I LOVE this book. I read it as soon as it came in and am taking it to work for my co-workers to read. I also plan on ordering a few more copies to have. One for me to keep and others to pass around.

The book is just the right combination of humor and education. The graphics are awesome. The book just flows without being too overwhelming but is spot on.

If you are non-binary, know someone who is (or may be), or just want to educate yourself this book is for you!!

Released June 8, 2021 

 

The Jasmine Throne 

By. Tasha Suri 

Orbit Books 

P. 480 

Format: eArc 

Rating: ****1/2 

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I received an e-arc from @Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

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A lot of fantasy books make you choose between having a detailed and entertaining plot, or having detailed and entertaining characters. There is only so much space in which to write the book, after all. However, The Jasmine Throne has both. 

 

Priya has a secret, one that cannot come out. However, when a princess is sent to her country for her imprisonment, everything starts escalating out of control. She finds herself working in the temple that she once grew up in. It starts to bring back memories of her childhood. Only three children escaped from the temple, the rest went up in flames. 

 

Malini is a princess whose crime was refusing to allow herself to burn. Exiled far away from the throne she has to find allies, and who is better than her maidservant with secrets of her own? 

 

I really enjoyed the world, as well as the plotting. The romance was. . . interesting. I am the least romantic person ever, so maybe I was missing something. However, I do enjoy the complicated relationships between all the characters. That is just how life is - messy and complicated. The ending was pretty predictable. There was foreshadowing long before it happened. That doesn’t make it a bad ending, just not a surprising ending. If it didn’t end that way. . . well, then there would be problems. 

 

I will absolutely be picking up this book in print as well as continuing on in the series.

Released June 1, 2021 

 

Future Feeling 

By. Josh Lake 

Soft Skull Press 

P. 294 

Format: eArc 

Rating: **** 

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I received an e-arc from @Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

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Future Feeling is a mystical trans fantasy novel. If that does not hook you instantly, then this may not be the novel for you. 

 

Penfield R. Henderson is a dog walker in New York. He is haunted by the R in his name which stands for Ruth, the last remnant of his gender assigned at birth. He is also haunted by Aiden, a trans super influencer on the gram. Aiden shows a life that is a little too perfect. It is too much for Penfield to take. So, he does what any logical trans man would do. He uses his hacker roommate to hack into Aiden’s social media account. Then, he has his witch roommate send out a hex. Except, the hex does not hit Aiden. Instead, it attaches itself to Blithe, a trans man adopted from China. The hex sends Blithe to the Shadowlands. The Rhiz, a mythical organization for all trans beings, charge Penfield and Aiden to work together to bring him back. 

 

This book is written whimsically but covers very deep topics. The book itself is amazing. I wish there was a Rhiz organization to initiate and connect all trans beings. The relationships that are formed are messy, but they are all the better for it. This novel is a validation to all trans beings that you are not alone. For all nontrans beings, then it allows you a glimpse into the mystical tribe. 

 

For the most part, this book is set in a very familiar everyday setting. However, the technology is just slightly advanced. I think this was done, mostly, to highlight the more fantastical elements of the novel. It really makes more of a fusion novel than one set in any specific genre. Which, especially considering the subject matter, really works well.

Released June 1, 2021 

 

The Library of the Dead 

By. T.L. Huchu 

Tor Books 

P. 336 

Format: eArc 

Rating: ***** 

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I received an e-arc from @Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

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I love a good Urban Fantasy story, and The Library of the Dead is an excellent start to a new series. The main character, Ropa, is a teenager who dropped out of school to take care of her grandmother and her sister. It wasn’t much of a loss, as school was boring for her anyway. To pay the rent Ropa delivers messages for ghosts. It may not be glamorous, but it pays the bills. 

 

Except one ghost will not leave her alone. Her son is missing and she wants Ropa to find him, one problem, she cannot pay. But Ropa is too nice for her own good and finally decides to find the missing kid. So, of course that means she needs to go to the super secret library that her friend works at - the one she shouldn’t even knows exists. 

 

The tale gets even more fantastical from there. What you are left with is an urban fantasy story that you do not want to put down. I flew through the book enjoying every second of it. While the MC is young, The Library of the Dead is not a young adult book. However, the characters are still true to their age - even if they had to grow up fast in this new world. There also were not any explicit scenes. So, why it isn’t a young adult novel it would be suitable for younger audiences. I also loved the disability rep, one of Ropa’s new friends is in a wheelchair. 

 

I am already anticipating the release of the next novel in the series. 

Released April 13, 2021 

 

Victories Greater Than Death 

By. Charlie Jane Anders 

Tor Teen 

P. 288 

Format: eArc 

Rating: **** 

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I received an e-arc from @Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

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Victories Greater Than Death is Anders’ first young adult novel. The book starts right in the action with Tina trying to activate her alien homing beacon so that she can be taken back to outer space, where she was expected to save the galaxy. It seems like something all teenagers fantasize about - or was that just me - but in Tina’s case it is real. She also brings along some friends. What we get is a space voyage featuring a handful of Earth’s youngest and brightest. 

 

My favorite aspect of the book is it’s diversity. Anders included multiple cultures, genders, and sexual orientations. The universal translator is crafted to announce a person’s pronouns when they are first introduced. I love this and while this is done I think this should just become a cultural norm. Since our characters are teenagers they are dealing with a lot of teenager identity crisis that all happen in the middle of a galactic war. 

 

While I really enjoyed the book it took me a lot longer to read then a 288 page book normally would have. I felt more distant from the characters then I would have liked and kept putting the book down. While the core human group was easily identifiable, it did not feel the same with the aliens. I kept having to stop and remind me who certain people were. 

 

I love Anders writing. While this is not my favorite book of hers, I still enjoyed it and plan on continuing on with the series.

Released May 11, 2021 

 

Son of the Storm 

By. Suyi Davies Okungbowa 

Orbit Books 

P. 545 

Format: eArc 

Rating: ** 

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I received an e-arc from @Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

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**Spoilers Below - I tried to be as vague as possible but it couldn’t be helped** 

 

I want to start by saying that I really, really, really wanted to love this book. The cover is probably the best cover to come out this year. The premise of the book is amazing. It should have been epic. . . But as you can see from my rating I did not find it so. 

 

Son of the Storms looks at an empire in pre-colonial West Africa. Bassa is the empire’s capital. It was once an empire to be feared, but now it has created its own history that it hides behind and punishes anyone who would dare think differently. Danso is bi-racial. His father conceived him with a yellow skinned islander that are now gone, their islands have sunk into the sea. Danso has doesn’t fit into his society’s cast system. He is too light skinned to be upper class, yet he his intelligence landed him a spot at the elite university. 

 

Intriguing right? Like I said, I wanted to love this book. It should have been amazing. 

 

My issue mainly came with gender representation in this book. There are two main female main characters, both were described by mensuration for the first half of the book. One female character’s menstrual cycle lasted for over six days while she was unconscious and seriously hurt. Then the second female character had her menstrual cycle mentioned also. WTF - women do more than bleed. 

 

Then there is a pregnancy mentioned in the book. This pregnancy happened to one of the characters above. The character was “late” even though they conceived less than a week prior. Not only did they know they were pregnant a few days after a missed period, every other character figured it out also. Then there was an entire plot line around this collection of cells - because a simple internet search would have shown that the fetus would not have even developed organs - but hey lets allow it to be a conducted for magic. The entire span of this book took place within a few weeks, and the child was conceived during that time period. 

 

There is also a Non-Binary character. I would usually be all over this. Except that this character did not make sense. There is a character that had to hide that he could not conceive children because he feared for his life. A main tenet of Bassa culture is procreation. Yet there was no cultural issue with a gender divergent character? Then this character mostly killed things and had sex. This book made me realize that maybe sometimes no rep is good rep. 

 

The story itself is slow. There are awkward sections that are described from the weirdest point of views which minimizes how the reader connects to certain critical scenes. I mean we loose one of the main characters, but the current narrator ends up blacking out while it happens. It made me disconnect from the story and did not allow me to properly morn the character. 

Released May 25, 2021 

 

The Blacktongue Thief 

By. Christopher Buehlman 

@Torbooks 

P. 416 

Format: eArc 

Rating: **** 

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I received an e-arc from @Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

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The Blacktongue Thief is the start of a new fantasy series by the seasoned author, Buehlman. However, this is the first book that I have read of his. I was not disappointed. 

 

The book is told in first person from the perspective of Kinch Na Shannack a trained thief who owes his guild money. Up front Kinch tells you two truths about himself, and then you spend the whole rest of the novel wondering if he lied to you straight out. Kinch is a very unreliable narrator. He is very honest about this though. It adds a certain humor to the narration, but can leave the reader feeling a bit baffled. It was brilliantly done. 

 

Overall, the tale is pretty dark. It is Kinch’s own perspective that lightens things up a bit. But be warned that the novel is full of death, violence, and sex. On that end, it is a male authored fantasy with a male narrator that enjoys thinking about women. Although, while I could have done without the frequent ogling of women, I found the role women take in the novel refreshing. See all the men died so women basically took over and became the warriors, and everything else. It makes for a fairly liberated fantasy novel. I also appreciated that Kinch tended to focus his sexual obsession on one women so I no longer had to hear about him propositioning every female in sight. 

 

It was an interesting read and series that I plan on continuing with.

The Album of Dr. Monroe

By. Daryl Gregory

P. 176

Format: eArc

Rating: ***

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I received an e-arc from @Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. 

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I didn’t exactly know what I was getting myself into with The Album of Dr. Monroe. I saw the title and thought it would be interesting to read a retelling of H.G. Wells The Island of Dr. Monroe. I had never read anything else by Daryl Gregory.

Then I started reading. The novel itself is more of a novella at only 176 pages. Yet, it is a fully developed, abate weird story. Think of it as a cross between Daisy Jones and the Six and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The book is about a boy band. Except this band is full of hybrid animal humans. After a night of partying after their last night on tour they wake up to find that their manager has been killed. An FBI agent, a single mom of a soon to be famous singer of her own, is brought in to solve the case. 

The plot is a bit ludicrous, it isn’t much of a mystery, but it is well written. I went and researched what else Daryl Gregory has written and will pick up more of his work in the future. This one was an interesting escape from the same old repetitive story, but that doesn’t make it any less weird. Also. . .the ending. . . I didn’t quite care for it. It seemed out of character for the FBI agent.

Project Hail Mary

By. Andy Weir

P. 496

Format: eArc

Rating: *****

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I received an e-arc from @Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own. Then I bought the book (pictured).

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Andy Weir took the science fiction world by storm with his release of The Martian. It was gritty hard science fiction. His second novel, Artemis, was not quite as revered. Although I personally loved it, it had a lot of similarities as The Martian. The main character just seemed to be a gender bent version of Mark.

Project Hail Mary is different, and is my favorite Andy Weir book to date. Firstly, I must say there is not a single swear word in the entire book. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was disappointing, but it was an obvious choice.

The first part of the novel may be a bit slow. You are disjointed and have no idea what is going on, because the main character, Ryland, is disjointed and has no idea of what is going on. He has lost his memory and he seems to be alone in space. 

The novel is a combination of real time events as well as memory flash backs. It makes for a very thrilling narrative. Then pops in my favorite character ever of any book - Rocky. I won’t tell you much about him because it would spoil everything. But I love him. I will buy action figures of him. . . When someone decides to make them.

If you love science fiction at all then read this book. 

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within

By. Becky Chambers

P. 368

Format: eArc

Rating: *****

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I received an e-arc from @Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

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The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is the fourth book in the Wayfarers series. Each book in the series is set in the same universe. While you do not follow the same characters, the books themselves have some connection linking them back to the first book. You do not have to read them in order, it is only my own sense of order that would recommend that you do so.

In this fourth book we are stuck at a fulling station on a lifeless planet Gora that exists under an environmental bubble. Three very different ships visit the station run by a Laru mother and her child who has yet to select a gender. When tragedy strikes the five individuals are stuck together unexpectedly. The next few days will change who they are as individuals and will cement a bond that will continue for the rest of their days.

The brilliance of Chamber’s writing is her ability to create characters. The Galaxy, and the Ground Within is the first book in the Wayferer’s series that only has humans in the plot as an abstract concept. All the characters are nonhuman, yet we human readers can relate to them in a way that will leave us emotionally torn. Each species is different, and each person is different within their own species. All these aspects are shown through their every interaction. It leaves us, the reader, also changed on some fundamental level.

I have loved each book in the series, and I would say that this fourth book is not my favorite. The plot is almost nonexistent and it took me a bit to center myself on where I was and what was happening. However, I would also say that this is the most impactful book in the series, to date. It is the one that has stayed with me on an emotional level more then the others. So, perhaps it is my favorite after all.