Very cute. On of those “if you’ve read the series, you can feel free to keep reading the series” books.

This was a really short read, made far less hopeful (intentionally) by the introduction that was written later.
I found the way she writes about harassment versus spam (or not so much versus as versions of) to be extremely compelling.
And incredibly disheartening to think that we take more seriously fifty emails asking a man if he wants to enhance his penis over fifty emails of men threatening to use theirs to rape.
Building better architecture and moderation is a choice - and, well, it already says a lot about our society that we consistently and actively choose not to build structures to protect and not to moderate our spaces.
(It's also interesting reading this after watching online groups and spaces negotiate their boundaries and what are - and are not - acceptable expressions within spaces. The sense of entitlement that people have not merely to speak, but to be heard and to be heard in someone else's space is...a heck of a thing.)

I really appreciated both the content and the approach of this book.
In terms of content, the thesis of the dark fantastic is...disturbingly elegantly proved in its repetition. Thomas's movement from the text to the reception is crucial; it prevents the misperception that the problem is just racist response and it argues for how diverse representation is not about presence, but that - beyond the step of having a POC character - it matters HOW you write them and whether they survive and HOW they survive and the degree to which they are a locus for violence differently than the white characters are.
But what I appreciated the most about this book was Thomas's model of a critical text that is simultaneously about her scholarship and about her experiences, weaving them together to make the argument stronger through the wholeness of her identity. This shift in a model of scholarship is one of the best things happening to the field and Thomas's book is such an excellent example. I'm so glad I finally got it and read it.

Good series, still fun, glad I read it, Kiva Lagos is a [censored] delight.

I feel like all short story collections are an invitation into the author’s psyche in a way that even novels aren’t. And also that is a dangerous assumption about narratives that are, even when they feel raw, crafted.
This book is hard to talk about in the way that paintings are. It just kind of happens to you and then you’re left thinking “huh”.
And also “Estranged Children of Storybook Houses” was stunning in every sense of the word.

Cute, historical, queer...
At first I would have called the narrative style fanfic-y, but only in the sense that it’s a series of vignettes where the reader is expected to fill in the blanks with what they know from canon. Except there’s no canon here.
I turned back way too many times to figure out what I missed only to discover that the answer was... nothing.

I feel like a significant number of my reviews are opining about how x book is like fanfiction. And if enough books are like fanfiction, am I actually right that this is not a style often found in published literature?
Obviously I think I’m right (lol) and I ALSO think that as writers cut their teeth in fanfic and grow into writers while reading fanfic, the storyshapes more common to fanfic begin to permeate the mainstream.
Fanfic cares about details, fanfic is episodic, fanfic is not a single plot-arc but resolves multiple events over the course of one long story, fanfic assumes you care about the universe, fanfic does not pace the sex but just kind of throws it in regularly.
This is not the storyshape of a romance novel or even epic fantasy, although this book clearly draws on both. If we understand fanfic to be it’s own genre (in the way that novel and novella and interlinked short stories are), then this story makes a lot of sense.
Do I love reading fanfic storyshapes with all new world building? ABSOLUTELY.
I fully appreciate that this book may be hard to market - evidenced by the fact that if I’d known what I was getting myself into, I’d have picked it up much sooner.

There were more stories so OBVIOUSLY I read them.
That's how romance novels work.

This book was adorable beyond reason, I'm not sure how i forgot to review it at the time.