in terms of books, she was doing fine

The Works of Vermin (Hiron Ennes)

This was hands down the best book I've read this year. I hope I can make a good case of why I think it's so great without spoiling it, because I think it deserves to be experienced directly, but here goes.

The Works of Vermin mainly follows two characters (in an exquisitely detailed and textured omniscient third person): Guy, who works as an exterminator, is riddled with debts, and trying to protect his little sister from getting swallowed up by poverty, and Asther, a perfumer contracted to the Marshall (who is essentially the second most powerful man in the city). The city of Tiliard is almost a character itself: it is socially stratified, it is rotting from the inside out, it craves beauty and theater and music, it gives birth to ginormous insects that in turn change the city itself. The magic in this book permeates things, from the insects and their exudates to the way perfumes can be used to bend the minds of those who smell it.

Those two perspectives are used delightfully to give insight on the politics of the city, and on the cycles of violence it goes through. There is so much worldbuilding woven into the story, and in a fashion that I adore (though I know can be an obstacle to some readers): Ennes does not hold anyone's hand, and trusts their readers to piece things out themselves.

Reading this book was a slow (to me) but extremely rewarding experience, the prose feels almost tactile with how vivid and atmospheric it is. Queerness and gender fuckery is woven throughout the plot, while avoiding making any romance the main focus: the politics of the city, and the brotherly relationship between Guy and his sister Tyro are front and center of the book. All the characters are morally complex, though somewhat emotionally obscure. Everything is evoked rather than outright stated.

I don't know how to conclude other than say this book was a treat to me, specifically <3 also it's a standalone which I love for a book that manages to pack so much in it!!

Bookish Resonances

The game is just to take one book, and give a few other books that I was reminded of while reading it. It does not mean that the books are necessarily super similar, but that one of the core elements of them resonated in my mind

So today my starting book is The Works of Vermin

And the resonances are as follow:

Books of 2025: THE WORKS OF VERMIN by Hiron Ennes.

Delighted and reeling to report that Ennes has Done It Again!! LEECH is one of my all-time favorite books, and I was so unbelievably stoked for VERMIN this year, which arrived in the mail right around when I needed to vanish for NaNo reasons. Displaying utterly herculean self-control, I managed to delay my gratification and not start this until this weekend! And!! Promptly binged it in like two sittings, despite what I feared was going to be a slower start.

Where LEECH is very Gothic and wintry and post-apocalyptic horror SF, VERMIN is much more immersive and richly woven fantasy, featuring a hell of a lot of bugs and other, well, vermin. Think VanderMeer's AMBERGRIS meets Kingfisher's PALADIN'S GRACE by way of METAL FROM HEAVEN--we've got the lush and sprawling and weird arts-oriented city, the heavy emphasis on perfumes and perfumers and politicking (and, yeah, assassination attempts), and the bizarre magic right at the confluence of recognizable technology. Like METAL, VERMIN is deeply queer, and I deeply love when that queerness extends to gender fuckery (as it does here!).

June 2026

On Sundays She Picked Flowers. By Yah Yah Scholfield. Saga Press, 2026.

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Genre: horror, lgbtqia+

Series: N/A

Summary: When Judith Rice fled her childhood home, she thought she’d severed her abusive mother’s hold on her. She didn’t have a plan or destination, just a desperate need to escape. Drawn to the forests of northern Georgia, Jude finds shelter in a house as haunted by its violent history as she is by her own.

Jude embraces the eccentricities of the dilapidated house, soothing its ghosts and haints, honoring its blood-soaked land. And over the next thirteen years, Jude blossoms from her bitter beginnings into a wisewoman, a healer.

But her hard-won peace is threatened when an enigmatic woman shows up on her doorstep. The woman is beautiful but unsettling, captivating but uncanny. Ensnared by her desire for this stranger, Jude is caught off guard by brutal urges suddenly simmering beneath her skin. As the woman stirs up memories of her escape years ago, Jude must confront the calls of violence rooted in her bloodline.

***Full review below.***