Ate ate ate ate. Beautiful wonderful amazing awesome. 

Lots of thoughts. I'll write something more detailed after the book club discussion but: while I found the ending a bit of a slog to get through and some parts of the resolution just were not satisfying, I overall really enjoyed the book!! 

This was cute, but ultimately a LITTLE bit disappointing since I expected it to be a slam-dunk for me. First of all the vagueness about the exact time period kinda distracted me to the point where, while I was listening, I'd open my notes app and write down things that existed to try to pinpoint a century -- which I'm sure doesn't matter to literally anyone else but when you say "a fun medieval romp" I'm gonna want to know if you mean early medieval or high medieval or late medieval or so on? Ultimately what I though Croucher did with the time period WAS fun and smart (setting it around when Le Morte d'Arthur would have been published and having "canon Arthurian times" be I think the 6th century) but like would it not have been fun to throw in a "come on dad it's the 15th century" somewhere?  Furthermore while I was fully very ready to suspend my disbelief because i DID expect this to be fun and anachronistic, it wasn't fun and anachronistic ENOUGH, and the things it took from stuff that might happen in the 21st century were like... things that the average reader might just take for granted about the Middle Ages, not something that's like Glaringly Obviously Anachronistic For Fun. 

For example the

Arthur-Lancelot letters.

And like just to be extremely clear the problem was NOT that they were gay af, in fact

I think it's really clever that they were and that their beard was so effective that, with some suppression of history and a dose of heteronormativity, everyone just kinda bought that of COURSE the royal Lancelot would be in love with would be Guinevere.

That part was great!! But my problem is that there is NO way

These royal mfs would be learning "COMMON BRITTONIC" AND calling it that. If there were extensive written records I think probably there would have been a different name, and again if there were extensive or even few written records I think it would be a thing that you'd have to teach yourself or learn from like a very specialized source, not something commonly taught to nobles like latin might have been at this point in time, and this is even ASSUMING that Arthur or Lancelot would be literate enough to write each other gay ass love letters because many people rullers included just were not.

While we're on the topic I also thought it was a cop-out to end the book before

Gabriel gives his speech legalizing gay marriage

, and in general thought the

big serious war where all the characters were put in actual genuine bodily danger and Gwen and Gabriel's dad DIED

just really didn't fit the tone of the story. 

I could complain about a lot more tbh like how if we're doing all this with Arthurian legend shouldn't there be some Matter of France stuff going around also, which is a lot more into the Lady Knight concept so if anything the conflict with Bridget shouldn't have been that she's a girl who's a knight but rather that "that only exists in stories" or something like that, or that the whole Cultist thing doesn't make sense because Belief in Magic and Catholicism aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, or that (and I'm saying this being Turkish and focusing in so many of my college classes on Middle Eastern & Muslim representation in medieval lit right so I should be happy about this) Arthur's being half-Persian felt like suuuch hollow representation since his mom, who he gets that identity from, died giving birth to him and he seemingly does not know or care to know ANYTHING about that side of him, has no complex feelings about not having access to that side of his heritage, etc which was weird since Bridget's being Thai didn't feel that way (to ME, maybe a Thai or generally Southeast Asian reader will feel differently) since it actually affected parts of her character and she still had a connection to her culture through her LIVING family members even though it was relegated to like one or two convos. If you're gonna get me hyped up for your MALE MAIN CHARACTER (who is actually the most likeable person in the story btw, Arthur ily) being half-Middle Eastern don't let me down like that smh!! I could say much more but I will not bc my laptop is dying

Really great textbook for beginners in archaeology / undergrad level / etc! Since I've already taken many archaeology classes before some of the info was repetitive but still a helpful review, and I think this is a really good book to put into the hands of someone taking like an Intro to Arch class --- a good review of both various methods AND the evolution of ideology (or ideologies) dominant in the field, in a really concise & accessible way!

Awesome. Beautiful. Felt like looking into a mirror sometimes. Cried!

This was insane to read. It caught me completely by surprise — I didn’t think much at first and then BAM I was so invested in everything and couldn’t put it down. It’s also crazy that this is a debut?? Because the writing was really beautiful without being like overly flowery or pretentious, all the characters were really beautifully realized, and just like the whole building of atmosphere and the emotion of it all….. just chef’s kiss. I kept being absorbed in this instead of studying like I had told myself and I love when a book does that. At the end I sobbed my eyes out when

when the compound got raided and they found the guns and William took the fall for Mustafa

and I sobbed my eyes out when

the ceasefire got signed and William and Layla had their wedding and everyone was so happy and I was so hopeful that it was gonna last

and I especially sobbed my eyes out over breakfast when I should have been headed to the library an hour ago at the very end when

they killed William at his wedding AT HIS OWN GODDAMN WEDDING and everyone still had to disperse after, and they argued about which cemetery to bury him in just like with the dead body in the beginning, and Layla and Mustafa had to go to Khartoum without him and she claimed him as her son

and ohhh my god im gonna sob my eyes out again. Fatin Abbas I am picking up every book you put out ever for the rest of my life that is a promise

So yes I've only read 2 books by him, but I keep having the same problems with P Djeli Clark's books: really really awesome and exciting premises that miss the mark for me in execution. I didn't have as much of a problem with the relatively flatter characterization because like this is a novella, ofc you're not gonna get as much space to develop the characters, and the fleshing out we did get was interesting enough! But I think this book was just too packed with... magic?? ... for those characters to have really shined. Did we need 3 (or potentially 4? ) different forms of supernatural entities from 3 different supernatural realms, one of which doesn't even enter the story until the last like 75%?  The horror just leaned a lot more fantasy than I was expecting, which like isn't the book's fault,  but like what can I say!!

I’m crying they’re so sweet! And I loved how puzzle-piece they are <3 This kind of ended up being more Kai’s book than Naomi’s just bc of the whole fraud of it all but I honestly didn’t mind since he’s SUCH a compelling character to me and I’m sure if I was into men I’d be head over heels in love with him. This being said Naomi also definitely had her moments to shine, and their entire romance was really well-developed imo. The only thing I didn’t enjoy that much was just how convoluted the setup was, partially because we don’t even know the whole story until, well, the end. I know every lie has an inside and an outside but

as a reader I would have loved to either be much more inside or outside Kai’s ultimate plan. Like I think there could have been more untrustworthiness for the readers if we knew about Kai’s training in Japan earlier, or if he was shiftier with his plan with US as well, or on the other side if we knew what the plan actually looked like and saw everything fall into place.

But basically Courtney Milan does it again and I actually so badly need 4726262736 more books in this series - I need books until we get a love story for every resident of Wedgeford ever. I nominate Andrew (🫶🏼) for our lead next book

I never really know what to say about short story collections but I really enjoyed this!! I don't think any were doing super revolutionary things but I was super invested in all of them, which for me is HARD when it's short stories! An awesome debut, would love to read a full novel from Philyaw because she's really great at creating some vivid characters