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Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 28

1984 meets The Handmaid's Tale meets Blade Runner 2049. That's the best mashup I can think of for this book.\ \ I flew through The Infinite State and I barely know how I managed it. The pacing was breathless and tense and nonstop, I really like Swan's writing style! I will wholly admit this is my first book by him, but man... what a banger to start with. This was clearly a poignant project he was passionate about that involved processing a lot of things all at once. It took risks, it was fun, and the characters were all difficult people in an impossible situation.\ \ I love when a book can engage in political commentary without it feeling overburdened and I felt like Swan did a great job. For me, it occasionally felt hamfisted at parts but that's because I am very aware (too aware) of political systems and how they work - that was a Me problem not a Richard problem. For someone who has no foreknowledge, I think the explanations of fascism and democracy are fantastic. He made them conversational and didn't bulldoze you with a billion explainers on theory, he just gave very accessible overviews of what different political systems are and the fact that none of them are perfect. These explainers were essential, too, which sometimes books can forget about when we get too deep in the weeds. He gave readers as much theory as they needed to understand the Empire's threat and the reasons Gabriel was an important project.\ \ I loved the atmosphere Swan included in this book, too. The dreary landscapes of the Empire juxtaposed with the humid, colorful Gabriel was a great visual and even before he described Gabriel in such a way I was already seeing it in that palette. One thing he did well, though, which I think is both hard to do and uncommon to see is the threat of a concept. It's challenging to get the sense of threat in a fascist state translated into a fictional book - let alone a fictional space book - because there's no one singular threatening enemy. Books tend to crystalize around a clear enemy and a clear hero or heroes. I love when they manage to subvert that and turn either into something new, which Swan manages in The Infinite State. He makes the very concept of fascism the bad guy and shows you using the actions of his characters. From the Emperor to Cyprian to Droor to Morita to Morozov, Swan makes it hard to separate the idea of "bad guy" into any singular operator for the Decurion Empire. It isn't even the Decurion Empire that's the villain, necessarily, its the systems and antithetical mindsets that let the Empire exist in the first place.\ \ Swan was very smart and thoughtful about how he leveraged human nature and how the Empire acts in conflict with what we have naturally evolved into. As someone who lovingly refers to myself as a defiant optimist - someone who refuses to stop believing in the best in things or people or situations - I felt very, very seen in this book. Swan believes in the inherent human desire to help and do good and the Empire beating and tormenting that out of people is turning its people into these twisted, abominable visages of humanity that are in direct conflict with one of our most important base instincts. It's the denial of agency and the discouragement of joy that sets the Empire's people to suffering. In their suffering, they're too tired and scared and cynical to do anything to oppose their fascist overlords.\ \ He put so many different facets of what fascism does to people in here that I feel like I could talk about this for a dozen pages at least. One of my favorites was his demonstration of how the Empire's own worst enemy was... the Empire. Not the Free Nations, but itself. You can only stagnate and oppress your people for so long because you start to fall so far behind you create the tools for your own system to collapse. Denial of what human beings are and what we need at our core is a house of cards that always collapses in on itself, it's only ever been a matter of time. \ \ His inclusion of the technology disparity was also very, very fun to watch. When Katherine gets out into the wider world (space, fine fine fine), she's blown away by how much of their suffering in the Empire is the Empire's choice. It's a decision that helps facilitate the repeated subjugation of their people by keeping them sick when they don't have to be, overworked when they don't have to be, poor when they don't have to be. It was a great way to show that the obligation of a government is to care for its people and its decay begins when it loses sight of that goal. When our basic needs aren't met and a government turns it into a flagellation of the people, a moralistic chiding that blames the people it was established to govern instead of itself, it begins to poison itself and heralds its own doom.\ \ Somehow, in all of this, we also managed to fit one of my favorite topics to rant about and I will do my best to stay high level with it: the military industrial complex. I hate the military industrial complex and I got the impression Swan does, too, but he was much better about making The Infinite State informative as to why it's so damaging and terrible for a population to let military privateers run amok than I would have been. The Perpetual War Council from the get go gave me TMJ because, yeah. If you're engaged in perpetual warfare, you're probably in the wrong. He talked about the human canon fodder of their own children the Party members create, how the constant forced birthing and obsession with pregnancy is just a mechanism to feed the constant machine of interstellar war and has nothing to do with women's rights or family, the lack of technological improvement feeds their trumped up propaganda narrative about the nobility of these stupid wars, and how the distance of the people watching the footage of these endless wars keeps them removed from the true horror of them and thus continually in support of these "expansion efforts". The arms fair made my skin crawl, but Swan also was very smart about including why it's necessary to be armed when everyone else around you is armed. I appreciated that inclusion a lot because it's under discussed how when everyone around you has nukes, you need to be able to also defend yourself from nukes kind of thing. Smaller countries arm themselves up because everyone around them has armed themselves up. If they don't they just open themselves up to being overtaken under the guise of "protection" and then fully annexed against their will. Sounds remarkably like a very recent conflict occurring actively today, right? \ \ Okay, I won't preach, I swear. As someone who loves political themes in books and believes fully that reading is political, books are political, and books are affected by the political climate of the era they were written in, this was a very bold story that directly faced down modern issues and conflicts most authors shy away from or leave room to pretend has nothing to do with modern day situations. I felt like Swan confronted complicated current events in a smart, accessible, thoughtful way that you could couch as a reader in terms of science fiction and places that don't exist. While the removal from the current day is there plainly and front and center (in my opinion), the way he bluntly addresses systems is very easily taken into our own world. Too often, authors rename fascism like "urblanagism" or "portoricianism" or give it some made up name that allows us to remove ourselves even farther from the concepts and pretend that's fully made up and not real and doesn't exist outside of the context of that story. Swan didn't. He called a spade a spade and I think in the era of surveillance states, flirting with fascism, and watching once-great governments forget that their priority is the wellbeing of the people they govern? This distinction is relevant, important, and will be a lens into the current state of the world to future readers.\ \ Pater Delenda Est

Infinite Fascism: The Infinite State

1 book

3

Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 27

[Let's go chapter 2! I actually have a few chapters already written, I'm trying to get one done a week for this project at minimum give or take. I like this so far and I have a character in Book 2 conjured up that I am already so excited to get to. She's gonna be my favorite, honestly. Still. Gotta use this as a setup for the bigger breakout in the series. This is kinda fun, guys. \ \

• • \ \ Chapter 2: Traitors\ \ Castor stood outside the double doors to the throne room and took a long, steadying breath. The ritual he had perfected over the last ten years in service of his mortal enemy came so easily now. He breathed--slow and deep--and checked all the buckles and belts and fasteners on his armor. Counting as he went. Clearing his mind, smothering the fire that burned at the back of it as if the Dawn Emperor might see it someday. He touched the notches on the edges of his steel bracers - one for every member of his dead family, dead friends, dead court. One for every person he loved that the Dawn Emperor had taken from him. \ \ He prayed for their strength, lifted his head, and nodded to the guards. They opened the doors on terrible, silent hinges and the throne room painted across his vision. The walk, as always, felt interminable. He kept a lazy hand on his sword and a lazier grin on his face as he approached the man seated on the golden sunburst of a throne. The Emperor leaned on his hand, watching Castor approach through half-lidded pale blue eyes under tightly trimmed black hair. His thin mouth was set in a permanent partial smile, as if he always found something vaguely amusing or was plotting something unspeakably wicked. \ \ Castor usually found it was the latter. \ \ The Emperor raised a hand covered in golden rings, sweeping the dark blue of his robes along the pale stone floor. Castor took the invitation and kneeled, kissing the serpent signet ring of his liege and bowing his head. \ \ “Rise,” the emperor sighed. “Tell me of the north.”\ \ He always sounded bored, which Castor assumed he must be. With two thirds of Moranthe now under the Dawn Empire, he was running out of places to conquer. He fought the urge to clench his hand into a fist and stood. He was no coward, despite what everyone said about him in the north. He looked the Emperor in the eyes when he spoke. \ \ “Small pockets of rebellion, nothing we aren’t accustomed to,” he clasped his hands behind his back to steady them. “Put down swiftly. The Forestmen are pillaging again, though. I believe the Ice Witches laid waste to some of their hunting grounds, the feral bitches. It’s forcing them through the Wastewood to pillage. I’ve got my men forming patrols and ending the bands when we find them.”\ \ The Emperor hummed his approval, scanning his cold eyes up Castor’s body the way a lord might eye a good horse. That’s what he was to this man, really. A prized stallion. Proof that even the strongest-willed of his enemies could be broken and cowed to the point of becoming a beloved general in his army. Valasen rallied the world to help close the Tempest Gate and beat back the demon hordes that surged across Moranthe and the Dawn Emperor took the moment to spread his army out and occupy any throne left unguarded. His little cousin had saved the world and the world rewarded her with a dead family and dead allies. \ \ Castor was only a boy when he was taken into the emperor’s court as a ward. Eleven and frothing with rage, a wild creature all snapping teeth and raking claws. The Guard Captain was still missing half an ear. They had found him guarding the bodies of his murdered parents with a sword twice his size. The last living member of House Tartenna, ruling family of Valasen.\ \ He wished they had killed him. \ \ The Emperor remarked to his miserable son without looking at the young man fixed slightly behind the left side of his obnoxious throne, “General Tartenna is our greatest asset in the north. He knows the people intimately and is the only one the Ice Witches will entreat with.”\ \ “Yes, father,” the young man watched Castor through frigid glacial blue eyes. \ \ He took after his mother, the long-dead Empress Delia, thankfully. The only thing he inherited from his tyrant father were his eyes and his penchant for being an asshole. Prince Ciro was everything the court wanted from an heir. Just barely shorter than his father, an already towering man, he was broad-shouldered and carried himself with an easy confidence. Simple to do when you’re the future Emperor. He was sharp-jawed and high-boned as all good royal sons are, his thin silver circlet half hidden under a cornsilk forelock. \ \ Compared to Castor, though, he might as well have been a boy. They were two years apart in age, but impossibly different in stature and appearance. Castor was the hulking mass of war, built like a battleaxe with pale blond hair nearly silver, kept far too long in a mess of braids and tangles he knotted atop his head to keep out of his face. Cold, bright green eyes fixed on the prince from under a weary brow. Castor’s nose had been broken more than once, a scar slashed across it that added a dash of menace into the wild attraction of him. \ \ The two young men regarded each other with the disdain neither of them had ever bothered to hide. As boys, they had never made peace. As men, they interacted only as much as decorum demanded. Decorum, of course, being the Dawn Emperor. \ \ “I should like you to stay for the opening ceremony of the Games, General,” the Emperor waved a hand. “The additional guards will come from the ranks and they would be more receptive to you than the Captain, I believe.”\ \ Castor agreed. For all his hatred of the Dawn Emperor and his Day Prince, he held the undying love and admiration of the soldiers. He had fought for his place in their ranks, chosen to start where everyone else did despite the Emperor’s offer of command. He wanted to earn it. More than that, he wanted to owe the Emperor who had destroyed his family as little as possible. \ \ It helped that he had a death wish and regularly threw himself in harm’s way during campaigns to save his men. He did it under the guise of honor and valor, but the truth was much simpler. He wanted someone to kill him. Whatever god had decided to make him their pet project, however, had not allowed for this. Instead, he found himself the center of many celebrations and a long and growing list of soldiers who owed him their lives. He couldn’t remember the last time he paid for a drink.\ \ “Yes, your majesty,” Castor thumped a fist to his chest and bowed enough to satisfy. “Anything else I can offer you, my Emperor?”\ \ “No,” he sighed and waved a hand, “you are dismissed. Attend the barracks and coordinate security with the Captain, please.”\ \ He turned on his heel and stalked out, controlling his gait the way he always did. Not too fast, not too slow. Languid, as though he loved his role as the Traitor General. The wolfish grin he paid the guards bought their belief and they gave him one back, loving his role, too. \ \\\\ \ Castor stared at himself in the mirror, leaning over the washbasin. Water dripped down his back in cool rivers, pooling and shifting and turning around the cords of muscle and scar. He marveled at how tired he looked. How tired he was. All of his sins weighed him down and he let himself have a moment to stop trying to hold them off. His back bowed and he was looking down in the still water at a distorted version of himself. \ \ Fitting, he mused. The warped version of his face mirrored how he felt under all the complicated layers of who he believed himself to be. \ \ He glanced at the small scroll of parchment, his reason for bathing and tidying as best he could. He had another role to play while he was here. A drowning, hedonistic role he let himself disappear to and pretend everything was fine. He would attend their parties, be marveled at like a hound, and accept their offers of beds and drugs and wine until he forgot his own name. \ \ How else was he supposed to cope with the knowledge of everything he was?\ \ Traitor to his people, yes, but also the only thing keeping them safe. If he hadn’t let himself be cowed, if he hadn’t bent the knee and sworn his fealty, the Dawn Emperor was going to murder them all. They believed he was the last Tartenna left, that he carried their hope of liberation in his heart. Then he knelt and kissed the serpent ring and that hope had been snuffed out. All that remained of Valasen now was a corpse, bones picked clean by a cobbled-together council of low-House survivors too mealy to ever foment insurrection. \ \ Castor knew, though. Deep in his heart in the place where secret, soul-bound knowledge lived--Elara was alive. With every fiber of his being, he knew it. It was why he bent the knee, why he joined the army, why he went north when ordered and fought for glory under the Dawn Empire’s rising-sun banner. He was looking for his lost cousin, the true Princess of Valasen, the real Tartenna heir. \ \ She was out there and he would find her. They would restore the castle at Reyna and rally their conquered allies to her throne. They would beat back the Dawn Empire and undo the man who had destroyed them. He would find her. He would find her. \ \\\\ \ Finn dropped his head to rest against the cold wood of his bedroom door. He hardly dared to breathe, to speak. His debt would be paid. By the end of this plan that was, in truth, absolute madness, he would be free of this life he did not want. He could go. He could join the Brothers of Death or become a silk merchant or open a fish stand and sell grilled hatya trout he caught in the Maga. After this, he was no longer a prisoner of violence to a man he hated. \ \ He just had to find a way to stomach being around Keelie fucking Sharp for two weeks. \ \ It didn’t matter. He would do it. She might have absolutely zero self control, but he did. He could hunker down and drag himself through any situation if it meant he could come here, pack his bags, and never look back. He went to the closet and pulled out a trunk, pushing the taste of freedom to the back of his tongue long enough to sort out what he would need. Suits and tunics and jerkins and jackets of the finest possible make Tobin could find, awash in what was to be his House colors of plum and silver. He tried not to cringe. He looked dreadful in plum. \ \ Of course, Keelie wouldn’t. Probably why Tobin chose them. He swallowed the bitter pill of Tobin’s affection for Keelie, misplaced as it might be. All of them, on some level, craved Tobin’s approval and only Keelie had managed to actually obtain it. How? He had no idea. He put it all out of his mind and loaded his things for travel, summoning one of the house servants to bring it down and ready it for the carriage. His second trunk he would take down himself. That one was full of all his tools he would need for his role. \ \ If it was spycraft he would be doing, it would be the best damned spycraft he had ever done in his life. Finn would leave nothing to chance. He was getting out of this life that never should have been his one way or another. When he finally lay down to sleep, he stared at the familiar crack in the plaster ceiling he had slowly watched bloom and grow over the years. He had no idea how it had started, only that it was there one day. It grew a little every year and Finn liked to imagine it as the road to his new life slowly inching closer to the door through which he would escape.\ \ Gods willing and kind, this would be the last night he spent in this bed looking at that crack. \ \\\\ \ Finneas tapped his foot on the marble floor of the foyer, glancing at the clock with a sigh. He looked to Whistler who lounged against the railing, “What could possibly be taking her so long? She already loaded three trunks into the carriage, it’s a miracle she has anything left to wear!”\ \ Whistler just shrugged indifferently. No help, as usual. Finn approached the bottom of the stairs and shouted, “Will someone tell her highness that we have to leave?! Whatever she’s doing can wait!”\ \ “I assure you it could not,” Keelie threw open the door to her room - the second largest, of course, justified by her unquenchable thirst for finery that bordered on pathological as far as he was concerned. \ \ She whirled in a flurry of pale yellow silk, the gown full skirted and laced tight up the back. He grimaced and considered the mechanics of fitting that, himself, and her litany of trunks into the carriage. Briefly, he considered asking Tobin to call up a second. It might be nice to enjoy his last hour of peace before he was stuck with her for two straight weeks. Her hair was long, falling nearly to her waist in artful waves and curls. She had secured it over one shoulder with a gold and peridot comb that matched the embroidery thread stitched into the bodice. Her face had been painted subtly, augmenting angles and drawing out the brightness in her green eyes. \ \ Saskia’s handiwork, no doubt. Much as she was an artist with a blade, it seemed to be the only medium in which she had any sort of finesse. Behold, Saskia appeared in her bedroom doorway frowning unpleasantly at the back of her head. She met Finn’s irritated gaze and rolled her eyes, her muscles shifting subtly in the language they had developed after so many years to communicate things Keelie would probably break their noses for. He concealed the twitch of a smile and motioned at Keelie to hurry. \ \ “Would you stop preening over yourself and come on? If we’re the last ones there, it’s harder to blend in. The entire point of this is to blend in,” he watched her stroll down the stairs, each step a pointed essay on sloth. He set his mouth in a firm line, “I’ll leave without you if you’re going to be petulant.”\ \ He turned to make good on his threat and heard her sigh with no small amount of sulk in it. She refused his proffered arm with a sneer and shoved past him to be helped into the carriage. He took a moment to breathe. In, out, and in, out. Saskia broke his concentration. \ \ “Smuggle me back something from the castle,” she was grinning slyly at him, leaning over the railing. “Don’t get in trouble, stay safe, and talk to her as little as possible, Fins.”\ \ He smiled at her, letting his affection be plain and unguarded on his face. He and Saskia had been fast friends, two people who ended up someplace they should not have. Kindred spirits in their displacement. He felt the twinge of regret in his heart knowing he would be free while she remained a captive princess in Tobin’s grimy tower. It made him ill to think how much he would have to pay for her freedom. \ \ He would, someday. They had made that promise years ago and whatever she felt about him now, Finn intended to keep it. He offered her a nod and sweeping bow befitting any full-blooded nobleman, “A trinket for the lady, so ordered.”\ \ She rolled her eyes and grinned, waving him off, “Don’t get killed and don’t kill each other. Come back to me, Finneas Asper, and rescue me from my tower when you’re done.”\ \ He blew her a kiss and didn’t wait to see what she did with it. Keelie waited sullenly, staring out the window at the curving drive and manicured gardens. He steeled himself and climbed into the carriage behind her. With a thump, they were off. Passengers in a prison of silence. \ \ He was counting the trees, watching them fade into estates, then well-made houses, then much nicer row houses. The capital passed them by in a blur of wealth through the Gilded Quarter, skirting the slums and the working Rose Quarter. Keelie traced shapes on the glass and stared at the prints she was leaving behind. \ \ “At the castle,” her tone was serious, which concerned him, “be smart. Not that you won’t be, before you take a tone about it. Just… be smart and be safe. I don’t like the Labyrinth Castle, it just… sits wrong in my head.”\ \ Finn tilted his head in curiosity, staring at her, looking for the trap she was laying for him. Finding none felt worse, “You, too, Sharp. We’re walking a fine line with this job. Any of those noble Houses can finger us for frauds, if given sufficient motivation. Don’t give them any.”\ \ “The only thing I plan to give them,” she looked at him and grinned, “is a sufficient beating at these asinine Games they love to pretend mean anything at all.”\ \ He couldn’t resist grinning back, “Good. Do us slum dogs proud and let them lose that purse to rabble. Even if they’ll never know it, I will. If you succeed, I’ll even do you the favor of spreading that rumor all through the Rose.”\ \ She feigned surprise, “Truly? You would do something so kind for me?”\ \ “Let that be our deal, Keels,” he raised a hand and extended it to her. “We get through this, I get free, you get your purse, and if we can manage to be civil the whole time I’ll spread rumors of your greatness to the masses.”\ \ She stared at his hand in suspicion, mulling it over for a long time. Finally, she reached out and shook, “Done.”\ \ In her periphery, she tried not to look at the looming mass of the Labyrinth Castle that made a chill run down her spine.\ \ Upgrade for $5 or login](https://sarahdoesbookishstuff.binderybooks.com/item/mSHIW89ZGkVFh40mGViQ/)

Untitled Fantasy Book Chapter 2

Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 24

[I did it. I finally finished The Faithful and the Fallen with the ending of Wrath by John Gwynne. This series was a rollercoaster for me and I have a lot of things to say - good and bad - that might upset folks. Here's the thing, I won't lie about things I read even if I feel bad for saying some of them. \ \ Let me quickly recap because I read the first two before I started writing out my feelings and thoughts.\ \

• Malice: I struggled with Malice. The first half I almost put it down and I was actually shocked people loved it so much. Still, I see it on people's favorites list and it evokes a visceral reaction in me. The second half, however, proved me wrong. It picked up in huge ways I really needed. So much of Malice was Corban training and losing, repeat. The latter half, though, was all plot and story and action and moved at a much better pace. \ \
• Valour: I liked Valour so much more, but it still had the same pacing issue. There were so many repeated motifs and settings. Run, rest, be discovered, repeat was the entire book. The exception for me was Maquin and his storyline. I lived for Maquin and Fidele's storyline in this book, it was exactly the deviation from the formula I needed. \ \
• Ruin: Ruin was the best of the series to me. A great balance of action, plot, characters, development, and motion that I really enjoyed. It slogged itself down at times, but overall this was the strongest book in the series! \ \ \ One thing I've felt about this series is every single book could've done with a 30% trim and been so much stronger and better paced for it. Each book had 20-30% in it that was just repetitive or bland or didn't serve the story or anything to me. Some of the POVs reached a point of comical versions of an archetype that if we had trimmed them back or done with one less, it would have sung. \ \ Wrath, for me, suffered from the same problem. I'll start with the things I disliked and get those out of the way. Wrath was, overall, good. A good ending to a very popular series, in my opinion. However, there were a lot of cyclical moments in this book that pulled me out of feeling like I was reading a Book 4 story while characters do Book 1 things. Most prominent for me is Camlin and Rafe. Camlin has multiple chances to kill Rafe and after everything he has been through and how Camlin has grown and developed, he opts to... let him go? Many, many times. Camlin is the one character who has consistently believed in just taking action and putting someone down because they're a threat. Until it came to Rafe. Which, of course, bit him in the ass. Not once - multiple times. That was the infuriating bit. I could have forgiven once, but it was thrice that Camlin was making Book 1 choices in Book 4. That detracted from his character to me and undid what had been careful and smart development. \ \ The other example I have is the repeating Maquin-Fidele-Lykos saga. At a certain point, when they get captured for the fifth time, all I'm hearing is yakkity sax. That repeated capturing over and over actually turned Lykos from Book 2's scariest villain into a comedy trope to me. It deflated the threat of Lykos and made his character feel... silly. It also undermined Fidele's smarts and her coming into her power when, in the end, she didn't overcome Lykos at all and was exactly who she was when he bewitched her. And Maquin - GOAT and true hero of the tale - Three Stooges-tier repetitive failure to kill him. He's deadly and skilled and the best warrior they have, but comically stumbles over a root or gets elbowed in the back right when he's going in for the kill. There's a point at which I just don't care anymore and I reached that point with the Lykos cycle. \ \ My other issue stems sometimes from Gwynne's writing style. The man can write the heck out of a fight scene. Like. The absolute heck. But I can feel it in everything else that he doesn't like writing the journeying parts to get to the fight scenes. Moving around the map had a tendency to feel rushed and everything I needed to create a scene or space was left too open for me to feel grounded in the locations, but the fights were so well coordinated I could visualize them the entire time. \ \ Now onto the good bits. \ \ Camlin "For Love of the Game" whatever his last name is remains one of my favorite characters. I loved him and Edana's friendship and how his loyalty was born from just wanting something different for his life. He turns into the cool adoptive forest dad and ends up with a beautiful ending I really loved for him. \ \ Veradis, my son, finally got it together and has his "wait is this play about us" moment in Ruin that he carried into this one. His desperation to find his friend again in Nathair and the gutting knowledge he can't was a phenomenal trajectory for him. I love this idiot because even with Nathair's betrayal and breaking his oath, he remains a loyal and moralistic man to his core. He understands that his role within his oath to protect Nathair means, in this moment, from Nathair himself. \ \ Maquin's ending though. Loved it. Won't say anything else. \ \ One character who surprised me with how much they grew on me? Corban. I kinda felt like Corban was boring. In Valour I would heavy sigh at his chapters, I can't lie. But in Wrath, I really loved reading his character. He comes into his own and all the things that made him who he was pulled together here. Gwynne wrote him not as a reluctant hero, but as a man choosing to be heroic. There's a huge difference! Corban spoke to his fear and how it was fear that made him brave. He cares about his people beyond just his friends. He doesn't want power, he wants peace, but he recognizes the necessity of violence to obtain that peace.\ \ Wrath, overall, gave me a satisfying ending. I felt the twist was handled really well, the characters were where they should have been, and everything tied up nicely without feeling forced. Every ending felt earned. I did enjoy the series, but it has its flaws. It's good, not great, but I'm locked in now so I guess I have to dive into Era 2.](https://sarahdoesbookishstuff.binderybooks.com/item/MxwRF8GTZ4AM3z4BrPIr/)

The End of an Era: Wrath

1 book

Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 24

[I posted about adding exclusive written content for Tier 1 members and beyond and I figured it's only fair folks get the chance to see the stuff I plan to write and what they can anticipate.\ \ Currently, I have two dueling works-in-progress I will be sharing chapter by chapter. I'll be open for feedback, changes, criticism, etc. on both projects and figured I'd let people decide which one they want to follow and go for that since they're both so different.\ \ The first project I'm posting about is this one: The Book of Icarus. It's a blend of Catholicism, Celtic folklore, and Greek mythology about two disgraced exorcists who discover one of their own who they thought was missing might not, in fact, be missing at all. Icarus and Maren unravel something the Church has been hiding from them for over a decade and have to choose a side in the war between faith and fae.\ \ The second project I'm posing about is currently unnamed. That's how new it is. Maybe I'll open the floor and let readers help me decide on a name so I can stop calling it Unnamed Fantasy WIP. This one is very different from The Book of Icarus. It's an epic character-driven fantasy meant to evoke classic juggernauts like Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones where the world is huge, the characters are the focus, and we start returning old, forgotten fantasy creatures to our beloved genre.\ \ It turns out life doesn't end when you close the Tempest Gate and save the world. Keelie Sharp, unfortunately, would rather not talk about all that. She's a simple woman who kills people for money and accepts that her childhood dreams will only ever stay dreams. Until, of course, her patron sends her and the one person she can't stand into the heart of the kingdom to find out what exactly the Dawn Emperor is doing in the dungeons. While she avoids a face from her past, a nosy prince, and an Emperor who may or may not be going mad, she begins to wonder if she really wants to know the answer.\ \ So. Without further blathering. Enjoy the first chapter of The Book of Icarus and decide if you'd like to keep enjoying future chapters exclusively reserved for Tier 1 subscribers.\ \

• • \ \ Chapter 1\ \ Exorcising demons was killing Icarus Ulrich slowly and painfully. He closed his eyes and let his head fall back, chest heaving, the knife wound in his forearm a distant pulsing memory. The pile of ash erupted in a dim blue flame and reclaimed his attention. Vial in hand, he dipped it into the fire and captured the shimmering sludge within. When he straightened, he found the elderly couple staring at him wide-eyed in the doorway. He politely palmed the vial into his pocket and gave them a sharp nod. \ \ “My secretary will be in touch for payment,” he didn’t wait for them to respond and shoved his way past.\ \ The cold Dublin air bit at his skin despite his effort to sink back into the high coat collar of his long, wool coat. His stride was long and fast, escaping the shadow of the cramped row house until he found an alley he could use. He cracked open an ampule and let the iridescent liquid drip into one eye, then the other. Blinking, he leaned into the stone wall and slid to the ground. \ \ The numbing wash of pleasure flooded his veins, empty smile on his lips. He knew what he looked like to any passers-by: sclera flaring brilliant blue, expression slack and joyful, skin just slightly thin enough to show his pulsing veins for anyone who cared to look hard enough. Fifteen minutes passed and the world ate away at the feeling until his vision cleared and his head was sharp again. He rubbed his eyes with a calloused hand, resting against his knees while the effects wore off in full. \ \ Two more weeks until he would have to do that again. Two more weeks until the Rot tried to claim him and he fought back valiantly with a substance that would drive him mad someday if he let it. He shoved off the damp flagstone and brushed off the back of his coat halfheartedly. He needed a cigarette. Fumbling for a moment while the Eidolon wore off, he found a rogue tobacco soldier in his pocket and the last gasp of a matchbook with it.\ \ It burned his lungs deliciously while he walked the uneven cobbles and slithered around the iron poles of unlit gaslamps lining the street. The rattle and shout of horses and hawkers crashed into him like a wave when he spilled out onto the main thoroughfare into the lifeblood of industry. He tugged the white Roman collar free and shoved it in the pocket with the vial. People tended to stare more when they spotted a priest with a cigarette between his lips and he did not much enjoy being stared at. He kept his head down while he walked, mindful that he would have to dispose of his vice--one of many, if he were being honest--far enough from his destination to avoid being chastised by his loving colleagues.\ \ He flicked the butt away, lamenting the loss of a third of it, and patted his coat until he found what he needed. Keys jangled in his hands when he reached the iron-barred door of the office tucked away on the busy Temple Bar street corner. It was not his first choice, Temple Bar, but nothing matched the price so this was where they were forced to set up shop. \ \ Inside, a fire warmed the small offices upstairs against the prewinter chill. Heat carried all the way to the paned front door and he shut it quickly to stop it from escaping. He stamped the city off his boots and shrugged his coat onto a hook. A crackling, wizened voice called down from the top of the stairs, “Back so soon?”\ \ He grunted affirmation and ran a hand through slightly-too-long hair the color of sodden wheat, “Hadn’t attached to the place too hard, one foot still in the Veil.”\ \ His boots fell heavy on the wooden stairs, amber lamps stretched his shadow too long across the floor. The woman at the desk was older than she had any right to be, but more reliable than the younger ones who had come before her. Edith was never late and always methodically locked everything up at the end of the day. Her calendars were clean, easy to read, and she had no problem shaking down clients who thought they could avoid the whole “half later” part of the “half now, half later” contracts they signed. Icarus liked her very, very much.\ \ “Maren back yet?” He asked with a glance to the dark office nearest them. He knew the answer, the ask was a reflex.\ \ Edith shook her perfectly pinned white head and peered over thick spectacles, “No. Any minute now. You have a visitor.”\ \ She jerked her chin towards his office. He paused, “Who?”\ \ “Father Reed,” came a familiar strained voice behind the cracked door. Floorboards creaked under the man’s feet when he rose and widened it. His face was drawn, eyes tired. He had the ever-increasing hunch of someone who saw too much too often. \ \ Icarus took a deep breath and attempted--poorly--to hide a sigh. He placed the vial firmly on Edith’s desk, “Make sure Maren distills that. I’m running low. Father, lovely to see you.”\ \ “I’m most definitely sure it is not,” Reed smiled warmly and moved out of Icarus’s way, closing the door behind him. He remained on his feet when Icarus sat behind the weathered wooden desk.\ \ When Reed didn’t immediately explain himself, Icarus prompted him, “What brings you to the dregs of exorcist society?”\ \ He exhaled and finally sank down into the chair opposite. He leaned on the simple silver-handled cane he carried and brushed imaginary lint from his sleeve. Though he liked Father Reed, Icarus had little patience for the Church’s unexpected visits. It took the older priest a long, studious moment of silence before he decided to speak. Icarus hid his growing irritation in the grip on his pencil while he filled out the remaining fields for his most recent client. \ \ “There’s a case I’d like you to take. North of the city in Baldongan,” Reed examined his gloves. He wasn’t making eye contact, already the sign of something peculiar that set Icarus on edge.\ \ Storm-blue eyes snapped to him so sharp they could cut glass, “ You, not we. Not a Church-sanctioned house call?”\ \ He extended a hand for the yellowed folder Reed passed him and leafed through it. Eyebrow arched, he studied the details. Nothing stuck out to him as unusual. A woman showing early signs of possession, no spatial distortions, no evidence of anything other than a run-of-the-mill Bánánach trying to force its way in. The grainy black and white photo showed a buoyant woman in her late teens or early twenties, the one behind it a more recent version of her that looked a hundred years older. Jarring, but all the signs of a standard possession.\ \ “This is child’s play. A baby Caldrist could do this. You don’t need a Nytherist to slap a Bánánach around,” he dropped the folder with a clap. “Rejected until you tell me why this one specifically.”\ \ Icarus leaned back and steepled his fingers across his chest, boots thudding when they landed on the desk. The priest frowned at the impropriety, but ignored it. They had known each other long enough that Reed expected rudeness without being affected anymore. At one point, they had even been friends, “You think I didn’t already send one to handle it? The last thing I’d like to do is contract your services, you know that. The local bishop asked me to discreetly send someone more… gifted.”\ \ Icarus smirked, “And you had to admit that someone was me? I’m flattered. What about it’s different? You sure your Caldrist wasn’t just incompetent?”\ \ “I’m sure,” he shot back with a warning look. “Father Simon was efficient and effective, but this… whatever it is… couldn’t be shaken. It’s all the signs of a Bánánach, but it threw him clear across the room and broke his leg. Then it blew out all the windows and blacked out the town. Bánánach can’t do that.”\ \ “So you misclassified a demon,” Icarus shrugged. “Happens to the best of us. Well. The best of you lot anyway.”\ \ “Icarus,” Reed warned again, “don’t make me regret asking you. Just go investigate, at the very least. If it’s something Simon screwed up, I’ll double your contract fee for the inconvenience.”\ \ That made him pause. He did not like the Church, but he did like the Church’s money. He ran his tongue along his teeth and glanced at the clock ticking away at the back wall. Maren should be back by now. He would want her input on it, but Reed seemed twitchy about this case for some reason. It was unlike the man to hide his nerves, which made Icarus all the more intrigued. He sighed dramatically and dropped his feet to the floor. He put on a good show of thinking it through, bobbing his head eventually in a halfhearted nod.\ \ “Fine,” he thrust a hand at Reed, “I’ll take your ridiculously simple case and prove the Church fucked it up.”\ \ “Language, Father Icarus.” Reed shook the outstretched hand in the style of makeshift deal that had often been made about these things between them. \ \ “Father feels a bit formal,” Icarus scrunched his face to hide his disdain. He got feet to show Reed the door, “Perhaps Brother? Cousin, maybe? Hell, Uncle might be more fitting.”\ \ Reed shot him a confusing paternal look and paused at Edith’s desk. He had taken a shine to her since she started two years back and it was very much reciprocated. The older woman beamed at the opportunity to settle contract terms with him. Beside her desk stood a figure Icarus was grateful to see again. She was only shoulder height to him, but that wasn’t her fault. Icarus had always been tall. Her limbs were long, body catlike, dark almost eyes perpetually narrowed as though she constantly scrutinized everything they settled on. She did, so it was fitting. She kept her straight, black hair pulled into a low ponytail secured at the nape of her neck. Her arms were folded over her black shirt, Roman collar flashing white in sharp contrast to the dark. She liked her collar. She also didn’t smoke.\ \ He gave her a half smile, the best he could do, and she tilted her head at him. A silent conversation played out between them--what was Father Reed doing there, he would tell her in a moment, she hoped he got a good price, he absolutely did. \ \ Reed started when he noticed her and offered a small smile, “Father Maren! My apologies, I didn’t see you, my dear. You’ve always been so quiet.”\ \ It was true. Maren had a magical way of going unnoticed when she wanted to, which was essentially all the time. Her expression stayed unchanged, but it relaxed when she looked at the old man, “A pleasure, as always, Father. I look forward to Icarus’s debrief.”\ \ They exchanged a pleasant farewell and waited until the small bell stopped tinkling before sealing themselves away in Icarus’s office. She never rounded on him, Maren was not the kind to get worked up easily. She would study, ask questions, be thoughtful. Explosive response was Icarus’s specialty. He leaned against the edge of his desk and passed her the file, waiting for her to finish her methodical evaluation. \ \ “And the Church wants us to look into this?” She read through it again, her tone wary, “Seems fairly rudimentary.”\ \ He shrugged, “Beneath us, but he’ll double the fee if it turns out to be incompetence. So, there’s that.”\ \ “Hm,” she nodded, “and we do like money.”\ \ “How’d it go in Clondalkin?” He watched her ever-placid expression, always hoping someday she would give something more away to him.\ \ She put the file back down on his desk, “Fine. Nothing a Sídhe Binding couldn’t handle. Yours?”\ \ “Throw some Pale Doctrine and blood into a seal and that tends to do the trick. Left you some raw Eidolon to distill, did Edith give it?” At her affirmative, he relaxed, “I’m nearly out. I’d like to live a bit longer before Rot takes me, if you don’t mind.”\ \ “Never do,” she kept her focus on the closed file with suspicion. “Why do you think they asked for us?”\ \ He breathed a laugh, “They didn’t. Reed did. That’s the strangest bit of it. He’s selling it as Church business and I’m fairly sure the Church doesn’t have the faintest idea.”\ \ Maren watched the frosted window behind him and listened to the sounds of the city. Carriages rolling, steam trams in the distance screaming along the rails, voices muffled by the early evening fog. She turned, hands shoved into her pockets, and went to leave the room. \ \ “Tomorrow at seven there’s an early train north,” she paused to look back at him, her tone firm from giving the same lecture too many times. “Do not be late, Icarus. Repeat it back. Do not be late.”\ \ He rolled his eyes, hands up in defeat, “I won’t be late, Father Maren.”\ \ He was absolutely going to be late. \ \\\\ \ When he showed up promptly at half past, Maren was ready for him. She said nothing of it and hoisted her bag over her shoulder. He trailed after her through the hissing, steaming station disappointed by her lack of disappointment. When he glanced at the ticket she gave him, he made a noise.\ \ “You tricky bastard. Eight. Not seven,” he brandished the ticket in the air and laughed. “You’ve known me too long, my friend.”\ \ He could have sworn he saw a smile on her impassive face, but he knew better than to draw attention to it. He kept his coat wrapped and his scarf tight, the flash of his white collar hidden underneath the dark red wool. Maren stood like a statue beside him, her dark hair barely affected by the morning breeze. They waited on the brass and tile platform in silence, watching the trains pulled in and out along flickering copper wires overhead. Amber light from ornate gaslamps wavered uneasily in the receding dark. \ \ He eyed the ticker above the platform and watched the letters flutter and change. Their train drew in with a sigh--a testament to industrial engineering at its finest. Rich red and gold paints along its body, an interior of plush rose velvet in the second class car, and glorious heat that gallantly kept the Ireland cold at bay. \ \ Icarus settled into his seat and shed his coat down to his black clerical shirt and collar, relishing the warmth in the air when he hung it on the communal hook. Maren did the same, but with far less flourish. They settled in companionable silence and waited until the train jerked away from the platform before she spoke. \ \ “What do you suppose it means, that Reed is asking this and not the Church?” She mused, hand-sharpened pencil scratching away at a leatherbound journal full of secrets and sketches he had never concerned himself with knowing. \ \ He shrugged and stretched out long, arms folded, “No idea, but I’m looking forward to the double fee.”\ \ His hand slipped into his pocket and he drew out a silver flask. Maren made a disapproving sound when he shook it at her in offering. He uncapped it and drained enough to make the passage of time more bearable. Then a bit more to make it nonexistent.](https://sarahdoesbookishstuff.binderybooks.com/item/ZYGXdztZC7SsNqR31z6g/)

The Book of Icarus: Chapter 1

Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 21

Recently, I finished a book that is entirely too hard to describe. Not that I can't, just that it won't make much sense because for a majority of the book nothing made sense. \ \ Which is why I loved it.\ \ We have been craving something inventive and new in fantasy. Something that isn't brooding shadow daddies and chosen ones and grimdark and dragon Europe. A deviation from stories of magic and wizards and court intrigue that makes us think, gives us something to chew on, forces us to change what we conceive of as fantasy.\ \ Benjamin Liar gave us that in The Failures. Tenfold, he gave us something that actually feels new in fantasy. Nothing makes sense, he explains very little, but in a way where it doesn't matter and the inventiveness of his world is enough to string along my curiosity for over 500 pages. We have a desolate mountain world, automata, immortal gods, superpowered beings called Behemoths, world-ending giants, portals, sorcerers that vanished, a sun covered in buildings, a universe bereft of sky.\ \ Liar demands a lot of his readers in this book, but he rewards you with beautiful prose and fun, unique characters that I fell in love with. He leans into their failures, the things they get wrong, they ways their human nature interferes with them doing the right thing. We get a woven story that is stretched between timelines and characters, slowly converging and revealing to us that there is a quest we are going to learn about and it failed spectacularly. Now, the ghosts of that quest are coming back to haunt everyone. The worst part?\ \ Nobody knows what the right move is next. \ \ I want to talk about the characters, but I feel to do so is to betray some special moments in the book that you really have to be there to understand. Suffice it to say, you will be meeting a lot of people and people-adjacent characters. I loved The Killers' POVs. I love how he has this gritty, complicated cast of characters that slowly converge and when you realize who they all are, you will actually gasp. His use of portals and this peculiar arcane mystery of lost knowledge and dead Ages is fascinating. We learn about Dirt Magic and Silver Magic and Old Gold and this entire lexicon of terms that is unique to his world, a language that is special to these characters and people that I don't see anywhere else. \ \ I think my favorite thing about this book is the intensity of the world building. If you love a layered, complex, dreamlike world with tons of lore you will only start to pull apart in book 1? This is for you. Liar created this gigantic space all contained within the fabled Mountain that blocks out the sky. He gives you pieces without betraying the whole because part of the journey in The Wanderlands series is the story of the world. To explain hierarchy and location and kingdoms and portals would be to give away the plot and the story, which he is allowing to unfold as he teaches you about the quest our... characters... must go on. \ \ I don't care to say "heroes" because all of them are anything but. West and Candle and Winter and Bear and all of them are flawed with a history that isn't exactly heroic and where nobody knows who is making the "right choice". Liar does an excellent job of showing you right and wrong are, often, dependent on your perspective about a problem. That is one of my favorite themes - the flexibility of morality and human nature. His characters are all spectacularly gray. Even the character we consider a villain or villain-adjacent is one I found myself rooting for several times. He twists you and turns you until it's very difficult to articulate why one person is "right" and another is "wrong". \ \ The Failures sets up something so unique to fantasy that it has to be read to be understood. I cannot go into a lot of detail because the detail is the story. This book is ambitious as hell and very well written. Though I found Liar repeating themes and details and moments a lot, I can see why the choice was made to do it. I have a memory like a steel trap and I read fast, but if you're a slower reader and things get tangled? I can see losing track of the details that are so critical to his tale. Still, it never muted the beautiful, lyrical writing style of Liar, which was something I deeply loved. It called back Tamsyn Muir or Hiron Ennes for me, two authors I adore. He writes in such a sing-song way that fits the story fantastically. Everything in this tale is familiar, yet alien. Ours, yet not ours. Like looking at a TV remote underwater. The things we anticipate or think we understand bend just slightly until they become something new and foreign, demanding we consider what is "normal" in this world versus our own. The way Liar writes is so well suit for this task that it made the experience of trying to hold onto everything he says... charming? I think that's the right word.\ \ The Failures is a story that's all its own. It's demanding, but it rewards you with a delightfully complicated world, characters that really shine and test your morality and patience, and sets you off on an adventure where you truly don't know what the correct answer is - or if there even is one at all.

The Failures and Its Success

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Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 21

[That's right. This is so early in the process I haven't decided on a name for this beast yet. I've written the spine of the story so far and it's probably going to cap out at 6/7 books. Screw it. Let's have fun and write it anyway.\ \ The whole purpose of this project? Write an epic fantasy character-driven story with inspiration from Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, Throne of Glass, and several other epic series that make me want to try my hand at character-driven storytelling. I'm typically more thematic and atmospheric so this is going to challenge me in big ways to do something different. In the spirit of bravery, catch Chapter 1 in all it's rough-draft glory below.\ \

• • *\ \ Chapter 1: Whisper\ \ Nobody ever tells you what happens after you save the world. If someone had, maybe eight-year-old Elara Tartenna would have left the Tempest Gate open and let it burn. She had not, unfortunately, and it changed nothing. The Gate closed, but the wars raged on and over the course of sixteen years she had lost her family, her kingdom, and the life she was delusional enough to believe she was supposed to have. Now, the world thought Elara Tartenna had died when she closed the Gate. As far as Keelie Sharp was concerned? She did. \ \ Keelie knew one thing better than most people at the ripe old age of twenty-four--she knew how to listen. Hood high to cover the distinct silver-blonde hair she kept tightly plaited down her back, she leaned on her forearms and listened. The stew in front of her steamed, bread broken in her hands paused on its journey from bowl to mouth. All her focus lingered on the figure in the other chair, back to her. \ \ “You know how he is. Selling out his own uncle so he can inch closer to the seat of power,” the man spoke too loud, too drunk, and threw an arm across the empty seat beside him. “Finch will do what he always does. He’s a rat bastard, he’ll be at the Pits and make it look like he had no idea what’s been done.”\ \ It was what she needed to hear. She dug into one of several pouches belted around her waist and left a coin on the table, striding for the back door. Darkness had become the nature of her, the night opened its arms to welcome her out. Black cloak over a black tunic and a dark vest. Gray wool pants tucked into calf-high boots that ended at her knees. Her work tended to be nocturnal, so that was what she had become. Save for the blasted silvery hair that only ever came out when the moon was full, anyway. She should dye it again, she knew that, but it washed out her already too-pale skin and made her look like a ghost. In her line of work, ghosts stuck out. \ \ Finch was a bastard, the man spoke true. A dumb bastard, but still one all the same. The dumb ones died same as the smart ones--with one of her longknives in their throat. She adjusted her sleeves, bracers snagging the fabric, and checked the hold on her bandolier. Everything orderly, everything sharp. That was how she liked it. \ \ She had no plan for him, not yet. It would come to her while she walked the streets of the Dawn Empire’s illustrious capital Hoardann, pinnacle of civilization. The shining city of the shining Empire that swallowed the continent by inches. Eroding the nations it called allies, bleeding their wealth dry, and leaving them withered in its wake. To know Hoardann, was to love it and hate it. Usually the latter a little more. \ \ She stayed out of the wealthy neighborhoods, preferring to catch her quarry when it dared to venture into the slums she called home. Buildings cramped against each other, bending inward on shaky foundations over cobbled streets that had seen better days. Shouts from amber glowing windows, men stumbling from taverns half removed and half of their own accord. She moved without a sound around the teeming life of the darkest parts of the city. Women discretely watching for customers lingered in doorways that smelled like jasmine and rose to mask the opium smoke. Weathered-faced men exchanged whispered words and bags whose contents she would rather not ask about. A cat stepped into her path and she danced over it without losing her pace. \ \ She knew what she sought in these stinking, crumbling alleys. Knew it too well from her time in Hoardann. The last seventeen years of her life had been spent here, found and trained and tested against everything the city had to offer. Trained to fight and survive, watch the movements of people, read unspoken thoughts in every furtive glance. Trained to listen. \ \ The Pit was always heard before it was seen. Shouting, cheering. Not the good kind. Men came in droves to this cesspool, women followed in hopes of making or taking good coin. The briny scent of the River Maga washed away the human stench of the alley thanks to a well-timed breeze. The rickety docks stretched into the river, lit by dull lanterns in a feeble effort to make all of the slapdash boats feel watched over as they bobbed in the harbor. It was already drizzling when she reached the Pit. It was always drizzling. That was the worst part about this place--everything was damp. Nobody bothered to dry anymore. \ \ The building stood several floors tall and long, the only one on the block that looked to be marginally stable. The only one that made any real money, thanks to the fighting pits it pretended not to have buried inside. Its owner, a skeletal man she had only met once, called it “hiding in plain sight”. Keelie called it “idiocy”. They had exchanged a few fist-based words about it before she was banned for a month. \ \ She stared at the heavy wooden doors that did nothing to dampen the sound. The brilliant light dancing in the blown glass windows, flickering as the shadows of spectators drifted around tables and bars. Breathing deep, she stepped up and pushed. The noise hit her like a wall and she flinched, trying to make herself small. She slipped across the back wall as far as she could go before a worn wooden bar forced her to either order a drink or walk with too much purpose for a place like this.\ \ Hood still up, she flagged the bartender, “Whatever’s tapped and cheap.”\ \ He grunted, eyeing her, before turning to pour her a glass of something that foamed too much. He knew better than to ask anyone who went to that much trouble to hide their face many questions. She was known here, to her great misfortune. It was likely this would be traced back to her, yes. By the time they had, she was sure it wouldn’t matter and nothing would come out of it. She turned and crossed one booted ankle over the other, leaning back against the bar, and scanned the upper viewing area. \ \ It was two stories only, the rest reserved for the illegal brothel and gambling houses disguised as tenant properties. At the center of a square of boardwalks lined with railings threatening to collapse from the crowd, a square pit was sunken several yards into the ground. The tunnels at the back were the only way in or out. There were five of these pits built into the foundation. Five squares filled with two men each who paid or were paid good money to brawl. Sometimes it was less clear how willing each fighter was. \ \ Sometimes, she remembered with a familiar ache in her shoulder, it was a fighter who was foolish enough to think herself capable of a noble deed. She pushed the thought out and rolled her shoulders. She sipped and grimaced, half tempted to cause a scene over the audacity they had to serve something so grotesque. Cheering erupted and she used the moment to lean forward and scan anyone who stood around this pit. \ \ No sign of Finch, but she could feel him. Sense him in this place. It was her gift from Oisha, the Guild Master said. Her ability to sense things if she focused, sense people more easily. Magic? No, they would not dare utter the possibility it was magic. Not in these times where it was becoming increasingly dangerous to engage in that nasty business. She had fought the urge to spit on Oisha’s name back then. Young enough to be taken and taught, old enough to remember this was not where she was supposed to be. Not even a little. Another life she shook off with a shrug and continued her scouting around the space. Slow, unhurried steps. Weaving through the ebbing and flowing tide of the crowd, dodging a waitress with a too-full tray and ducking under the wide-thrown arm of a patron deep in his cups. \ \ It was the third pit where she found her mark. The young nephew she had been told in no uncertain terms to dispense with. The weak link in the family chain. A child who fancied himself a schemer against the master of scheming himself. The boy was a fool. Finch sat with a glass of something cherry red and expensive in his hand, leaning against a balustrade with a concubine on his lap. Also expensive, from the look of her. His dark hair too short, his nose too flat, his eyes too beady. It irritated Keelie to look at a man and know on appearances alone that he was a slimy, miserable thing. She would not feel an ounce of remorse for this. \ \ So she sat and she watched and she tracked and she waited. Most importantly, she listened. \ \ “Their tab’s getting awfully high,” the barmaid who had been running trays up and down muttered. “Last time he did this, he stumbled out and we had to call in the account to his uncle.”\ \ “Filch?” Both women laughed quietly at the mocking nickname, “Fancies himself the heir of Tobin’s secret empire. Wouldn’t shock me if he was dumb enough to try and take it.”\ \ Then what Keelie knew would not shock this woman, indeed. Finch had made a mistake. A series of them, actually. He had decided he was tired of playing the libertine to his underworld-myth of an uncle. The man was hard as nails, vicious as sea dragon, and ruthless as the death-god Haln himself. She should know. Tobin was her Guild Master, after all. \ \ His idiot of a nephew had wanted more. Gorged himself on a cushioned lifestyle and decided he was now hungry for power. That was his first mistake. The second was believing anyone in that den of vipers was his friend and ally. An unofficial Guild, they were. Bound by loyalty, money, and a healthy fear of the man in charge. Tobin, unfortunately for all but himself, possessed a formidable amount of fire affinity. He was Katur-touched, so they liked to say. He was very strong and very good at wielding what he had been given. He was also very, very good at hiding it until it was too late to do anything about it.\ \ If you called it a god-touch, you could skirt the technicalities about calling it magic. That’s what most people did to avoid getting pinched by the Black Guard, those secret police the Dawn Emperor had patrolling every street in his empire who were more than happy to make examples out of the gifted who failed to report and be registered. She shuddered at the thought of the last example making she had accidentally passed by. \ \ Finch, that was her priority. Not the Black Guard and certainly not magic.\ \ Keelie stared up at the man too old to be pulling this shit and made her plan up in her head. She was typically better than that, but Finch was a dumb bastard and she didn’t feel like it would take too much to handle him. When one of the barmaids began filling a tray with drinks, the other made an irritated sound. \ \ “Again?” \ \ “Just ready the runner to go find his uncle again,” one sighed, annoyed, and turned her back. \ \ With a pass of her hand and a twitch of her fingers--quick as a blink--Keelie unstoppered and dropped an equally mean-looking liquid into the glass of something cherry red and expensive. She made the maneuver look like she was turning back to stare down at the bar and into her glass of what was really just tangy water pretending to be ale. She kept her eyes in shadow and waited. \ \ The barmaid said something innocuous, gathered her tray, and headed for the stairs. Keelie turned her head slightly and took in the sounds of the crowd. Jeering, angry bets being fulfilled, some crooning too-young woman insisting a man too old and too drunk could afford it. She did her best to pretend she didn’t know what he could potentially afford. Being an assassin--a Whisper, as Tobin loved to call them as if it made what they did not the exact same thing--was not as exciting as she had been led to believe as a child. Yes, there were the knives and the acrobatics and the disguises and the coded languages, but mostly it was just a lot of sitting around and waiting. \ \ She timed it in breaths, how long she would have before it would be best to pack it up and leave. Each one passed, each sound becoming a dull buzz in her ear. It was like being underwater, tossed around by a river, unable to hear anything but the roar of static and silence in her head. \ \ Finally, a scream. \ \ It cut through the buzz and the water and snapped her attention along with the other patrons who knew a death scream when they heard one. Which, frankly, was far too many for one building. She glanced up and saw her mark--slumped over the railing, red foam falling from his pale lips with a sickening plop onto the floor below. He was twitching and spasming, would be for a while if the dose of gadras poison she had been forced to estimate was correct. \ \ Keelie took advantage of the momentary pause, then the subsequent chaotic shouting. She pulled off her cloak and tugged her hair free, screaming and pushing with the flow of the crowd like the rest of them. They mobbed towards the front door and she was so immersed in her act of panic that it almost felt real for a moment. The crowd spilled out onto the street into the dark, heading for the Avenue Provence as if the main street in the worst part of the city would offer them any safety. The guards that patrolled it were mostly decorative this far down. \ \ She ran and shoved and surged and eventually, slipped quietly off down an alley and slowed her pace to a leisurely walk. She sighed and raked her hands through now-tangled hair, irked at how much time she’d spent brushing it that morning. A shadow fell in beside her, swallowing the light. The only sign it was a person was the burning end of a hand rolled cigarette on the inhale and a tendril of earthy smoke on the exhale. \ \ She coughed theatrically and waved it away, “That’s a horrible habit, Whis.”\ \ The figure shrugged and light caught its face. A man, older than her by a decade with a battlescarred face and too much gray threading the black at his temples to be nowhere close to forty yet. He was wiry and lithe, like most of them in this line of work. It didn’t do well to be a barrel chested bruiser when you were trying to kill people with subtlety. \ \ “Yeah, well, don’t tell my mum will you,” he flicked the butt away knowing full well his mum was dead. All of their parents were, it was practically a prerequisite for depressing, murderous work, “You get it done?”\ \ “You think a mob of people just decided to run out of the Pit screaming?” She hastily plaited her hair again and wrapped her cloak around her shoulders. He was looking at her with a raised brow, she could see it even in the dark, “If you walk into someplace with your hood up acting mysterious, then someone dies, do you think it’s best to keep looking mysterious with your hood up when you leave?” He shrugged, “Thought not.”\ \ They walked in companionable silence for a while. Whistler was less of an active taker of lives nowadays and more of a master of espionage. If someone made it ten years in the trenches, Tobin tended to find a better use for them. Recently, his empire had been expanding into rudimentary spycraft she suspected had to do with a natural inclination to grab for power that seemed to run in his family. \ \ “Boss wants to see you tomorrow night,” Whistler said in his reedy voice. He had so many now that Keelie wondered occasionally if that was the real one or if he’d forgotten what his real one sounded like, “I’ll tell him it’s a success. Give the man the evening to mourn. But you’re back out on something big, Keels.”\ \ She sighed heavily and held out her hand. The pouch appeared without so much as a perceptible movement of his hand and she weighed it, calculating in her head. It was almost double what Tobin had said she would make for this. She frowned, “He feeling generous?”\ \ It was not a good thing when the boss felt generous. \ \ “Nah,” he struck a match along the wall and lit another cigarette, “Finch was up to worse than he thought. Decided to add a bit’a weight to match the recalculated value of the target.”\ \ She hummed and pocketed the coins, then reached out to pluck the smoke from his fingers. She took a long drag and grimaced, hating the smoke as much as she hated herself for indulging the habit, “What’s the job tomorrow? Or are you solemnly sworn to secrecy?”\ \ He shrugged and exhaled, “Don’t know the details. Just know you’re involved. Something about a lovely field trip to the castle, I hear.”\ \ Keelie froze, a chill settling into her blood. She repeated dumbly, “The Labyrinth Castle?”\ \ Whistler took two or three steps that felt a lot like skipping to her, then turned with a far more theatrical shrug that betrayed he knew significantly more than he was ever going to tell her, “And Finn’s going, too.”\ \ She groaned and threw her hands in the air, “Of course he is. Finn. Spectacular. Keelie, please kill my nephew. Keelie, please spend more time with the worst man in the Guild in the worst place in the city for one of the Whispers to go--let alone two.”\ \ Whistler laughed, musical in a way that chilled the bones of anyone who didn’t know him well. She lengthened her strides and caught up with him, annoyed, and unwilling to hide it. Whatever this mysterious job was, there was no way in all of the hells that she was going to agree to that. Haln himself could step across the Veiled Sea and tell her she had to do it and she would still not agree. She and Finneas didn’t do jobs together anymore for a reason and the reason was Finneas.\ **\ \ “No,” Keelie folded her arms. She was slouched in a fine velvet chair in a fine velvet room in a fine velvet house in the Gilded Quarter. \ \ Tobin’s house, borrowing from the “in plain sight” mantra of the Pit’s owner. Ever the mask covering his true line of work, Tobin played the successful merchant-lord who had hit the ceiling of his power without a family House. It made a wonderful alibi for what he really did and explained the regular comings and goings of all manner of person in his home. Their home, really. Base, Whistler called it. \ \ Tobin sighed, exasperated, and ran a hand across his brow. He was a handsome man, by all accounts. Tall, well-built with hair that had gone silver-gray in his twenties and become a bit of a trademark for him. He retained the boyish youth in his face, tempered by time and an impeccably maintained silver beard. He looked at her with melancholy, honey-brown eyes and a reprimanding frown. \ \ “Keelie,” he said, voice a firm and deep baritone, “nobody else can do this.”\ \ “Of course nobody else can do this, nobody else is me.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder for emphasis, “Whatever it is, I’m not doing it with him.”\ \ She jammed a finger in the direction of the young man, a year her senior and cocky as hell. His thoughtful frown and handsome face weren’t fooling her. She could see through the short ash-brown hair and soulful dark eyes, all the accoutrements of a young man with a noble calling who took a wrong turn and ended up in the Whisper Guild. \ \ He leaned against the far wall, arms folded over a blue wrapped tunic secured with the dark leather belt of a shortsword. He balanced the heel of one dark boot against the wall, the other kept long. Finn sighed and ran a gloved hand through his hair, tousling it in a way that somehow made him more irritating and handsome at the same time. Women tended to fawn over Finn, which he pretended to hate as much as he pretended to be humble. Keelie hated him. \ \ “It’s not a matter of whether or not you want to, my darling girl,” Tobin unstoppered a crystal decanter and poured himself a drink. He thought better of it, and poured one for her, too. She accepted the bribe with a glower, “I need information and Finn can get it for me. I need Finn protected and you can protect him for me.”\ \ “How does it feel to know you’re going to play fetch while I watch over you, Finnsy?” Keelie fired off a sharp smirk at him. He rolled his eyes, but wouldn’t dignify her with a response, “I hate this and I don’t want to go.”\ \ “I know you don’t, beloved pain in my ass,” Tobin patted her shoulder. She would go. They all knew it. She just wouldn’t go without a fight.\ \ “Whistler said it involved the castle,” she frowned, grim. “I really, really don’t want to go to the castle. Especially not with that pompous ass.”\ \ “Right, I’m the pompous, arrogant one,” Finn finally spoke and pushed away from the wall. He dropped into the seat across from her, face serious, “Can you ever take this work seriously, Keelie? Just once in your life, can we pretend that we are affected by what we do?”\ \ She scoffed and took a long drink, waving Tobin on. Only she could get away with such an affectation. Tobin loved her, she was essentially his adopted daughter. She was also the best weapon he had. People rarely suspected a beautiful woman had the ability to cut their throat in an alley or poison their drink in a bar. They expected her to wind up more in Saskia’s line of work. \ \ The woman opened the ornate wooden door and peered around it, beaming at Finn. Her seaglass eyes settled on Keelie and her expression soured, “I thought I smelled piss. Hello, Keelie.”\ \ Her smile curved like a scimitar, sharp and perfect. Everything about Saskia was perfect. Her stunning face, her perfectly shaped figure, her wavy black hair. She was an absolute beauty and the crown of Tobin’s brothel empire. Men and women paid by the pound for a night with his favorite concubine and he gladly charged it. She and Keelie had been found at about the same time, but Keelie ended up under Tobin’s wing while he sent Saskia to Madam Artois. Keelie killed, Saskia moaned. They, too, hated each other. \ \ “Funny, I thought I smelled opium. Lovely to see you, Sas,” Keelie raised her glass to the woman and was pointedly ignored. \ \ “The dressmaker dropped off your parcels,” Saskia directed her statement to Tobin. “The final fitting will have to be tonight so when you’re done with her, I’ll take her up.”\ \ “Her is capable of speaking,” Keelie frowned now. She looked between the two of them, then at Finn, “What’s going on? I love a new dress and all, but this feels like an awful lot of people to put me in a gown.”\ \ Tobin sighed and sat down in the only remaining chair. He pinched his nose and finished his drink. Saskia slipped away and shut the door behind her, ever the emotionally attuned lady, “You’re going to participate in the Argunfell Games and get Finneas access to the castle. He’s going to do some fact-finding for me while all the lovely lords and ladies of the realm are gathered in one place. Your only job is to do your best without exposing either of you and keep Finn from trouble.”\ \ “What?!” She half spit out her drink and hissed at the residual burn in her throat, “Are you serious?” She looked frantically at Finn, “Is he serious?”\ \ “As a summer day,” Finn sighed. “Papers are already forged. Congratulations on qualifying with flying colors, by the way. Everything’s been worked out for months, we just needed the final approval before bringing you in.”\ \ Keelie sneered at him, then at Tobin, “There’s not a better way to do any of this? I feel like we could come up with several plans to get this information you’re so worried about without involving me. Send him in as a serf or a stable boy! Let him get kicked around by a few of the royal horses, it’ll build character!”\ \ Tobin was already shaking his head, “Someone needs to be able to converse with the Houses in ways I cannot. It’s rare they gather like this in one place so I’m seizing a moment. You and Finn look the most passable for nobility from the bunch, so it’s you two going in.”\ \ Something passed between them. A knowing look that reminded her he knew all too well why she would pass just fine in Hoardann’s central court. Finn just happened to avoid any work that wound up with a scar on his pretty face or a broken nose. Maybe if she changed that, she could get out of this. As if he could read her mind, Finn made a disgusted sound and threw up his hands. \ \ “Why don’t I go in alone and fish up your information?” She bargained, “I can tease it out of them over two weeks. I can get anyone to tell me anything. I learned from the best, remember?”\ \ “You have the spycrafting ability of an ox and you are quite possibly the least charming person I have ever met,” Finn spat. \ \ She leaned forward and pointed at him with her now empty glass, “Only with you. I’m the most charming person with everyone else-”\ \ “You can’t even charm your shoes on in the morning-”\ \ “I will charm that look right off your f-”\ \ “Enough!” Tobin shouted with a finality that shut them both up. Not without an exchange of withering glares, though. “Oisha forgive me for this horrible mistake I am making. I need you both to find a way to work together and get this done. It’s two weeks. Keelie, go participate in the Games and enjoy yourself. Win, even. You can keep the whole purse if you do. Finn, do your job and get me my intelligence and I’ll forgive the last of your debt. Fair?”\ \ Finn blinked at him, stunned. The last of his debt. Keelie stared, too. This was how Tobin kept them all. He invested in every Whisper he brought on, so he expected that investment to pay him back. He kept meticulous ledgers of what every single Whisper owed him and allowed them to cash out or repay every time they finished a job. Keelie had no intention of leaving this life, not when Tobin made it clear she was his heir-apparent. All of her earnings had gone right into her bank account and subsequently into her rather elevated tastes. \ \ She liked nice things, sue her. \ \ Finneas Asper, though. He was a completely different kind of animal. She didn’t know how he’d ended up in the Guild, nobody really did. He had the stick-up-his-ass morality of a noble-born fop and took everything so seriously. He offered prayer candles at all of the altars to Haln and Emrillen after every job and, she suspected, twice on Altarday. Every kill came with a plea for forgiveness and he never took jobs that ended the life of someone who didn’t have an existing criminal background. It was insufferable how painfully moralistic he was. \ \ He had put every piece of his earnings to pay back his debts. The debts were, of course, nearly insurmountable. Designed to be. It was more likely to achieve a lordship than to pay off Tobin Parnel, still Finn tried. Now, on a silver platter, was his freedom. \ \ Keelie was staring at him, the haughty irritation fell away for a moment and she looked at him with genuine hope. Finn wasn’t made for their world. Her loathing aside, she felt a flicker of elation for him at the sound of his freedom. She could see him joining the Brothers of Death, the servants of Haln tucked deep in the mountain monastery in the Ubron Peaks to the north. \ \ She blinked away her surprise and the mask slid back on, “What if I don’t win, though? Finn gets to run free and I get the satisfaction of placing, what, third?”\ \ “You’ll win,” Tobin waved her off, but his focus was entirely on Finn. “Acceptable terms, then?”\ \ Finn nodded, mute. If he spoke, he feared the offer would vanish before he had time to enjoy it. Keelie grumbled her annoyance, “Fine. Accepted. Now,” she clapped her hand against her empty glass, “I believe I was promised dresses?”\ \ Upgrade for $5 or login](https://sarahdoesbookishstuff.binderybooks.com/item/hgQXYgEaornz1kEhx08I/)

Untitled Fantasy Book Chapter 1

Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 20

[So. In addition to reading a lot of books, I also am... writing some. Yes, it's true. I actually started all my social media to prep myself for writing and advertising. However, it turns out I really hate advertising myself and have terrible Imposter Syndrome. I also much prefer to keep it low key until I'm really, truly ready to get something together and publish it.\ \ However, I also really, really need to get over that and let people read my stuff so I can actually improve and write something worth reading. So I decided to get creative and take advantage of what tools I have at my disposal.\ \ Currently, I have two works in progress I am working on that are pretty different and definitely in need of something to motivate me to write while I get over my belief that nobody cares about what I have to write. I love to storytell and it's a thing I think makes all of us painfully, truly human. There is a magic in telling stories that everyone possesses in their own way:\ \ The magic of fantasy tales, the magic of recounting personal stories, the magic of explaining your favorite show, the magic of telling someone about your job... whatever it is, there is something in us all that tells a specific story so well that's unique to us.\ \ Well. I think I need to stop doubting my ability to tell a damned story. So. I am doing something crazy.\ \ For Tier 1 and beyond members, I am adding some new features and actually putting together projects that will be exclusive to folks who want to be a part of this journey with me. They include:\ \

• Cover art previews\ \
• Draft chapters for each project\ \
• Input opportunities for each project\ \
• Author interview requests\ \
• Early access to author interviews\ \ \ The goal is to motivate me to stop being so shy and to actually hunker down and finish what I put my nose to. I tell stories because I love to tell stories and I would love to tell those stories to more of you. So. If you want to hear more of them and have a chance to help shape what they look like? You'll be getting that chance!](https://sarahdoesbookishstuff.binderybooks.com/item/tb3acUQpuxjz1imqeeKf/)

We Are Doing Something Insane...

Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 19

The sea wall has broken during one of the worst hurricanes in known history, destroying New York City and the northeastern coast. Climate change ravages the world with power outages, water shortages, and the slow erosion of society inland.\ \ So mudlarks are born.\ \ People who can enter the ravaged city and scavenge for things the government needs that live under the brackish water of the city. Neko and Iggy, two seasoned mudlarks with their own license and crew, take their apprentices Harriet and Jules on a job that's a little legal a little illegal that changes everything.\ \ Neko finds a master CD of her vanished mother's old band The Nightjars. This request from a mysterious client makes her ask something that's plagued her for the last twenty years: is Jenny Sweet still alive somehow?\ \ I finished Mudlark and had dreams about it. Moving, emotional, sometimes a little too busy, but man it stuck to me so badly. This wasn't about the apocalypse or survival or high-octane action. This was about the struggle of mothers and daughters, the meaning of motherhood, love and purpose and how they don't always intersect, and what it means to let go.\ \ Heavy on the musical themes, a lot of that is lost on me. I am not a big music person, but it didn't detract from the meaning of the story at all. I got to watch the present-day and past-day perspectives of Jenny and her interactions with her daughter, Neko, as the girl grows up and as her relationship with Neko's father - Max - deteriorates. We see Jenny's perspective on herself and interactions with Neko, then present-day Neko's interpretation of those moments.\ \ Neko idealizes her father, then slowly becomes disillusioned with him. She also repeats her mother's patterns in a different, subtler way despite not having her around after the age of 13 when the hurricane hit. She carries immense guilt with her over her mother's disappearance, a childhood acting-out gone awry meant her mother was in their apartment. Right where the blast zone of the breaking sea walls were.\ \ We follow Neko's life and her complicated relationship with the ghost of her mother and her own guilt. When she gets the chance to uncover the mystery of Jenny Sweet and kindles the hope she might be alive, she jumps on the opportunity and becomes singular to it. Iggy, her partner of twenty years, struggles to understand or reconcile this dogged pursuit of a mother who's been out of her life more than in it and it causes them to expose their feelings about their relationship, each other, the futures they want, and how a relationship can slowly fray over time no matter how strong.\ \ As someone with a strained relationship with her mother because I felt alien to her my whole life, this hit so many chords for me (pun!). I also watched my dad descend into the cruel abyss of dementia until I lost him and have had many relationships face the question of whether or not the futures we want are irreconcilable. I was very touched by a lot of themes in this book and a lot of parts it explored. It broke my heart so badly, but I also welcomed it because it was about the tragedy of change and acceptance. There's a certain kind of complexity to being a misunderstood daughter with a mother who can't comprehend you, but likewise it changes as you grow and understand the truth: your parents are, in the end, just people. Specht captures that layered experience from both angles - the mother doing her best and the daughter who feels like she's the problem.\ \ I loved watching Neko piece together her mother and learn how to lay down the specter of her. She had unknowingly shaped her life around this understanding of Jenny and the weight of her sense of responsibility for everything that happened. her subtle mirror to her mother and Max's relationship, her unknowing reticence at motherhood that echoed Jenny's, her desire to help without grand dreams of heroism... there are parts of our parents that make their ways into ourselves whether we want it or not. We become echoes of them - less strong and faded, but the same song. Neko and Jenny shared so much across time that they never got the chance to see in one another, but I got to see it as the reader. It was so bittersweet and I just wanted to yell at Neko that Jenny loves her and tell Jenny she's a good mom.\ \ The ending, I felt, gutted a part of me. So much upheaval and change that I was dizzy about it. Things I thought would be immutable truths of human connection broke and reforged, changing the entire trajectory of lives beyond just Neko and Iggy. But that's always how it works, right? We stagnate and get comfortable for a while until something in us chafes for change as we grow without noticing. We become archons of change and growth and it means we need a bigger cage or a wider enclosure. Neko and Iggy show us how there are ways we change that are too much to hold onto - perpendicular winds that take us in all sorts of directions where we can't follow each other not matter how hard we try.\ \ Mudlark was bitter and warm and hopeful and lost at the same time. In the vein of Station Eleven or Shark Heart, Specht takes an experiment with a setting and uses it to share an intimate story of mothers and daughters and how to forgive ourselves. I loved this a lot more than I expected to and I hope, when it releases on the 21st, you do the same.

The Humanity of Being a Mudlark

1 book

Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 17

I'm having a very bug girl summer, I think. First The Demon Star with its worm exorcists, and now this book. Anyway. Andrew Joseph White, what on earth did you dream up here?\ \ I was shocked and blown away by this book. I know AJW from his YA book, so this was a sharp and cutting left turn into adult horror and I think this is exactly the place he is meant to be. What a mess of a book in the best way. White gave us such a visceral, nuanced, and confrontational experience in the head of a mute, autistic, trans man named Crane.\ \ Crane is self destructive in a way I understood in my early 20s and it hurt my heart to read about a character in that same place. Crane indulges in risky, dangerous behavior including sex that blurs the line between consensual and not, emotional and not. All of it is meant to contend with mental health issues run amok, a struggle in his own skin, and him not giving himself permission to live and be someone worthy of healing. He doesn't deem himself worthy of care and thus takes off down a path of demolition that I never could have expected.\ \ Crane turns up pregnant one day. The Hive, the mass of bugs and viscera that brought a bunch of people in their worst days together in a violent patchwork found family they never chose, won't allow him to abort it. It threatens his friends, it sends a guard to keep watch on him, and it tasks his not-quite-boyfriend Levi with keeping him in line until the birth. It is just... horrific.\ \ Claustrophobic, frantic, and disgusting. Crane loses control over his body even more after already not feeling as if he has control over his body. He considers the dark side of parenthood and maternity and all of the things he's supposed to feel never coming to the surface. He tries to set other women free from this curse and protect them at the expense of himself, not sure why he even does it. He experiences resentment and hatred at the women in his life who support it, even tacitly, and lashes out.\ \ This book was about the complexity of the trans experience and the experience of a woman transitioning into a man. It was also about the betrayal of sisterhood and how our fellow women are sometimes the architects of our suffering. Women who discredit each other's identities, try and push their agendas on other women, refuse to acknowledge trans men, obsess over each other's bodies... we hurt each other and ourselves when we deny our sisters the ability to choose their own path for their body and their lives.\ \ White also shows the complex duality of living in a transmasc body. The struggle between appearing feminine and feeling masculine, the comfort of hearing your pronouns used correctly, and the personal struggle in the mirror to reconcile your body with your mind. I don't have gender dysphoria, I don't fully understand that struggle and I count myself very fortunate I feel like I am in the right body. White showed me this vulnerable, brutal window into what it's like to endure through those conflicting identities all converging on each other. How hard it is to look at yourself and not know you. I had no idea what that felt like, but damn did White really help me understand.\ \ There's a certain level of control women and trans folks do not have over their bodies. YWMTBH dives into how suffocating and frustrating that is in a real, intense way. The other thing he does, though, is he captures how no matter the restrictions - alien or government - nothing changes. Nothing. Not one thing. Crane is still trans. Crane is still autistic. Crane still doesn't want to be pregnant. Crane is still Crane, no matter how the Hive or Levi or the government try to stamp that out of him.\ \ Crane also dealt with the fear all young folks deal with and I think I would've like to see that explored a little more - the fear of telling his family because he had seen so many awful, awful endings to people who told their truth. Society and exposure to so much made him fear telling his parents anything and instead he fled and started over with the Hive. He never gave his parents a chance because we have highlighted how much hatred there is that trans people experience every day.\ \ When laws aren't working, when restrictions aren't working, we try force instead. We force trans people to be something they aren't, we force them to stay in the closet, we force them to suffer and when they die for it we consider that a job well done that they died in a body they do not want and did not fit them. Seeing this in action made Crane too afraid to go to two people who clearly loved him so much they recognized him at a gas station as a fully different version of himself.\ \ We have tried so hard to batter trans people down with hate, but we have never tried love. Of course Crane descended to the point he did. We did that to him.\ \ Another theme in this book I want to talk about is how White handled the complexity of an abusive relationship. I was in one, once. Seeing someone take that situation and portray it how White did was actually liberating and refreshing. He got it right. All of the statistics and plans and maps for how to deal with a friend in one? Correct. I got out because my friends never stopped being there for me and never let me be isolated until I was ready.\ \ He also was so good about showing how abuse isn't what you think. It's not always black eyes and bruises. It's a lack of control over your psyche, it's self doubt to the point of making decisions you'd never make in your right mind. It's about manipulation and when that doesn't work it turns into force. White showed Crane experiencing abuse in a very different way than we think of it and I thank him for that. It's not always what we think, but it's still abuse even if it doesn't leave a physical mark every time.\ \ We also got to be in the head of one of the rarest character types - a nonverbal autistic person. I don't think I've read another book that has a main character that's nonverbal and autistic. What a unique experience. The struggle of communication, not knowing how to get past his autistic meltdowns, what they look like, how they feel. This was such a book about feelings it's hard to explain. It should twist your gut and make you nauseous because some of the things we do and the ways we treat people are, actually, nauseating.\ \ Stagger, his guard, becomes a staple of the story and the effect of what it feels like to have someone with your best interests at heart after being surrounded by people who don't. It's hard for Crane at first to accept Stagger actually cares about him, but by the end he is so connected to Stagger that being without him is painful. Stagger is the bridge of well-meaning that tries so hard to do its best while still not doing enough to allow Crane to have control over his body. Wanting more and caring about him, but not interfering to protect him until the damage is done. It's all of us who have never marched, spoken out, intervened, etc. until it's already over. It isn't enough to be well meaning, even if it does help in the long term. We have to be brave and willing to put ourselves in the way to protect each other's rights to our bodies and our lives. We can't exempt ourselves because we aren't part of their group - whatever happens to one community affects us all eventually. That's what the scene with the bathtub was showing you: eventually, we are all affected by the same attacks on our neighbors.\ \ There is no escape, there is no exemption. That's why we have to stand for each other.\ \ I liked this book so much more than I expected for a book about bugs and viscera. It was haunting and gross and stark and very raw. If you're looking for a horror book that will challenge you in ways horror tends to shy away from in a serious way, this is a great place to plunge your hands into the worms and get grimy.

You Weren't Mean to Be Human and Neither Was I

1 book

Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 14

The Demon Star, we need to talk.\ \ This book was... something else entirely. I'm going to try and pull apart all of the themes and I am sure I am going to miss one, there were just so many.\ \ The Demon Star by Jesse Aragon is an ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) I was so lucky to receive at the last minute from the publisher because I said yes to a totally different book. I was so excited about this one because the premise looks crazy and just up my alley. Demons, exorcism, living gods, revenge? Sign me up. I love a bleak fantasy\ \ What I got, instead, was a little bit of every single genre I love, complicated characters, deep themes I never get to see in a book, and a fresh and unique take on storytelling that I just fell in love with. Let's start with the writing itself. Aragon is an action writer. Period. Cinematic, vivid, visceral. She knows how to get in your head and make you see exactly what she wants from you. I felt like I was alongside her characters in their breathless race to win against their demon "gods", I was shocked and horrified several times, I gasped, I punched the air. Whatever she was looking to convey, she did it.\ \ There were some moments in the middle I felt we could have used a breather or a bit to pause and gather our thoughts, which did make me pause reading and feel a little overtired. Overall, though, I loved the pacing of the first 2/3. The last 1/3 had it's moments where it felt a little slower or more meandering, but I interpret that as the feeling of having a leash yanked after running full sprint. Of course it's going to feel slower and different after nonstop running. And honestly? Everything about the book is so wild and fun and engrossing that it didn't make my experience any less fun.\ \ Now let's get into her characters. Oh boy, the characters!\ \ I have so much to say!\ \ Nobody in this book is a hero. I love, love, love that. I love it so much I can't even explain. Every single character was morally complicated, a disaster, right, wrong, evil, good. Everyone.\ \ Jacen, our resident exorcist, was a complete disaster. Messy, complicated, addicted to faith and then adrenaline and never sure if he's making the right moral decisions. He chooses his paths and sticks with them to the bitter end. Jacen sees the gods for what they are and what they are doing to everyone and he chooses to stop being a mewling sycophant and weaponize his faith. Is he right? It's not clear. He is plagued constantly by whether or not he's making the right choices and he never knows if his choices are his, he just knows he's sick of the church's lying to him. He channels his own hurt about his discoveries into his actions and uses that to justify them. In the end, though, he stands at the edge of the world with Seth and Ysira and asks himself: What have I done?\ \ Speaking of Ysira. Ysira, my love. What an amazing, complicated female main character. She has a son, a demon that regenerates her body forever, and has to decide what power means and what it will cost her. She is a horrible mother. Not maternal at all. But she is always considering what she's doing in the grand scheme of a greater good. Yes, she says awful things to her son, but Neri is the only one who can save them in their time of need and she has to decide if it's Neri or the world. Ysira is faced with a classic trolley problem and she is decisive. She acts. She is always the actor. I, personally, am also a decisive person and Ysira's character resonated with me hard. She doesn't know how to be maternal, how to love or be loved, how to take herself out of survival mode. Ysira recognizes that the only thing she can use in her world to keep herself and anyone she cares about safe is power. Nothing else will matter. She sets her son up to do the unthinkable for the greater good of their species and planet. But still, she stands with Jacen and Seth at the edge of the world and asks herself: Did I make the right choice?\ \ Finally, we have Seth. Seth. My love. My lynchpin. Seth is the closest we get to a hero in this story. He loves Neri for Neri. Neri has been used and neglected and forgotten, powerless and pointless, but not to Seth. Seth loved Neri just because he was a curious and gentle kid who deserved to be loved. He fell in love with Jacen, a complete disaster exorcist who dealt with unimaginable grief, but was able to keep his heart open to him when Jacen came back to himself. Seth sees Ysira clearly and all of her pain and fear, but he makes a place for her in his heart she doesn't have to fight for. Seth is trying so hard to be good in this world where goodness is snuffed out like a candle. And he stands with Jacen and Ysira at the edge of the world and asks himself: Can I love you through your worst decisions?\ \ Their relationship isn't so much about romance as it is about self-loathing and coping with impossible circumstances. Jacen and Seth love each other, they always have. For them, this connection is always where they wanted to be. Ysira is not in love with either of them, but she has love for both of them. The inverse is true. The three of them are the only ones who can be full present and together and understand what they all have done. It makes sense they would destroy themselves by leaning into an intensely emotional, volatile connection that has a foundation of destruction and usury and weaponization. Will it be lasting and strong? It's impossible to know. All we do know is they're three people who have to bear a horrible weight that nobody else can carry and it makes perfect sense they would descend into each other to cope.\ \ Aragon talked so, so well about the theme of religious exploitation and the complexity of faith. Faith is something you are supposed to question every day, but in the White Church, you can be executed for it. Questioning your living demon gods results in a Harvest chip and you're never seen again. That stamping out of questioning has let to centuries of suffering, so when a new living god comes around and offers a better deal? Of course there's a group that decide the devil they don't know might be better than the devil they do. Ysira and Jacen allying to turn the church into their greatest weapon to save their people is smart and thoughtful and demonstrably true when we look at the history of religion and how it's been manipulated and bent and changed to suit the needs of conquering nations. She brings that to light in a way that doesn't feel forced or preaching or shoved down your throat--she's just frank and deliberate about it in this world and trusts her reader to take it out into their own.\ \ I loved how she made this so messy. Is Naxal actually better than the Firstborn Empire? Are these small, violent blips in Neri just moments or signs of something else? When they consider the horrors of the Firstborn Empire, are they really opting for a lesser evil? When they discover the weapons of their enemies and consider harnessing them if they must, are they any better than them?\ \ Nothing in this story is clean, nothing is forgiving. It ends with more questions than answers, but about the decisions they have all made and whether or not they were right. Aragon does a phenomenal job of making you consider right versus wrong, good versus evil, and if those things even exist in the first place.\ \ If you're looking for something that's one big moral quandary and grabs elements of horror, science fiction, and fantasy? The Demon Star was a 4.5 star read for me and I think it will be for you, too.

The Demon Star and Genre Bending

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Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 11

So. In one of the cooler things I've had the chance to do, I got to send over an interview to THE Kaden Love, author of Toothsucker. Kaden is an indie author who wrote a wild sci-fi cyberpunk vampire story unlike anything you've ever read. Original concept, chaotic energy in the best possible way, and one of the weirdest interpretations of vampirism I've seen. \ \ I had the great fortune of asking Kaden a few questions about himself, his process, his inspirations, and a lot more. Here's what he had to say!\ \ Tell me about yourself! What’s your favorite genre to read? What are you currently reading? What’s your grand-slam all-time favorite book?\ \ As you can tell with my writing, I am a huge fan of cyberpunk and thought provoking scifi. The weirder and the more it hurts my head, the better. I grew up being a much more of an epic fantasy reader, which I still love, but I've been tending towards scifi as of late. It's hard to pick an absolute favorite, but to choose some, it would be Hyperion by Dan Simmons, Memories of Ice by Stephen Erikson, Neuromancer by William Gibson, and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the world by Haruki Murakami \ \ The obvious question: Why teeth? How did we get here? What prompted the dentata of it all?\ \ funny enough, this all started as a short story I wrote in college that was a play on the tooth fairy. I love the moral dilemma of an ethical vampire who hates to hurt people, but has to feed. I wondered what if we gave tooth fairies a reason for collecting teeth then made one wonder if he could trick people into leaving their teeth under their pillows to avoid ripping them out.\ \ Did you always envision this as a cyberpunk world or did it start somewhere else first?\ \ It started as a fantasy short story. When I decided to turn it into a novel, it was a dark fantasy reminiscent of Dark Souls. I got super into cyberpunk when I was about 3 chapters in and decided to start from the beginning with a new light (you get the pun if you've read Toothsucker).\ \ Describe how it is you picture this manifestation of light-as-currency in your book as best you can. Bad drawings are encouraged. So are good drawings.\ \ The color spectrum is really interesting, noting especially how in light there is different energy emitted by ultraviolet and infrared. This was the basis. I wanted to make light something physical, in the sense that data is, so it turned into currency, ammunition, apparel in the form of clothing highlights and make-up, and so forth. Society in this hyper-capitalistic world is sorted by the colors. Blue is the average city, Violet is reserved for the elite of the elite, Orange is the poorest of the poor, and Red is a literal wasteland for fiends created by this world’s neglect (mostly beings that were once human but have since changed due to this whole pharmaceutical mess that gives the story it's backbone).\ \ Have you ever pitched this story to a traditional publisher or literary agent, or was this always “meant” to be an indie project for you?\ \ I queried it for a month or so but went indie and am happy with the audience I have so far. I love having it indie because I can pump books out a the speed that I like (books 2 and 3 are both being released this year), but I would love to go traditional to help it reach a wider audience eventually.\ \ What was your experience like with getting the audiobook made for Toothsucker? How did you find your narrator? What was the most surprising thing you learned while working up the audiobook?\ \ The audiobook was actually a really funny experience. I tried for a long time to get a publisher to help me do an audiobook, because my social outreach has grown a lot since the first books release. With a larger social media following, I get random messages all the time from people trying to promote their own things, but I still try to check them even if I don't answer them, I got one from a narrator saying that he would like to throw his hat in the ring to see if I'm interested in having him narrate Toothsucker. At this point I was still looking for a publisher, but I listened out of interest. Turns out, Jordan Joshua WAS THE VOICE for Petya (the main character in the series). We started working together quickly. I loved his work and his wide range of voices, that I think is starting to rival Jeff Hayes for me. He's doing so well and it's putting even more sound effects into book 2 and I can't wait for more people to listen to it! Funny enough, even though I think he is one of my favorite narrators I've ever listened to, I hate listening to my own audiobooks cuz I feel like I'm listening to myself. Talk. Whenever I am reviewing them for potential errors, I have to do something to distract myself because I hate listening to my own words, even though I am pretty proud of my books.\ \ How is indie audiobook publishing different from print? What would you do differently?\ \ With indie, I was able to negotiate a rate and do a one-time payment to my narrator, rather than sharing royalties. Even though it's a little more expensive up front, it's pretty nice because I get all of the money from the sales, except whatever audible steals from me. At this point, I'm about to publish my fifth novel and I feel like I have the system down pretty well. The only thing I want to change is a larger audience, but that is hopefully coming with time.\ \ Are there any people in your real life that you’ve used as inspiration for any characters in the story? Do they know? How do they feel about it?\ \ As you read in the dedication, this was made for my wife's best friends who were stuck in detainment in the US for 1.5 years while trying to flee the war in Russia. The stories that Petya tells about his detainment were inspired by the inhumane conditions of ICE facilities here and the tragedy of people seeking safety. That is a long depressing story that never ended in them making it to the US, so I felt they deserved a story. They both know about the dedication and appreciate it immensely. The romance in the novel is somewhat inspired by me and my wife, though there are many characters with minor inspiration. \ \ Have your parents read your book? What do they think?\ \ Funny enough, they have both read the first book and loved it. They are currently working on reading book 2. They're fans and I think it makes them proud \ \ Your social media is very active and engaging. What do you think helps you market your work the most online? How do you stay so connected with your online audience?\ \ I'm glad that people find me entertaining and enjoy my book reviews, I've been very blessed to have some success on social media. The best for marketing tends to be when other people review my books or talk about how much they enjoy. Then. I might make some sales from my post, but whenever I find a genuine fan that talks about how much they love my books, that does so much more for me. That genuinely enjoys my books, because any any support like that means the world to me. The Instagram community has been a lot of fun from me as an author and I can't thank the people that talk about my books enough. When Brandon Sanderson or George RR Martin get another book review. Their world doesn't change. When someone reads one of my books, there is a good chance. I will see the review posted and it means so much to me. Every sale matters. Every reader matters.\ \ When you were first putting this story together, was there an author or authors you wanted to emulate or were drawn to for inspiration? Or did you just open a Word document and start flying?\ \ Most of my earlier books were very plot focused, but I know a lot of people enjoy character focused stories. Pierce Brown did this very well with Red Rising, by making the characters and plot equally as interesting. I tried to tap into that with this, but I think the greatest inspiration was the anime cyberpunk edgerunners. This show managed to pack such an emotional punch into 10 mere episodes. I loved the blend of cyberpunk crime, with a brilliant romance and the drastic fall of a certain character. To me, this is the perfect cyberpunk story, which made it such a big inspiration. I am also a huge manga fan, and each novel in the series was drastically influenced by a certain manga. Chainsaw man, and the works of Naoki Urasawa were particularly influential to my work.\ \ What one piece of advice would you give to anyone just starting to write their story or manuscript?\ \ Just start writing. Write everyday no matter how few words and don't let a day go by without writing. Use every moment you have to write, even if it's on your phone during a busy work day. Utilize all the spare time that you have to make that novel happen, because unless you commit it won't.

Kaden Love and the Experience of Eating Teeth

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Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 9

We've done it. We've made it to the halfway mark of the year! I can't believe it's half over already. 2026 has been a banner year for me with reading and coming out on top reading some incredible books I never thought I would get the chance to read. \ \ I've had so many opportunities and changes and experiences in the last 6 months I almost feel like a different person sitting here typing this up. I've read ARCs, connected with authors, joined a writing cohort, taken on a job doing developmental edits, started a podcast, started an interview series... \ \ All because I just like to talk about my weird and wonderful books. \ \ So, halfway through 2026, let's talk about those wonderful books and what's been a 5-star read for me this year. \ \ The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon\ \ My first five star read of the year. Candon built this incredible, lush, weird, amazing world I wanted to live in. Fever dream mech fantasy about a man trying to figure out how to be normal and escape a past that won't let him go. Sunai makes horrible choices, but all of them consistently lead him back to the one place he never really left. I loved how wild and bizarre this was. I was left wanting more and more of this world and I hope so hard that Candon continues this series. \ \ Slewfoot by Brom\ \ If you want me to rate your book five stars, make it about female rage and killing puritans. Brom outdid himself with this one. He wrote Abitha with such conviction there's no way his wife didn't advise him on it, I refuse to believe a man capable of capturing the frustration and rage about the female experience so accurately. I love the tapestry of witchcraft and small mindedness and the blindness of religion and the effects of patriarchy on us all. This was so delightful and 5 stars well earned. \ \ The Wolf and His King by Finn Longman\ \ Book so good I emailed the author. I've never emailed an author before. Finn was the first. This book is a retelling of a real 13-century fairytale that was the first example of fiction in medieval France. Longman turned it into a beautiful test of prose, writing styles, and an exploration in chronic illness, queer identity, and what it means for love to endure. This book was so full of yearning and so beautifully written I finished it in a day and I bullied several other people into reading it after. \ \ Shark Heart by Emily Habeck\ \ I picked this up on a whim because the premise was bizarre. A man is slowly turning into a great white shark because of a genetic disorder? And someone said it wrecked them? Okay, bet. And bet I did. I walked away sobbing over this heart wrenching, existence examining piece on caretaking, loss, illness, and love. Shark Heart does not get enough love for what it did.\ \ Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir\ \ Muir is incapable of writing something that isn't five stars. Her use of prose and style, turning the writing itself into a character... nobody does it like Muir does. Every book in this series is different, it changes you. Nona was her solarpunk installation that gave me so many painful, beautiful moments of seeing characters I loved overcome and endure for each other. It also made me mad at Jod.\ \ Memories of Ice by Steven Erikson\ \ I am a Malazan bro because of this book. MoI was the culmination of two books - 1800 pages - worth of trust in a process I was unsure could be trusted. Erikson delivered on every single front. He gave readers something incredible in this book and really proved to me how multifaceted and gifted he is at world building and writing. This was an incredible installment. \ \ Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang\ \ I am a different person because of this book. Because of Sciona, unlikable heroine and dogged in her pursuit of knowledge. Because of Thomil who understands the cost of power and pushes to make Scion see it, too. I adored this book and how it addressed the importance of intersectionality and listening to marginalized voices. It was so beautiful and fearless and Wang knows exactly how to break your heart to teach you something important. This book should be required reading.\ \ Headlights by C.J. Leede\ \ This was the first ARC I have ever given five stars to. I was a mess. A disaster. If you had told me a book about an unretired FBI agent investigating wild killings where victims are skinned and the perpetrators have no memory would change me, I would never have believed you. I adored every second of this. It was about wildness and fear and loss and love and so, so much more than I can articulate in a single post. If I had my Bindery a few months sooner, I would have written pages upon pages about this. Leede's writing is poetry, her symbolism is subtle and unique, her approach to loss and grief is spellbinding. \ \ The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes\ \ Ennes will go down as one of the most stunning writers in the modern era. They have a grasp of language that I can only hope to have a fraction of. This book was weird and stunning and unforgiving. It made me forget I was reading about bugs because I was constantly engrossed in the characters and the world and the slow collapse of this bizarre government. It accosted my senses in incredible ways and showed the costs of power without question. I adored the characters and I will forever be rooting for Guy and his love of the theater. Ennes made politics, art, and theater inextricable from each other. One begets the others, every time. I am so, so impressed at this book. \ \ The Soft Touch by Daniel Polansky\ \ How did one man pack so much into a novella? Really. I finished this, stared at the cover, and bought everything Polansky has ever written. I loved this world. I loved how stubbornly optimistic Wren was and how he refused to let pessimism win in a town where pessimism already believed it had won. He was clever and sharp, the writing was witty and dry, and everything was so alive in such a short time. I didn't want it to end, this wild blend of steampunk magic. This novella made me realize the draw of urban fantasy. \ \ The Butcher of Nazareth by David Scott Hay\ \ I have a whole post about this book and I can never stop saying wonderful things about it. Hay created a masterwork here, just an absolute class in how to leverage the physicality of writing to meet the story and create something beautiful and tragic. II was so sad and so hurt for the Butcher, but I was in his grief with him in ways I didn't think I could be in a book. I am deeply impressed by this story and how David crafted it. Everyone should read it, especially if you love religious horror. \ \ So this has been my year in favorites so far. I've read 100 books on the nose so far and this is the sliver of those who really changed something about me. Every five star I give out changes a piece of me - my perspective, my sense of self, my understanding of a genre, something. I walked away from each of these books with something new in my bones that wasn't there before. I love all our popular series just as much as the next person, but my heart will always be with books that dig deep and demand things of me nothing else does.

Meeting Up Halfway

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Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 7

So I recently dove into an oft-unmentioned book by sci-fi great C.J. Cherryh called Hammerfall. The first in a duology, I was excited to get into it and read something obscure she wrote - something new an interesting I had missed somehow. \ \ I do, sadly, see why it was obscure and unmentioned. \ \ The premise? Very cool. Marak has visions and after being betrayed by his father, he is sent to be taken before the immortal god-ruler called the Ila. Marak suffers from what's called "the madness" where a person is plagued by repeating visions and hallucinations, all of them suffering identical ones about a tower followed by the relentless compulsion to journey east. The Ila, strangely, decides Marak has enough of his faculties that he should just... follow them. See what happens. \ \ So after bartering for his fellow madpersons' freedom to join him, Marak ventures across a desert as his visions intensify. During their travels, we see them weather storms, a power exchange, his budding relationships with two women who become his wives, Hati and Norit. Finally, after months, they come upon the tower. We learn about a galactic war between the Ila and these mysterious creatures and how the Ila has rebelled by creating things she wasn't supposed to and putting life on this planet. Luz and Ian, the two figures manning this tower, warn Marak that the end of the world is coming and they have to return and get as many people as they can to the tower for safety. \ \ That's about where the interesting stuff stops. \ \ After our journey through the desert, we then have to... journey back through the desert. Where we argue with the Ila, but then she rallies the tribes to go across the desert. Then... we go back across the desert. Again. Racing time as the "hammerfall" or apocalypse arrives. \ \ I can only read so many passages about getting off and on a pack animal, resting in midday tents, and walking before I am skipping pages begging something to happen. To and fro. That is all the journey was. Just... coming and going. \ \ It's a shame because Cherryh is a beautiful writer, her prose is fantastic and remains so strong in this. It was just so ceaseless in its monotony that I couldn't bring myself to be anything but annoyed. I skipped and skimmed so much hunting for when things would happen only to annoyingly discover they never did. We never got clarity on the ondats and what they are, very little came out about the nanotechnology other than it lets them live forever if they're infected with it, and Marak got closure by killing his dad after his dad killed his mom. \ \ This all sounds extremely exciting, I know, but let me tell you that it was not. Somehow, we made it bland and tasteless and boring. I love weird sci fi, but there's a line between weird sci fi and pointless sci fi and Hammerfall was unfortunately the latter. \ \ This got me thinking about a bigger picture item, mostly because I just finished Throne of Glass and there's a lot about the weakness or "bad writing" in the series' early installments. Even the greatest writers stumble. That's the nature of writing. Some big, colossal, genre-defining names have had bad or weak or forgettable books. Not every book is going to be a masterpiece and that's just fine. \ \ We put so much pressure on authors to always produce masterworks, always getting better and better. Typically, they do! This is the nature of repeatedly flexing a talent! But sometimes, even masters of their craft slide. The true test of greatness is what they do with that slide, that reminder of the kind of author or talent or creator they used to be and how far they have come. Cherryh is a powerhouse in sci fi. She will always be. It's because of this folding-in of a less than ideal series that she continues to be known as a great writer. It didn't stop or deter her, she just folded it in and went back to her desk. \ \ We have to let our favorites fail sometimes. They're humans. The beauty of human-made art is in the occasional failure of that art to connect. There is something painfully real about pushing through a book I should've put down and getting to the end, to seeing it through. It reminds me of fallibility, of how much we can change and still fall back a few steps, of how everyone including these colossi of their craft can miss sometimes. \ \ So Hammerfall was not what I wanted it to be, but it was also a reminder that it doesn't make Cherryh any less of a great. That, alone, was worth finishing for the reminder.

Hammerfall and the Occasional Miss

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Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 5

We made it. This will be long. We've got a lot of ground to cover, chat.\ \ Kingdom of Ash has been completed. I have read my way through Throne of Glass for the very first time. It's done. I have to say, I think the finale really did satisfy me in every way I could think of. It was bittersweet, fast-paced, and action heavy. We saw growth from Aelin as a character that I've been dying to see and that was preventing me from enjoying my time with her as a character.\ \ This book was far more dispersed. We got every cluster of side characters equally and Aelin no longer dominated the page, which I felt was a good thing for me as someone who doesn't care for her and for the story. It let the other characters shine in ways they really deserved to. I actually consider the story in 2 parts - before the box and after the box. Everyone loves a good Main Character in a Box arc for some reason, but it worked here in really good ways.\ \ It was not a clean rescue. We didn't get Aelin back in the first 100 pages. She stayed gone for the first 350 and mentally gone for the next 150, meaning half the book was giving Aelin an arc to realize where she stumbled and start anew if she wanted. I loved Fenrys in this and getting to know these other cadre members that we didn't get much time with before. Him and Aelin's trauma bonding was heartbreaking and SJM really leaned into villainy here, which I liked a lot. She let Maeve be evil, but her motives be kind of... understandable? That's one thing I've enjoyed about the series. Nobody is clear cut, not even Erawan.\ \ I felt for Aelin in the end. The fear and struggle and suffering... I just really felt for her. Refusing to break and not knowing real from illusion is terrifying. It stripped her of all the mechanics she used to avoid herself and never have to face anything head on, which translated to later in the book when she stopped avoiding herself and charged into battle. I don't think she could've let the army without this arc, evil as it was. She had to become someone new to claim her power and birthright. The person she was didn't have the capacity or ability to step into the role of queen. If she wanted to lead her people, she had to literally be reborn as a new person.\ \ She retains her dry humor and irreverence, but she's lost the self-limiting cockiness and aggrandizing behavior that alienated her from other people. Part of leading is knowing when to accept help, thinking bigger than yourself, and knowing how to balance hard choices for what you need with what you want. The fact is that for the first 6 books of the series, Aelin didn't have that. She was selfish and couldn't think outside of herself for a long time. Later books, she learns to also think of her friends, but still in a selfish way. She doesn't let them in, still keeps them at arm's length, doesn't give them autonomy or choice and decides on their behalf what's best for them without their input. Well-intentioned, of course, but well-intentioned doesn't mean right. It also doesn't mean she's ready for leadership. At all.\ \ But the woman who comes running from Maeve's war camp and sits quietly on the boat through the mountains is different. She's been forced to rely on Fenrys for her mental survival. Her skin has been stripped away and forged anew. She literally loses all the scars that remind her of the person she was and has to decide the kind of person she will become. Her scars are an old version of her that doesn't fit with this new person she needs to be, the person she wants to be. I think that's the key difference between KOA Aelin and EOS Aelin. EOS Aelin was present-minded, she only thought about right now and herself and what she wanted and felt she was owed for herself. KOA Aelin has been through so much that stripped that away and made her realize it wasn't about her, it was about Erilea and Terrasen. She removed herself from the equation to see the real picture at hand - she had to become someone that could lead a kingdom, regardless of whether or not it ended with her on the throne. She had to be the kind of person who loved her people sight unseen more than she loved a crown and power. EOS Aelin wanted the crown and the power, KOA Aelin wanted whatever was best for her people. That's the distinction and why I think Darrow was fully right to deny her the throne in EOS. I stand on that forever.\ \ I loved seeing Fenrys get his arc, tragic as it was. My only complaint is that I wish we'd split KOA into two books so we could get more of Fenrys and Connall, or had more setup for their dynamic ahead of time. I think Connall's death felt a little flat for me because I didn't know him beyond being Fenrys's twin and I didn't know Fenrys enough to have an emotional attachment to that bond. However, it was still devastating to read and empathize with this poor wolf-man who only ever wanted to protect his brother. Maeve had cleaved into Connall's mind and destroyed their relationship, yes. But Fenrys did what Aelin had done - he decided what was best to protect Connall without letting Connall have any agency or tell him what he needed. Misguided as it was, Connall took the blood oath because he wanted to. Fenrys didn't respect his brother's agency and that let himself be manipulated by Maeve into taking it, too. If he had allowed his brother to do what he wished and tell him how or if he needed protecting, I think it would have been a completely different relationship for them.\ \ Sometimes, you have to let the people you love make bad decisions and experience the natural consequences of them. Constantly shielding people from those consequences isn't noble, it damages your relationship and prevents the person from experiencing what they need to from that choice. It's the hardest thing in the world to watch someone you love make a bad decision, but you have to respect their agency to make it. You have to let them experience the consequences. Die a hero or live long enough to be the villain, remember?\ \ I need to opine on Aedion and Gavriel, but I don't even know where to start so let me stretch first.\ \ Okay. Aedion and Manon of all of these characters suffer the most loss and biggest hardship. Yes, even with Aelin in the box. I'll get into why Manon actually paid the steepest price later, let's focus on Aedion. Aedion is in Orynth. Holding the wall. He makes bad choices that get a lot of people killed. Again, intentions were good when he drugged the lords and went to bring the fight to Morath. 100% understand his noble decisions.\ \ But it was the wrong choice that decimated their army. Thank god it showed them the witch towers before they reached the city, but that cost was steep. Darrow, in that moment, was absolutely right to punish him for it. Darrow's commands were actually rooted in good strategy and about conserving lives and forces. Aedion messed up.\ \ In times of war, you cannot have a general that defies leadership. War is too stressful, too precarious, and too dangerous to tolerate insubordination like that. Darrow handled it with an iron fist and he was right to do so. I like him so much as a character because he makes the hard, unpopular, uncomfortable choices that success on a battlefield demand in order to survive. Aedion makes very noble, headstrong choices, but he is not a strategist. He is a front line general. He is brave and strong and powerful and motivating and knows how to lead, but he isn't a war strategy guy. Darrow, however, is. He has the knowledge and history and understands making hard choices to lose battles in order to win wars. He is the reason a lot of people survived and they had the supplies they needed to weather a siege.\ \ Aedion paid the price for his own headstrong blindness. A heavy one. Couple that with the fallout with Lysandra and he just kept paying over and over. Aedion was shattered by her betrayal. He was right to be furious, right to be cold, right to question everything between them, and right to throw her into the snow. That's a very controversial take, but hear me out.\ \ Lysandra and Aelin knew about Aedion's traumatic past. Knew about how he was on the killing fields at Terrasen's last stand at fourteen years old. Knew he had to serve a king against his own people, watch his kingdom be ransacked, and be used and passed around all of Adarlan ending up with a reputation he was ashamed of. Their plan put him, right back into his trauma. It triggered the return to the worst period of his life on purpose in a way that he thought these two women would never, ever do to him. He trusted them. He trusted Lysandra above all others. She betrayed him and was prepared to drop him back into his trauma.\ \ I've been in that situation. Not to get all deeply personal, but I've been in a place where someone I trusted knowingly tried to re-traumatize me in the same way I had shared in confidence. If it's never happened to you, you don't understand what it feels like. There is no reasoning with it. No soft landing. No gentle words. No intervention. The only way you can handle a person who willingly and knowingly does that to you is through total annihilation. Iron fisted slam into the earth. It has to be absolutely clear that the boundary is made of steel and it will not bend. If he bent, if he gave her that inch, he would be opening the door to "permitting" the behavior and allowing other boundaries of his to be crossed. He had to be cold and ruthless and unfeeling. It was literally him versus her and he picked himself. As he should have. Plus, they were in the middle of fighting for their lives, they didn't have time to patch shit up. There's demons in their hair.\ \ I'm glad they repaired things because I do love them together, but I would take a very long time before I fully trusted that person again.\ \ On top of all of this, it's Aedion holding Orynth together. Aedion watching his men die. Aedion keeping at bay an entire city worth of hopelessness. Aedion watching the witch towers coming for the walls. Aedion holding the gates. Aedion losing the father he should have been given more time with. Which I blame Rowan and Aelin for and I'll get into that later. Of all of them, Aedion is one of the two characters who paid a much steeper price than the rest.\ \ Now let's talk about the only other character whose price was steeper: Manon.\ \ Manon, my sweet and darling girl. Manon left the Ironteeth and chased down the Crochans. She became tribeless, peopleless, and only had the Thirteen. Still, she persevered. She did not back down. She chose hope even when nobody gave her any reason to have any. She buried the Crochan dead with her sisters and risked everything to ask them to join her. She went to the middle of the Ferian Gap and risked annihilation to hope with her fellow Ironteeth who had never been allowed to hope before. Manon unmade herself and remade herself because she loved her friends and her dragons so much it was worth it even if it killed her.\ \ When Abraxos is injured and Manon knows it's time for them to die for a better world, her Thirteen do not let her. Their final act is love, in defiance of their entire lives built on hate and cruelty they chose to love Manon more than themselves. They flew to that witch tower for hope, not vengeance. It made them stronger than all the other Ironteeth and the Blackbeak matron could ever have been.\ \ Manon had to stand at the walls and watch her sisters obliterate themselves because they hoped and believed enough in a future they would not live to see. All she could do was witness. Manon, in the end, was the only character who was completely alone. Aelin had friends and family and her mate with her. Aedion had the same. So did Lysandra, Rowan, Lorcan, Elide, Fenrys, Chaol, Dorian, Nesryn, Yrene, Sartaq... all of them had friends and loved ones and family they could lean on. They had someone to hold and process and cleave to in their grief. In return, someone was there to hold them back.\ \ Manon had no one.\ \ She didn't even have Dorian. Not really.\ \ Her grief lived in her heart and she was the only one who could carry it. There was no one to lean on, no loved ones to turn to, no friends to draw strength from. Every person who knew Manon and loved her fiercely was gone. Now she has to return to a homeland her beloved sisters died for without ever knowing what it looked like and build it in their image.\ \ Without them.\ \ Manon's price, more than any other character, was the steepest. Time will heal her, it will build her friendships, gain her new sisters, open her heart up, but she is the only character who must endure her sorrow in isolation. My heart, for her, broke the most.\ \ Aedion might be the only character who comes close to understanding that. Gavriel died hoping his son forgave him. He sacrificed himself for the child who had rejected him and Aedion realized too late how badly he did not want to. He rejected his father in no uncertain terms because of Aelin and Rowan.\ \ Yeah. I said it.\ \ Aelin and Rowan cost Aedion his connection with Gavriel in enormous ways I won't ever forgive specifically Rowan for more than Aelin.\ \ I mentioned it in EOS but Aelin and Rowan took Aedion's agency away and weaponized his relationship with his father for their own gain. They used him yet again the way he had been used by Adarlan and kept him and his father from reconciling earlier than the moment before his death. There was no effort from Aelin to encourage Aedion to repair the rift or find a way to get to know Gavriel.\ \ Gavriel was the only one who stopped to help her in Heir of Fire and she looked at him resentfully instead of encouraging Aedion to know his father was a noble man and there was more to his story. Rowan considered Gavriel the best of them, the most noble, the one cadre member who might have been his true friend, but Rowan never once spoke in Gavriel's defense to Aedion. In fact, Rowan treated Gavriel very badly and acted like he was a completely different type of man than the one he knew him to be. He never defended his friend. Never told Aedion the entire story despite knowing it. Rowan claims "it's not his story to tell", but then never hesitates to weaponize Aedion's existence after telling Aedion it wasn't Rowan's place to divulge his paternity to Gavriel. It was okay to do so to Aedion to get Gavriel to do what Rowan wanted, but not okay to do so for Gavriel when it could have done good and repaired his relationship with his son.\ \ I resent Rowan for it so very much. He is a shitty friend and a bad partner. I will stand here on this hill and say I do not care for Rowan because of how he treats his friends. He doesn't encourage growth in Aelin, never guides her with his centuries of experience, won't hold her accountable, and resorts to immediate violence when anyone holds her responsible for her own behavior.\ \ He mistreated Gavriel at every turn knowing Gavriel was the only true hearted one of his friends he trusted. Gavriel was the best of them and came to Aelin and Rowan's defense multiple times, but yet Rowan always treated him like he had done something wrong by taking the same blood oath Rowan took and only got out of because of a chance encounter. Rowan acted like he had no idea that the blood oath was a compulsion that would kill them to defy. He had the same compulsion, he didn't break it, but somehow expected Gavriel and Lorcan to do it? Miss me with that, he's a dogwater friend. How a man treats his friends is an important glimpse of his character and he treats his friends badly.\ \ Speaking of the Lorcan of it all, that man is owed several apologies by multiple parties and I will accept no Lorcan slander. Released of his oath, Lorcan chooses to go help rescue Aelin. He's the one who gets her to safety. He risks himself over and over again and everyone treats him like shit for it. Even AFTER he's the one who gets Aelin to safety and she forgives him because she understood her capture was largely her fault. Lorcan called Maeve's armada because he thought those ships were Erawan's - RIGHTFULLY so, Aelin never told anyone the plan until she made a showy entrance to Ansel. Her prioritizing her flourishing entrance is the split second Lorcan sent out his call and that is why she got captured. Showmanship over communicating during a time of very real threat and danger to people's lives. She didn't treat any of that situation with the gravity it deserved or her companions with the faith and trust they deserved and that's what cost her. That's why she forgave Lorcan, it's one of the lessons she learned in the box and why she stopped doing that shit after it.\ \ Lorcan called Maeve's ships with the intention of pitting them against what he believed to be Erawan's fleet so they might be able to escape during the naval battle. That's a smart plan. I'm sorry. Based on his limited knowledge? That plan was sound as hell. I side with him. That was smart.\ \ When the blood oath is rescinded from Gavriel and Lorcan, Lorcan is the only one whi tried to get up and do something. Gavriel sat like a sad pumpkin mourning his honor more than acting to save his new queen. Elide stood there and did nothing. Manon didn't even move to stop her. Lorcan is the only one of them on the beach who tried. When he tells everyone this and despite them all knowing beyond a doubt he is telling the truth, they ignore it and dismiss it to keep blaming him. Knowing he is telling the truth. Do you know how messed up that is? Knowing someone is being honest about their motivations and then completely ignoring it to cling to their anger and the made up version of you instead? That is so messed up. Lorcan deserved a hell of a lot better than that from them all, even my girl Elide.\ \ Which brings me back to the hotdog water friend that is Rowan Whitethorn.\ \ Rowan knew - he knew - Lorcan had taken punishment after punishment for him without saying a word. Lorcan paid the price for Rowan leaving. He never spoke of it, never mentioned it, never asked for anything. He did this for centuries whenever Rowan fucked off. Lorcan swallowed every punishment in silence for a man he believed was his friend and he had a responsibility to protect. How does Rowan handle leaning about all of that? Oh. By dismissing it outright and never thinking about it or considering it or coming to Lorcan's defense. Ever. In fact, Rowan is the worst offender in making sure everyone stays hating Lorcan.\ \ Rowan is a bad friend.\ \ Lorcan is a better man than me because after that shit in the caves on the boat with Fenrys and Rowan and Elide ALL ganging up on him, knowing the truth and still choosing to stay and help Aelin - who had asked them all to forgive him and let go - I would have been like alright you are all very much heard, I'm gonna go wander off and find Vaughan, good luck storming the castle. Won't trouble you with my presence since it's unwanted, bye. Lorcan stayed and ate shit from them and still fought his ass off to get Aelin her throne.\ \ Lorcan deserves apologies from every single one of the cadre.\ \ Alright. Continuing on. Chaol and Yrene? Oh, you mean the true heroes of the story? You mean Yrene, the strongest magic user in the whole series? The GOAT? The slayer of Erawan? Yeah I love them. Chaol kicked his dad's ass and stayed to protect Anielle even when he could have left. He prioritized his city and his people and put his dad in his place. Chaol deserved a better father and because of him he will be that better father. All Chaol hate should be directed at his dad. Chaol survived that man and has no magic and trained himself to be the best fighter on the field. With NO MAGIC he can fight standing, on horseback, with a cane, and in a chair. That man did that. Raw battle prowess did that. Chaol deserves way more respect for that. He showed there is no such thing as a limitation, only an adaptation.\ \ Yrene? Unbothered self assured diva. Yrene is self confidence incarnate. She knows exactly who she is. She is the image of what happens when you process your trauma and you do not allow it to control you anymore. She trusts her instincts, she trusts herself, and that's why Erawan can't get in her head or rattle her. She is unflappable. Erawan got in everyone's head but hers because she's processed her life and chosen to heal, the self confidence it gave her to accept all facets of herself made it impossible for him to rattle her.\ \ We love to see a healer being the one who saves the day. No swords, no bloodshed, no warrior cry. Just a woman growing life in herself who knows the incredible power of a gentle hand over a hard one.\ \ Chaol is Wife Guy #1 and he is so proud and supportive of his wife. I love them so much.\ \ Dorian's arc, too, has been really interesting. In my first TOG review, I may or may not have but definitely did refer to him as a wet pencil. I stand by that. His personality in TOG? Boredom. Nothing. Blah. Unexciting. But also he was the hedonistic prince of a demon king and didn't get out much. Watching him get into the world and experience figuring out who he was gave him so much more dimension. When he left Manon for the greater good and picked up the mantle of a destiny that wasn't supposed to be his, he chose to challenge himself about what kind of man he wanted to be.\ \ Dorian had one of the most satisfying arcs. He didn't get his clean ending. He didn't charge into battle to save his own city. He charged into battle to save his friend's because he wants to be the kind of man who answers a call for aid. He wants to be the kind of king whose kingdom rallies to protect its allies. Even when he felt like he was pantomiming, he still acted the way he wanted his best self to act. That's one of my favorite messages:\ \ You are already the best version of yourself, you just have to act like you would want your best self to act.\ \ Fake it until you make it. He never let his quest for self discovery stop him from acting like he wanted his best self to act. In the end, he realized that's all he had to do to be the man he wanted to become. I love that. Dorian is baby.\ \ All in all, I thought this was an incredible satisfying ending to the series. It left enough open that if SJM ever wanted to do more, she could. But nothing felt unfinished and no stone felt unturned. Everyone's circles closed. I laughed, I cried, I got mad, I decided I hate Rowan Whitethorn...\ \ My biggest complaint is I wanted more about Rolfe and the Mycenians. We had them teed up to be something big and I didn't think we got that. I also wish we'd had more about these Wolf Clan fae and they didn't feel like kind of a deus ex a la Endgame. The way that happened didn't fully make sense to me, but it's fine. I also wish we'd have gotten the full breadth of the demon spiders Tower of Dawn built up. That kind of turned into a fart in the wind, which was disappointing. I personally think splitting it into two or even three more books would have deepened a lot of the cast, which ended up getting a little too busy in the last book to have the punch I think I was expecting.\ \ However, I loved the way SJM handled nerfing Aelin. I didn't really care for the multiple worlds thing and i don't love that all her series are connected, but that's me being pretentious and not a big portal fantasy person. To each their own. Anyway, I think she did a good job of reeling back in the overpowered magic of Aelin, giving Dorian closure with his dad, and leaving enough that there's room for more if needed.\ \ Justice for Gavriel, who could have come back inside.\ \ More importantly though... where the hell is Vaughan?

Throne of Glass: A Critique of Book 7

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Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 3

People skip Tower of Dawn? Truly, they skip this book? \ \ Could never in one million years be me. Never ever. First of all, the book is so much fun I forgot fantasy can be so vibrant and delightful. Second of all, it's got essential information in it to the series. Like. Critical reveals happen in this book. People skip this?! Grow up. \ \ Chaol apologist until I die. I loved his arc in this. Coming to terms with his injury and his own limitations in a physical way was so great to see for him. He blamed himself, but really he could never have known. Aelin and Dorian were around the king, too. They didn't notice how evil he was - and he was Dorian's dad! We never talk about that! Everyone shouts at Chaol for following orders (doing his job! Which most normal people would do in his situation!) and that he didn't notice the king was hella evil, but they forget that was Dorian's actual father. Dorian saw him more than Chaol ever did and in way more contexts. \ \ He had been That Way for all of Dorian's life, so Dorian wouldn't have known better, but he had also been that way for all of Chaol's life, too. People ignore the fact that Dorian and Chaol are the same age! Chaol is held to a much higher standard than anyone else in the King's orbit, which is so ironic to me it makes me actually laugh about it. That's his trauma - he holds himself to a much higher standard than everyone around him, his dad held him to a much higher standard than everyone around him. Readers who hate Chaol are doing to him exactly what his dad and he himself does that traumatizes him in a specific way!\ \ Okay, back to Tower of Dawn because I could go on about Chaol for hours. I love him, he's the best, beloved household name here. \ \ I love Yrene. Love, love, love the addition of her to the story. She is fierce and strong and perceptive and kind. She understands kindness versus niceness so clearly. Nothing about Chaol gives her pause and she sees him immediately as he is when she meets him. She doesn't care about his limitations, she just cares about him getting better. \ \ I loved their mirror arcs in this, too. Yrene processing her hate and rage, Chaol processing his self loathing and disappointment. It was so great to see them together. And the yearning really got me. \ \ This was the book I felt SJM had the most fun writing. It's buoyant, but fast-paced and gives you so much without burning you out. Nesryn and Sartaq are so fun together, too. Nesryn learning to be put first and her whole calling back to her homeland? I loved that. As someone who feels lost and struggles to articulate that I don't feel "home" anywhere, that really resonated with me. I'm always looking for wherever it is I am "meant" to put my roots down. I get her in a very personal way and loved her learning she was always meant to be back in Antica. \ \ The story in this was delightful. A friend described it as "very Temple of Doom" and I felt that so hard. The library scene was stressful, the hidden-in-plain-sight twist was fantastic, and the red herrings were actually subtle and well done. That surprised me. I think this was SJM's strongest-written story. The romance felt authentic and organic, it's very much what two people in this situation would probably experience. \ \ Sometimes, I will admit, I feel a little caught off guard or like the romance develops too quickly for me to not be skeptical about a couple or two. This one? I liked this one. I am very cautious about love and attraction, so I find that a slower-paced romance lands much more realistically for me. The story itself was very well put together and its message and themes felt distinct from the main arc. It did drag and repeat itself or get into loops a few times, but I didn't mind that too much. When it slowed down, I just relaxed into the story and focused on the characters' behaviors more. I think we could've axed like... 50-100 pages and had a much tighter story but I'm not an editor so take that with a grain of salt.\ \ I walked away calling this an "asterisk book". This is Throne of Glass and this is HUGE for the main story, but it's its own thing. Does that make any sense at all? I hope so. \ \ Her reveal, though. That big one? The Maeve of it all? That was wild. It actually made me feel a little bad for coming for Aelin's neck honestly. Yes, I want her to experience consequences to force her into processing her trauma, but I meant a wrist slap! I didn't mean this! I regret putting that into the universe, guys. I'm sorry. \ \ I needed the world without Aelin for a while, that's what I learned from this. It was such a spark to me, Tower of Dawn. I had so much fun. This one was the breather and the new life into the main story I really needed to no longer feel like I was oversaturated. EOS and TOD? Tied for favorite to me. Which is hilarious because they're the tandem books. \ \ This has been one of the most fun, enjoyable, rewarding community experiences reading a series I've had in a really long time. If anything, I'm loving this series because of how active and engaged I've gotten to be with the TOG community during my read through. That, alone, has made this experience so special so far. \ \ I'm not ready to be done. I'm not ready to leave the world. But we've got a future Queen to save, so we do what we must.

Throne of Glass: A Critique of Book 6

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Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jul 1

Mordew. \ \ What - and I cannot stress this enough - the hell did I just read? In the best possible way, I have absolutely no idea. I love a weird book, this is not a secret. This book? I think Mordew maybe takes the weird book cake for me. \ \ I expected something completely different than I ended up getting, but my expectations being torn asunder in a way I wasn’t prepared for is always a delight for me. This book was a lot of things and no things at once. Phelby is, truly in the best way, a madman. If we put him and Hiron Ennes in a room, I’m not sure which one of them would blow the room up first. His brain and how he conceived of this story is something I am going to be so curious about for years to come. \ \ The story follows Nathan Treeves through this gritty, gothic world full of stratification and grim and visceral forms of magic I can’t really explain. Nathan’s father is gravely ill with lungworms slowly killing him, his mother tries to ship him off to a mysterious man only ever called The Master. A dead God imbues magic into everything making it dead-yet-alive. There are flukes, creatures living in the dead mud that can become anything, including people. Ghosts are real and they have strong opinions about our behavior. We have gillmen who are these froglike guards and the sister city of Malarkoi and the Mistress and firebirds slamming into a sea wall held fast by magic. \ \ This is the story of a young boy who never, from the start of his life, has any agency. He is always doing what he must and always kept in the dark. There are things about him he wants to know, but nobody will tell him. When he has enough, we watch this boy’s anger manifest in total destruction as a way to cope with loneliness, betrayal, and being used by people who were supposed to love him. Yet somehow, he still desperately wants to remain kind.\ \ I’d liken this to Oliver Twist meets Tim Burton meets Alice in Wonderland then dip it in mud and scream into the sky. It’s such a bizarre cluster of things that it’s many things and none of those things all at once. The first two parts build out how this wild city of Mordew is kept moving through the magic of the Master. We see Nathan struggle with his father's illness, the rejection of his mother, and his found family of friends give him purpose. Then, the third introduces a new character after an event I fully expected to be the end of the book, only for it to split into one final breathless catapulting part I did not anticipate. \ \ And I haven’t even talked about Anaxomander the talking dog and his brother, the loyal Sirius. \ \ Anaxomander was a fascinating inclusion in this story and probably the one I enjoyed following the most. His very direct, matter-of-fact way of thinking and the insight Phelby gives us into how we anthropomorphize animals was such a wild ride. Every twist he set up paid off and made me gasp - though half the time I couldn't explain it if I tried. When I realized how Phelby leveraged language? I thought my brain was going to fall out of my ears. I love when authors dive headfirst into such an inventive use of words and comprehension to add depth to the story. \ \ I will say that it being so out there and full of strangeness did make it occasionally hard to follow at parts. Some scenes felt longer than they needed to be and I never felt like I fully understood exactly what was going on. What I anticipated from the blurb ended up not really being as essential to the story as I thought it might be, but that’s alright because blurbs are rarely accurate to the full story anyway. This is the first in a trilogy, so I am trying not to say that I didn’t get answers to all my questions because that’s the point of the other two books in a series. \ \ What I did get, however, was exactly what I asked for. A wild, bizarre story with a character trying to be soft in a hard, gritty world. Witnessing Nathan’s constant betrayal, his effort to stay a good person, the conflict between wanting to do right and being compelled to not was so interesting. It was a fantastic tension between young men as they want to be and young men as the expectation of society forces them to be. \ \ Phelby brought in wealth disparity and how the ability to suffer is, in itself, a power that many well-off people do not learn and cannot survive when it comes for them. Not in a noble sacrifice way, either, which I loved. He spoke of this disconnection as the thing that gives a religion power and if the poor and struggling turned that ability to survive towards the oppression of the merchant class, they would be unstoppable against them. He writes in such an effervescent way that makes the world feel tongue in cheek, horrible, and grotesquely whimsical with a way of making the storytelling itself feel like it breaks the fourth wall at poignant, thoughtful moments. \ \ I really got hit with the heartbreak Nathan endured at the betrayals he experienced and how those shaped him into what he became, then also opened the door to him becoming something new again. The Mistress was such a wild character and the designs for these people in this horrible world are unlike anything I’ve ever read. My favorite part, though, is that still I have no idea who I am rooting for or who is in the right. This is a world without heroes, only a small handful of people who are trying to do their best and survive.

Mordew, What's Going On, Loca?

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Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jun 27

Lovingly, we are all at one point victims of the worst, most insidious little worm known to human cognition.\ \ Recency bias. \ \ What does that mean, though? What is recency bias? I'm so glad you asked. Recency bias is a type of cognitive bias or "logical shortcut" our very lazy brains used to make it seem like the newest thing is the best thing. We do this with everything. History, books, house styles, clothing... we place a disproportionate emphasis on the newer thing and out brains convince us it's the best thing. \ \ We also do this with, funny enough, people! When we evaluate another person, we put more weight on the most recent interaction we had with them than we do on our relationship as a whole. It can affect our positive or negative perception of a person! Isn't that crazy?! \ \ Here's the thing about a cognitive bias: to fight back against it, you have to know what it is and be able to ask yourself questions about your own thoughts and feelings. Investigating your own opinions and perspectives is critical when you are combating any cognitive bias--and why I am always rolling my opinions over in my head again and again. \ \ When we don't confront our recency bias, we ignore historical patterns and fail to learn. Our brains are lazy. They want to do the least amount of work for the most amount of reward. The problem, unfortunately, arises when our shortcut-taking leads to worse outcomes that we have a disproportionate experience with so we don't actually learn anything from the events leading to those worse outcomes. \ \ In other words, history majors get mad because nothing is new and we are always repeating a cycle we never learn from. \ \ That's all well and good, but what does that have to do with books?\ \ Easy. In the book space, we tend to misguidedly feel like whatever books are recently out or new to the market are the "best book", forgetting all of the other historically "best books" we have read. We start to crave newness--new titles, new authors, new installments, new series--more than we crave high quality. Our recency bias in books means the zeitgeist is so rapid-moving that if a new author wants to capture the conversation, there is a large amount of pressure for them to write and produce a book or series too fast in order to stay relevant to the conversation. \ \ Our addiction to newness can be fine when talking about things like clothing, hairstyles, movies, etc., but books are different. Books require time. Slowness. Consideration. Deliberation. Authors aren't SHEIN factories. To manifest their stories and ideas on a page requires time, the nemesis of recency bias. \ \ There are complaints in the book space about book quality significantly dropping off in books 2/3 of a series and many theories about why--I think all of them are correct, kind of like how there was no singular Fall of Rome event--but not many people are discussing the impact of recency bias on this conversation. When an author writes their first book, nobody knows who they are. They have as much time as they need to tell the story they want, so the first installment is strong and well rounded and well told. \ \ Once it gets "discovered" and published, publishers want to keep that series or author in the zeitgeist as long as possible to make sales. Thus, the pressure is on to produce, produce, produce. Write, write, write. So a book that took 5 years to write now has to catapult a sequel into existence in a year--20% of the time it took to get the first part right. Without the other 80% of that time, we see a steep drop in quality, world building, consistency, etc. that ends up on social media with people very upset and annoyed that the second or third in a series isn't as good as the first. \ \ So how do we fight back against this as readers?\ \ Push back against publication timelines. Encourage authors to take their time. Be clear and adamant that we'd rather wait 4 years for the book an author deserves to write than 6 months for a slapdash story we are upset by. Be mindful of how you consume books. Dip into older series. Support authors who speak out against crunch timelines for books they're working on. Just be vocal about the fact that books, of all things, are patient and an author can and should take their time. \ \ The book zeitgeist is going to swallow a new Robin Hobb or Margaret Atwood novel in just as many gulps in 7 years as they would in 7 months. That's the beauty of the book space people are forgetting--beloved authors don't fade into obscurity if they're not constantly churning out a new novel. Writing isn't content creation, it's storytelling. The oldest form of art and communication humanity has. Trying to push writers into treating their stories like content is going to erode the quality and sanctity of that craft, leading to weaker books and worse stories. Weaker books and worse stories will make people put down more books and eventually step away from reading altogether. That's bad for... well, everyone. \ \ Recency bias also has this horrible habit of skewing how it is we "rate" books. This means it's impacting reviewers and content creators negatively with our audiences if we don't watch out for it. It's insidious and frustrating. Every single book pops up on creators' pages as "the best book they've ever read". If every book is the best book, then none of them are the best book. It creates mistrust between reviewers and our audiences when we continually say everything we just read is the best thing we just read. \ \ As reviewers, it's important for us to use discernment. We have platforms, therefore we have a responsibility to those platforms. This means being mindful of our cognitive biases, how we speak about the books we read, and how honestly we engage with the material we are reading. I, personally, can find something to love about everything I read--even if I didn't love it. It's important to note the good parts of something, but also the parts that didn't land. I have to remind myself that though I've found something important to love about a book everyone else disliked, I need to keep in mind the parts that were weak as well and speak to those against my strong desire to be enthusiastic and supportive. \ \ It's a hard line to walk. Especially when we read and ARC or new release and want to be so excited and joyful about that with people. We still have that obligation to our audiences to go inward and as ourselves: did I love this new book or is it just... new. Or my personal favorite: is this the best book in the series or just the one that I recently read?\ \ If you step into the content creation sphere, specifically around books, there's an obligation that is unspoken to be mindful, honest, direct, nonjudgmental, and discerning. It is on us to ensure we are not letting recency bias affect our experiences with a book and calling everything we read our "favorite book". How do we fight that? I'm so glad you asked. \ \ Be mindful, be stingy, be self-honest, and be inquisitive about our own opinions! Read across timelines. Older books, newer books, recent books, less recent books. Reading across decades and being intentional about rotating in older books and things that aren't brand new and shiny helps us remember how much is out there and what it means for a book to truly be a favorite. Question yourself every time you finish a book and feel an immediate urge to gush about it. Why did you love it? What stuck out the most? How has that book affected you? Why is it 5-stars? Why is it your favorite?\ \ For anyone just reading for love of the game and not doing any kind of reviews or creation or anything so grave and serious as recording BookTok videos, do whatever you want and love whatever you want! But if you're going to choose to step seriously into an arena where people will look to you for recommendations, ideas, things to bury their heads in, it changes the calculus on how we read and how we speak about the books we get through. A platform where we will be listened to requires a different degree of responsibility. It requires us to engage actively with our own thoughts and opinions so we can articulate and justify them in a way that lets people make decisions that are informed and honest. \ \ If we want to save the creator space from just labeling every new book as "6 stars" and prevent our books we love from becoming a content creation pit of disappointment, we have to face down our silent enemy slithering around in the battlefield of our brains:\ \ Recency bias.

Recency Bias and the Book Space

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Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jun 25

Empire of Storms!\ \ Empire of Storms is where it really is at for me. This book gave so much more that the first few were missing, SJM filled in the gaps and evidently asked herself the same questions I was by the end of Queen of Shadows. I was struggling to understand "Why Aelin?" and "Why Terrasen?" We know she's special and we know her kingdom is important to her, but why is it important to her allies? Her friends? The rest of the known world?\ \ SJM leaned on those questions and got me so much more than I expected by way of answers. Out the gate, we see Lord Darrow ask the same thing - why you?\ \ I took the controversial stance that Darrow was completely correct to deny Aelin the throne. Especially the way her entire court went about it. I was so frustrated at Aelin's entitlement and haughtiness and complete ignorance to the customs and laws of her own people that I cheered when Darrow shut her down. Here's the thing: just because Aelin is traumatized by her past, doesn't mean she should be given the throne. In fact, it means the opposite of that. \ \ A traumatized leader who steamrolls her court, responds to denial with threats and bullying, has a volatile temper, and is known to literally scorched-earth whoever she deems an enemy is not someone who should be blithely handed a kingdom. Aelin does not collaborate with her court, she won't process her temper, she refuses to be accountable for her behavior, and she chose to surround herself with people who never hold her responsible for herself. So when Darrow bluntly denies her and then tells her how she appears to the rest of the world, it blindsides her. Because that's what happens when you surround yourself with sycophants who never tell you when you're in the wrong. \ \ I'm most angry at Rowan during this exchange, however. He's 300+ years old, has seen empires rise and fall, has been a part of courts throughout history, and he doesn't coach her on anything related to politicking or political maneuvering? He Provides no insight on how men like Darrow and the other lords might push back on her? No strategy for countering it? In fact, Rowan does exactly the thing Darrow denies Aelin the throne for - he resorts to threats of violence immediately when he doesn't get what he wants.\ \ That reaction from both of them is why she shouldn't have the throne. Aelin won't be making decisions just for herself anymore, she will be making them for a nation. Her people will be the ones to suffer for her behavior, her outbursts, her decision to blow away anyone she disagrees with. And Terrasen is already in tatters. No army, fighting poverty tooth and nail, and the one man who held it together and kept them from destitution or genocide is being told he didn't do enough and has to hand over the country to a 19-year-old who did, in fact, abandon her people for ten years while they suffered.\ \ Yes. I said it. Aelin was traumatized and endured so much. But from the perspectives of her people, she also spent a decade lounging in finery and indulging a career of murder. These lords and probably many of her people - Ren included! - see her having indulged herself in Adarlan's finery while they starved. Regardless of what we, the reader, know about her past, this remains true of everyone else's perception of her. She has to contend with that. She has to, unfortunately, prove them wrong. And marching in demanding a title and her throne without regard to the laws or customs of her own nation fails to do that. \ \ I want to talk a little about Aelin's decision to give Lysandra land and title without thinking it through because Aelin's whole theme is not thinking things through. I agree she was right to give Lysandra that gift. But she should have recognized the limits of her power and posited it as a plan when she has the throne. By tipping her hand to Darrow about how she intends to reward a court he doesn't approve of, she opened the door to be blockaded by the men who already hold power there. \ \ I understand that Darrow is stuck in the old ways, but you have to consider this from the perspectives of people holding on by a thread. They have been brutalized, subjugated, and impoverished. Darrow and their customs have likely kept them alive. Those customs kept Terrasen safe and secure for centuries before Erawan ripped the nation apart by force. I know Aelin wants to create a new kind of court, but the world her people are in has depended and succeeded with the old one. In fact, the "new court" of Adarlan rule is what put them in this horrifying state. Why on earth would or should they be receptive to ANOTHER "new court"?\ \ I also want to point out that Aelin later in EOS agrees that she isn't ready for rulership and Darrow was right to deny it to her. So. Vindication. \ \ Let's be very clear though: this doesn't mean I am pro Darrow speaking how he did and calling Lysandra a whore and dragging Aedion's reputation into this. Both of them approached that discussion completely incorrectly and did more damage to each other than anything else. Neither of them helped Terrasen in that room, but Darrow was right to deny her power. \ \ What's so funny about that scene to me though?\ \ If Chaol were there, he could have helped Aelin navigate it better than any of them. He knows court intrigue by exposure. He knows customs and rules and how to facilitate those conversations. Chaol could've saved that meeting. I'll die on this hill. \ \ ANYWAY. The rest of this book. \ \ Lysandra? Damn. She really rocketed to the top of my list. I loved Lysandra so much. The sea dragon fight in Skull's Bay made me shout about things while I read this book. I locked in for her. I would ride or die for Lysandra. I love her and Aedion's relationship and how much he respects her autonomy. His lack of caring about her former profession? Very attractive behavior. He understands intimately what you have to do sometimes. Also, Aedion pansexual king? We love that.\ \ Elide and Lorcan, though. Let me tell you what. I loved them. A lot. I love Lorcan and Elide, I hope everything works out for them because they would be so cute and sweet. Elide is such an amazing FMC because she takes everything about keenness, insight, knowledge of human conditions, perception, and turns it into strength that outmatches a fae warrior sometimes. That is just such a cool spin on "weakness" in characters. \ \ Manon continues to be the house fave. She was less present in Empire of Storms, I noticed, but I loved her in it anyway. And her and Dorian? Adorable. I like them together with their deeply parental trauma. Manon remains a mirror arc to Chaol, honestly. She's gravely injured and has to decide to rebuild her sense of justice. So does Chaol. They're two sides of the same coin. \ \ I have THINGS to address, however. And you're going to hear them!\ \ I don't appreciate or respect how Aelin and Rowan weaponize Aedion's parentage to their own advantage in one hand while telling him it's his choice with the other. They both took away Aedion's autonomy in this situation. They actually take it away from him a lot, which makes me very angry because Aedion is so mindful of everyone else's only for his to be removed at every turn of the dial. \ \ Rowan weaponized Aedion against Gavriel when it suited him, robbing Aedion of the decision to tell his dad or not on his own terms. Aelin did the same. By the time Gavriel and Aedion encountered each other, there wasn't really much choice left for him except "talk to your dad or don't talk to your dad". I'm glad he got out his feelings at him and I love how Lysandra considers everyone else's perspective and accounts for their thoughts as well. I love a generosity of spirit thinker. However, I'm angry and begrudging at Aelin and Rowan for telling Aedion it was his decision and then making it for him. \ \ In the end of the book, I went back to being frustrated with Aelin because, honestly, her being captured by Maeve is mostly her own design. I know that's not popular to say either, but Maeve was alerted to her whereabouts by Lorcan because Lorcan didn't know the fleet was Aelin's. His idea was to draw Maeve to them and then spark a fight between what he thought were two enemy armadas. It was actually a smart plan, I respect Lorcan for it. He did exactly what he should have with the information he had. Information Aelin denied to everyone. At any point, her capture could have been avoided if she had just shared her plans with the class. Her capture was very much one of her own making, which angers me for her and for everyone else. Not trusting her court made everything significantly worse for her and for everyone who trusted her. \ \ I know she's traumatized, but here's the thing: trauma isn't an excuse. At some point, we are responsible for repairing damage that was done to us. No, we didn't cause it and it isn't our fault, but we are still obligated to repair the damage. This capture is a direct result of Aelin refusing to repair that damage or confront it with loved ones. I feel bad for her, I'm scared for her, I know this is going to be VERY BAD, but I also am frustrated that she did a lot of it to herself because she wouldn't take responsibility for her actions. \ \ Finally (I swear), I need to talk about... The Plan. \ \ Yes.\ \ That Plan. \ \ The Plan that Lysandra and Aelin made that relied on lying to two of the men in Aelin's life she says she loves. That plan... was fucked up. I can't even apologize for this. Autonomy and self-determination are two of my core personal values. They are immovable for me. Anytime someone denies information to someone that would affect choices they could make or robs someone of autonomy over their body or life, my walls slam shut and I will never make space for that person ever again in my life. Trust is irrevocably broken and I will remove that person from closeness with me forever. \ \ That plan robbed both Aedion and Rowan of autonomy. Completely and entirely. It relied on rape by deception of Aedion to succeed. And Lysandra agreeing to it caused me grievous harm to my love for her. Aedion would never in a million years have accepted a plan that turned her into a breeding mare, but she turned around and agreed to one that made one of him. Aedion was right to be furious. If anything, he wasn't furious enough. And Rowan. Would they think he wouldn't know? He would just go along with it? I know there's a prevailing theory that Rowan would have known immediately, but it would be too late to stop Aelin and so they would work it out. However, I can only ever go on information I have that is said to me, not on what someone doesn't say to me. If it isn't said, I can't use it as information. They didn't say that. I'm hoping it gets expanded more in Kingdom of Ash so I'm reserving my decision to be furious about it or not, though, until I see the fallout.\ \ When you're making a plan like that and it involves the bodily autonomy of another person, that person needs to be in the room. Full stop. The only person you can ever make decisions about with regard to their life and body is yourself. You can never make those decisions for another person. I am shocked and frankly kind of put off that Aelin, who had her autonomy robbed at every turn, would then do the same to people she loves. Again, hoping for more expansion on this insane plan in Kingdom of Ash, but right now I think Aedion was right to be furious and Rowan should've been more mad. \ \ This book though? My favorite so far. I loved it. This was so sharp and snappy and paced so well. I loved the twist about Why Aelin (not going to spoil that bit for folks, that's just mean), actually. I think that is so tragic and frustrating and I liked it a lot. I am officially Elena's enemy, that's for sure. I loved how they mirrored Elena's irresponsible, reckless behavior and belief she was always right with Aelin's and how it resulted in all this. SJM handled that very interestingly and smartly. \ \ I'm moving onto Tower of Dawn and so far? SO good. Can't wait to blast my love for Yrene into the sky forever. \ \ And remember: Chaol could've changed the whole course of Empire of Storms with his quiet pragmatism and understanding of nonmagical folks. Yup. I stand on this. Chaol not having magic would've been a boon in that mountain tavern discussion and that's why it went to shit. Fight me.

Throne of Glass: A Critique of Book 5

1 book

Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jun 23

Who could have known a Frankenstein-inspired book about two gay Victorian London-era men using mycelium to build a daughter would be so thoughtful about the human condition? No me, that's for sure. \ \ I was pleasantly surprised by this book! I went in expecting a fun reset or a weird story about some scientists who play build-a-bear with plants. I ended up immersed in a complicated story about love, family, sacrifice, personhood, identity and what is sentience. We follow Jennifer, Gregor, and Simon in the use of an exotic mycelium to turn a corpse into their sentient daughter Chloe. She begins as an experiment and turns into a member of their bizarre family who live in a beautiful greenhouse. \ \ This story takes place in 19th century Victorian-era London where queerness was understood and discouraged, but one of those oft-not discussed features of life. Gregor and Simon love one another dearly, but they test each other a lot between Simon's fervent worry and Gregor's megalomania. Jennifer is their housekeeper-turned-family whose best friend's unexpected passing paves the way for Chloe, the "substrate" for this experiment. \ \ We watch Chloe develop and behind to get away from her fathers' original ambitions, turning into something entirely herself. It forces Gregor to consider what is personhood? What does it mean to be sentient? At what point has Chloe earned a right to autonomy? Simon, on the other hand, is horrified at first. Over time, he learns what it means to love paternally and how to see Chloe as her own person instead of an identity crafted around what he hoped she might be. \ \ The style is very gothic and the prose is springy and fluid, but can be a bit drab at times. I loved some of the imagery and the moments where we see Jennifer start to come out of her shell from "quirky village girl" to fully realized passionate woman. Watching her interactions with Chloe and how she becomes an advocate for her independence is charming, in a weird "this woman is made of plants" way.\ \ One thing I found surprising, personally, was how I forgot at a certain point Chloe was just a jumble of plant life. When she is given a voice and subsequently robbed of it, I was furious for her. It was beautiful commentary on the way women are often silenced to sate the egos of men. I appreciated Medlock's subtlety with showing how gay men in Victorian London still had more power and voice than a woman did, despite both of them being subjugated and shackled by their own society. Gregor could pretend and society would be happy to let him, but Jennifer and Chloe can't hide their womanhood despite Jennifer's affinity for suits. \ \ Gregor, I think, was a fantastic Dr. Frankenstein-inspired mad scientist. He was stiff-upper-lip and completely convinced of his own superiority to the point of nearly destroying everything he loved. His megalomania and pathological need to be right almost ruined his relationship with Simon and had me scowling at the text because how dare he say such things to my precious Simon. His ego started this experiment and nearly destroyed him. \ \ Simon learned to pull past his timidity and fear because of his growing love for Chloe. At first, she was an abomination to him, but then she becomes his daughter as much as any flesh and blood child could. Her curiosity and her desire to be free and participate in the world inspires him to stop fearing life and shying away from valiantly loving the way he wishes. Neither he nor Gregor seek to change London's societal woes around queerness, but they stop pretending to be anything other than themselves. \ \ This was much more than I was expecting in a pleasant way. A quick, easy read that got delightfully weird and a little gross. It asked questions of me I did not expect and for that I am very grateful. \ \ Gregor with your testy letters to Julian though? You better keep my man happy or it's on sight.

A Botanical Daughter and What Makes Us Human

1 book

Sarah Does Bookish Stuff\ \ Sarah\ \ • Jun 21

Everyone has books that live in their bones. Some sediment of emotion or change that has settled into their marrow and left them changed in a way they can't articulate. Over time, that sediment calcifies and those books become part of who we are. They shape our morality, our world views, our empathy... they become us.\ \ I have my five books that have historically settled and fossilized and are inextricably linked to me as a person. I also have the modern, recent reads that I just know are doing something to me. Taking my ligaments apart and putting them in new places. Making room in my muscles and viscera for something new to grow and change me.\ \ So... What are they?\ \ The Butcher of Nazareth by David Scott Hay\ \ This book was something entirely different. New. Hard to let go of. It touched on grief and faith and the importance of community in processing loss. Hay did something amazing with turning his lessons learned into a biblical cautionary tale to show his readers how unprocessed loss in isolation can turn you into someone you don't recognize. It can cost you everything.\ \ The care and love this was crafted with is incredible. Paper weights, font styles, later inclusions of page stamps, text coloring... everything about this book from the contents to the structure was deliberate. It delivers a brutal message made all the more impactful by the love with which it was sent.\ \ The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes\ \ Never have I seen more beautiful, mad prose in a book. Ennes writes with a paintbrush the likes of which I rarely see in books. I am treated like I'm smart, I'm respected by the material, and they take the opportunity to show me what I am capable of. The characters are never what you think and never who you believe them to be. Nobody is all one thing and the character who are suffer because of it. It talks about denial and loss and art and politics and what it means to let someone be who they are.\ \ The weirdness of this book never feels offputting or gross. It feels like texture and color and sound. Ennes proved that a book can live with me long after I finished it and make me rethink and turn over its lessons again and again without exhausting what I find in it. This was such a beautifully unexpected read that is feeding off of my attention.\ \ Blood Over Bright Haven by M. L. Wang\ \ I have never been forced to confront myself like I have in this book. Wang is fearless, direct, and wastes no time worrying about your feelings. She immediately makes you uncomfortable and forces you to look at horrible truths about yourself whether you like it or not. Some folks said this was too on the nose, but I disagree. I believe this book is exactly what it must be. Subtlety won't always get people to confront themselves and their biases. Wang found a way to dispense with the subtlety and not make it feel preaching or taunting. Instead, she takes you by the chin and asks, "Is this who you are deciding to be?"\ \ The themes of otherness, inclusivity, intersectionality, and whether or not a haven is truly a haven if it's paid for in blood? Stunning. Layered. I'm still thinking about it months later.\ \ Headlights by C. J. Leede\ \ This rocketed to the top of my list when it made me bawl my eyes out at 10pm on a Saturday. It reads like a procedural turned folkloric horror, but it's so much more than that. It sinks its teeth into the rose-colored glasses of childhood memory. What does it mean to love and lose? Where do we put our grief when it's too big to hold onto? How do the ghosts of our past become a part of us? Leede puts Danny through so much to learn how to love wild things and make peace with the people he loves no longer being there for him to lean on. She made me consider what it is to let someone in, the fear of leaving a part of yourself with someone and trusting them to care for it.\ \ This book told a wild story in such weird and wonderful ways that thinking about it still makes me tear up and wonder if I really saw everything she had to say or if there's more.\ \ Shark Heart by Emily Habeck\ \ How did a book about a man turning into a shark become a beautiful, bittersweet, hopeful story about how to love someone through chronic illness and the strain of love and resentment held by caretakers? I opened this book expecting a weird, wonderful story and instead I learned so much about the weight we carry when we have no power to help someone we love. Living through chronic illness and caring for someone through it are tragic, beautiful, complicated experiences Habeck articulated perfectly in this book. Habeck shows how different degrees of loss take a toll on people, they all add a new straw to the back of that camel that eventually breaks.\ \ But she also showed us how when its broken, there exists only one choice: stay broken or stand up and go on. At some point, optimism and hope and survival are a choice. We have to look grief and hardship in the face and decide not to let it drown us. Hope is a choice. Habeck illustrates that phenomenally.

The Books That Change Us

5 books

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