mariebrunelm's Reviews (478)

Arthie wasn’t destined for much, but since immigrating to the city of White Roaring, she’s created a life for herself and her band of misfits—Spindrift, a tea house by day which caters to vampires at night. But the police are itching to find a way to close down her business. Her hope resides in the information kept in a ledger that may or may not be kept in one of the best-guarded places in White Roaring, and home to the elite society of vampires. That means one solution. A heist.

I went into this book expecting fun, and I got fun! This high-stake heist adventure has memorable characters, twists and turns, and an undercurrent of antiracist and anticapitalist vibes that was the cherry on top. I loved Faizal’s writing style which I’d discovered in We Hunt the Flame—though I hadn’t been a fan of the quest narrative of that one and the romance had been irking me all along. Here, there is romance, but it’s more in the background. This book would have been perfect with a hint of queerness, but it’s so diverse and I enjoyed one of the final twists so much that I’m not holding it against it.

This book does not replace Six of Crows in my heart because I’m a Kaz girlie through and through, but I think it did as well as it could knowing the bar was super high, and for once I’m excited for the sequel.

A retelling of Shakespeare’s Macbeth from the point of view of the unnamed Lady Macbeth? Yes, please.

After having her books on my wishlist for years, 2025 is the year I’m reading Ava Reid and I’m so delighted about that. Reid is a queen and after reading A Study in Drowning and Lady Macbeth I’m now a full-time member of her fan club.

Where A study in Drowning had a sense of tenderness, Lady Macbeth is a lot rougher, while the prose is still exquisite *and* adapted to the story. To be fair, I was convinced this book would be great after reading the character list which ended on a note about there being different versions of a name because of linguistic differences between regions at the time. Yes, queen.

I’d read Macbeth before reading this book, but I’d say it’s not a necessary step. The details were hazy at best anyway in my memory, so if you read both, that’s great, but Lady Macbeth very much stands on its own. There was a creative use of some of the play’s elements, and while the final twist fell a tiny bit flat for me, I still enjoyed the rest so much that I won’t hold it against the author (that, or putting glass windows in an 11th-century Scottish castle).

Time will tell how much of an impact this book had on me, but in the meantime I had an excellent reading experience and this book grabbed my attention enough to read it during quiet times at work in a busy environment, which is saying a lot!

Ce recueil de nouvelles pioche un peu dans tous les genres et ne va jamais dans la direction à laquelle on s’attend : science-fiction, dystopie, réalisme magique,... Il y en a un peu pour tous les imaginaires. J'ai aimé les concepts au cœur de certaines nouvelles, mais je n’ai pas particulièrement pris de plaisir à la lecture parce que ce qui ressort principalement c'est une impression d’inconfort. Et c'est au crédit de l’autrice qui a réussi à poser des atmosphères étouffantes et parfois malsaines. La narration est très détachée et froide, voire clinique, et les personnages ne sont pas spécialement attachants, ce qui malheureusement fonctionne très peu avec moi. Je reconnais objectivement la qualité de ce recueil, qui a le mérite de se détacher des conventions des littératures de l’imaginaire pour proposer des textes volontairement instables et sujets à interprétation. Je pense que c'est un livre qui gagne à être lu en groupe pour pouvoir en discuter !

This short comic book manages to strike a great balance between cosyness and darkness. We meet Hamal, a gardener who can see ghosts, and Blue, a ghost himself as they navigate the cycle of growth and decay. The story doesn’t dwell on the reasons why the ghosts in the story have passed away. In that, it is a gentle exploration of friendship, love, grief and letting go. I was strongly expecting this book to break my heart, which was placing too many expectations on it. Perhaps I would have liked it to be a little longer, to take more time on those sweet and sour feelings and give them time to sink in. It’s still a lovely, lovely comic book that I’ll keep and re-read. 

Cet essai examine ce que dit de nous la façon dont nous traitons les animaux. Pour cela, l’autrice convoque bien sûr la notion de spécisme, mais aussi celles de sexisme, de racisme, de capitalisme et de société dans une vaste réflexion intersectionnelle qui est absolument fascinante et nécessaire. Je dirais que cet essai est une lecture essentielle, en particulier pour les personnes qui consomment de la viande, mais ce n’est pas pour autant un traité sur le végétarisme. Sa portée est beaucoup, beaucoup plus vaste. Fondé sur un récit très personnel de l’autrice, qui est disséminé au fil du livre et offre autant de respirations ou plutôt de changements de point de vue, cet essai est facile à prendre à cœur tant il aborde des questions fondamentales à notre quotidien, et les rattache à des mouvements historiques profonds. Je ne savais pas, par exemple, que beaucoup de suffragettes militaient aussi pour la cause animale, ni que le rapport du naz!sme aux animaux participait à sa politique génoc!daire. C'est un texte qui est parfois (souvent) difficile à lire en raison de l’horreur des faits historiques ou quotidiens rapportés, mais il est porté par une plume assez romanesque et soutenu par une bibliographie conséquente. Si la fin m’a parue un peu rapide, ce livre a eu le temps de me marquer et de m’indigner.
AC : spécisme, sexisme, racisme, guerre, colonisation, etc.

Dans un Paris ravagé par le capitalisme, Belleville s’est fait Commune. Fi, couturière, façonne les vêtements des révolutionnaires et tisse son deuil dans chaque pièce. Son frère, un temps employé de Disney, a progressivement basculé dans la tragédie avant le cataclysme le jour de l’ouverture du parc d’attraction. Depuis, Fi le pleure et rêve de vengeance. Elle rêve de brûler Eurodisney.

Ce roman punk, profondément queer et post-apocalyptique ne laisse pas indifférent. Il plaira, je pense, aux nostalgiques du Chet écrit par Estelle Faye dans Un Éclat de Givre, dans une veine tout aussi violente et ravageuse, mais moins solitaire et plus communautaire. La narration en deux temps m’a parfois perdue, mais je me suis raccrochée à la voix singulière de Fi et à la galaxie de personnages brisés mais flamboyants qui l’entourent.

Voici un roman extrêmement minimaliste, qui, je pense, provoquera des réactions très différentes selon votre état d’esprit.

La protagoniste, non nommée, évolue dans un territoire vidé de ses habitants. Elle est seule depuis quelque temps, et vivait dans un abri relativement confortable jusqu’à ce qu’elle décide de le quitter. Pourquoi ? Excellente question. Que se passe-t-il par la suite ? Une errance poétique  qui la déleste de tout, y compris de ses mots, en compagnie d’un oiseau.

Ne vous attendez pas à un récit complexe et politique sur les ravages perpétrés par l’humanité. On peut certes lire ce texte comme une novella post-apocalyptique, mais aussi comme une fable hors du temps, des genres et des conventions. C’est un livre qui pourra plaire à celles et ceux qui ne lisent pas d’imaginaire, car il est profondément ancré dans son personnage et non dans un univers étendu.

J’ai apprécié le thème du langage qui parcourt cette novella, ainsi que son minimalisme qui la rend méditative. Ce n’est pas forcément un coup de cœur, mais je le recommande quand même à celles et ceux qui ont besoin d’un peu de repos.

Sadly I DNFd this one at the 25% mark because it is way too complex for my tired brain. There is no doubt it is a great book, though, but it’s just not for me. It is written in a stream-of-consciousness style jumping from one family member to another, from one time to another, and I simply couldn’t follow. Also I felt really hindered by my aphantasia because there were plenty of (short) descriptions but my mind refused to paint a mental picture of what was written. 

For someone who enjoys atmospheric books, I sometimes wondered when something would happen in this one. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed myself, but I think the blurb is slightly misleading because it gives quite some importance to the hunt when in reality this book is all about the characters’ portraits & relationship. I do love a good character study, and here I was delighted. Maggie and Wes are complex, relatable and deeply human characters and it was a privilege to witness their journey so closely. I also loved that the worldbuilding was limited but the concept of society and tolerance was at the heart of this novel. The author explored religious prejudice with a depth I’ve rarely encountered in a fantasy novel, let alone a YA one.

I enjoyed this book but it did feel a little slow because I kept waiting for what was in the blurb to happen, and that’s unfair to the book. The good thing is that I absolutely loved the author’s writing style so I’m delighted to have another one of her books on my TBR and this time I won’t look at the blurb again before diving in.

I cry over books roughly once a year. In 2024 I it was my very first read of the year that did it (Babel). This year, apparently it’s this one.

Friends, this book was *bleak*. There was just so much sadness oozing from it that at first I thought I could barricade myself against it but towards the end I just couldn’t hold on.

This novel, which I believe is partly autobiographical, deals with the experience of a gay Vietnamese young man in the USA and is written as a stream-of-consciousness letter to his mother. The prose here is absolutely gorgeous, and I felt like it was in the pleasure of it that I could get the tiniest amount of joy from this book.

Of course, writers don’t owe us joy. In a way, I felt a little bit like I did when watching the TV show It’s A Sin, which emotionally destroyed me. To me, that TV show (about the AIDS crisis in 1980s London) was written for a cis white audience in the hope to show them that queer people deserve to live. It was not written for queer people because although there is queer joy in there, there is mostly pain and sadness. I’m wondering if that might be the case for Ocean Vuong’s book — that it’s written for a white, cis audience in the hope to make them care about immigrants and queer people. And there’s obviously nothing wrong with that, it’s a noble endeavour. But I do believe we need as many depictions of non-white & queer joy as we need depictions of non-white & queer pain.

CW : racism, war, homophobia, drug abuse, death of loved ones, sexual content, terminal illness.