#qreview

Author: C. B. Lee

Opening Line: ‘Jess grits her teeth, going for a running start.’

This was AWESOME fun!

So this is a superhero story set in a world where it’s pretty common to have powers, but our main character Jess has none. Which is, understandably, pretty disappointing. A few main points:

The ‘person X is really Y in disguise’ is pulled multiple times, and is really easy to guess ahead of time, but I think that’s the whole point. And it’s a delightful riff on tropes of superhero stories! I had a lot of fun watching that happen, as though it was just this… side effect? Of having lots of people with superpowers about.

I love Jess, she’s wonderful. Her crush on Abby is great, and I love her dynamic with her friends and her family. Jess’s conversations with M are all excellent. I really like that Jess checks M’s pronouns. Jess is bi, and her friend Bells (also a great character who I believe gets more pagetime in the sequel?) is trans. Their friendship is done really well!

In terms of plot, it was pretty cleanly done. No massively surprising twists, but it didn’t need them – what it had was good. Did I mention the villain? Good villain. Great villain.

I really need to get my hands on the sequel! 4.5/5.

You might enjoy this book if you enjoyed: The Incredibles (movie), Seraphina (Rachel Hartman), The Micah Grey Trilogy (Laura Lam).

Author: Melissa Caruso

Opening Line: ‘Here, my lady?’

This was excellently enjoyable!

So, Amalia is the daughter of a noble family who basically gets accidentally stuck partnering the lower-class Zaira, who has incredibly powerful magic. This is a less than an ideal circumstance that makes for a thoroughly good read.

Amalia is the viewpoint character, but Zaira is her equal in importance – and Zaira, delightfully, is bisexual or pansexual. Both of them are really great characters; Zaira in particular is great fun, they work well in counterpart with each other and I look forward to seeing their dynamic develop in the next two books. I found myself particularly enjoying Amalia’s character development – between her and Zaira you have a really good range of emotions and competencies.

The characters in general were well-written, as were their relationships with each other. I thought Amalia’s relationship with her mother was particularly interesting – Caruso could have easily rendered it simplistically but chose to make a much more interesting dynamic.

It’s very much an examination-of-how-we-handle-magic type book, and the world-building is good – complex enough not to be boring, simple enough to be easy to follow. There’s also a reasonable amount of scope in there that I imagine Caruso will be able to pull from as she expands in the rest of the trilogy.

All of that combined with a good twist and a satisfyingly nasty villain means that I had a great time reading this, and I’m really interested in reading the next two books! 

5/5.

You might enjoy this book if you enjoyed: Green Rider (Britain), The Black Magician Trilogy (Canavan), The Chronicles of Ixia (Snyder).

Author: Natasha Pulley

Opening Line: ‘The Home Office telegraphy department always smelled of tea.’

This was a book I’d been eyeing for a while without realising it was a queer love story – finding that out was the final straw and I just had to read it. And I’m so glad I did!

It’s a faintly steampunk, faintly magical story set in 1880s London, which starts when Thaniel Steepleton finds an exquisite pocket watch left in his rooms. This leads him (via a fairly large explosion) to Keita Mori, a watchmaker with his own secret to hide.

We also have Grace, an interesting character, determined to get some scientific work done no matter what her family says about getting married and settling down.

The sci-fi/fantasy elements are pretty light, but they are also intrinsic to the story. And the story? An intricate little unfolding puzzle with a love story weaving through it. I’ve seen a few reviewers say they felt like the romance element came out of nowhere, but honestly I could see if from the very first meeting between the two characters – it’s the subtle mutual pining type of set-up.

It was a really enjoyable read, and I’d love to see both of them again in another book. As long as they don’t forget the clockwork octopus (I want one).

4.5/5.

You might enjoy this book if you enjoyed: A Closed and Common Orbit (Becky Chambers), The Micah Grey Trilogy (Laura Lam), Tooth and Claw (Jo Walton).

Author: N. K. Jemisin

Opening Line: ‘Let’s start with the end of the world, why don’t we?’

So previously I reviewed the first book in this trilogy, The Fifth Season. I recently got to reread book one and then read straight through books two and three, so it seemed to make more sense to review the whole thing as a trilogy.

The problem is, every time I sit down and try and string together some sentences, I just end up making vague gestures at my computer screen.

Friends, this trilogy is overwhelmingly, jaw-droppingly good.

It’s actually really hard to be articulate, because I just kind want to run around yelling? Or fill this whole review with keysmash. But I’ll try. I’m trying. I promise.

The story is set on a continent (country? Landmass of some kind?) called the Stillness. This is an extremely sarcastic name, because Stillness has a vast amount of tectonic trouble. Low-level quakes are pretty common. And every so often, their world enters what they refer to as a Fifth Season: basically a near-apocalyptic event. Sometimes volcanic, sometimes an earthquake or a tidal wave, sometimes a combination, sometimes all of the above. Humans retreat during these times and survive as best they can until the fifth season ends, then (mostly) rebuild civilisation from scratch.

One thing seems to survive down the ages, and that’s a deep hatred of Orogenes. These people have the ability to detect and control tectonic activity (a simplified explanation, but it’ll do). So they’re deeply necessary but also treated with very little trust.

In the middle of all of this we have Essun, and Damaya, and Syenite. Damaya is a young girl discovered to be an Orogene, on her way to the Fulcrum where Orogenes are trained to both use their ability and obey without question. Syenite is an adult working for the Fulcrum, finding out that the world is not quite what she thought it was. And Essun… Essun is living out her own private apocalypse in the middle of a very real one.

That’s about as much as I can explain without getting too detailed or two spoilery. But a list of other things found in this trilogy: stunningly good writing; complex but well-revealed world-building; a trans secondary character; multiple non-straight relationships; a polyamorous three; people made of stone; a surprising but brilliant use of perspective; a wealth of well-written female characters. Jemisin keeps a precise balance between an intensely personal story and one at a scale almost beyond description. Not to mention that she manages to write about a brutal world where characters go through some awful things without ever making her reader miserable – I never felt worn-down by the story, just absolutely enraptured.

Please read this trilogy, folks. I need more people to talk to about it!

One of the best fantasy series of all time. 5/5.

You might enjoy this book if you enjoyed: The Realm of the Elderlings (Robin Hobb), Strange the Dreamer (Laini Taylor), The Black Prism (Brent Weeks).

Author: Audrey Coulthurst

Opening Line: ‘When I was seven winters of age, my mother caught me in the hearth stacking red-hot coals with my bare hands.’

I’d heard so much about this before I got it, so I was very excited to read it!

The two bi princesses are everything I was promised – Denna and Mare are both nicely rounded characters whose relationship feels very natural. Partly that’s because it’s so slow-burn – Coulthurst takes her time in building the two of them as characters, then as friends, then as mutual crushes, and finally as a couple. My only complaint with that is I wanted more of them as a couple. I felt like I was waiting for a lot of the book. But there’s a possible sequel on the horizon, so hopefully that’ll come out there!

One of the things I loved the most about this queer-characters-in-fantasy set-up is that there is no homophobia in this society. Early on, for example, there’s casually a couple of gentlemen dancing together in the ballroom. Reading something like this where queer people are just a normal part of the society… it feels like breathing out. Like my shoulders had lost tension I didn’t realise they’d held. There’s definitely value in telling stories of bigotry and exclusion and finding yourself despite your culture, but I would love to read more escapist “this is how it should be” fiction. It’s just so enjoyable.

The set up is nicely done, and the whole fictional universe feels very coherent. I thought the twist was good (no spoilers!) and I particularly enjoyed Denna’s mother and sister as secondary characters. Neat magic system, too! It really felt like Coulthurst had left room to explore it further. I’m looking forward to the next one!

A fun, entertaining slow-burn romance with a political edge. A solid 4/5.

You might enjoy this book if you enjoyed: The Green Rider series (Kristen Britain), Ash (Malinda Lo), The Chronicles of Ixia (Maria V. Snyder).