#queernormative

Themes: Fantasy, LGBTQ, Political intrigue, inspired by West Asian and Central Asian cultures, War

I loved this book. It was so great that I can even forgive the fact that there was hardly any sapphic yearning even though the blurb told me there would be sapphic yearning. It does very much deliver on the sword-and-scythe-wielding-female-knights-with Pegasi-front, though.

The Gryphon King is a fantasy novel set in a queer-normative world inspired by the cultures of Western and Central Asia, rife with political intrigue, complex not always loveable characters and entrancing world-building. The relatively large cast of characters can be a bit daunting at first, but the writing somehow manages to make almost all of them feel distinct early on. It also manages to occasionally make you forget that Bataar is actually quite the assh0le and has you genuinely sympathising with him, right up until he does something that makes you go «hey why’d I forget that you’re a piece of shit?!» The emotions, especially towards the end of the book, are so raw and real that it made me feel the despair and anger and fear the characters go through. 

The comp titles listed for this are «Godkiller» and «The Priory of the Orange Tree», but I also thought that specifically the magical element of the world felt very reminiscent of «An Ember in the Ashes». Both books begin with very little magic, to the point where you’re left wondering whether there really is magic in this world at all. Magical elemets are introduced to the plot slowly, and they always have a very remote, inhuman, almost other-worldly air about them. It is not magic for humans to meddle with, and meddle they shall.

I’m really looking forward to reading the sequel, whenever it comes out. The silent despair and hopelessness I felt at the end was exquisite, and I can’t wait to see where it goes from there.

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This book has: Urban Fantasy, Magic, parallel worlds (duh), sapphic Vietnamese-American protagonist, sapphic Chinese-American protagonist, queernormative world

The blurb says this is a cozy fantasy. It is not. Still a good (audio)book though.

Now, I did enjoy the (audio)book but the blurb is definitely off the mark in describing this as ‘cozy’. It starts off cozy enough, with the two main characters meeting at the titular coffeeshop (in an alternate universe). But from there it quickly veers away from that to instead have the plot center around a capitalist conspiracy that is endangering the two parallel universes and has already resulted in multiple deaths. Which doesn’t sound all that cozy to me. The romance between the two protagonists is really sweet, as are all of the platonic relationships for that matter. And while that does give some scenes a rather cozy vibe, it is vastly overshadowed by the fairly angsty main plotline.

To be 100% clear, I don’t think that those are bad things, I quite enjoyed the book after all, but I think it is being mismarketed, which will inevitably lead to readers going into it with the wrong expectations and only ending up disappointed.

A more accurate pitch might be that this is s sapphic urban low fantasy set in two parallel world versions of LA. One world has no magic, the other has all the magic, but that’s basically all that’s different between the two. Seriously, they even have the exact same high schools and the exact same Target, except one sells laptops and the other sells ‘Runebooks’. And it’s not like the two worlds diverged very recently, it’s been 100 years at the very least. But you want me to believe that the Target is not only in the exact same place, but also has the exact same floor plan - to the point where a character can walk around through most of it without realising you’re in a different Target?

So, if you like magic systems and world-building that is intricate, detailed and ‘realistic’, this probably isn’t the book for you. The magic system isn’t simple, exactly, but it also isn’t very intricate either. The story is a very fun sapphic romp that you can read and enjoym but probably shouldn’t think about for too long.

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