[Fic Recs] Short Stories and Books!
Apr. 6th, 2023 09:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocochipbiscuitOriginal Work (Short Stories)
Rabbit Test by Samantha Mills - 7k word story about reproductive rights and autonomy over generations and throughout history. It's dark and biting and uncomfortable, but it's a discomfort I want to sit with. Mind the warnings re: sexual assault, abuse, traumatic miscarriage, psych ward treatment, and suicide.
Unname Me at the Altar by Ashaye Brown - 2.8k words. Three generations of family in one home, and a grandparent whose name changes daily, serving as a living altar to their ancestors. Content warnings for character death and references to war and mass killings. It’s short and bitey and a testament to grief and survival and the impermanence of memory.
Skin by Isha Karki - 4.9k words. The daughter of Nepalese immigrants wears different skins around her wealthy boyfriend, her academic advisor, and her family. Content warnings for body horror, racism, misogyny, and references to sati and death/burning. This gave me such chills, both for its way of depicting assimilation (or the attempt thereof) in the pursuit of safety, and also carries echoes of selkie wives.
The Storyteller by Rhea Roy - 1.4k words. Mala Auntie goes to the crossroads to make a deal with the Devil. She wants her dead husband back; and don’t we know how these stories go? I love how this one plays with folklore (Mala Auntie studied the literature of far-off places during her post-grad!) and riddles. A happy ending and great palate cleanser compared to some of my other recs!
Books (Fiction)
Radcliffe Hall by Miyuki Jane Pinckard - A 40k word novella, with a Japanese student attending an American women's college in 1908. It's a Gothic novel with the characters encountering the supernatural, which is no less malevolent than systemic racism and homophobia. It's wonderfully atmospheric, spooky and heartbreaking.
You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo - Fast-paced comedic space opera!!! Captain Niko’s an ex-admiral, attempting something like retirement from the Holy Hive Mind with her squad of ex-soldiers. A mysterious package is delivered! A restaurant critic might bestow a coveted Nikkelin Orb! Their whole station blows up and they escape on a sentient ship that’s convinced it’s being stolen! Then, PIRATES!!!!
…in case it’s not obvious, this is incredibly fast, wacky, and with a whole cast of lovable crew and loving descriptions of food. I’m not always a fan of the omniscient POV that’s used to bounce between characters because it never gets the emotional depth I really want, and many characters are painted in vivid splashes rather than with nuance. (And the villain absolutely chews the scenery.) The ending leaves a lot of loose threads and a cliffhanger that begs for a sequel.
DESPITE ALL THIS, it was an incredibly fun, light-hearted read and I thoroughly enjoyed it!
The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz: Time travel! Murder! Punk feminism and rage!
Tess is a time traveler trying to preserve the rights of women and other marginalized people across the timeline, while gently nudging towards a better future. While visiting a riot grrl concert in 1992, she stumbles across another group of time travelers dedicated to stopping her organization and destroying the time machines.
In 1992, Beth is a teenager at that same concert, unknowingly about to murder a friend's abusive boyfriend. Beth gets caught up in a path of escalating violence and vengeance as they realize just how many other shitty predators there are in the world.
Their paths intersect, and their futures blossom out from one another.
This is just SO good, clever and gripping and brutal. I had to put the book down at times when it got to be too much, and it made me cry (with joy! With relief!) at other times. Absolutely deserves a whole set of content warnings, but I love how it plays with time travel as a geological science rather than physics (which is such a fun and different take!) and the ideas of whether history is truly shaped by great individuals or collective efforts.
Some spoilery content warnings: abuse (including sexual and child abuse), incest, sexual assault, abortion, reproductive coercion, misogyny, racism, transphobia.
The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Nina Bealieu is hoping to join the ranks of the Beautiful Ones, Losail’s most notable socialites, and make a good marriage during her debut. Her wealthy and well-connected cousin’s wife, Valerie, is to help make the appropriate introductions. However, Nina has a little problem—her struggles to control her telekinesis. She meets Hector Auvray, a famous entertainer, who is also telekinetic and dazzles audiences with his skill. Hector begins courting Nina, but only as a way of getting close to Valerie, to whom he had once been secretly engaged. Nina, meanwhile, is genuinely falling in love. Drama!!!
This is just deliciously melodramatic, old-world romance set in a pseudo-France in the late 1800s (ish? I’m not great with time periods). It plays with ideas of romance and romantic love, it gives high emotional stakes and heartbreak, and Valerie is an over the top villainess whom I love to hate! I devoured it in two days, and am still chewing over Nina and Hector’s original romantic notions of love; youthful passion and intensity of devotion, the way that Valerie despises her husband and thinks he only views her as another trophy rather than truly loving her, and how she still holds on to the memory of Hector’s love and would rather see him forever in love with her (or a memory of her) than move on. It just swept me along for the ride.
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin: It’s five years after a virus erupted that turned anyone over a certain level of testosterone into monsters, and Beth and Fran are two trans women who’ve eked out a living by hunting feral once-men and harvesting their organs for their friend Indi, a doctor who can refine them into sources of estrogen. They’re joined by Robbie, a trans man who’s survived by avoiding other people, and all four end up on the run from not only the feral men, but murderous TERFs and a sociopathic bunker brat. Bittersweet ending, take that as a warning or enticement.
Content warnings: sexual assault, graphic violence, body horror, medical horror, pregnancy body horror, cannibalism, transphobia. More spoilery warning: lynching and forced hysterectomy of a Black woman.
Nutshell summary: Brutal apocalyptic horror and a bleeding love letter to trans women.
Or: HOLY SHIT THIS BOOK WAS A WILD RIDE. It’s also a rough read and I don’t recommend it lightly! The characters are messy, flawed, and very human in ways that make me ache for them and also scream for them to make better choices! It’s strikingly vivid, even beautiful in places, but also visceral and disturbing. There are also a lot of sex scenes, many of them treading between erotic and horrifying as the characters negotiate (or don’t) the ways they can share pleasure or inhabit their bodies and dysphoria.
Longer spoilery yelling:
BETH IS MY FAVORITE. She utterly breaks my heart and I fell so hard for her because of that contrast between her physical strength and her emotional vulnerability, the way she hurts so badly and isn’t allowed to be ‘delicate’ in the same way that Fran is, since Beth’s a “brick” (non-passing trans woman) and the one who’s actually good at hunting! She’s been trying so hard to be good, not be ‘toxic’ or ‘predatory’ or any of the other things that had been drilled into her by other queer people who were using the right buzzwords and social justice jargon to make her feel small about herself, and it just!!!! She’s gone through so much and I want to give her a hug.
FRAN. WHAT THE FUCK FRAN. I will confess that Fran is for me simultaneously one of the most relatable characters, but also (probably because I see too much of the things I dislike in myself in her!) one of the most frustrating, because she’s so desperate for approval from other ‘pretty’ people, especially cis women. She conflates being desired with being accepted, and shits so much over Beth in the process. Including in their first sex scene. While it’s consensual, it’s very apparent that Fran’s using Beth’s body in relation to her own to feel delicate and more feminine, and it’s a source of both yearning and tension between them considering Beth’s longstanding crush on her.
FUCK YOU RAMONA. Ramona is one of the antagonists. She is attracted to trans women and revolted by that same attraction, and her most violent or degrading outbursts occur when she’s stewing in her own self-loathing. She repeatedly has so many chances to make a better choice, to punch up instead of down, or just to leave the TERF army…but instead she keeps going because she’s too afraid to stop, because she doesn’t know where else to go. Her very late turnaround absolutely does not absolve her of her earlier actions, and I’m so glad the narrative and characters acknowledge this: when she asks if she can stay with the trans commune at the end of the book, they pointedly tell her no because they don’t trust her and can’t feel safe when she’s around. Can Ramona turn her life around? Sure, I believe it! But it’ll be a much longer emotional journey and it’s not one where she deserves to live cheek to cheek with former victims who haven’t forgiven her.
As much as I enjoyed this book…I also feel like I need to point out the horrific lynching scene. This is a book that engages with gender and queerness much more explicitly than it does race, and I’m comfortable with that. Not every narrative needs to be everything to everyone, and no single story can represent all identities at the same time. There are multiple characters of color and the story includes explicitly pointed out microaggressions and casual racism (Robbie recognizing when people are trying to place his ambiguously ‘ethnic’ skin tone, Indi wincing when she realizes how she’d overlooked one of the Spanish-speaking characters, Beth thinking a racist joke and then immediately telling herself that’s an inside thought only, not something to say out loud), which mostly serve to show that yes, people are still messy and flawed in a post-apocalypse and at least our protagonists are trying to recognize and do better.
Karin, the Black woman who’s brutally publicly executed, is one of Ramona’s friends. They’re both part of the TERF army, but are on watch because their leader knows of Ramona’s attraction to trans women, and Karin’s sympathies for trans women. Ramona essentially gets away with it, with a few warnings, because she’s still considered a useful tool…and while Ramona never thinks of it, she’s also white. Most of the TERFs are white. When Karin’s caught slipping intel to the trans women, she gets no such warnings. Instead, she’s tortured and publicly made an example of. Since we’re watching through Ramona’s POV, and Ramona’s not terribly aware of nuance, I don’t think it’s necessarily a fault of the narrative that it’s not made more explicit. But at the same time? This was an incredibly disturbing scene.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong - Basic summary: The narrator is a gay Vietnamese-American man trying to write a letter to his illiterate mother, with each chapter a retelling of personal history and his attempts to understand her. It’s incredibly weird (positive) and poetic. It’s also incredibly heavy (content warnings for child abuse, domestic abuse, intergenerational trauma, racism, and homophobia) so it’s not necessarily something I would recommend for a feel-good read, despite moments of surprising tenderness and aching sincerity.
I’m always a bit suspicious of trying to read too much into the author by the characters they write, but as Ocean Vuong is also a gay Vietnamese-American writer, I feel like he deliberately blurs that line between author and character because so much of the story itself is about the subjectivity of memory and using those stories to reclaim history and lived experience.
I’ve read some of the author’s poetry before and the prose reads a lot like the poetry; experimental, raw, and making use of deliberate contrasts and elision to provoke emotion. I don’t think it necessarily works well in terms of telling a plot (as in: a sequence of events, told in a comprehensible fashion, especially because the letters themselves recount events in a nonlinear narrative) but it definitely tells me an emotional story.
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine - I’ve already written about how much I loved the previous book, A Memory Called Empire, and this sequel follows only a few short months after the first book! Mahit, once-ambassador to the Teixcalaan Empire, has gone home after warning the Empire about an alien threat…but home is no longer a refuge, and she’s discovering (re-discovering) what it means to feel like an exile even in a place that should feel familiar. Three Seagrass shows up, blithely offering her a job helping the Empire attempt communication with the aliens, and Mahit doesn’t really have an option to refuse!
Where the first book was mostly from Mahit’s POV (with various interludes from other characters), this book has a larger cast and rotates between them. Considering that the scope of the book is much broader, it makes sense! And I love the sections from Eight Antidote’s POV, both so young and so aware of the power that he holds as the imperial heir.
And just!!! It’s so much bigger in so many ways; the stakes are higher, both in the general good of ‘we are trying to stop a massive war’ but also personal stakes of each of the characters involved, because each chapter with the rotating POV helps give a greater sense of their own motives and desires. I can’t imagine this story having been told any other way; there’s a painful, complicated tension as Three Seagrass and Mahit learn (relearn?) to communicate all over again and to understand their relationship in terms of the respective power between their homelands, not just purely as personal liking, and having both of their perspectives really helps twist the knife and show that they are both trying so hard even when it’s not in ways that the other person truly understands. And Eight Antidote’s own character growth and the way he’s distinguishing himself as his own person, not merely a 90% clone of his genetic ancestor…again, would have been impossible to do without getting inside his own head, and helps create that sense of urgency for the climactic race against time near the end of the book.
I really loved this book, if that’s not obvious! It’s also incredibly chewy and thought-provoking and I’m tempted to sit down and try reverse-outlining it because I’m just in awe of the way that the author manages to juggle so many moving parts to create this incredibly moving high-stakes space opera.
My only crits: there are a few loose ends that didn’t get expanded on in the ways I was hoping. I’m presuming that there will be more stories in this setting, even if they no longer center on Mahit, because I have so many other questions and characters I want to explore! Like what about the insurrectionists and Twelve Azalea’s friends, the ones that he keeps carefully away from Three Seagrass? What about Two Lemon and the imago-machine that she took from Mahit’s skull, back in the first book? What about the Lsel teenagers with their subversive comics?
Amazing. I’m still foaming at the mouth.
The Demon of the House of Hua by Maria Ying - The sixth warlock of the House of Hua sacrificed herself so that her daughter could live, leaving behind a grieving widow. Madhuri, grieving widow and now mistress of the Hua estate, cares for her daughter but avoids spending time with the demonic butler that’s responsible for her wife’s death and now bound to preserve their daughter’s life. But slowly, both caring for the child that will grow into the seventh Hua warlock, they grow closer. (F/NB gothic novelette)
I got this as part of a trans-inclusive sapphic horror bundle, and it did not disappoint!!! While it’s part of a series (Those Who Break Chains), it’s tasty on its own. Lovely, lush and dark, and prime monsterfuckery material for those who care. ;)
Nonfiction
Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine by Sarah Lohman -
In case you haven't realized: I love food. I love food history and looking at how cuisine changes over time and by region. And this book is all about how eight distinct flavors reflect the USA's history of trade, immigration, and cultural shifts! She specifically does this through black pepper, vanilla, chili powder, curry powder, soy sauce, MSG, garlic, and Sriracha (and notes that while coffee and chocolate are hugely influential, there's been so much already written about them that she chose to omit them from this book).
My brain's been mush lately and I plan to read mostly romance novels and fanfic for a bit, maybe play some viddy games. I keep wanting to finish writing Awoo AU too, but...I think that this point I need to accept that I'm just tired and my brain needs a break. I'll keep plinking at it, but am trying to take the pressure off.
If you've read any of these and have thoughts or feels, please feel free to yell about it with me!!!!
Rabbit Test by Samantha Mills - 7k word story about reproductive rights and autonomy over generations and throughout history. It's dark and biting and uncomfortable, but it's a discomfort I want to sit with. Mind the warnings re: sexual assault, abuse, traumatic miscarriage, psych ward treatment, and suicide.
Unname Me at the Altar by Ashaye Brown - 2.8k words. Three generations of family in one home, and a grandparent whose name changes daily, serving as a living altar to their ancestors. Content warnings for character death and references to war and mass killings. It’s short and bitey and a testament to grief and survival and the impermanence of memory.
Skin by Isha Karki - 4.9k words. The daughter of Nepalese immigrants wears different skins around her wealthy boyfriend, her academic advisor, and her family. Content warnings for body horror, racism, misogyny, and references to sati and death/burning. This gave me such chills, both for its way of depicting assimilation (or the attempt thereof) in the pursuit of safety, and also carries echoes of selkie wives.
The Storyteller by Rhea Roy - 1.4k words. Mala Auntie goes to the crossroads to make a deal with the Devil. She wants her dead husband back; and don’t we know how these stories go? I love how this one plays with folklore (Mala Auntie studied the literature of far-off places during her post-grad!) and riddles. A happy ending and great palate cleanser compared to some of my other recs!
Books (Fiction)
Radcliffe Hall by Miyuki Jane Pinckard - A 40k word novella, with a Japanese student attending an American women's college in 1908. It's a Gothic novel with the characters encountering the supernatural, which is no less malevolent than systemic racism and homophobia. It's wonderfully atmospheric, spooky and heartbreaking.
You Sexy Thing by Cat Rambo - Fast-paced comedic space opera!!! Captain Niko’s an ex-admiral, attempting something like retirement from the Holy Hive Mind with her squad of ex-soldiers. A mysterious package is delivered! A restaurant critic might bestow a coveted Nikkelin Orb! Their whole station blows up and they escape on a sentient ship that’s convinced it’s being stolen! Then, PIRATES!!!!
…in case it’s not obvious, this is incredibly fast, wacky, and with a whole cast of lovable crew and loving descriptions of food. I’m not always a fan of the omniscient POV that’s used to bounce between characters because it never gets the emotional depth I really want, and many characters are painted in vivid splashes rather than with nuance. (And the villain absolutely chews the scenery.) The ending leaves a lot of loose threads and a cliffhanger that begs for a sequel.
DESPITE ALL THIS, it was an incredibly fun, light-hearted read and I thoroughly enjoyed it!
The Future of Another Timeline by Annalee Newitz: Time travel! Murder! Punk feminism and rage!
Tess is a time traveler trying to preserve the rights of women and other marginalized people across the timeline, while gently nudging towards a better future. While visiting a riot grrl concert in 1992, she stumbles across another group of time travelers dedicated to stopping her organization and destroying the time machines.
In 1992, Beth is a teenager at that same concert, unknowingly about to murder a friend's abusive boyfriend. Beth gets caught up in a path of escalating violence and vengeance as they realize just how many other shitty predators there are in the world.
Their paths intersect, and their futures blossom out from one another.
This is just SO good, clever and gripping and brutal. I had to put the book down at times when it got to be too much, and it made me cry (with joy! With relief!) at other times. Absolutely deserves a whole set of content warnings, but I love how it plays with time travel as a geological science rather than physics (which is such a fun and different take!) and the ideas of whether history is truly shaped by great individuals or collective efforts.
Some spoilery content warnings: abuse (including sexual and child abuse), incest, sexual assault, abortion, reproductive coercion, misogyny, racism, transphobia.
The Beautiful Ones by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Nina Bealieu is hoping to join the ranks of the Beautiful Ones, Losail’s most notable socialites, and make a good marriage during her debut. Her wealthy and well-connected cousin’s wife, Valerie, is to help make the appropriate introductions. However, Nina has a little problem—her struggles to control her telekinesis. She meets Hector Auvray, a famous entertainer, who is also telekinetic and dazzles audiences with his skill. Hector begins courting Nina, but only as a way of getting close to Valerie, to whom he had once been secretly engaged. Nina, meanwhile, is genuinely falling in love. Drama!!!
This is just deliciously melodramatic, old-world romance set in a pseudo-France in the late 1800s (ish? I’m not great with time periods). It plays with ideas of romance and romantic love, it gives high emotional stakes and heartbreak, and Valerie is an over the top villainess whom I love to hate! I devoured it in two days, and am still chewing over Nina and Hector’s original romantic notions of love; youthful passion and intensity of devotion, the way that Valerie despises her husband and thinks he only views her as another trophy rather than truly loving her, and how she still holds on to the memory of Hector’s love and would rather see him forever in love with her (or a memory of her) than move on. It just swept me along for the ride.
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin: It’s five years after a virus erupted that turned anyone over a certain level of testosterone into monsters, and Beth and Fran are two trans women who’ve eked out a living by hunting feral once-men and harvesting their organs for their friend Indi, a doctor who can refine them into sources of estrogen. They’re joined by Robbie, a trans man who’s survived by avoiding other people, and all four end up on the run from not only the feral men, but murderous TERFs and a sociopathic bunker brat. Bittersweet ending, take that as a warning or enticement.
Content warnings: sexual assault, graphic violence, body horror, medical horror, pregnancy body horror, cannibalism, transphobia. More spoilery warning: lynching and forced hysterectomy of a Black woman.
Nutshell summary: Brutal apocalyptic horror and a bleeding love letter to trans women.
Or: HOLY SHIT THIS BOOK WAS A WILD RIDE. It’s also a rough read and I don’t recommend it lightly! The characters are messy, flawed, and very human in ways that make me ache for them and also scream for them to make better choices! It’s strikingly vivid, even beautiful in places, but also visceral and disturbing. There are also a lot of sex scenes, many of them treading between erotic and horrifying as the characters negotiate (or don’t) the ways they can share pleasure or inhabit their bodies and dysphoria.
Longer spoilery yelling:
BETH IS MY FAVORITE. She utterly breaks my heart and I fell so hard for her because of that contrast between her physical strength and her emotional vulnerability, the way she hurts so badly and isn’t allowed to be ‘delicate’ in the same way that Fran is, since Beth’s a “brick” (non-passing trans woman) and the one who’s actually good at hunting! She’s been trying so hard to be good, not be ‘toxic’ or ‘predatory’ or any of the other things that had been drilled into her by other queer people who were using the right buzzwords and social justice jargon to make her feel small about herself, and it just!!!! She’s gone through so much and I want to give her a hug.
FRAN. WHAT THE FUCK FRAN. I will confess that Fran is for me simultaneously one of the most relatable characters, but also (probably because I see too much of the things I dislike in myself in her!) one of the most frustrating, because she’s so desperate for approval from other ‘pretty’ people, especially cis women. She conflates being desired with being accepted, and shits so much over Beth in the process. Including in their first sex scene. While it’s consensual, it’s very apparent that Fran’s using Beth’s body in relation to her own to feel delicate and more feminine, and it’s a source of both yearning and tension between them considering Beth’s longstanding crush on her.
FUCK YOU RAMONA. Ramona is one of the antagonists. She is attracted to trans women and revolted by that same attraction, and her most violent or degrading outbursts occur when she’s stewing in her own self-loathing. She repeatedly has so many chances to make a better choice, to punch up instead of down, or just to leave the TERF army…but instead she keeps going because she’s too afraid to stop, because she doesn’t know where else to go. Her very late turnaround absolutely does not absolve her of her earlier actions, and I’m so glad the narrative and characters acknowledge this: when she asks if she can stay with the trans commune at the end of the book, they pointedly tell her no because they don’t trust her and can’t feel safe when she’s around. Can Ramona turn her life around? Sure, I believe it! But it’ll be a much longer emotional journey and it’s not one where she deserves to live cheek to cheek with former victims who haven’t forgiven her.
As much as I enjoyed this book…I also feel like I need to point out the horrific lynching scene. This is a book that engages with gender and queerness much more explicitly than it does race, and I’m comfortable with that. Not every narrative needs to be everything to everyone, and no single story can represent all identities at the same time. There are multiple characters of color and the story includes explicitly pointed out microaggressions and casual racism (Robbie recognizing when people are trying to place his ambiguously ‘ethnic’ skin tone, Indi wincing when she realizes how she’d overlooked one of the Spanish-speaking characters, Beth thinking a racist joke and then immediately telling herself that’s an inside thought only, not something to say out loud), which mostly serve to show that yes, people are still messy and flawed in a post-apocalypse and at least our protagonists are trying to recognize and do better.
Karin, the Black woman who’s brutally publicly executed, is one of Ramona’s friends. They’re both part of the TERF army, but are on watch because their leader knows of Ramona’s attraction to trans women, and Karin’s sympathies for trans women. Ramona essentially gets away with it, with a few warnings, because she’s still considered a useful tool…and while Ramona never thinks of it, she’s also white. Most of the TERFs are white. When Karin’s caught slipping intel to the trans women, she gets no such warnings. Instead, she’s tortured and publicly made an example of. Since we’re watching through Ramona’s POV, and Ramona’s not terribly aware of nuance, I don’t think it’s necessarily a fault of the narrative that it’s not made more explicit. But at the same time? This was an incredibly disturbing scene.
On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong - Basic summary: The narrator is a gay Vietnamese-American man trying to write a letter to his illiterate mother, with each chapter a retelling of personal history and his attempts to understand her. It’s incredibly weird (positive) and poetic. It’s also incredibly heavy (content warnings for child abuse, domestic abuse, intergenerational trauma, racism, and homophobia) so it’s not necessarily something I would recommend for a feel-good read, despite moments of surprising tenderness and aching sincerity.
I’m always a bit suspicious of trying to read too much into the author by the characters they write, but as Ocean Vuong is also a gay Vietnamese-American writer, I feel like he deliberately blurs that line between author and character because so much of the story itself is about the subjectivity of memory and using those stories to reclaim history and lived experience.
I’ve read some of the author’s poetry before and the prose reads a lot like the poetry; experimental, raw, and making use of deliberate contrasts and elision to provoke emotion. I don’t think it necessarily works well in terms of telling a plot (as in: a sequence of events, told in a comprehensible fashion, especially because the letters themselves recount events in a nonlinear narrative) but it definitely tells me an emotional story.
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine - I’ve already written about how much I loved the previous book, A Memory Called Empire, and this sequel follows only a few short months after the first book! Mahit, once-ambassador to the Teixcalaan Empire, has gone home after warning the Empire about an alien threat…but home is no longer a refuge, and she’s discovering (re-discovering) what it means to feel like an exile even in a place that should feel familiar. Three Seagrass shows up, blithely offering her a job helping the Empire attempt communication with the aliens, and Mahit doesn’t really have an option to refuse!
Where the first book was mostly from Mahit’s POV (with various interludes from other characters), this book has a larger cast and rotates between them. Considering that the scope of the book is much broader, it makes sense! And I love the sections from Eight Antidote’s POV, both so young and so aware of the power that he holds as the imperial heir.
And just!!! It’s so much bigger in so many ways; the stakes are higher, both in the general good of ‘we are trying to stop a massive war’ but also personal stakes of each of the characters involved, because each chapter with the rotating POV helps give a greater sense of their own motives and desires. I can’t imagine this story having been told any other way; there’s a painful, complicated tension as Three Seagrass and Mahit learn (relearn?) to communicate all over again and to understand their relationship in terms of the respective power between their homelands, not just purely as personal liking, and having both of their perspectives really helps twist the knife and show that they are both trying so hard even when it’s not in ways that the other person truly understands. And Eight Antidote’s own character growth and the way he’s distinguishing himself as his own person, not merely a 90% clone of his genetic ancestor…again, would have been impossible to do without getting inside his own head, and helps create that sense of urgency for the climactic race against time near the end of the book.
I really loved this book, if that’s not obvious! It’s also incredibly chewy and thought-provoking and I’m tempted to sit down and try reverse-outlining it because I’m just in awe of the way that the author manages to juggle so many moving parts to create this incredibly moving high-stakes space opera.
My only crits: there are a few loose ends that didn’t get expanded on in the ways I was hoping. I’m presuming that there will be more stories in this setting, even if they no longer center on Mahit, because I have so many other questions and characters I want to explore! Like what about the insurrectionists and Twelve Azalea’s friends, the ones that he keeps carefully away from Three Seagrass? What about Two Lemon and the imago-machine that she took from Mahit’s skull, back in the first book? What about the Lsel teenagers with their subversive comics?
Amazing. I’m still foaming at the mouth.
The Demon of the House of Hua by Maria Ying - The sixth warlock of the House of Hua sacrificed herself so that her daughter could live, leaving behind a grieving widow. Madhuri, grieving widow and now mistress of the Hua estate, cares for her daughter but avoids spending time with the demonic butler that’s responsible for her wife’s death and now bound to preserve their daughter’s life. But slowly, both caring for the child that will grow into the seventh Hua warlock, they grow closer. (F/NB gothic novelette)
I got this as part of a trans-inclusive sapphic horror bundle, and it did not disappoint!!! While it’s part of a series (Those Who Break Chains), it’s tasty on its own. Lovely, lush and dark, and prime monsterfuckery material for those who care. ;)
Nonfiction
Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine by Sarah Lohman -
In case you haven't realized: I love food. I love food history and looking at how cuisine changes over time and by region. And this book is all about how eight distinct flavors reflect the USA's history of trade, immigration, and cultural shifts! She specifically does this through black pepper, vanilla, chili powder, curry powder, soy sauce, MSG, garlic, and Sriracha (and notes that while coffee and chocolate are hugely influential, there's been so much already written about them that she chose to omit them from this book).
Bertha Wood said of the waves of immigrants arriving at the turn of the century: "Their housing conditions are changed—their style of clothing must be changed; many of their social customs as well as some of their religious ideals, must be given up; only the habit and custom which can be preserved in its entirety is their diet." Food survives when all the other trappings of foreign culture fade away. We don't speak the same language that our immigrant forebearers did, or wear their same clothes—but Grandma's recipes become a guarded part of family tradition. And one day those recipes become American food.
Look!!! Look at this quote!!! Because so many 'classic' ingredients and flavors in American cooking got adopted into popular culture through trade, cultural shifts, and waves of immigration! A colonial era apple pie might have used rosewater instead of vanilla, but now vanilla is considered a baking staple! Garlic went from being a weird smelly lower-class seasoning to something that's widely abundant and commonly used! Soy sauce is used as an ingredient in so many non-Asian recipes (including processed foods like chicken nuggets!) that you likely consume quite a bit of it even if you don't keep a bottle in your pantry!
FOOD REFLECTS CULTURE AND CUISINE CHANGES OVER TIME I LOVE IT SO MUCH!!!
Mild nitpicking: because this quote in isolation implies that recipes don't change or adapt... but the book as a whole makes it clear that 'authenticity' is overrated when looking at how cuisine changes across a diaspora, with 'classic' recipes adapting to incorporate new ingredients or appeal to local tastes. (Personal example: my mom made chow mein with spaghetti when I was a kid. My mom is from Hong Kong, I'm Chinese-American. No, spaghetti isn't the 'traditional' noodle for this dish but it is inarguably authentic to my own experience, even now when I can find chow mein noodles instead of having to use spaghetti.)
Look!!! Look at this quote!!! Because so many 'classic' ingredients and flavors in American cooking got adopted into popular culture through trade, cultural shifts, and waves of immigration! A colonial era apple pie might have used rosewater instead of vanilla, but now vanilla is considered a baking staple! Garlic went from being a weird smelly lower-class seasoning to something that's widely abundant and commonly used! Soy sauce is used as an ingredient in so many non-Asian recipes (including processed foods like chicken nuggets!) that you likely consume quite a bit of it even if you don't keep a bottle in your pantry!
FOOD REFLECTS CULTURE AND CUISINE CHANGES OVER TIME I LOVE IT SO MUCH!!!
Mild nitpicking: because this quote in isolation implies that recipes don't change or adapt... but the book as a whole makes it clear that 'authenticity' is overrated when looking at how cuisine changes across a diaspora, with 'classic' recipes adapting to incorporate new ingredients or appeal to local tastes. (Personal example: my mom made chow mein with spaghetti when I was a kid. My mom is from Hong Kong, I'm Chinese-American. No, spaghetti isn't the 'traditional' noodle for this dish but it is inarguably authentic to my own experience, even now when I can find chow mein noodles instead of having to use spaghetti.)
My brain's been mush lately and I plan to read mostly romance novels and fanfic for a bit, maybe play some viddy games. I keep wanting to finish writing Awoo AU too, but...I think that this point I need to accept that I'm just tired and my brain needs a break. I'll keep plinking at it, but am trying to take the pressure off.
If you've read any of these and have thoughts or feels, please feel free to yell about it with me!!!!
