary characters as background in low focus, I loved the (very different) treatments of Lark, Gadfly, and Aster. Lark genuinely felt like a faerie version of a kid, whether it was by relative age or just a matter of temperament was unclear, but her version of faerie callousness was a recognizable kind and it gave me an in for her character. I liked Gadfly better in the second half than the first, and that's all I can really say without spoilers. His early understatedness had a great payoff and I loved it. Aster's story was heartbreaking in the best way, I would love to get more of her story but I suspect that this small dose of her was the most satisfying version.

I loved the ending, it pulled together some little details that had seemed arbitrary or inconsistent to finish the story in a really great way. 

Rosemary and Rue is drenched in blood and magic; October's path is filled with death as she races against time to solve a murder before it kills her. 

I love urban fantasy, stories with the fae, and murder mysteries, so I had a great time reading this one. It's so fully centered in the convergence of those genres that if that combination doesn't sound like a good time then this maybe isn't the book for you, but it was perfect for me. Stories with the fae have to decide how relatable or inscrutable they'll be, and I especially liked this book's take on changelings as a way to bridge the reader's understanding of the other supernatural creatures. While many of the tropes were familiar, the way the Faerie elements are treated here was a great mix of leaning into the genre and building something fresh and new. The resolution was surprising while also fitting the story that led up to it. A lot of ground was laid to sustain a long-running series (at the time of my review the 14th book in this series has been published), so I'm excited to dig into this one. The main story in this book was wrapped up to my satisfaction, but it's obvious that the world traced here can hold so many more stories.

I originally gave this a 4.5 but I updated it to a 1 upon learning that this was based on (or at least partially inspired by) the Sixties Scoop, an decades-spanning event in which thousands of Indigenous children in Canada were forcibly removed from their homes and adopted elsewhere. That real-world context makes the "these orphans have powers" marginalization plot into a fantasy version of a real-world genocide. I'd waffled on whether to even bring up implications about race in the original review since the book seemed like it was trying to be about queerness rather than ethnicity, but it's horrible that it is actually about a major series of events in a racially/ethnically motivated genocide that hasn't really stopped in the present day. It also perpetuates a long-standing and racist tradition of depicting Indigenous people as magical or otherworldly, in this case many of the kids are literally inhuman. My original review is left intact below.

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The House in the Cerulean Sea is lovely and perfect and amazing; a fantastic found-family story about how things can be okay even when people are terrible and awful people don’t like the idea of marginalized people being happy.  

The marginalization in question is specifically that of being a magical creature of some kind. It's set at an orphanage and deals with the evils and prejudices in the kind of system which creates orphanages for magical children but never tries to get them adopted, which may be triggering for some readers. The traumas are mostly handled as backstory, and most of them aren't fully described but rather hinted at, but there are depictions of characters being triggered by events in the present. This book has so much care and was really cathartic to read.

Woven throughout the story is an awareness of other kinds of marginalization and identities which are discriminated against, in a way that subtly nudges to say that these particular kids have lost their homes for turning into a small dog or being the literal son of Satan, but the way that this happens and the hate that their existence engenders due to bigotry and ignorance is coded as an analogue for queerphobia, specifically. It depicts internalized fatphobia/body shaming, as well as homophobic micoraggressions (the kind which pretend to be nice but still hurt). 

The characters are excellent, I love everyone on the island and I'm so happy without how this book handles their stories and gives them space to be happy even though things aren't perfect. The setting is lovely, the contrast between the island and the city is cartoonishly stark because it conveys how it feels to the MC to be in each of those places. The people at the agency are well-written and terribly bureaucratic, the secondary characters at each location fit their spaces well while also informing the setting. 

It's about learning how to relax, to enjoy things and have fun, to be okay and be yourself, but without pretending that bad things don't happen.

Anya and the Dragon is an upbeat fantasy story about friendship, magic, and figuring out how to do the right thing when everyone around you has a different idea of what that is. 

I like almost all of this book but my one reservation is pretty major because it's a problematic moment which is unchallenged within the story. First, the things this did well. The MC feels like a kid, especially in the way that kids can feel like they're grown up even when they aren't. She's aware of the prejudices affecting her family, but her solutions to try and make things better really fit her age and character. The characters were great, and I loved the balance between explaining all the different creatures and leaving some less-described (but occasionally shown). It helped reinforce how the MC would be familiar with them and wouldn't randomly extemporize about them. 

The plot was great, the twists hit just the right zone between being appropriately foreshadowed and genuinely surprising. I loved the characters and found the villains to be appropriately scary in a very believable way. There were a few places where we learn what the MC knows about something and then find out her knowledge is incomplete or inaccurate, it created the feeling that she's still learning about the world (because she's literally a child) and the reader gets to be part of those moments. 

The dynamic between the main kids handled really well, they aren't instantly friends but once they get more comfortable with each other they really have each other's backs. They have a specific reason to be around each other at the start, but it feels like it changes into a genuine friendship by the end of the book, and it was really fun to read.

All right. Now the problem. A character is queer-coded solely through a moment of unchallenged queerphobia . He's ashamed of the magic he has because it's the same as his mom, and he's desperate to have the magic his brothers and father do. We both (1) don't get confirmation of him having a queer identity and (2) learn that his brothers tease him for having a feminine kind of magic and not having what they all do, in what looks like both internalized queerphobia from him and regular queerphobia from his family. The parents don't seem to do anything about the teasing, and while he eventually starts accepting the magic he does have, it still felt off. When compared with how a different kind of bigotry (antisemitism) is handled, it especially stands out as either poorly executed or completely unintentional (which I think would be worse).

There are several discussions about the way that antisemitism from the villagers affects the MC and her family, including the actions of one particularly anti-Semitic person in power. That antagonist gets a comeuppance directly as a result of his anti-Semitic actions in a moment that feels triumphant in the story. By contrast, the character teased in a queerphobic manner just... starts using his "feminine" magic at one point.

There isn't really a resolution to the queerphobia, just to the way it was holding him back. This means that the implied queerness doesn't resolve in a satisfying way, I don't get to be excited about a queer character but I still had to deal with queerphobia, which is the worst of both worlds.

I loved the ending and I am interested in reading the sequel, I do care about knowing what these characters do next. 

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

Running out of time, Magic or Die is fun and terrifying in turns. With strong characterization and an instantly hateable bureaucratic villain, this fantasy is no one's daydream, and the demons may fill your nightmares.

I loved reading this, I read it in one sitting and enjoyed every minute of it. Sometimes I was just laughing while reading, I had such a good time. It's also very dark and deals with a lot of stressful topics (refer to the CWs below), but handles them in a way that has so much care for the reader that it was cathartic rather than stressful. The way it handled the characters was superb, really understanding what they'd be going through emotionally in this awful situation, and that made it feel good to read too, even when it was dark. The MC has this grittiness that reminds me of the best bits of a film-noir setting without actually being in that genre, especially at the start. He's stressed and trying to hold it together for the people under his care even when he doesn't actually know a whole lot more than they do, and that was such a relatable feeling.

The balance between focusing on each secondary character and keeping the plot moving was handled well, the more introductory portion of the book was staggered in a way that felt natural and made it easier to track these very different people. I'm someone who usually has trouble tracking a lot of character names at once and I didn't have problem here, at least partly because of the pace at which they were established. The magic system could have felt like a giant infodump, and instead I find myself at the end of book one, feeling like I could actually explain this system to someone. I could at least describe the different types of magic and how the users might be affected. 

There is a student/teacher romance, but everyone involved is fully an adult and nothing about this setting was a typical academic environment. This portrayal definitely fits under "power differentials are sexy"; it's not exploitative within the story (and the potential for it to be exploitative or inappropriate is discussed by the parties involved). 

The villain was fantastically hateable. Early on I was unsure and I thought the MC just didn't like her because she's an abrasive person, but by halfway through I completely got it and unreservedly hated her too. She has a great balance between having an understandable motivation for being evil and being so thoroughly terrible that understanding her didn't make me hate her any less.