I love the worldbuilding, but where THE JASMINE THRONE really shines is in characterization. The various factions are complicated enough to imply tangled motivations and longstanding tensions, but the focus on just a handful of really important characters makes it easier to track. Priya and Malini are the heart of this books, with a few other characters occasionally taking turns in the spotlight as their unique perspectives become relevant. By the time each minor or secondary character gets their chapter they’re already known, so it feels like filling in a missing piece and it makes the whole narrative better.

There was a hugely traumatic event which is a political concern for some characters but a world-shattering transformative event for others. The details of what happened are slowly described throughout the story as they become relevant, sometimes as information someone needs to know and sometimes as catharsis when an affected character talks about what they went through. There’s a lot of grief and pain from that night, bubbling out to shape current events as some want to move on, others want to fix things, and a powerful few want things to keep burning.

A great story and an excellent start to the series, read this for a slow burn sapphic romance with many secrets.

THE GRIMROSE GIRLS depicts three girls wrestling with grief and piecing together the ragged edges of their lives after their friend dies and a newcomer is placed with them.

I love remixes and retellings, and this fairy tale boarding school uses the more tragic iterations of the various tales simultaneously as plot and motivation. It was fun to try and figure out who the various characters were and what that might mean for the story. I appreciate that this emphasized the archetypal nature of these stories, where tales like Cinderella have parallels under other names around the world. 

I like the worldbuilding and the cast of characters. I was wondering how the story was going to square the girls' in-universe understanding of fairy tales with the parallels they were noticing, but I like how it's handled. Where this really shines is in its portrayal of the complex dynamics between the remaining three girls and their new fourth after Ari dies. The rotating perspectives kept the story moving and showed the very different ways the four main characters think about past and current events, including their differing understandings of who Ari was and what she meant to them individually and to the group as a whole. 

The main plot gets wrapped up but the overarching investigation/mystery has a lot more room for the series to continue. It's a good narrative balance since I have closure on the most important things while also having an idea of what they need to figure out next.

Minor spoilers to follow. There's a character who seems to straddle roles across several stories, two for sure and a third by my best guess. I like the feeling this generates, but I wish it happened more clearly for other characters as well. Part of why it feels strange is that when the canonically transgender character is given the story roles of Beast to another character's Belle and also names herself Swan in a purposeful reference to the Ugly Duckling, it made that portrayal feel strange, like she could only exist in context with perceived monstrosity. It definitely seems like it's trying to be a good or respectful portrayal of a trans character, and I think it mostly succeeded (especially with how her side role as Beast plays out). My main issue with it is that it used her so much in story beats that relied on her transness or her past experiences of transphobia that I don't have much of a sense of her beyond the coy and slightly abrasive trans girl. I like her and I'm glad she's there, but this definitely wasn't her time to shine.

A great remix of some classic tales, I'm excited to see what the sequel brings!

THE UNINTENTIONAL TIME TRAVELER is an exploration of love, identity, and gender through mental time travel. The rules of this particular version are that Travelers can affect the times they visit, but there’s no time machine involved. Jack/Jacqueline uses he/him and “Jack” for himself throughout the majority of the text, even when jumping bodies, so I will do the same for simplicity’s sake.

The worldbuilding was both detailed and slow to make sense, the timeline weirdness meant that I didn’t totally understand what was happening until about halfway through. This is perfectly fine (and almost required) for this kind of time travel story and overall it works very well, especially towards the end. I like Jack, especially when he's dealing with showing up in his future just to find out that some iteration of him had behaved very differently than what he would do himself. I like the ending, it's a good solution to the problem and it's achieved rather elegantly.

I am disappointed that, seven years after its publication, there don't appear to be any sequels, because the ending definitely is trying to set up that they'll have more time travel adventures to follow in future books. I'm writing this review in 2021, so it's possible that this will change but I'm not hopeful right now.

This does a lot of good things as far as trans rep and I'm going to talk about those before I discuss why I don't recommend it as a whole. It handles issues of dysphoria in a realistic way, as well as showing the way that socially transitioning helped Danny experience gender euphoria once the medical side of transitioning was handled by the superpowers. One of the main plotlines deals with domestic abuse from a parent, with an ebb and flow to the verbal abuse which showed how the general pattern of yelling and silence created an overall situation which was worse than any one incident. She doesn't have everything solved by her body being transformed, which provides a narrative opportunity to show transphobia. When depicting scenes with transphobic slurs and other very cruel language it's often first depicted as a summary of what hearing those words made Danny feel, then later when she's able to unpack it and start dealing with it the reader is told what some of those words were. It helps to center Danny and how she was hurt by misogyny and transphobia before it presents those slurs for the reader. 

I like how the world in the book is presented as morally grey, with various factions vying to Danny to join their side. For most of the book it felt like it really was a morally grey world, but I was disappointed that towards the end it seems to pick a specific side. I hope the sequel proves me wrong on that, if I decide to read it. Calamity is a great mentor, she's my favorite character. I also like Doctor Impossible but that got trickier as the story progressed. The worldbuilding works well, sketching the idea of this world that is very different from ours because of when the superheroes showed up, but recognizable enough because of what was chosen to parallel our real developments. 

Now for the main reason I don't recommend this: I'm disturbed by the way it handles disability and ableism, both with the casual use of ableist slurs (from characters of all cape factions, so this wasn't just how to mark the villains) and with the treatment of physical disabilities. There’s a disturbing battle scene

where Danny is fighting goons in mech suits, but it turns out they’re embedded in the suits instead of having their organic limbs controlling the suits. One of the goons is someone Danny met earlier and he had all four limbs in that earlier scene, so the implication is that the villain removed his limbs in order to put him in the suit. He also still is on the villain's side while he's in the suit, so I see three possible scenarios: He lost his limbs in some undescribed accident and is being further exploited by the villain he's been helping; His limbs were unwillingly removed by the villain but decided to help them anyway; or He had his limbs were willingly removed by the villain because he believed in the plan so much that he gave up his limbs to get a mech suit. No matter which of the three scenarios is in play, what happens is that the protagonist and supposed hero forcibly removes a quadruple amputee from his mech suit (which is also an assistive device), causing great pain to him, the hero notices that it causes great pain, and then proceeds to do the same thing to the other four amputees in mech suits, narrating each time how much it hurts them to be ripped out of the suits. I'm, frankly, uninterested in trying to hash out exactly what I wish Danny had done differently (though leaving the goon on a roof after removing his assistive device is definitely NOT something I think she should have done), I'm more concerned with how callously this treats multiple disabled characters, both named and unnamed, and how the reveal that this previously-limbed character now has fewer limbs is treated as shocking and horrific. The villain is a cyborg, and exactly which parts of her body are organic or inorganic are described in a way that feels like it's supposed to be disturbing. Finally, there's a friendly character who also loses a limb and expresses feeling like there's nothing to live for now, which, while certainly something a real person in that scenario might express, seems narratively bad in the context of the earlier ableism.

Overall this seems like pretty good handling of trans stuff and domestic abuse by a parent, but mediocre to terrible handling of ableism and disability, and therefore I don't recommend it. Maybe the sequel could win me back, but that won't be enough to make me feel good about this particular book.

So that was dark and stressful.

THREE DARK CROWNS doesn't pull punches and lives up to its name. It's the kind of story where if you ask "does the dog die", the answer is not only "yes", but begs the follow-up "do you want to know the fates of any other animals?" In the canon of books where sisters raised apart must fight to the death for only one can be queen, this stands out for having understandable reasons why. There's a goddess who at least supposedly wants everything to go this way, but more importantly there are large, driven, and complex political factions full of individuals pushing for power and prestige. The triplets have been apart from each other and mistreated by their various handlers for nearly a decade, each one being told that the other two will be just as ready to kill her as she must be. The three sisters are very distinct from one another, and their various clusters of friends, allies, and manipulators were fascinating to read.  When things go wrong (and they just keep going wrong) there's a known reason (at least to the reader).  

The worldbuilding is detailed and vibrant. The three largest factions each are backing a Queen whose ability matches theirs, but there are two more power-based factions and then the (supposedly neutral) Temple. We learn that sometimes there are four babies instead of three, and other kinds of messiness that the power systems have worked around, redirected, or incorporated to their own ends. I love how these little explanations make it feel like a system that people within it might actually want to perpetuate, which is so vital for a story so full of deadly machinations and impetuous decisions. Arsinoe is my favorite character though I gradually warmed to Katherine and I like her much more by the end. I like how Mirabella is handled, but I didn't warm to her as a person. The Poisoners are my favorite faction, Natalia is a driven and manipulative guardian for Katherine, and Pietyr completes the picture in a way that's good for the plot but doesn't bode well for anyone around him. The nice thing about having the factions and multiple protagonists is it feels like there's room to like and dislike any permutation of characters as people and still enjoy the story. 

I love the ending, the last chapter transformed my general interest into needing to get the next book as soon as I feel emotionally recovered from this one. 

SPIN ME RIGHT ROUND pits Luis's stubbornness and optimism against the sudden reality that he's found himself transported to 1985. His school that is homophobic in the 21st century was even worse in the 1980's, and his one goal is keep fellow gay kid Chaz from dying like he did the first time around. The school is canonically racist in addition to being homophobic, and the characters discuss this as a factor without splitting the story's focus too much, using it as a point of solidarity to fight the school's generally bigoted posture. 

The worldbuilding worked well, drawing comparisons to Luis's starting time to help any readers who weren't around for the 1980's. Since my own knowledge of the 1980's comes mostly from things like Back The The Future, one of this book's inspirations, I appreciated the brief explainers and I don't think they slowed down the story. Having a protagonist who also didn't already know how the 1980's had worked made the level of background provided feel believable and appropriate. Luis's assumptions and reactions change several times in a very natural way as he tries to adjust to being a person out of his time. I'm glad he has help from someone who believed him about his situation. Ms. Silverthorn is helpful but not overbearing, supporting while leaving Luis mostly to handle his problems in his own way. The teenagers have individual reactions to Luis's antics and the whole tangle of friends, acquaintances, and bullies was complex and felt real.

I loved reading this, it's so nice to have an accidental time travel story with genre-savvy characters. I liked the ending, it showed how much Luis grew throughout, becoming a better and less self-centered person.