SO MANY LIBRARY BOOKS!!!!

[chocochipbiscuit]

It's been a while since I've posted about books, so I'm going to jump right in!!!

Books (Fiction)

The Kingston Cycle by C.L. Polk - I've read Witchmark before (and even wrote about it!) but haven’t reread it in a while! My impression of Witchmark was charming, not many surprises, but lovely worldbuilding and characters. But when I saw the sequels at the library, well… I had to borrow them!

Every book in the series follows a different protagonist POV, and picks up directly where the previous books left off; I doubt I would have followed the story very well if I’d read them out of order. Each book also continues with some very nice queer rep (Witchmark was M/M, Stormsong is F/F, and Soulstar is NB/F), though Soulstar also gives more background queer rep in a way that the first two books don’t; which I wonder how much was deliberate because the third book’s main characters focus more on the ‘common people’ rather than the wealthy aristocrats who are more concerned with appearances and blood line, and how much was because even in a few years, the publishing climate had changed enough to allow different types of representation.

Anyways! While Witchmark started out as more of a murder mystery, every book still has murders and mysteries but get more heavily involved with politics! Or:

Witchmark: A murder!!! And while trying to solve the murder, find out about massive government conspiracy and confront estranged family! (Or: a traumatized man from a privileged upbringing who gave it all up has to confront that past in order to make a difference.)

Stormsong: Politics and climate disaster! A political prisoner is murdered, now our main character must discover who murdered her, protect the enterprising reporter (that she has Feelings for!) from assassination, and politically maneuver herself to get the haughty aristocratic mages on her side in order to defend their island home! (Or: Privileged daughter who only recently realized her entire upbringing was built on the exploitation of the lower classes, and is forced to recognize the ways in which she’s been complicit in the system, and why her progressivism through incremental change isn’t the sweeping reform that her friends are hoping for.)

Soulstar: Politics and revolution! A political organizer is reunited with her childhood sweetheart, but as her sweetheart had spent the past two decades in prison…well, there’s a lot of trauma and catching up! And now with the new king tightening his grip on the people, there’s more need to organize with her fellow revolutionaries who are looking for a democracy, rather than a monarchy, while also protesting the general inequities that were present in the first two books!

….I don’t think I’m really giving the books an accurate description, but honestly if that sounds intriguing, you can look them up! Mostly I enjoyed them because a) the prose continues to be charming, b) I love the characters, and c) …this is actually the first fantasy book I’ve read that’s actually critical of monarchy? A lot of standard fantasy stories tend to be ‘oops, there’s a Bad King, the solution is to get a Good King in place’ (which Stormsong falls into a bit, though it’s more due to the POV) while Soulstar and its characters criticize the monarchy in general.

“All the years I ran charitable foundations, funded the Rose Crown scholarships, headed relief programs, and you couldn’t see that I was on your side? You couldn’t see that as king, I would steer our course toward reform, that my rule would be good for you?” He looked at me with hurt in his eyes. “I had so many plans. Why didn’t you trust me?”

“Because we’re asking for so much more,” I said. “Because a good king is still a king.”

Anyways!!! I need to reread Witchmark now because again, even though I read it…from what I read before, it didn’t blow me away. The sequels though? Absolutely blew me away, I ended up staying awake past my bedtime to read ‘just another chapter.’ Absolutely made me tear up in places. And maybe it’s because I’m at a different point in my life now! Maybe it’s because the author leveled up from their debut novel!

Absolutely recommended reading.

 

When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole - A suspense/thriller about gentrification!!! Since it’s a suspense novel, fair dues that I’m going to spoil a lot of the surprises by talking about it!

This was sharp and scary and absolutely NOT a cozy bedtime read for me; I made the mistake of trying just a chapter or two, but then would either end up incredibly un-soothed with difficulty sleeping, or trying to cram in more chapters because I was hoping to race to the ending! Plus the author does such a great job of weaving in the actual history and the sort of constant, exhausting double-think that racism pushes onto people of color (especially and specifically Black people). It’s the “were they just being rude, or did they not really see me? Did this terrifying thing actually happen, or was it all in my head? Am I going crazy?” and constant self-doubt as the world’s uprooted around our protagonist, Sydney Green, who already has that sort of self-doubt and terror of being ‘insane’ after having been forcefully institutionalized by her ex-husband.

And Theo…hot damn but I have such an unfortunate type and he is it. Big dude, absolutely has done bad shit (not racist shit! Important distinction there; he’s a ‘trailer trash’ white dude who absolutely gets shit on by the wealthier white characters who simultaneously expect him to fall into racial (racist) lines against their Black neighbors, and an important part of his growth is learning to get called out on when he’s being embarrassingly White about it. “Howdy doody” as a “quit being a white jackass” safeword is delightful.), but also trying so hard to do better, especially for a cute girl who he figures deserves better than him anyway? Heel-turn himbo is one of my favorite archetypes and I’m almost mad about it!

The suspense builds and it gets sharper and scarier until…well, the book’s climax, where things went off the rails for me. It broke my suspension of disbelief, but I was along for the ride just because I wanted to see how things ended!!! After Theo and Sydney kill the thug that was sent to murder her, the neighborhood blackout—orchestrated by the gentrifiers, the real estate developers who overlap with the sketchy medical center that’s being built and who are both institutional descendants of the original predatory banks that refused to invest in the neighborhood AND which traces its roots back to the original Dutch slaveholders that had to find another way to make profit off the people they were no longer able to legally own—happens, during which the cops start rolling in. Theo and Sydney find their way into the medical center through an underground passage, find all their missing neighbors who have been kidnapped and experimented on, interrupt a board meeting that includes influential politicians as well as the CEOs who planned all this, get captured, then are rescued!!!!....by their sweet older neighbors, who’ve seen this cycle of destruction occur several times already and have been working on their own contingency plans.

This is one of those things where….honestly, I don’t know if I can even argue that it’s a failure of the narrative so much as a failure of the genre as a whole, for me. I don’t generally enjoy suspense narratives exactly because they escalate and explode, because…well, it builds the suspense! Counterintuitively, violence (and the ending is very violent, in a physical way that hits so differently than the societal violence that’s been inflicted earlier in the book) acts as a way of draining that tension, releasing it.

As a whole, I enjoyed this book. I just doubt I’ll reread it.

(Important note, since I’m continuing to spoil: There is a dog! The dog ends up okay! Yes, I am fully aware of the irony of me blithely talking about the way that the various humans are hurt, injured, or wind up just plain dead, but then taking care to mention that the dog’s okay!)

 

 

A Master of Djinn by P. Djeli Clark - OH MY GOD I WANT TO EAT THIS NOVEL WITH A SPOON!!!! I’m ‘eh’ on the prose, but the worldbuilding and characters are fantastic! The book’s set in a steampunk alternate history Cairo, 40 years after the veil between the magical and mundane realms was ripped apart; Egypt is the leading world power, and counts djinn among its many citizens. Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman working for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities, has a penchant for wearing tailored suits, and has already saved the world once. Now, she’s assigned to investigate the murders of a secret brotherhood, along with her newly assigned partner, the newest female agent of the Ministry. And reuniting with her enigmatic girlfriend, who has secrets of her own!

This is riveting and fantastic, and I love the way the various details click together in satisfying ways! I anticipated the villainous reveal (and felt very smug for doing so!) and just love the blend of humor and wonder and humanity; the djinn are just as human (in the sense of being flawed, self-interested, or idiosyncratic) as the other characters, but it doesn’t take away from their sense of awe and magic. Even ancient gods (or their acolytes) can change and shift over time, and I just…I love how the book simultaneously ties together very old traditions and non-European histories but also shows that history and tradition are living things, that cultures can shift and people fight for progress.

Plus there’s just something delightful and weirdly satisfying about reading a book by a man that actively centers so many female characters. It’s not ‘just’ Fatma being exceptional; she has a work-partner who calls her out on her own internalized sexism (like assuming that the new agent, because she’s a hijabi, doesn’t know how to handle herself in a fight), there’s an all-female gang of thieves who astonish the city with their audacity, and SPOILER (the villain takes advantage of others’ expectations to hide her own identity!).

(Minor salt: I do find it mildly hilarious that I read a different ‘Middle Eastern fantasy’ series that was actually written by a woman, and that series took until Book 3 to have more than three named major female characters. One was our main character, and the other two were enemies/antagonists! It makes me cackle whenever I see that author blurb someone else’s work by calling it ‘feminist.’)

 

Ring Shout by P. Djeli Clark - Nutshell summary: Alternate/supernatural history of Black resistance fighters hunting Ku Klux demons masquerading as Klansmen!

Longer summary: Mauryce Boudreaux has an enchanted sword and the will to hunt monsters. She and her friends—Sadie, a foul-mouthed sharpshooter and Chef, a Harlem Hellfighter (and boy I would love a book that went more into Chef’s history as a butch lesbian war veteran)—hunt Ku Kluxes. The Klan is planning a rerelease of The Birth of a Nation and rallying to bring a literal hell on earth, so all three women and their allies are racing to stop them.

This is a novella, which means boy it moves fast, and oh boy I would love to explore some more of the characters and the world! All the characters are richly voiced and I love how the author can use their distinct personalities and opinions to touch on relevant topics; identity is not a monolith, and there’s plenty of argument over Sadie’s use of ‘big N versus little n’ for a racial slur, Chef’s skepticism on socialism, and Garvey’s ‘back to Africa’ movement. I also appreciate how the book makes it clear that while the Ku Klux demons feed off hate, it’s not that the demons made the Klan; it was the original Klansmen’s hatred (and sorcery) that summoned the Ku Kluxes. Not all characters have the Sight to see them in their true form, but Sight can be acquired through trauma.

Or, as when a (human) Klanswoman at the end of the book, after the bloody showdown, says:

“Monsters!” she stammers to me. “They was monsters! I seen them! I seen them!"

Chef and I look at each other, then answer back, “‘Bout damn time!"

Because they were always monsters! It's just that now she can see them as literal demons!

I couldn’t help thinking about how this hit me so differently than A Master of Djinn; on the surface, a similar sort of alternate history with magic, but more of an action-thriller with less of the wry humor and sense of wonder. I also couldn’t help thinking about this compared to When No One Is Watching; again, both look at racial injustice, though this one didn’t have the slow build of anxiety/panic the way that When No One is Watching did. Again, very different pacing and emotional beats. And while I mentioned having difficulty with my suspension of belief for When No One is Watching, I didn’t have any issue with this one; mostly because the supernatural elements are built in from the beginning, while the vast conspiracy of When No One is Watching is entirely mundane and makes it even more skin-crawling.

 

The Fraud Squad by Kyla Zhao - This book is very much The Devil Wears Prada x Crazy Rich Asians (both of which I love!)! Samantha Song's from a working class background and dreams of writing for a high-society magazine. With the aid of two wealthy friends (coworker Anya Chen and her friend Timothy Kingston), she plans to infiltrate that socialite bubble and impress the editor in chief of Singapore's most elite magazine! Glamor! Romance! Socialite extravagance! Will Samantha be able to reconcile her pretense with who she really is?! And what about that mysterious gossip columnist everyone's talking about?!

I HAVE EXCLAMATIONS BECAUSE THIS BOOK WAS AN ABSOLUTE ROMP. Delicious drama, just the kind of brain candy I crave!

That said…I do find the premise rather silly (just how exactly is Samantha passing herself as a socialite supposed to convince Timothy’s parents that he should be allowed to pursue his passion for art and classics? This is important because that’s how she convinces him to help!) but am fully willing to turn my brain off for the sheer fun of it all. There weren’t any real twists here (I had enough familiarity with the tropes and setup to predict some of the beats, including the inevitable betrayals from various characters) but it was enjoyable.

And, in my true niche femslash habit, I’ve fallen in love with two of the side characters who never even directly interact in the book, and am now writing a hatemance fic for them. :’) (Anya has one blithe line about not being able to tolerate heterosexual drama, and then it’s never mentioned again! Raina has one mention of possible attraction to men, but is also a lawyer whose off-work signature item is a denim jacket rattling with feminist pins. So. Uh. I think you can see why I so desperately want to plink them together.)

 

Books: Nonfiction

Hope in the Dark by Rebecca Solnit - After having read various quote and excerpts from this book, I felt I actually needed to sit down and read it. The entire book is a beautifully written series of arguments on the importance of hope as a commitment to act for an unknown (or ‘dark’) future, with prose that I found very readable but also with meaty enough concepts that I had to take short breaks between chapters to absorb what I read.

My personal takeaways: “Hope is an ax you break down doors with.” It’s acknowledging that positive change is a long, slow process, and that victories may be small or incremental, but better than nothing. That we may not always see our immediate successes, and that even success may be fragile; we may prevent the extinction of some species, but it’s a constant continuance of effort, not something we get to go home and close the book after.

I don’t consider myself an activist. I donate, vote, and occasionally send letters or emails to organizations or politicians that I think can do some change. I’m glad I read this book; I only wish I had read it earlier, when I was in college and (while still not an activist) much more active than I am currently.

This was a lot of reading, and I still want to finish a few library books (and the first draft of the Fraud Squad hatemance fic!) before switching over to video games. :')

Hope you've been reading and playing good things, please share if there's anything fun you'd recommend!