Review: Reborn, by Seth Haddon

When the Rezwyn Empire mysteriously cuts diplomatic ties with the Kingdom of Usleth, merchant lord Oren Radek is sent to investigate. But when he discovers a coup brewing against the emperor, Radek's life and his country's safety is suddenly under threat. Izra Dziove, visionary advisor to the Rezwyn Emperor, is trying to hold the turbulent Rezwyn court together while being plagued by dreams of his fated man. But when Izra’s adversaries launch an attack on the diplomatic party from Usleth, he is forced to take action to protect them and prevent a war.
Forced to trust one another, both men must put aside their differences to save the future of both their nations, while also contending with the growing attraction between them— all while trying to understand their mysterious connection and the forces guiding their shared destiny. Can their fated love change the destiny of nations?

"To survive something as final as death". Seth Haddon's Reborn is a companion novel to the author's debut Reforged, set in the same world, but with a different set of characters. The world-building grows in depth and scope, with the introducion of new ways of thinking, new gods, new lore. The main characters are fated to be, and the fact that only one of them is aware of it creates an interest contrast; they are also opposites, in a way, and that makes for a good dynamic.

The plot structure was better than in the previous book, but the editing could use some work; the mistakes were jarring at times, and took me right out of the flow of reading. The supporting cast was less fleshed out too, which is a shame because that was a definite plus of the first book. It's like in fleshing out more the main characters' relationship, the author had to resort to making the other characters utterly monodimensional.

Reborn is a step down from its predecessor.

✨ 3.5 stars

Review: In the Roses of Pieria, by Anna Burke

When Clara Eden is offered a job as an archivist working for eccentric estate owner Agatha Montague, she thinks her prayers have been answered. Soon, she finds herself sucked into her research world, captivated by a romantic correspondence thousands of years old. But as her feelings for her employer's assistant, Fiadh, deepen, so does her suspicion that something about Agatha Montague isn't right. Unfortunately for Clara, it is far too late to run by the time her suspicions are confirmed.

"I'll paint your face into the histories". Anna Burke's In the Roses of Pieria is a sapphic horror novel with a complex worldbuilding and academic overtones that really enrich the experience. The story is interspersed with a millennia-old correspondence that tugs at the heartstrings with its lyrical passages and references to Sappho's fragments, while slowly unease creeps into Clara and the readers alike as the main character realizes the truth behind the letters.

The fictional Nektopolis, created by the author as a backdrop to such an ancient love story, is so vividly described that makes one wonder whether it's real; the novel begins with an academic discussion that goes on for pages and sets the atmosphere well. The genre-savvy reader will understand immediately what takes Clara a little more time to wrap her head around, but the novel is still full of surprises with an exciting (and mildly horrific) take on the fae.

As the story unfolds, so does the love story between Clara and Fiadh, speeding through the unraveling horror making itself known. Fiadh is a compelling love interest, mysterious and intricate in her loyalties, but fierce in her passions. The adventurous second part of the novel allows to explore her more as a character, and revelations abound. The story, while pretty self-contained, ends with an abrupt cliffhanger that leaves you wanting the second installment in the duology immediately.

In the Roses of Pieria is a gloriously weird sapphic vampire story.

✨ 5 stars

📚📚📚 IF YOU LOVE THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE:

* A Long Time Dead, Samara Breger

for: sapphic vampires, love through the ages

Review: Legacy of the Vermillion Blade, by Jay Tallsquall

Talon Cour-Vermane is not only the sole inheritor of his House’s lands, titles, and political power, but also of the pact his family has forged with darkness through countless generations. From birth, Talon’s father tethered his son’s life to the family’s bloodline and his own ambitions of power, but everything changes when a new blacksmith and his young apprentice, Richen, join the staff at the Cour-Vermane estate. With their fateful meeting, Talon’s life changes course forever, derailing the meticulously laid out existence planned for him. From his family’s estates and the countryside of Eleryon to the extents of the Xallian Empire and the dwarven kingdom of Lymehold, Talon discovers the different aspects of love, true family, and himself as he battles his cursed blood and the shackles to darkness his father bound him with.

"Sometimes all you had in life was blind faith". Jay Tallsquall's Legacy of the Vermillion Blade trudges on as we follow the life of the main character, a lord's son who was possessed by powers bigger than him and attempts to free himself from them, while looking for his lost love and making connections along the way.

It's a lovely exploration of asexuality (especially towards the middle of the novel, as an older Talon explores his boundaries) but it's not a good fantasy novel. The narration jumps from one year to another to decades later with no real effort to make a cohesive story, only painting vignettes and telling us to trust that things are advancing. When it takes its time to breathe and explore the characters and situations, it's good, but that happens rarely.

The worldbuilding is confusing, not really clear, and the main character's father is almost cartoonish in the depiction of his villainy. This could have been a great novel, with some editing; it's rare we get a homoromantic asexual protagonist, so I was very excited for it, but it didn't deliver on the speculative fiction side.

Legacy of the Vermillion Blade is a book with a good premise and some great representation.

✨ 3.5 stars

📚📚📚 IF YOU LOVE THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE:

* The Perfect Assassin, by K.A. Doore

for: sword fights, asexual protagonist

Snippet: The Water Outlaws, by S.L. Huang

Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job. Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.
Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats. Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire.

"We shall be the storm of silk and steel that shelters all those in need". S.L. Huang's The Water Outlaws is a standalone anti-hero journey that genderbends a classic Chinese novel, Water Margin, mixing things up with interesting magic. It's a violent tale about rebelling against a broken system - one that allows rape and abuse of power, where dissidents are thrown into prison - and making the most of what one has, about finding community even amongst violent people. The cast is huge, but the two main characters, once friends and now possibly on opposite sides, undergo major character development that feels organic and earned. The tale slows down towards the middle only to pick up towards an explosive finale that accounts for all the loose threads.

✨ 4 stars

📚📚📚 IF YOU LOVE THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE:

* The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water, by Zen Cho

for: banditry, queer wuxia

Review: A Power Unbound, by Freya Marske

Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, would love a nice, safe, comfortable life. After the death of his twin sister, he thought he was done with magic for good. But with the threat of a dangerous ritual hanging over every magician in Britain, he’s drawn reluctantly back into that world. Now Jack is living in a bizarre puzzle-box of a magical London townhouse, helping an unlikely group of friends track down the final piece of the Last Contract before their enemies can do the same. And to make matters worse, they need the help of writer and thief Alan Ross.
Cagey and argumentative, Alan is only in this for the money. The aristocratic Lord Hawthorn, with all his unearned power, is everything that Alan hates. And unfortunately, Alan happens to be everything that Jack wants in one gorgeous, infuriating package. When a plot to seize unimaginable power comes to a head at Cheetham Hall―Jack’s ancestral family estate, a land so old and bound in oaths that it’s grown a personality as prickly as its owner―Jack, Alan and their allies will become entangled in a night of champagne, secrets, and bloody sacrifice . . . and the foundations of magic in Britain will be torn up by the roots before the end.

"Broken items wanted to be whole". Freya Marske's A Power Unbound sticks the landing with this exhilarating conclusion to the Last Binding trilogy. A new set of main characters takes center stage, but this time the protagonists of the two previous volumes are more entangled with the plot and even undergo more development as this big, queer found family races against time to unveil a plot that could destroy everything.

After the enclosed setting of the second book, we find ourselves once again in England, between estates and magical parliament; we also see poorer parts of the city as Alan, who was introduced in the previous book, is an immigrant with a big family he works hard to support. This allows the book to introduce themes of class and power dynamics that work very well in the general context of the series and give it more depth. The journalist who's secretly a writer of queer erotica finds his perfect partner in bisexual Lord Hawthorn, as the two of them slowly dismantle their walls over the course of the book and a couple of intense sex scenes.

Every loose thread from the first two books is accounted for in this finale that asks questions about family, power, and abuse. The magic is made bigger and more interesting as the roots of power are explained and explored; every character has a moment to shine, from the medium that facilitates a heart-wrenching heart-to-heart with a ghost, to the nobleman who once thought he wasn't as powerful as his peers, from the seer to the powerful actress to the one who got violently torn from his own magic. And then there's Alan, who isn't magical but who can disrupt magic, and the surrounding cast of magicians, friends and foes, enstranged family and abusive brothers, and mothers who'll tear the world apart for their children.

The book weaves a rich tapestry that's much more deeper for its focus on land and contracts, the places where we live that protect us, and the free contracts between two people. It's a honest exploration of unconventional desires, woven together by the books written by Alan and mentioned in the first two installments: a thread that slowly reveals itself and makes the whole series almost a metanarrative.

A Power Unbound is a powerful exploration of love and the ties that bind.

✨ 4 stars

📚📚📚 IF YOU LOVE THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE:

* The Magpie Lord, by K.J. Charles

for: Edwardian England, power dynamics

List: Most Anticipated Books of 2024 - January to June

To usher in the new year, here are my most anticipated books for the first half of the year, in order of publication.

Publication Date: January 18th 2024  

HERE you can find the Goodreads page. 

 

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Publication Date: January 16th 2024  

HERE you can find the Goodreads page. 

 

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Publication Date: January 18th 2024 

HERE you can find the Goodreads page.

 

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Publication Date: February 15th 2024 

HERE you can find the Goodreads page. 

 

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Publication Date: March 5th 2024 

HERE you can find the Goodreads page. 

 

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Publication Date: March 26th 2024 

HERE you can find the Goodreads page. 

 

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Publication Date: April 23rd 2024 

HERE you can find the Goodreads page. 

 

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Publication Date: May 28th 2024  

HERE you can find the Goodreads page. 

 

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Publication Date: June 11st 2024  

HERE you can find the Goodreads page.

List: Best Books of 2023

2024 is coming! Here are my favorite books of this year, with links to my reviews.

 

 

 

✨ 4.5 stars
You can find my review here.

 

 

✨ 4.5 stars
You can find my review here.

 

   ✨ 4.5 stars
    You can find my review here.

 

 

   ✨ 4 stars
   You can find my review here.

 

 

 

✨ 5 stars
You can find my review here.

 

 

 

✨ 4.5 stars
You can find my review here.

 

 

 

✨ 4.5 stars
You can find my review here.

 

 

   ✨ 5 stars
   You can find my review here.

 

 

   ✨ 5 stars
   You can find my review here.

 

 

   ✨ 5 stars
   You can find my review here.

 

 

   ✨ 4.5 stars
   You can find my review here.

Review: Queen of Coin and Whispers, by Helen Corcoran

When teenage queen Lia inherits her corrupt uncle’s bankrupt kingdom, she brings a new spymaster into the fold ... Xania, who takes the job to avenge her murdered father. Faced with dangerous plots and hidden enemies, can Lia and Xania learn to rely on each another, as they discover that all is not fair in love and treason?
In a world where the throne means both power and duty, they must decide what to sacrifice for their country – and for each other.

"Fierce as a bloodied blade". Helen Corcoran's Queen of Coin and Whispers is a sapphic YA fantasy with an intriguing premise; the dual narration allows us to follow both the idealistic monarch and her spymaster as they navigate threats, ruling, and their feelings for each other. Lia and Xania are young and untested and ultimately, their youth is too off-putting in the context of what they manage to do. We are supposed to believe that a mostly untrained seventeen-years-old is able to create her own web of spies, even in foreign countries, over the course of a few months.

The court intrigue is handled better, with believable threats and interesting characters and twists in the development that inject life into the narration; but some scenes seem disconnected, and one finds oneself confused as to the reasoning of the characters in some cases. In some instances, the development is left to throwaway paragraphs that aim to bring readers up to speed, but they're wholly confusing.

The relationship between the main characters is the highlight of the book, with its delicate new state and the problems that come when you put love and duty together, when you put an idealistic person through the realities of ruling. The conflict feels believable, and it's handled maturely.

The final third, while fascinating with its sudden change of pace, scope, and general atmosphere, was terribly rushed and, most importantly, left a pretty big development to the other main character's POV; perhaps it would have benefitted from being handled more respectfully, instead of just being fuel for angst that is handled mostly offscreen.

Queen of Coin and Whispers is a solid adventure for readers on the younger side.

✨ 3.5 stars

📚📚📚 IF YOU LOVE THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE:

* The Priory of the Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon

for: fealty, difficult decisions

Review: All the Hidden Paths, by Foz Meadows

With the plot against them foiled and the city of Qi-Katai in safe hands, Velasin and Caethari have begun to test the waters of their relationship. But the wider political ramifications of their marriage are still playing out across two nations, and all too soon, they’re summoned north to Tithena’s capital city, Qi-Xihan, to present themselves to its monarch. With Caethari newly invested as his grandmother’s heir and Velasin’s old ghosts gnawing at his heels, what little peace they’ve managed to find is swiftly put to the test.
Cae’s recent losses have left him racked with grief and guilt, while Vel struggles with the disconnect between instincts that have kept him safe in secrecy and what an open life requires of him now. Pursued by unknown assailants and with Qi-Xihan’s court factions jockeying for power, Vel and Cae must use all the skills at their disposal to not only survive, but thrive – because there’s more than one way to end an alliance, and more than one person who wants to see them fail.

"We are not tragedies". Foz Meadows' All the Hidden Paths is the surprise sequel to last year's A Strange and Stubborn Endurance, an excellent exploration of abuse and healing that became one of my favorite books of 2022. The first book seemed to be a standalone novel and resolve everything, although it left some threads; these threads are explored beautifully in this sequel, where the question is pretty simple: what next? After facing one's fears and coming out, what is next?

The answer is that of course not everything is finally and magically solved; one has to work through one's issues. Vel struggles for the most part of this novel with his dark thoughts, pulled forth by the turmoil Cae himself is feeling after the events of the first novel. They need to learn to know each other and trust each other, and most importantly, communicate. This novel features a constant push and pull between Velasin's trauma and Caethari's sense of inadequacy that isn't perfectly resolved, setting perhaps the stage for a third book. I would love a final volume in this series; the news of this one sequel had taken me completely by surprise. One can see that there's still material to explore, if the author wanted to.

The mystery is more enticing than the one in the first novel's, less straightforward and thus exciting as the duo, with the help of Vel's valet friend and a reluctant ally, attempt to find the name behind an unnerving number of murder attempts. The appearance of many new characters makes the narration vibrant and well-rounded, with a sharp focus on the intricate politics of the new court setting, building on the rich world-building of the first novel. Caethari and Velasin don't know who to trust, and we are left spinning with possibilities as they navigate such unfamiliar grounds at the same time as they attempt to navigate their relationship and overcome the hurdles coming their way. It's refreshing to see that even despite the conflict building, we never doubt their love for each other. This novel is also definitely spicier than the first, with a good number of sex scenes that range from being intimately sweet to exceedingly intense. Once again, one can only be grateful for the author's decision to put trigger warnings at the beginning of the novel.

Onto the elephant in the room, or rather, the new POV that dominates a few interludes: the character's journey was compelling and his plight made one sympathize with him, but there was perhaps an issue of pacing, where a few more interludes might have been needed to better appreciate his story and how it entwined with the main characters'. As things stand, one finds oneself wanting for more, and his ending especially feels a bit abrupt.

All the Hidden Paths is a stunning sequel that builds on the lovely foundations of the first novel.

✨ 4.5 stars

📚📚📚 IF YOU LOVE THIS, YOU MIGHT LIKE:

* A Taste of Gold and Iron, by Alexandra Rowland

for: anxiety, politics

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