this is for my dear friends who want
- a very cool rec for the #transrightsreadathon 
- a sff short story collection
- a book rich in intersectionality, with a focus on queerness (and especially intersex and trans rep!!), emigration, jewish rep, neurodiversity 
- a book on the locus recommended list
- a hidden gem 

this book delivers on every single thing it promises. there are aliens who communicate with humans in different individualized ways. there are artificial intelligence beings who refuse to deny their own individuality. there are people who get transformed into plants and are shaped by both their humanity and plant experience. there's discussion on cultural appropriation. there's different degrees of acceptance by others - the father who wants to be supportive but fails the mark completely, the community who harasses, bullies and rejects otherness, the queernormative worlds. 

I feel very emotional about several of the stories in Power to Yield. I find the writing incredibly powerful, both the more gentle tales and the harsher ones inspired deep empathy in me. most of all, I loved how unapologetic each story is.

my favourite stories would be A Holy Spark, for how it shows the beauty of each individual mind and ways to communicate and process information, and Folded Into Tendril and Leaf, a story full of queer longing, vivid descriptions and a unity with nature that I both love and envy (on my notes I wrote "this tale is alive"). 

I truly think this book was special and unique. Bogi Takács's voice is unmatched and this book really showcases eir incredibly creativity and talent to portray characters that are deeply real in gorgeous and expansive unreal worlds - that feel true, nonetheless. 

I'm very thankful to Bogi Takács for sending me a review copy for such an inspiring book. I come out of this reading experience wishing to live as authentically as I can and with so many new ideas and the urge to create. I'm so full of joy <3

you know how sometimes we can't judge books by their covers? not the case. judge this book by the cover. the inside is just as beautiful. 

we follow Kye, the Herald, a saint, the chosen one, who very much doesn't want to be so, nor the immense power that comes with it. Kye's job is to delay the end of the world, she and the Vigil Order travel through planets to stop the blight that turns whatever it touches to ruin. It's in one of these jobs that she meets Jude, who wants to save her people even if that means directly defying what is considered holy. Jude takes her mother's sword and with it the legacy she didn't expect for herself. 

my blurb is a mess I'll give you that. but this story is full of complex characters, in a queer normative world. Jude is the trans sword lesbian that we all deserve. Kye is the chaotic chronically ill almost-god-incarnated. read this for the world building - it's so intricate and complex, it'll be hard to start grasping it (which is literally my only issue with the book) but it's so worth it. the several gods, that rule different planets. how different peoples perceive these gods in such contrasting ways. a chosen one that doesn't want to be chosen, who hurts with the weight of her power and its consequences. a magic system unlike any I've seen before: the space traveling? the archives? so beautiful. I need you to read about Haven - a person, a place, a self-made creation, all at once (and my favourite magical aspect of the book). read for chosen family, read for a beautiful sapphic romance (yearning is the word here). and finally read to support an incredibly talented indie author.