If I had to choose only two adjectives to describe this book, I'd go for "dense" and "compelling." The political fantasy part was great, although I'm not 100% sure if the fantasy label applies here; it's the kind of fantasy where the author didn't want to set the story in any actual real-world historical period/country and came up with his own early industrial setting with zero magic or dragons or whatever else you might expect from the genre. I admit I skimmed some particularly long-winded sections on the intricacies of engineering or hunting.

The story is well-crafted, with all the right tension points and plenty of cases when each of the many prominent characters wields their own subset of information and is unaware of all the forces scheming against them, effectively placing the reader on the edge of their seat. The one part that felt off to me occurred near the end. Without going into any real spoilers, I believe there should have been a better way to reveal the final chord of the big intrigue without the schemer sitting down with the victim and laying it all out in plain words.

Like every good political story, the characters are where this book really shines: their goals, their motivations, the conflicts where their interests intersect. I strongly relate to the way Valdes thinks about the world, and Miel is exactly the kind of noble person whose high moral ground is both his strength and his undoing that I love to root for, even when they're headed to be doomed. What really struck me, though, how this book is so full of complex, fully realized male characters—Valdes, Miel, Orsea, Vaatzes, and others—and there's not a single woman in sight to stand on the same level. The only truly prominent female character is Veatriz, and she has very little agency and her entire role in the plot is to reveal things about the men who surround her, or be a catalyst for their actions and changes. One can argue that it's "period-specific" and "historically accurate," but by making it low fantasy and not historical fiction, I feel like an author loses that excuse. Besides, this setting isn't exactly 100% a man's, man's world. There are, for example, all those nameless "women in red" smuggling letters beyond borders and making the entire plot possible. They're supposed to have a lot of agency, a lot of money, and probably quite a lot of adventure... somewhere off-screen. Unfortunately, they're collectively used merely as a faceless plot device.

Regardless, this was a pretty engrossing read, and I expect to pick up the rest of the trilogy later.

I knew very little about this book when I picked it up. I knew it had ace/aro rep, that several people whose tastes I often share loved it, and that there was an Apache MC with magical gifts that had something to do with ghosts. The cover led me to believe it was a winter read. I was actually surprised to find out it took place in summer.

Anyway, this story was incredibly enjoyable. I loved this urban fantasy world that started unfolding with a ghost dog and then delved deep into Native myth and cursed vampires and faerie circles. Ellie is a great MC: stubborn, courageous, kind, loyal, and curious. All the characters around her were fully developed and relatable. The story, at its heart, is a mystery with strong themes of family and legacy, and that mystery is incredibly well-crafted, with quite a few nice twists and red herrings and all the ends tied neatly at the end.

It probably says more about me than this book that the relationship between Ellie and her parents baffled me a little. A lot of YA protagonists need to hide their exploits from their parents, turning family into yet another obstacle to overcome, because their parents either don't have a clue about what's going on or, if they knew what their kids were going through, would step in and take matters into their own hands and there would be no YA story for the author to tell. In this case, Ellie's parents remain a part of her life throughout, and not just as mentor figures or moral support. Her mother steps in several times at key point of the plot, but she does so in a way that doesn't take agency away from Ellie. Her parents worry about her and urge her to be cautious, but as they all deal with a murder in the family, they all work together as equals, more or less. This is something I had problems wrapping my brain around, far more so than the intricacies of waking ghosts or other supernatural elements. But I have a suspicion this is how families should work.

I also loved that Ellie's big talent for waking ghosts wasn't in any way portrayed as some sort of burden, something she had to put her life away to fully commit to, something she has to carefully balance with the other aspects of her life frequently making sacrifices, etc. It is, plain and simple, her life. It's a big responsibility, like all big gifts are, and she has to (and does, over the course of the story) grow into it, but it's not something she has to live up to. And her Six-Great-Grandmother, the original wielder of the same gifts, isn't a looming shadow in Ellie's life, someone Ellie has to struggle to be as good as, or anything like that. She's more of an inspiration.

Another thing I absolutely loved: how Ellie being aro/ace is no big deal at all. It's a fact that's mentioned at appropriate times, and absolutely everyone around her accepts her for who she is, and she never has to worry about people judging her, or struggle with her sexuality, or explain herself to people. She's free to simply focus on solving the mystery and working with ghosts and stopping the villain, and I love this book for it.

Despite a big part of the plot being focused on grief from losing a loved one, this book radiates hope and kindness, and I'm so happy I read it. Also, Rovina Cai's illustrations are a delight to look at!

When I read Rory Power's other novel, Wilder Girls, my favorite parts were the ones that dealt with all the weirdness. In Burn Our Bodies Down, though, the weirdness didn't compel me that much. There were some interesting moments, and that image of the weird pink corn is going to stick with me, but I was mostly drawn in by the more "mundane" aspects of the story: the heroine's relationship to her mother, her search for her roots, for a place to belong, wondering if she grew up or simply survived. I almost disliked the fact that the explanations for many of the mysteries Margot faced were as supernatural/speculative as the genre dictates. Mundane horror sometimes hits harder.

It was really great to see a queer protagonist whose challenges or personality aren't defined by her sexuality. Margot mentions her sexuality in passing in her inner monologue and when she sees an attractive girl, she recognizes the attractiveness. That's it. No romance. Much as I love good queer romantic storylines, it's so refreshing to see queer characters just living their life with no relationships to define or justify their queerness. It was also refreshing to see the protagonist make zero assumptions about other people's sexuality: there's a moment where she's talking to a secondary character at a party, spots a ring on his finger and wonders if his spouse is around and if the character told them about the events being discussed. It's a small thing. It's a nice small thing.

The prose was as vivid and flawed as well as I expected from this author. The pacing was kind of rocky for me, with some parts of the narrative dragging while others whooshed past by the end, and I don't feel like all the threads were tied neatly by the end. There are at least two questions I don't have answers to. Not big plot questions, just... "wait, but why exactly the antagonist's plan didn't work here?" and "why are these two acting like friends, what brought this on?".

Overall, this was an enjoyable read, but not something I'd call a favorite.

Read for Queer Lit Readathon (prompt: Non-Coming-Out) and #tistheseasonathon (prompt: Diverse Book).

I have about twenty different emotions about this book, and they're all conflicting.

The cover, the blurb, and even the first chapter all suggest this is a lighthearted contemporary YA romance, something cute, hopeful, and optimistic. And yet, even though there are plenty of cute and lighthearted moments scattered throughout the book, it's anything but. It made me cry, seethe, want to hit someone, and I barely got through that one scene by the end, the one viscerally depicting a physical assault against the trans character. Yes, this is probably a spoiler, but I feel it's a spoiler you need to know going in, especially if you are a trans/nonbinary reader. I'm grateful that I knew about it going in. It still left me shaken.

Mostly, when I try to pull my thoughts about this book together, I come up with this conclusion: there are two wholly separate stories there, and it's not because of the dual POV.

One of them is the story of a trans boy, Pony, who just wants to be normal and so he goes stealth in his new high school. He just wants to be known as this sometimes cute, sometimes funny guy, not the trans guy first and foremost. He's not ready to be out, and everyone around him has an opinion about it. His father wants him to "go back to being a girl," his sister doesn't approve of the entire stealth thing even though she's generally supportive, his out and proud friend wants him to be out and proud too. He makes new friends, but to better fit in with those bros and avoid revealing his secret he sometimes has to die a little inside as they all make homophobic jokes. He meets a girl he likes, and she likes him back, but when he comes out to her, she pushes him away because she can't deal with him being trans, and what if people think she's a lesbian? (According to many characters in this book, being a lesbian is just about the worst thing that can happen to someone. Lesbians! Oh the terror! /s)

Eventually, he reaches a very low point after being physically assaulted by homophobic jerks, and then... um... we never know what then. Because then suddenly, in a pretty rushed ending, everything around him is sunshine and rainbows. His father changes his mind. His now-girlfriend  has seen the light and become a passionate ally. His out and proud friend apologizes for pressuring Pony into coming out and praises him for doing it in the same breath. His new bros have suspected he's trans all along and still got his back (and they're sorry for the dumb jokes, they won't do that again). His now-girlfriend's friends who were so against her having anything to do with Pony are not a-ok with it. His assaulters are in jail. The only people who don't cheer on him and support him are some nameless homophobes having an anti-LGBTQ protest on the sidewalk. By getting assaulted Pony has apparently earned his happy ending when it comes to external factors. As for what's going on with him internally, how he process that low point, how he rises up, how he now views these people around him... we'll never really know, I guess. It feels like there's an entire Act III here, left untold.

But there's also another story here, a story for and about allies. Here, the protagonist is Georgia, a girl in a tight spot of her own: her boyfriend cheated on her and dumped, her mom left her dad for some rich guy, Georgia desperately wants to be liked by everyone, she keeps telling ridiculous far-fetched stories to hide the truth about herself, and she keeps turning away from her dreams of writing and journalism in favor of the more socially uplifting cheerleading. She meets a guy, falls for the guy, learns the guy is trans, and it scares and confuses her. Georgia gradually works through the issues she has with this and stumbles upon an entire knot of issues she has with herself. She eventually realizes the importance of living one's truth and supporting others in living their own; she learns that she can make a difference, more than just for herself; that she can change others' lives for the better. She learns to be brave. Her positive impact on Pony's life in particular may seem somewhat exaggerated, but for the purpose of the story she's the center of, this kind of works, with a bit of good old-fashioned suspension of disbelief. Here, we have a complete journey, a beginning, a middle, and a reasonably satisfying conclusion. Nothing feels left out.

This second story is the reason for the high rating I gave this book. I believe allies need stories like this, and we definitely need allies. I believe this can be a very important book for many people.

But as for Pony's story, the trans story, the story about the character I saw my younger self in as I read it... I have some problems with it. I loved Pony. Like I said, I saw a lot of myself in him. I lived through some of those moments he had to deal with. His story, for the most part, is very honest, very real, very well-written. And that's why it makes me so angry that the main part he plays in this book as a whole is that of Georgia's (and, potentially, the reader's) learning experience.  Here's how you treat trans people and here's how you don't. Here are the terrible things will happen if you lean into the don't. Be kind, be supportive, remember that trans people around you are human and have feelings and their lives matter!

Which is all very, very true. And very, very important. But. I don't know. There's something dehumanizing about being designated to a learning experience.

I still believe it's a pretty good book for allies or potential allies. But as a nonbinary person, I feel like I need a warm blanket, a cup of cocoa, and probably to go read about some trans or nonbinary characters just being themselves and having adventures and getting happy ever afters just because they're worth it, and not because someone learned a valuable lesson from their pain.

Read for Queer Lit Readathon (prompt: #ownvoices)

I'm glad I chose to stick with it despite the pacing being unfortunately slow for the first 3 issues or so (and then speeding up uncomfortably in the very last one). This is a really disturbing story, but it's also an interesting, thoughtful one, touching on a number of my favorite tropes. I won't get into detail about those, since it would mean spoilers, but the twists laid out in the second half of the story were really satisfying. The characters really grabbed my attention, and the friendship between the two leads was great. I was also very much intrigued by the creepy, claustrophobic setting. Maybe next year for Halloween I'll run a one-shot set in Shudder-to-Think for my TTRPG group.

This was a fun read that really shouldn't have taken me this long, but it's November and NaNoWriMo, so reading, much like life, is sitting on the backburner. :) It's a middle-grade book, but it read closer to YA to me. The plot was engaging enough, and I definitely enjoyed following the main characters, but what really made the story shine for me was the setting. The best way I can describe it is this: Stranger Things, but with a generous helping of Night Vale and a small touch of Unknown Armies.

As it usually happens with me and short stories, I kind of wish I could read an entire novel set in all of the worlds hiding under this book's cover. But with the exception of just a couple, all the stories were highly enjoyable in this short form for me, as well. I liked how different they all were, ranging from very sweet to very dark. My favorite is probably The Heart in Her Hands by Tess Sharpe, with Starsong by Tehlor Kay Mejia, The Truth About Queenie by Brandy Colbert and Love Spell by Anna-Marie McLemore all fighting for the position of the close second.

The two words that probably best describe my impression of the book are 'chilling' and 'gripping.' A lot of the events depicted here felt frighteningly familiar. As a child, I was never isolated and abused to the degree Tara was, and my parents were neither Mormons nor survivalists, but there was its share of moments coming from the same place. My family also had a severe distrust of doctors and medication; I can't imagine them not going to a hospital with third degree burns or a brain injury like the author's parents, but almost anything less obviously life-threatening than that was expected to be weathered at home. For example, as a child, I survived what I later realized was a very bad pneumonia with only herbal syrups and hot tea as remedies. I was sick for over 2 months and spent over a year coughing occasionally and often feeling extremely weak. I never saw a doctor about it.

I wasn't deliberately sheltered from information that didn't mash well with my parents' beliefs about the world around us—I went to school, I made friends—and my brother wasn't anywhere as bad as Shawn. I had a persistent uncomfortable thought as I read this book though: he may not have been so bad because he's younger than me. I was always taller, I was more flexible, and for the most part, faster. When he tried to grab me, I knew how to twist out of his grip. When it looked like he might hit me, I knew how to step away quickly, how to disappear in the bathroom, to lock the door and wait it out. To our parents, we were playing games, joking around, fighting as siblings do, sorting it out between ourselves. My brother had a bad temper growing up. That happens to boys. I could handle it. I was flawed and the black sheep and deserved it, anyway.

And the emotional manipulations, the gaslighting, the twisting of my memories, the warping of my reality—it wasn't that bad, that serious, as what the book depicts, but. But.

I seriously need to read something light and life-affirming now before I go completely down that rabbit's hole. But this book is, I think, a must-read to everyone wanting to understand what abuse is, what gaslighting is, what effect they have, why it's so damn hard for the victims to break ties with the abusers that raised them, how hard it is to let go of the beliefs you grew up with, even when they are beliefs about yourself that you're already proving false by simply existing as you are.

There were certain details that made me frown a bit and think, "But how would that work?", such as Tara taking a semester to get from not understanding a subject at all to getting a 100% grade (I've seen other people express surprise about it in their reviews, too), or how it's possible to start college with no documents but a birth certificate (probably a cultural difference; it's wholly impossible in my country—you need that certificate, yes, and also your citizen passport/id card that everyone gets at 14, the tax identification number, a medical certificate including some basic health assessment stuff that you can only get after going through that assessment in a hospital, etc. Probably the rules are laxer in the US?). But that didn't undermine the story for me. Some parts of the book could have come from my own diaries, with different details but the same gist. The parts about feeling responsible for the abuser's actions as a form of having control. How forcing yourself not to be affected or changed by their actions is the effect. How lying to yourself about not needing help is so much more important sometimes than getting that help you need.

...I REALLY need to go read something light and life-affirming. And less familiar.

Read for the following October 2020 Readathons:
- SbooksAndTea: Featuring something you're afraid of
- #gothicreadathon: Theorizing Women

This short story collection just wasn't for me, I think. I liked the idea behind almost each story, but the execution left me lukewarm. The only story I found memorable was The Vampires of Mulberry Street by Aria M. Jones, because I liked the contrast between all the tranquil cooking/gardening and vampire slaying.

Read for the following October 2020 readathons:
- BooAThon: Vampire
- StrangeAThon: Gothic Elements
- #gothicreadathon: The Undead
- SpooksAndTea: Horror with a stunning cover