Review: The Color of Time, by Millie Abecassis

 

Princess Cyrelle has always been faithful and true to her family, country, and Goddess. But now her brother, King Elias of Cicia, has asked for—no, commanded—her hand in marriage. Desperate to avoid this incestuous union, Cyrelle requests a series of increasingly impossible gifts and petitions the Goddess for a sign to sway her resolute brother’s proposal. As Elias persists undeterred, Cyrelle must risk everything to escape the only life she’s ever known.
Soon, she becomes Green Scales, hiding and struggling to survive on her own, far across the galaxy. But Phau isn’t the peaceful refuge Cyrelle had hoped for, and when the leader of its burgeoning rebel faction recognizes the runaway princess, she is forced to choose between safety and freedom. With the fate of two kingdoms on the line and nowhere left to run, Cyrelle must decide what it means to be true to herself, to her people, and to her heart.

​“I will never hide who I am again.”

Millie Abecassis' The Color of Time is a sapphic science-fantasy retelling of Perrault's Donkeyskin, although the incestous father from the french fairytale is turned into the protagonist's brother. This novella packs a lot into a pretty short format, and it could have worked, but instead it feels like a summary of the novel it could have been. Time goes by quickly, and we jump from a scene to the next without actually delving into the meat of the story and the people we meet.

This is felt especially with the epic relationship between princess Cyrelle and another woman, whom we don't really get to know, but we're supposed to feel profoundly about some story beats. And the bones are there, promising to be something spectacular, but it's difficult to really care.

On the other hand, the worldbuilding is quite unique, with gods whose scope encompasses the entire universe, and beautiful snakes, and rich cultures. The second-person narration is also very well done, with some snippets of first-person sprinkled in-between. 

The Color of Time is a nice retelling.

✨ 3.5 stars

 

Review: Umbra - Tales of a Shadow, by Freddie A. Clark

 

Fulvio Donati, cyborg assassin and thief, adopted a double identity. When night falls, Fulvio becomes Umbra: a masked vigilante, a charming and lethal shadow. Soleluna Giordani, philosopher and alchemist, searched for immortality and found it with terrible consequences. Their consciousness has been trapped within a mask for almost 800 years.
In a beautiful, yet corrupt land where crime lords, vicious celebrities, and ruthless politicians compete for the highest power, a deadly conspiracy is unfolding. While alchemists and courtesans fight to survive, and a prince searches for the one to save his life, Fulvio finds himself involved in intrigues and machinations. Together, Fulvio and Soleluna will find the answer; Soleluna with their wit and wisdom, Fulvio with his charm, skills, and access to the future Soleluna has never seen. Together, they shall save Florydia from its downfall.

​“​The city of masks is as corrupted as it is beautiful.”

Freddie A. Clark's Umbra - Tales of a Shadow s a gorgeous sci-fi novel set in a city-state inspired by Venice. A whirlwind of subplots and many characters, it follows young assassin Fulvio as he uncovers conspiracies and finds himself being more than just a shadow and an instrument for others. Along the way, he may also find love.

This was a stunning exploration of polyamory; Fulvio is a free spirit, and the relationships he creates with others are all important. The prince he saves, the woman he works alongside with; he loves all, and he loves freely. That said, the most important relationship of the book is the strange bond he forms with the spirit of a long-dead alchemist living in a mask, and the way this relationship changes him is a strong focus.

The city itself is a character, teeming with corruption and conspiracies. The worldbuilding is exquisite, and one struggles to follow along as we're pulled deeper and deeper into the city and meet many of its citizens. It was vibrant and colorful and filled with Italian names and terms, creating a truly immersive experience.

The only problem is the prose, veering between very simple, with odd turns of phrase, and long chunky paragraphs that describe what any character looks like or is wearing at any given time. This gets annoying fast.

Umbra - Tales of a Shadow is a unique novel.

✨ 4 stars

 

 

Review: The Oblivion Bride, by Caitlin Starling

 

In the glittering city state of Volun, Lorelei Steddart never thought she'd be anything but an office drone-until her family all die under mysterious and likely magical circumstances, leaving her to inherit everything. To figure out what's happened, her uncle marries her off to the city state's top War Alchemist, Nephele Corisande, an intimidating older woman who might just be able to save her. But what starts as a marriage of pure convenience becomes something deeper. Soon Lorelei and Nephele must untangle a terrible magic that has metastasized into something new and unstable, born in Lorelei's blood.

​“​Too well did he know the feeling of love where no​ love ought to live.”

Caitlin Starling's The Oblivion Bride is a sapphic science fantasy that packs so much in the form of a very short novella. Written beautifully with crisp prose, it details a tale of grief and love, entwined with a magical and medical mystery that has been killing off an entire family. The theme of arranged marriage is explored well, together with pregnancy, and the relationship between young woman and older general develops naturally despite the constraints of their contract.

The worldbuilding gives up tantalizingly little, just enough to get the lay of the land, but it works perfectly. We get the sense that it's a lived-in, complicated world with many city-states and a distant Emperor set on war. Magic twists together with science, towards an ending that feels very satisfying despite the more atmospheric shift.

The Oblivion Bride is a delicious novella.

✨ 4 stars

 

Review: Metal from Heaven, by August Clarke

Ichorite is progress. More durable and malleable than steel, ichorite is the lifeblood of a dawning industrial revolution. Yann I. Chauncey owns the sole means of manufacturing this valuable metal, but his workers are on strike. They demand Chauncey research the hallucinatory illness befalling them. Marney Honeycutt, a lustertouched child worker, stands proud at the picket line with her best friend and family. That’s when Chauncey sends in the guns. Only Marney survives the massacre. She vows bloody vengeance.
A decade later, Marney is the nation’s most notorious highwayman, and Chauncey’s daughter seeks an opportune marriage. Marney’s rage and the ghosts of her past will drive her to masquerade as an aristocrat, outmaneuver powerful suitors, and win the heart of his daughter, so Marney can finally corner Chauncey and satisfy her need for revenge. But war ferments in the north, and deeper grudges are surfacing.

"Unalone toward dawn we go."

August Clarke's Metal from Heaven is a genre-bending sapphic epic that defies expectation with its bold use of second person narration, a prose that feels like wading through molasses, and a rich, tight worldbuilding. It deftly explores issues of class struggle and anti-capitalism and what price we are willing to pay to have a revolution.

This is absolutely not a love story but a tragedy, and yet it brims with hope and with a visceral sensuality and with longing devotion that borders on feverish obsession, as main character Marney makes a martyred beacon of her dead best friend. This is also absolutely a novel about butch culture, and the all-female cast is a glorious exploration of masculinity and femininity and all the flavors-in-between, and the intersection of class and queerness, with a very clever distinction between working-class and noble lesbians. Marney is unapologetic in her desires, and pursues many women, although only one has her bleeding heart.

The worldbuilding is rich and complex and almost incomprehensible at times, with a great number of places and cultures and complicated politics governing their alliances, and to complicate matters further, many religions. The crux of the matter, the conflict at the heart of the novel, is the usage and mining conditions of a magical metal that causes unnatural consequences on child laborers and creates a condition of chronic illness on many such children, Marney included; this allows the author to also make a vivid depiction of chronic illness, something that is rare enough in speculative fiction.

The prose is a glorious fever dream of ambitious narrative choices, featuring nonlinear storytelling and long paragraphs that lovingly describe women and hallucinations and sex, and a dizzying muddling of I and you and we. It's also hysterically funny at the most unexpected times.

Metal from Heaven is a modern masterpiece.

✨ 5 stars

 

 

Snippet: A Drop of Corruption, by Robert Jackson Bennett

In the canton of Yarrowdale, at the very edge of the Empire’s reach, an impossible crime has occurred. A Treasury officer has disappeared into thin air—abducted from his quarters while the door and windows remained locked from the inside, in a building whose entrances and exits are all under constant guard. To solve the case, the Empire calls on its most brilliant and mercurial investigator, the great Ana Dolabra. At her side, as always, is her bemused assistant Dinios Kol.
Before long, Ana’s discovered that they’re not investigating a disappearance, but a murder—and that the killing was just the first chess move by an adversary who seems to be able to pass through warded doors like a ghost, and who can predict every one of Ana’s moves as though they can see the future. Din has seen Ana solve impossible cases before. But this time, with the stakes higher than ever and Ana seemingly a step behind their adversary at every turn, he fears that his superior has finally met an enemy she can’t defeat.

"Duty is thankless, invisible, Forgettable—but oh, so very necessary."

Robert Jackson Bennett's A Drop of Corruption is the highly entertaining sequel to the excellent Tainted Cup (you can read HERE my review), a glorious murder mystery following bisexual disaster Din as he assists the investigations of a brilliant and eerie Imperial detective; but it's also a deft criticism of autocracy. The worldbuilding is, as always with this author, a definite highlight, imaginative and strange, all described tersely and perfectly, with some imagery that's not for the queasy. This gorgeous mystery keeps the reader on their toes, struggling to catch up as revelations abound. One could spend hours lost in this series, in the company of these perfect Sherlock- and Watson-types; let's hope it's not going to be a trilogy, but feature more books.

✨ 4.5 stars

 

Review: Aurethia Rising, by Atlas Laika

 

Elio Henly has been preparing for marriage his entire life. As the Henly heir and future steward of Aurethia, he will inherit great power, including control of a lucrative trade route, and ownership of the most precious substance in the Greater Universe — Avara. The mysterious blue crystal native to Aurethia is the sole treatment for parsec sickness, an epidemic ravaging space travelers within the Greater Universe. But when he meets Cael Volkov, the charming heir of the outfitted military planet, Griea, everything he thought he knew about his homeworld, his family, and his heart is turned upside down.  Cael Volkov has been raised to conquer. Champion in the Tupinaire, commander of the Royal Reserve, and son to the mighty Legatus, Cael knows his mission is gain the Aurethian heir’s trust, learn everything he can about the forest moon, and prepare to take it by force. But the longer he spends with Elio Henly, the quiet, brilliant Aurethian prince, the more he questions everything he was taught, and begins to push back against the rhetoric seeded in him by a lust for vengeance.

"How does one undo a lifetime of inequity?" 

Atlas Laika's Aurethia Rising is a queer sci-fi romance that works perfectly as a standalone, but it's actually first in a series that promises to be explosive. Teeming with political maneuvers and betrayal, this stunning space opera takes more than a little inspiration from Dune to show a political marriage between rival Houses and the powerful love that can be born even in the direst circumstances, while reflecting on greed and capitalism.

Elio and Cael are exquisitely explored, and their courtship is a slow affair whose ending feels inevitable. They're a byproduct of their environment; Elio is painfully naive to the realities of commerce, his family the only one that can provide a substance coveted by the rest of the universe, and Cael was bred and trained for the sole purpose of taking back much needed resources, his whole people confined to a harsh homeland. Yet, they persevere, facing harsh betrayals and a seismic truth. The last PoV character is Cael's cousin, a harsh warrior and a tragic, hateful character. Of the rest of the cast, Elio's sister shines with her strength of will and her ferocious loyalty.

The powerful worldbuilding immerses the reader in a big universe, conquered by Earth's descendants, with a confederation made of many powerful Houses ruling planets and moons; but there's also a hint of otherness, the sense that humans aren't alone. The titular Aurethia is a stunning place, and the lush prose paints everything in vivid, colorful strokes, composing a beautiful symphony.

Aurethia Rising is a gorgeous journey.

✨ 4.5 stars

 

Review: Cage of Starlight, by Jules Arbeaux

 

Don't make waves, don't get attached, and never let anyone see the tattoos. Those rules have kept Tory Arknett alive, alone, and on the run for years in a country eager to put his healing hands to the work of war. When a desperate display of magic outs him to the authorities, Tory flees—right into the hands of cold and competent Sena Vantaras. Caged in a cruel training facility and threatened with placement on the front lines of a brutal war, Tory needs to get out before he gets dead. There’s just one thing to do before he goes: make Sena pay.
But when a mission strands them in enemy territory, they'll have to work together to survive. As they learn more about each other and the myth behind the magic that connects them, Tory and Sena find belonging with each other. But the trackers the facility has implanted in them will kill them in three days if they don't go back. Soon, Tory and Sena face a desperate decision: their freedom, or their lives? 

"Some stories are like that. Someone has to die." 

Jules Arbeaux's Cage of Starlight is a simple standalone adventure, dealing with a young asexual man, his struggle for freedom, and the lieutenant who's tasked with his training. In a world where their kind of magic is reviled but still used by some, and revered by others, the two fight against systemic slavery and try to carve their own path while coming to care for each other. The development is very fast, though, and the emotional beats don't pay off because we didn't have near enough time to get attached. Sena is an intriguing character, but a bit underdeveloped.

The worldbuilding, while interesting, is all over the place too, with long bouts of infodumping that feel disconnected. The magic system was unique, but the strongest aspect of the book were its twists and turns and the attention given to the supporting cast.

Cage of Starlight has a fantastic premise.

✨ 3 stars

 

Review: Bloodtide, by Sophie Burnham

 

Cracks are forming in the empire’s facade. In the wake of startling revelations and personal betrayals, Tair finds herself the Iveroa Stone's new custodian as she embarks on a battle for Luxana's streets. As the fallout of the fighting pit massacre leads to a rise in legionary crackdowns and vigilante justice, Tair is determined to find a better path forward for Sargassa’s future. Up in the Imperial Archives, meanwhile, Selah tries to make sense of her family’s tangled history within the Imperium's shadowed beginnings.
Elsewhere, in the far-flung reaches of Roma Sargassa's badlands, Arran and Theo undertake a covert mission for the Revenants, one that could tip the scales between victory and defeat in Griff's upcoming war. But long-laid plans and careful maneuvering are nothing compared to the forces of nature, and Sargassa's future might just be determined by the coming storm. 

"No one is nothing. No one exists alone." 

Sophie Burnham's Bloodtide doesn't suffer from second book syndrome as it continues the excellent series that started with Sargassa (HERE you can find my review). It may stumble a bit in the execution in the very first quarter, as it juggles many moving pieces and experiments with different formats to account for the seismic revelation from the first book, but once it finds its footing, it's an ambitious rollercoaster from start to finish, digging deeper into issues of slavery, class, and the circle of violence, but also into the resiliency of human nature. The twists keep coming, too, keeping the reader on the edge of their seat or laughing in delight. Predictably, it ends with a cliffhanger, but the stage is perfectly set for what promises to be an epic conclusion.

The worldbuilding expands to explore more of Sargassa, showing the ruins of a time long past. It's delightful to catch on to the references, or sheepishly realize what they were long after reading them. The city is further explored, too, with more focus on the struggles of the servae as the entire community reckons with a perfect storm that lasts days.

The character work is excellent. Everyone must reckon with terrible truths and with the shocking revelation from the first book, everyone grows and changes and matures. Selah is the definite highlight, on a journey to a paradigm shift and the realization that the system was rigged from the start. Even if she was already sympathetic, here she really takes charge and faces her preconceptions. Her relationship with Tair, so fraught after the first book, is given time to breathe, offering no quick solution, but taking most of the book to bring the both of them to the correct mindspace. The revolution's coming, after all, and they're all very busy.

The other PoV characters are given their time to shine, of course. Maybe Theo remains the more static, but they still get some very interesting moments dealing with their gender identity. Arran gets more to do, and the focus is of course on his dual status that puts him at the edge of society, never really fitting in. Darius was the most surprising; a character that was really hateful in the first book, here he gets some moments that really challenge his worldview, and I get the feeling his will be an interesting journey.

Bloodtide lives up to the hype and raises the bar.

✨ 4.5 stars

 

Snippet: The Chimes, by Anna Smaill

 

In the absence of both memory and writing is music. In a world where the past is a mystery, each new day feels the same as the last, and before is blasphemy, all appears lost. But Simon Wythern, a young man who arrives in London seeking the truth about what really happened to his parents, discovers he has a gift that could change all of this forever.

“Some memories tell us about who we are.”

Anna Smaill's The Chimes is a dystopian YA set in an imagined London where the written word has been forbidden and destroyed and memories don't survive the night. It's a very atmospheric piece of writing, a bit longer than a novella, a love letter to the power of music and the importance of memories. The beautiful first half gives way to a more fast-paced second half as the revolution strikes and young orphan Simon falls in love with a freedom fighter. It's a lovely queer tale from a time (merely a decade ago) when it was still difficult to find anything like it for queer youth.

✨ 4 stars

Review: Costumes for Time Travelers, by A.R. Capetta

 

Anyone who has hiked through time knows the town of Pocket. It’s the place travelers first reach after they stumble away from their hometime, passing through on their way to any other when. To Calisto, Pocket is home. They love their grandmother’s shop, which is filled with clothes from every era that are used to make costumes for time travelers. Calisto has no intention of traveling—it’s too dangerous. For Fawkes, traveling is life. He put on time boots when he was young and has been stumbling through eras ever since. When he floats into Pocket, Calisto meets him for the first time, though Fawkes has seen Calisto—in glimpses of what hasn’t happened yet. He’s also seen the villains chasing them both. Now Calisto and Fawkes must rush—from Shakespeare’s London to ancient Crete to California on the eve of a millennium—to save Pocket, and travelers, from being erased. From the Lambda Literary Award–winning author of The Heartbreak Bakery comes a fairy-tale romance that weaves in and out of time, from kiss to kiss and costume to costume.

"Destiny is a temporal disorder."

A.R. Capetta's Costumes for Time Travelers is a delightfully cozy time travel adventure. It pays homage to a few staples of the genre while giving its own spin, with a fun focus on tailoring not only as an art but also as a kind of time travel. The nonbinary main character Calisto is a young and enthusiastic tailor apprentice who has never time traveled, and the contrast with time savant Fawkes makes for a fun dynamic.

Theirs is a love story out of order, sweet and gentle. In fact, given the premises I expected far more angst than what I got, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. The book ambles gently, setting up a threat to reality, but it never feels like the stakes are too high. Perhaps the narration lacks some urgency in that regard.

The points of view are also all over the place, with an open third person narration that jumps too suddenly from one perspective to the next. It's a lovely book, but it may have benefitted from some rewriting.

Costumes for Time Travelers is a sweet summer read.

✨ 3.5 stars

 

📚🥾 So you want to read about out-of-order time-travelers?

Here's my review of Ian McDonald's Time Was  

 

Review: Time's Agent, by Brenda Peynado

Since humanity discovered the existence of pocket worlds, academics have embarked on exploratory missions as agents for the Institute for the Scientific and Humanistic Study of Portal Worlds to study this new technology and harness the potential of a seemingly limitless horizon. Archeologist Raquel and her biologist wife Marlena once dreamed the pocket worlds held the key to solving the universe’s mysteries.
Now, forty years in the future, Raquel is a disgraced ex-agent, pocket worlds are controlled by corporations squeezing every penny out of all colonizable space and time, and Marlena now lives in a pocket universe Raquel wears around her neck in which time passes faster than on Earth, and no longer speaks to her. Standing in the ruins of her dream and her calling, Raquel seizes one last chance to redeem herself, to her wife and her own failed ideals and confront what it means to save something―or someone―from time.

"Without time, everything is beautiful."

Brenda Peynado's Time's Agent is a sci-fi novella about time and grief, an alt-history take on the disappearence of the Taino people in what today is the Dominican Republic. Set in a world teeming with hidden entrances to pocket worlds, it deals with capitalism and colonialism and it's vibrant with fascinating concepts and a lush prose that really sells the imagery.

At its heart, it's a quiet story about how to deal with loss, especially the death of a child, and how it can tear a marriage apart. The main character, a sapphic woman in her thirties, has to deal with this loss alone for a portion of the book, as her wife needs time and space and solitude. The two plots end up mixing well into a delicate but heart-wrenching epilogue.

Time's Agent is a small gem.

✨ 4 stars

Review: Countess, by Suzan Palumbo

Virika Sameroo lives in colonized space under the Æerbot Empire, much like her ancestors before her in the British West Indies. After years of working hard to rise through the ranks of the empire’s merchant marine, she’s finally become first lieutenant on an interstellar cargo vessel.
When her captain dies under suspicious circumstances, Virika is arrested for murder and charged with treason despite her lifelong loyalty to the empire. Her conviction and subsequent imprisonment set her on a path to justice, determined to take down the evil empire that wronged her, all while the fate of her people hangs in the balance.

"Success or perish."

Suzan Palumbo's Countess is a Caribbean sci-fi retelling of The Count of Montecristo, an anti-colonial novella that takes the beloved character of Edmond Dantes and makes him a queer immigrant woman on a quest for revenge. Set in an inter-galactic Empire, the book follows the classic's plot pretty closely, giving it its own spin and exploring well the themes of homophobia, racism and colonialism.

The low page number doesn't do the story any favors, picking up speed and summarily summarising plot points that should have been given time to breathe. This is especially true in the second half, where the main character barrels through scene after scene after finding a crew of rebels. The heightened finale, though heart-breaking, doesn't fully work because we didn't have the time to truly appreciate the characters.

Countess is an ambitious experiment.

✨ 3.5 stars

Review: Sargassa, by Sophie Burnham

Selah Kleios is twenty-two years old and suddenly one of the most important women in the empires. The role of Imperial Historian is her birthright, something she’s been preparing for since birth—but she was supposed to have more time to learn the role from her father, the previous Historian. In the wake of her father’s sudden and shocking assassination, Selah finds herself custodian of more than just the Imperial Archives, the towering central library that safeguards all collective knowledge of the Roman Imperium and its client empires. There’s also the question of the two puzzling classified items her father left in her care—an ancient atlas filled with landscapes that don’t exist, and a carved piece of stone that seems to do nothing at all.
Soon, though, it becomes clear that the Iveroa Stone is more than just a slab of rock. With the reappearance of an old lost love who’s been blackmailed into stealing it for an unknown entity, Selah finds herself in a race to uncover the mysteries the Stone holds. But she isn’t the only one with an interest in it—she’ll have to contend with the deputy chief of police, an undercover spy, and her own beloved half brother along the way. What begins as an act of atonement and devotion ultimately pulls her into the crosshairs of deep state conspiracy, the stirrings of an underground independence movement, and questions that threaten to shake the foundational legitimacy of Roma Sargassa’s past, present, and future.

"She will always choose change."

Sophie Burnham's Sargassa is an incredible alt-history novel, set in a world where the Roman Empire never fell and injustice runs rampant. When Selah's father dies, she has to fill his shoes pretty quickly and take his place as Historian, a hereditary job that's meant to be like a custodian of ancient knowledge. But the world she has to move in, a world where indentured servitude was never stopped, forces her to come to terms with some very harsh truths.

This is a multi-POV epic that also follows her slave-adjacent half-brother, a nonbinary rebel, a righteous cop, and an idealistic thief. Their characters meet and play off of each other beautifully, even the racist misogynist of a cop who's tragically in the wrong place at the wrong time. The luring corruption of the city functions as a backdrop to this delightful mystery as a millennia-old lie unfurls into the light and battle-lines are drawn.

The setting is perfect, with fantastic pieces of worldbuilding, little things you can really trace to the actual Roman Empire. At the end of the book is a helpful compendium explaining how this colony came to be, and the revelations only enrich the experience. You get the sense, early on, that not everything is as it seems, and it's fun to follow the clues clearly left for the reader.

Between the themes of systemic violence and slavery, there wouldn't seem to be much time for love stories, but two delicate queer romances unfold organically, following the course of the novel to its incredible conclusion. In particular, the sapphic love story featuring Selah has the strongest foundation, and a strong development.

Sargassa is the fantastic first book of a series that promises to be explosive.

✨ 4.5 stars

ARC Review: The Crack at the Heart of Everything, by Fiona Fenn

Orpheus can't believe it's come to this. After helping his childhood friend conquer the realm by raising an army of hell-beasts, the befuddled dark sorcerer finds himself banished when the price of his magic endangers the palace. Isolated and betrayed, the feared spellcaster isn't exactly thrilled when his irritating and handsome rival keeps stepping between him and certain doom.
Ill at ease in the barren wasteland his powers created, Orpheus slowly warms to the charismatic ex-general's relentless overtures. But as his feelings grow more intense, the former villain struggles with an inconvenient calling towards heroism. Will dabbling in good deeds get him killed or open the doors to happily ever after?

Thank you to Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Fiona Fenn's The Crack at the Heart of Everything is a sweet standalone fantasy with a twist that recontestualizes everything we thought we knew about the story. We follow the main character Orpheus as he attempts to navigate a curse and come to terms with his evil deeds done in service of his queen, while contending with his newfound feelings for his cheerful companion and seeing the world outside for the first time.

It's a story about isolation, betrayal, and the love we can still find, no matter our circumstances. Orpheus is a compelling character, a man who only wants to do what's right, a traumatized person with self-harm tendencies. He cries often, but his tears aren't seen as a weakness, and his search for comfort is a strength. His companion slowly chips at the wall Orpheus has had to build, with his steadfulness and his great heart. This is not a romantasy, but the sweet romance grows organically, alongside with the main plot.

The worldbuilding is intriguing, snippets of the past revealing themselves slowly until the reader pieces together the truth. Some parts are still nebulous - one wonders at a few things - but the story still works. Despite the urgency and the trauma, there's also a strong cozy vibe.

The Crack at the Heart of Everything is a delightful debut.

✨ 4 stars

Review: The Lowest Healer and the Highest Mage, by Hiyodori

In a country where mages have all the power and healers supposedly only exist to support them, Clematis—a talented healer—is despised for her past attempts to defy the mageocracy. In her early thirties, she’s already on year seven of a life sentence for treason. But when the most powerful mage in the nation suddenly loses all her magic, the government wants unconventional Clematis to help get it back.
The mage is a tall, distant woman called Wist, and Clematis knows her all too well. They used to be classmates. Best friends. Perhaps more. Wist is also the person who reported Clematis for leaking state secrets. She’s the reason Clematis spent the last seven years in prison. Clematis wants revenge for her betrayal, but she wants freedom even more. She’s got thirty days to recover Wist’s magic: miss the deadline, and she’ll be shunted back to prison for the rest of her life. Yet attempting to resurrect Wist’s lost magic will force her to face the real reason why Wist betrayed her—and to face her unresolved, unspoken feelings for the mage who stabbed her in the back and walked away.

"I never forgot the sound of you calling for me. Not for a second."

Hiyodori's The Lowest Healer and the Highest Mage is a sci-fi/fantasy hybrid that combines a compelling protagonist and sole POV character with a surprising plot that keeps you on your toes as it slowly unveils the background of the characters and their history. Clematis and Wist navigate the consequences of an old betrayal that put them at odds with each other, while trying to solve a problem that might prove to be fatal for their world.

Clematis is a delight, caustic and angry and incredibly competent. Her old friend Wist is remote and mysterious and she has secrets which will change everything Clematis thinks she knows. Their relationship, in the present and the snippets of the past, is a compelling one, and so is the way they learn to trust each other again. The supporting cast does its job, with two very fleshed-out and interesting characters in the form of a friend Clematis made more recently, and a Healer that Wist trusts to treat her.

The snippets of world-building paint a vivid picture, albeit a fragmented one, that I hope to see explored more in the other books of the series. The contrast and politics of the usage and abuse of magic, with Healers as glorified batteries for Mages that, at least in the nation where the characters live, have no system in place to check their treatment of Healers, makes for an interesting conflict.

The Lowest Healer and the Highest Mage is a captivating novella.

✨ 4 stars

Snippet: Empire of the Feast, by Bendi Barrett

We awaken with Riverson, 32nd ruler of the Stag Empire, as he attempts to govern without the memories of his previous lives. To survive the ever-sharpening gears of war, he will need to mend the political schisms threatening to tear his empire apart while maintaining the erotic rituals holding off the eldritch horror known only as the Rapacious.

“We will eat the stars and drench the darkness in ecstasy.”

Bendi Berrett's Empire of the Feast is a sci-fi novella with a touch of magic, compact and luxurious. In less than a hundred pages, the author paints the delicate balance of an intergalactic empire held together against an eldritch foe only thanks to the power surges created by a never-ending orgy. Despite the particular subject, the book isn't too explicit, and follows the efforts of the newly resurrected Emperor attempting to regain his footing and stop a coup, having been brought back memoryless and with a different gender. This delightfully queer page-turner of a novella packs a complex journey that resolves in less than a day; it only stumbles in the Epilogue, where it tries to tie too neat a bow to the detriment of a perfect roller-coaster.

✨ 4 stars

Review: A Necessary Chaos, by Brent Lambert

In a world of magical empires and the anarchists that would tear them down, two mages, Althus and Vade, are each assigned to spy on the other by opposing sides. But when they both catch feelings, what happens when they’re commanded to kill their target? They must each decide if they'll follow orders or find a way to make their romance thrive beyond the lies.

"Grief never performed a single resurrection."

Brent Lambert's A Necessary Chaos is a sci-fi novella with magical aspects, a thrilling enemies-to-lovers romance between two men tasked to spy on each other. The dual POV allows to delve into the psyche, the past, and the motives of the main characters; we begin in medias res, with the deception of their love affair having gone on for years, and follow the inevitable shattering of the illusion when both characters are tasked to get rid of each other.

On the background is the larger conflict between an Empire that meddles with demons and human experiments, and the rebels who try to stop the carnage. When the truth is finally revealed, we race towards a high-stakes ending where characters need to learn to trust each other in order to avoid untold horrors. The novella was perfectly contained, giving tantalizing glimpses of a larger worldbuilding while managing to stick the landing. The main characters are skilled operatives, competent fighters with secrets, and the explosive finale is well-earned.

Unfortunately, there were a lot of typos.

A Necessary Chaos is a solid novella debut.

✨ 4 stars

📚📚📚 IF YOU LOVE THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE:

* This is How You Lose the Time War, by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

for: espionage, enemies to lovers

Review: The Red Scholar's Wake, by Aliette de Bodard

Xích Si: bot maker, data analyst, mother, scavenger. But those days are over now-her ship has just been captured by the Red Banner pirate fleet, famous for their double-dealing and cruelty. Xích Si expects to be tortured to death-only for the pirates' enigmatic leader, Rice Fish, to arrive with a different and shocking proposition: an arranged marriage between Xích Si and herself.
Rice Fish: sentient ship, leader of the infamous Red Banner pirate fleet, wife of the Red Scholar. Or at least, she was the latter before her wife died under suspicious circumstances. Now isolated and alone, Rice Fish wants Xích Si's help to find out who struck against them and why. Marrying Xích Si means Rice Fish can offer Xích Si protection, in exchange for Xích Si's technical fluency: a business arrangement with nothing more to it.
But as the investigation goes on, Rice Fish and Xích Si find themselves falling for each other. As the interstellar war against piracy intensifies and the five fleets start fighting each other, they will have to make a stand-and to decide what kind of future they have together.

"I go with my wife". Aliette de Bodard's The Red Scholar's Wake is a book about sapphic space pirates. It's hard sci-fi, with sentient ships that manifest themselves through human avatars, and Rice Fish is one of such ships; the resulting romance could take some suspension of disbelief, but it's intense in what's at stake. The book reflects over consent, and over neglect in previous relationships, in a sound manner. The relationship between the main characters is a bit instantaneous, and the way it starts isn't auspicious; things happen much too quickly, but in the end the relationship doesn't come without struggles, and I found that believable.

The books shines the most when it explores the main character's relationship with their respective children: Xích Si needs to save her daughter from indentures servitude, while Rice Fish has to face the misunderstandings that came from her first marriage. On that note, Rice Fish's first wife's perceived aromanticism is villanized in some way, but it might be a question of perspective; Rice Fish was, after all, traumatized by her first wife's choice of words - and actions - and so the narrative reflects that.

The use of Vietnames honorifics (little sis, big sis) might confuse some, but it's very clear there's no familiar relationship between the main characters (one's a ship!)

This is part of a bigger narrative universe, and it shows in the lack of explanations for many things, for example the overlays. I don't want to have my hand held (or I wouldn't read speculative fiction), but I'd like some context when it can be provided.

The Red Scholar's Wake is a solid sci-fi adventure with stunning prose.

✨ 3.5 stars

📚📚📚 IF YOU LOVE THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE:

* A Strange and Stubborn Endurance, by Foz Meadows

for: arranged marriage, previous toxic relationship

Review: Locklands, by Robert Jackson Bennett

Sancia, Clef, and Berenice have gone up against plenty of long odds in the past. But the war they’re fighting now is one even they can’t win. This time, they’re not facing robber-baron elites, or even an immortal hierophant, but an entity whose intelligence is spread over half the globe—a ghost in the machine that uses the magic of scriving to possess and control not just objects, but human minds.
To fight it, they’ve used scriving technology to transform themselves and their allies into an army—a society—that’s like nothing humanity has seen before. With its strength at their backs, they’ve freed a handful of their enemy’s hosts from servitude, even brought down some of its fearsome, reality-altering dreadnaughts. Yet despite their efforts, their enemy marches on—implacable. Unstoppable. Now, as their opponent closes in on its true prize—an ancient doorway, long buried, that leads to the chambers at the center of creation itself—Sancia and her friends glimpse a chance at reaching it first, and with it, a last desperate opportunity to stop this unbeatable foe. But to do so, they’ll have to unlock the centuries-old mystery of scriving’s origins, embark on a desperate mission into the heart of their enemy’s power, and pull off the most daring heist they’ve ever attempted.

"There is no dancing through a monsoon". Robert Jackson Bennett's Locklands aims higher than ever and crafts a tale of gigantic scope, a novel about transhumanism, choices, and sacrifices. Set eight years after Shorefall's devastating conclusion, it follows the original cast as they make a new society, something so vastly different from everything that came before, a new way of being. They fight for a chance to survive, battling against the ancient being that they awakened in the past, and finding unexpected allies. It's all-out war, vast and desperate, the very surface of the earth altered.

And yet at its heart, it's also a quiet story of loss and despair, about what a single man can accomplish in the face of a personal tragedy. It's terrible to imagine that much of the pain and catastrophies suffered by humanity were done in the course of attempting to right a wrong. Against the backdrop of the war mysteries are revealed, and the tragedy at the center of it all pulls at heartstrings in its simplicity.

Sancia and Berenice suffer through a trial of their own, as they're forced to face the consequences of what happened in the first book. They're an older couple now, they've been together for years, and they're comfortable in their skin and their love and in the ties that bind them; they know each other, inside and out, but darkness looms ahead, and choices that must be made.

The epilogue is masterful, tying all the final threads together to form a heartbreaking conclusion that nonetheless is filled with hope.

Locklands is the perfect finale to an imaginative trilogy.

✨ 5 stars

Review: The Saint of Bright Doors, by Vajra Chandrasekera

Nestled at the head of a supercontinent, framed by sky and sea, lies Luriat, the city of bright doors. The doors are everywhere in the city, squatting in walls where they don’t belong, painted in vivid warning. They watch over a city of art and avarice, of plagues and pogroms, and silently refuse to open. No one knows what lies beyond them, but everyone has their own theory and their own relationship to the doors. Researchers perform tests and take samples, while supplicants offer fruit and flowers and hold prayer circles. Many fear the doors as the source of hauntings from unspeakable realms. To a rare unchosen few, though, the doors are both a calling and a bane. Fetter is one of those few.
When Fetter was born, his mother tore his shadow from him. She raised him as a weapon to kill his sainted father and destroy the religion rising up in his sacred footsteps. Now Fetter is unchosen, lapsed in his devotion to both his parents. He casts no shadow, is untethered by gravity, and sees devils and antigods everywhere he goes. With no path to follow, Fetter would like to be anything but himself. Does his answer wait on the other side of one of Luriat’s bright doors?

"Is the chain ever free?". Vajra Chandrasekera's The Saint of Bright Doors is a lyrical marvel of a novel, a richly detailed exploration of agency, cults, and familial abuse. In this standalone, fantastical story, we follow the son of a major cult leader as he leaves home and finds himself in a city with a thousand strange doors. Not everything is clearly explained, but the nebulous nature of some things really sells the atmosphere. The major questions are answered, though, and some more, letting the reader glimpse some tantalizing truths.

The worldbuilding is immaculate, detailing a complex world that's so much more than what it's shown, as clearly said in the surprising final part of the novel, which is exhilarating with its paradigm shift. We explore the city and then the world with Fetter, uncovering secrets and trying to overthrow a tyrannical government that vanishes people into prisons as big as a country. We see him lose himself in many identities as he tries to be many people at once, uncertain of his place in the world, molded by his mother's abuse and by his powerful father's absence. The doors are a riveting mystery that remains partly unexplained.

The supporting cast is a delight, from the jaded revolutionary to the door scholar to his fellow Unchosen. Fetter's mother gets some more spotlight in the second half, and her story sheds some light on the nebulous nature of this world. She is a formidable character, looming large in the narrative, perhaps more than Fetter's father, who's still masterfully painted when we finally get to know him. And then the twist leads to a payoff that, while feeling somewhat abrupt and sudden, still works.

The narrative normalizes queer relationships, although in-story queerness is formally against the law. Fetter is bisexual, and he has to navigate what his relationships mean when he struggles to be someone that he's not. There's an intriguing glimpse of a wlw relationship in the background, which in some way ends up shaping the story.

The Saint of Bright Doors is a stunning debut, a lyrical delight.

✨ 4 stars