The Island Beneath the Sea was fantastic for me as a reader and quite the brain teaser for me as a writer. I listened to the audiobook, and I cheered and applauded and booed and hissed. I wanted to suckerpunch and I wanted to cry. I rolled my eyes and laughed so hard it shook my ribs. The book was a drama easy to get caught up in, with beautiful language and authentic characters who seem to breathe as easily as you or me. The sense of triumph vibrating through the ending was exhilarating and satisfying, and I think everybody except Maurice & Rosette got what they deserved.

Allende takes us on an emotional journey rivaled only by her mercurial writing style. Surprisingly, most of the book is...summary. That's right. Lots and lots of telling sprinkled with showing, albeit liberally. After hearing the adage "show, don't tell" for an umpteen number of years, it puzzled me exceedingly how the heck the book worked so darn well. Yeah, there's the frame of an older Zarité narrating the adventures of her younger days, but lots of books have older narrators and would be terrible as summaries. But somehow, through loa magic, with Zarité it works and works wonderfully for the most part. At some points, I got frustrated with naval gazing or Valmorain being a snit yet again. But then I went back to ogling how smoothly Allende wove in historical details and mentally willing characters to give Zarité a hug. Overall, a brilliant, shining read.

My partner and I recently re-watched the BBC miniseries adaptation of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and fell in fascination with Susanna Clarke's well-crafted world all over again. When we realized that we'd never read the not-quite-sequel-but-universe-expanding short fictions in The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, we picked a copy from the library and dug in. I honestly, perhaps weirdly, liked it better than the original novel.

There's no doubt, in my mind, that Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is a masterwork. It's a superb love letter and critique of Napoleonic & Austen fiction, academia, and the English identity, down to the spelling. The downside is if a reader occupies one of the "other" identities in those circles (say, a mentally ill bisexual woman like me), the characters most like oneself are dismissed, isolated, and generally trodden upon for 800 pages. Sure, Clarke makes a point about how that's Bad, but goddamn did it become too much sometimes. While Emma, Arabella, Childermass, Stephen et al. do get to directly kill The Gentlemen, the book ends before they get to revel in their reward. Where were the chapters about Stephen's happy, well-run kingship in Faerie; Childermass thriving in his new Yorkshire school and dating Segundus; or Emma, Arabella, & Flora happily not living as widows in Italy?

Well, thematically speaking, that's in The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, and I ate it up like pumpkin spice chocolate. I fully understand why Neil Gaiman said he read Clarke's stories and was utterly terrified. I hope to write a great number of novels in my life, and I hope my last one, where I'm at the peak of my writerly powers, can hold a single birthday candle to Ladies, Clarke's second work. Here are the biracial characters, the women who love women and will take no man's nonsense, the Jewish immigrants, the female magicians, and members of the lower classes triumphing over the rich and powerful and being happy. My one quibble would be I wanted a story explicitly about a black or brown person of color, who is connected to communities of color. Stephen's avoidance of other black people as a form of internalized hatred was really, really hard to read in Strange, so it would have been nice to have another story there.

Overall, if you like Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell at all, you absolutely must read The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories. They're fantastic and brilliant and brilliant in their portrayal of the fantastic.

Zoraida Córdova's Labyrinth Lost has been celebrated up and down the #YALit Twitter community, and as a queer urban fantasy book, it sounded right up my alley. Reader, the buzz is more than justified. I loved this book.

The story begins with Alejandra Mortiz not wanting to be who she is. As the middle child of a powerful family of brujas, she's destined to continue the legacy of the dead, but, to Alejandra, magic is a rotting harbinger of sorrow. That's why, when the Deathday formalization of her powers comes around, she tries to rid herself of her magic...only to have it backfire and send her entire family, living & dead, to the purgatory of Los Lagos. With the semi-reluctant help of fellow teen brujo Nova, Alejandra travels to Los Lagos to save her family, claim her heritage, and makes things right.

Córdova effortlessly builds her beautiful world of Brooklyn and the purgatory of Los Lagos, while maintaining a remarkably fast pace. I don't remember when I finished a novel this fast. The visuals and sensory details were incredible yet brief. It felt like I was reading a dream. The magic system is a blend of Santería and Catholicism, and Córdova weaves in details with deft charm. The characters are authentic, nuanced, and almost painfully real. Alejandra's teen angst feels refreshingly organic. Nova's character and backstory were an ornate, well-wrought counterpoint to Alejandra's. Her best friend Rishi is also an important character, and her humor and devotion were a good breather from the dark horror of limbo.

As far as the rep, the Brooklyn Brujas books are #ownvoices for Latinx rep, and there are queer characters, including Alejandra and Rishi. I know the next two books focus on her sisters, but I'm hoping Córdova explicitly states Alejandra's gender identity (right now it's I'll-figure-this-out-later/Ambiguously Bi) and develops Rishi more. Since the bulk of Labyrinth Lost centers on the journey in Los Lagos, we don't get a chance to learn a ton about Rishi beyond her shining, quirky personality. Gender and sexuality aren't the major focuses of the book, however, and I was quite content to immerse myself in the descriptions of the Meadows del Sol or Alejandra being a magical badass.

Honestly, Labyrinth Lost reminded me of why I love Young Adult literature. Fantastical worlds; well-meaning teens trying to make things right; deep themes uncompromised by fast pace; genre remixes of horror, fantasy, contemporary; diversity rep: sign me the heck up. I may have only read the first book, but I recommend the Brooklyn Brujas series to every YA fan out there.