This book was SO incredibly constructed. I love what Deonn does with the Arthurian legend and the way she writes with such a sense of place. I love that it plays with ideas of who is entitled to what kind of power, I love that she negotiates with different types of privilege and you can feel, in this book, the value of writing from an own voices perspective and what it means not to tell A story, but YOUR story.

Also, the way that the story ends and the way that slavery and oppression is, itself, the seed of the destruction of those who practice it. It's just...of course! How could it be otherwise?

This book sprawled in every sense. Over space, over time, over ideas, there's just a LOT here.
I really enjoyed watching the threads of the story spin together - Knox kept them, I think, deliberately messy and I appreciated that she didn't try to get that perfect puzzle piece feel. (Basically, everyone other than DWJ never quite succeeds.)
And also I was just so intrigued by the fantasy of the book - there's a lot to be said about what it is that authors see as the redemptive aspect of their stories. What are we returning to?

Knox's fantasy is that magic can save the world, meaning the actual earth. The absoluteness of the book, it's ability to change the world, is—for Knox—the capacity to do the things that feel impossible. The great god of the deserts versus the little god of the swamp, the emptiness versus lush and also gross fecundity. And to have it, ostensibly, kind of be a Torah is very interesting.

Also, I feel like one of the minor but major sea changes is that, these days, when I notice subtext between two characters of the same gender, it's usually because it's there intentionally and meant to go somewhere rather than queer bait. Which is kind of nice.

There's a reason this book gets recommended by many autistic parents as a way to work WITH (rather than against or train) children.
It's a really thoughtful and, crucially, respectful approach. The motto, of course, is "kids do well when they can". So if they're not doing well, it's because they can't. So what can you do to change that?

I feel like I just need a KM Szpara shelf for "what if fanfic, but taken EXTREMELY SERIOUSLY" and yes that's a compliment.
Szpara is fundamentally interested in the darker side of fanfic, the one that thinks about trauma and desire, except he plays it out extremely seriously. Both the plot and style owe a significant amount to the past...15 or so years of fanfic and its a testimony to writers like Szpara that it's becoming its own genre in the sense that it has recognizable motifs and movements in the larger story.
But the point of both this book and Docile is that stories of trauma and recovery aren't just food for dark fantasy, they're also psychologically terrifying and that in and of itself is a story.
In so many ways, this is a story about the difference between fantasy and reality, the lines that are safe to cross and the lines that are dangerous, the difference between wanting the story of the thing and the thing itself, with the inevitable recursion that comes from the fact that Szpara KNOWS that the thing itself that he is writing is also the story. Whether the point is driven home or undermined by the fact that he wrote the sex scenes using the rules of fanfiction rather than either the romance novel or the work of literary fiction is, frankly, left up to the reader. Is he writing hurt/comfort fanfic or its takedown or both? Look, at a certain point, it's just sadomasochistic turtles all the way down.

I'm also SO fascinated by the reviews complaining about whether the magic is real or not. I mean, that's, like, the POINT. You don't know. You don't get to know. There's nothing definitive in either direction. Haven't you all heard of the Sopranos?
In some ways, the point is that every piece of ritual and magic can be explained by the heightened emotions of human beings and the states we can send ourselves into, especially in groups. And also to fully chuck everything into that category feels like relying a bit overmuch on coincidence. It's meant to live in the space between, much like the story itself straddles the border of imagined desire and real trauma.

This was a really fun adventure through history, recipes, and the way ingredients get used and treated in American cuisines. I'm not going to make ALL the recipes in here, but I might try a few of the more intriguing (and kosher) ones.
But it's the story of the ingredients that was so compelling. (Did I bite into a few black peppercorns during that chapter to see what they tasted like...yeah.)
If you're looking for a quick read through some cool culinary history, definitely give this a go.

Tell me you're an affiliated Jewish author without telling me you're an affiliated Jewish author.
There's a lot to enjoy in this particular romance series and a lot to...not precisely nitpick, but to wonder about.
One of these days, I'd love for the most observant person in the room to also NOT be an antagonist. (I mean, miles ahead of some of the OTHER people in terms of morals, but still.)

Huh, this is the second book in a row I'm reading with an intersex main character. It's really nice to see a wide range of characters starring in novels. The cool thing about this one is that, while Regan's sex is an integral part of the story and affects it, it's not <i>about</i> being intersex, it's about Regan and this is part of who she is.

Horsefriends! I mean, that's kind where we're hanging out with this, right?
Seanan is really excellent when she's writing short and bittersweet and gives herself just a few pages to sketch the absolute brutality that is ordinary childhood.
Also, the parents are not part of the story and also the way that their children's adventures affect them is ALWAYS part of the narrative, which is important and helps Seanan hit the "this is fantasy and also EXTREMELY REAL" that is what gives this series such heart.

This book was adorable and it scratched one of my longstanding itches when it comes to how romance is handled in YA.
I also had absolutely no idea what this book was about, other than that E. K. Johnston wrote it and I really like her books and Liz Bourke mentioned it. I kind of wish I at least had checked the setting so I wasn't quite as thrown, but it worked very well.
Having said that - mild shade at the denigration of the corset. She mostly did okay, although both holding the styles as Victorian even though corset styles evolved and assuming shape is built by tightlacing rather than padding made me grumble. And the addition of a padded corset would have made so much sense! Anyway, it's fine, I spend too much time watching CosTube, it was not a significant problem and the book was still delightful.

Werewolf 2: 2 Howl 2 Furious.
This was really fun and I am deeply enjoying the "very serious fight for our lives" vibes intermingled with "we make fun of each other because we're a found faaaaamily".

There was more Miles in this book! Which is not the only measure of how much I enjoy these books, but it is part of it.
This one took a while to build, in part because Robin as a character feels less like a person having emotional experiences and more like an extremely overworked stand-in who just needs to finish. this. one. thing. ad infinitum. I may be projecting.
And I am always...torn when it comes to fantasy revolutions. They either feel unrealistic or like they only worked because magic. And that's maybe just the nature of narrativizing the work of change, but also I could use a few ghosts to haunt some vile world leaders, if Polk is offering.