Leif & Thorn

Thorn has to deal with having his teenager self around, and it's interesting how both of them are characterised - Thorn has an immediate protective instinct over Kid!Thorn, but his instinct is to treat him like he is literally himself as a teenager, as opposed to a parallel teenager, which causes a little tension between them. Kid!Thorn is eager to get home, but all of the adults are either treating him with suspicion or lying to him, which isn't necessarily helping. Thorn's PTSD comes up here - his former commander is involved with testing Kid!Thorn's abilities to see how they differ from the magic available in their home, but his former commander is the one who got half of Thorn's squad killed and Thorn's arm irreparably damaged in the aforementioned dragon fight. Thorn is understandably nervous letting him near Kid!Thorn, but he's being professional about it; ready to jump in if there's an issue, but not causing arguments, even when it's clear that he's strained by the interactions he has. See, this is where I keep going on about Thorn being Good, but not boring - he's clearly affected by PTSD, he's clearly unwilling to give this guy an inch, but he's trying to be diplomatic and work for the best of everyone, while still making contingencies. Kid!Thorn is just adorable, too. A little more emotional and impulsive than our Thorn, but you can clearly see that they're the same person underneath everything, and he's so easy to sympathise with. Especially when he's playing Fantasy Candy Crush for hours. Same, kiddo.

The other character with a lot of focus in these storylines is Kale, aka former dark magical boy Kudzu, who is trying to get over his own trauma at being manipulated into mind-controlling people by a dodgy pharmaceutical company, which led to him killing a lot of people when his buttons were pushed the right way. Kale is honestly trying to get past the cult mindset and heal, which is difficult when a lot of people think he's history's greatest monster, including himself. Not helping is the fact that Kid!Thorn was sent between universes by Kid!Kale, which means he, too, has a mini-me out there somewhere making all the same mistakes he used to. Kale is always an interesting character to me because yeah, objectively, he has done some horrible things - but that doesn't make him a horrible or unsympathetic person. We see why he did what he did, and we see how he reacts to it going forward. One of the things in this collection is his meeting with Hermosa, to whom he was close and who he hurt terribly when things went bad. There's an ambiguity to Hermosa's thoughts and feelings around it, which is interesting (Hermosa has pretty bad brain damage because of what happened) and there's definitely a lot of nuance around everyone's perspectives. None of them are entirely wrong, all of them are at odds with one another. Kale's self-loathing, Dex (Hermosa's cunning and devious spouse) wanting to kill Kale for all he did, Hermosa being somewhere in the middle of sympathetic and antagonistic to Kale. It's interesting to see unfold.

What's some other stuff in here? There's a neat subplot with Thorn's magical teammate, Atarangi, who's part of a DID system - one of her alters, Kallie, has completely different magic to her, which means her DID comes out when she helps with a water-magic thing that Atarangi, a fire mage, couldn't. This series' treatment of DID is pretty sensitive and, as far as I can tell as a singlet, realistic to how DID develops and what it looks like to have DID, so kudos there! Plus, the Neineikura system is cute. Justice for Pond Thing Neineikura. There's also one of the best and cutest moments in Leif and Thorn's entire relationship, where Kale rents Leif for an evening so that the couple can finally sleep together without there being a power imbalance. (Short version, Leif is an indentured servant who cannot spend time outside work unless he is being rented. There is a sexual services package Thorn can buy, the problem being that Leif would then be compelled to follow Thorn's orders on pain of punishment, which is a power dynamic that Thorn wants to avoid. If it's Kale renting Leif, and Kale just gives an ambiguous 'have fun!' kinda order, Leif is free to do whatever without consequence.) It's been coming for a long time, and the scene where it finally happens is so sweet, they're just overjoyed at finally having this opportunity to act like they're in a less complicated relationship for a night, and they're practically floating on air afterwards. I love these boys, I'm so glad they finally get some happiness!

librarian/bookseller rec'd: the buffalo hunter hunter by stephen graham jones. this book was on the seller's recs shelf at three different albany-area bookstores i visited around christmas last year; between that and the title i knew i had to give it a go, and god it was good. love a diary-keeper who is very obviously lying to his diary. love the thought that went into how the "cat man" functions. loooove good stab. slow burn revenge story protagonist of all time.

blurb buddies: curses by lish mcbride, who provided a blurb for the 2026 debut author book below. a beauty and the beast retelling where i really liked the leads and their romance, but the side characters felt very thin in ways that make me suspect this novel is names-hastily-filed-off fanfiction. like, the side f/f relationship was so unevenly written i don't think mcbride ever established that the feelings were requited? which, if these side characters are named something like korra and asami i guess that's not unacceptable, the audience will infer your intended dynamic, but when you've stripped them of that fandom context you kinda do need to do the work.

2026 debut author: apparently, sir cameron needs to die by greer stothers, tumblr's favorite weird cats owner. a cowardly knight's death is prophesied to cause the downfall of the evil sorcerer who wants to kill god, both of which the knight finds upsetting, but preventing his own death obviously takes priority over god's. an absolute delight! i read 95% of this in a three-hour train ride and was tempted to linger on the train to finish the last chapters. deeply weird and queer and fun; there was a twist i smiled and nodded at and two more that made me burst out laughing.

gothic fiction: we have always lived in the castle by shirley jackson. god. fucking incredible. fantastic character voices, subtly written. the agoraphobia is palpable, i wasn't surprised to learn that jackson struggled with it herself. it's a classic of the genre for good reason.

science fiction: zero sum game by s.l. huang. the author is a former hollywood stunt performer and graduated MIT with a bachelors in mathematics, which as interests could not be more perfectly aligned than in this sci-fi thriller: a woman with absurd math visualization powers uses those abilities to manipulate physics in her favor, kick ass and steal things (and/or people). she doesn't think about the childhood memories she can't recall until an encounter with another person with impossible abilities forces her hand. fun characters and a very hollywood thriller plot, i really enjoyed myself with this one.