Seriously, when it comes to romantic fantasy / fantasy romance / romantasy, it's like LGBTQIA+ writers and cishet writers are working in completely different genres and worlds. Notice how CL Polk calls these unnamed characters women and not feeeeemales.
Because people who are people, no matter what those kinds of people are, can invent gender even if they're not human. Sentient, sapient, thinking people who have cultures and civilisations of their own should invent gender, instead of running around like Ferengi calling everyone "males" and "females" instead of "men" and "women."
I literally do not care how many authors did it first, how popular the books are that do this in romantic fantasy and fantasy romance and romantasy and monster romance. It gives the impression the cishets are not okay. It gives the impression that you're bioessentialist (and therefore, a buncha terves).
I literally do not care of "well, everyone's been doing this since the 90s and look at all these really popular books that do it!" Like, seriously, if SJM jumped off a cliff...? Grow a backbone and stop sounding like a bunch of terves. I'm afraid, as a queer person in this space, I must assume terf and therefore unsafe every time you resort to biological sex instead of gender.
(And none of that is even getting into the weeds of the fact that in books like Daughter of the Blood, this sharp divide into "male" and "female" was indicative of the rot and corruption of power in that world.)
(and none of that gets into the fact that when you run around using "male(s)" and "female(s)" as nouns it sounds like you're talking about a bunch of lions or hyenas instead of people, and you throw a human into that mix who's fucking that creature and we get into some real curious consent issues if what she's fucking is not a person but an animal. because I know one of the excuses for using biological sex instead of gender is that it's more primal. gross, babes. gross.)
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Review: Vici (Temeraire 0.5), by Naomi Novik | 5/5
This short story is genuinely fantastic. I love it. It feels so perfectly plausible. I also found it very funny; it's been 10 years now since I read the last of the Temeraire books, and I do remember them being funny, and this one is probably still too fresh in my mind, but I don't quite remembering finding them as funny as I found this one. It might well be because Marc Antony is a real, historical figure.
I enjoyed all of the other books in this series—my rating scale is basically that 3+ stars all indicate enjoyment. 3 stars indicates that there may be flaws I found in the writing, but mostly it's an indication that I'm not keen to re-read the book. 4 stars indicates that I found the book to be excellent and would strongly consider re-reading. 5 stars means I want to re-read it right now. So for the entire rest of the series, I found that only the very first book inspired true enthusiasm in me. The rest of the books were all a good time, and I'm glad I read them, but they're not books of my heart.
This short story, though, I adore. I kind of hate that I think that this is the best of the Temeraire stories because Temeraire himself isn't in it, but I think this story is a wonderful showcase of Novik's talent, and it was published after the series was done (though I can't say with certainty that it was written after the series was done). I've always thought that Novik is a great writer—I've been reading her writing since before His Majesty's Dragon; IYKYK—but I could absolutely see her getting better and better with every passing year, so I think that’s why this feels so absolutely stellar.
So yeah. If you enjoy the period of history Marc Antony belongs to you, if you like dragons, if you don’t care if history and its “great men” aren’t treated with absolute and utter reverence, see if you can get your hands on this and read it.
The second quarter of 2026 was a curious three months of reading for me, interrupted by a painful, difficult, and tough-to-recover from eye surgery that kept me only listening to audiobooks for a week also slowed down reading considerably in the weeks following. Alas! But overall, as you can clearly see, I mostly had a good time.
Those DNFs, though...
First of all, I think everyone should read Karen Hao's Empire of AI even if I couldn't push through it. It's good and it's important, given the state of everything, but oh it was too enraging for me to listen to.
I discovered through that week of only listening to audiobooks that a romance novel from the first person POV of a character not actually part of the romantic entanglement isn't for me; and that I struggle more with typos and various grammatical errors in audio format than in text format. With ebook or paper, I can actually interact with the book and note the errors and maybe how I'd fix them, and I find that soothes my inner editor in a way that only hearing the errors can.
I wanted desperately to enjoy Joss Richard's It's Different This Time, but... it just wasn't for me. I couldn't carry on with it. I didn't like the romantic leads.
And, oh Heartsong. See, I'm a long-time Eliza/Goliath shipper, and there's sure a lot of Eliza/Goliath in that cover. That book looks like it was written for me. But I hate, I hate, I hate to the very bottom of my shirvelled little soul the way both cishet romantasy and cishet monster romance(1) are so bio/gender-essentialist with their instance on using "male(s)" and "female(s)" as nouns rather than adjectives as though human beings are the only kind of sentient, sapient, thinking species of people with culture and civilisation that can invent gender. I don't think it's sexy to have the leading man being like "I have to protect my female" that is GROSS it makes him sound like a bovine or a lion or something. Making them more primal and animalistic makes me think there are issues with consent happening; that's gross, because it makes them less than people, and if they're less than people they can't consent to fuck the FMC, who is probably human, and thus a person. The only people in real life who use "male" and "female" exclusively to describe MEN and WOMEN are
a) elderly Boomers like my mother who are increasingly thinking transphobia sure is swell;
b) transphobes;
c) incels/manosphere jackasses who talk about "men" and "females" because they're using "females" in the place of "bitches";
d) Ferengi.
And it's all gross. It's anti-sexy and anti-feminist, and so long as it's de rigeur for cishet fantasy romance/romantasy and monster romances continue to use it, I'll continue to rail against it. (And I don't care if dates back to the 90s and Daughter of Blood and other urban fantasy romances; Daughter of Blood in particular was saying something about power and corruption with the way it reduced people to biology like that.) I will rail less about it when the people who write and read these books stop talking about how these books are feminist, actually, because something something "female gaze" and "female emperment."
(1)there's a heck of a lot of overlap in things like fantastical elements like monsters and magic between fantasy romance and monster romance; if that monster romance wasn't a romance it'd be called urban fantasy. I think classifying "monster romance" separately from "fantasy romance" kind of... silly. Especially when so many monster romances... take place in secondary world fantasy... the monster romances that take place in our world are just... urban... fantasy... [throws hands in the air and carries on muttering about genres]
the romance genre has requirements and that's okay
Every time I see the argument that books that are from the romance genre in bookstores don't require a happy ever after (or happy for now if it's a series), I get a little more angry. Whether it's a major publisher or some dipshit on reddit, I'm just like... the genre has but two requirements. The happy ever after is one of them. That's what makes the genre escapist (not the I'm just gonna turn off my brain and stop thinking, tee hee! that's not what escapism actually is). Why are you so pissy about these requirements??
Imagine if someone was like
"I'm going to write a fantasy novel with no fantastical or mythical creatures; no supernatural elements; no swords; no sorcery; actually, no magic whatsoever, in fact; no deities; no quests, journeys, or adventure; no good vs evil; no royalty/nobility; and I'm going to set it in a Tim Hortons in 2026 Canada. The lead character's name is going to be Jennifer. Nothing interesting happens to her. She just has work and family drama. She has student loans. She meets a guy named Kevin. She drives a Honda Civic. It's just following her every day life. But it's TOTALLY a fantasy novel!"
Fantasy fans would make faces and probably declare, "That's just contemporary fiction that belongs in the general fiction section of a bookstore."
Same goes for love stories without a happy ever after.
Re-read: Silver in the Wood - Emily Tesh
First read: The Last Dragon of the East - Katrina Kwan
2. Best sequel you've read so far this year?
Stormsong - CL Polk (book 2 of The Kingston Cycle)
3. New release you haven't read yet but want to?
The Library of Flowers - LC Chu
4. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year?
The Adventure Zone: Story and Song (graphic novel 7) - McElroys & Carey Pietsch
5. Biggest disappointment?
Heartsong by SE Wendel. It should’ve been right up my alley, as a rampant, unrepentant, and decades-long Elisa/Goliath shipper. But this book does that ridiculous, awful, gender-essentialist thing that romantasy loves to do (even more disappointing because I’d classify this book as paranormal/monster romance, given it takes place in modern-day Earth): using “male(s)” and “female(s)” as nouns rather than adjectives. Because humans are the only sentient, sapient, thinking species with civilisation and culture of any sort that ever invents gender, somehow. DNF’d @ 36%.
6. Biggest surprise?
Apparently, Sir Cameron Must Die - Greer Strothers. I anticipated having a good time, but I didn’t anticipate just how much I’d love this book.
7. Favorite new author (debut or new to you)?
Debut: Greer Strothers
To me: Alexis Hall
8. Newest fictional crush?
Julian (Running Close to the Wind - Alexandra Rowland)
9. Newest favorite character?
Teveri az-Haffar (Running Close to the Wind, again) is incandescent.
10. A book that made you cry?
A book that made me cry? You underestimate my ability to cry:
Witchmark - by CL Polk
The Last Dragon of the East - Katrina Kwan
Glitterland - Alexis Hall
Even Though I Knew the End - CL Polk
11. A book that made you happy?
Apparently, Sir Cameron Must Die. This book is delightful.
12. Most beautiful book you've bought so far this year (or received)?
The special edition of Alexandra Rowland’s A Taste of Gold and Iron, which is my favourite book
Honourable mentions: Apparently, Sir Cameron Must Die; Bromantasy by Máire Roche (read in progress)
13. What books do you need to read by the end of the year?
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To the end of March, 2026, I read 17 books, blowing past my annual goal of 12. I don't set my annual goals very high, because my goal really is only to make sure I read a book a month. That said, I'm still pretty proud of myself.
The most important thing here is how much I've enjoyed everything I've read, aside from DNF'ing 3 titles. Even my least-enjoyed book(s) still had some redeeming features to them, and I wasn't reading them reluctantly (I don't read reluctantly anymore; I'm happy to DNF now).
Have you found a book that you think might be a 2026 favorite?
Oh yes!
The only book so far this year I've given five stars to is Katrina Kwan's The Last Dragon of the East, though it's a 2024 release that I only just got to this year as I endeavour to, as much as possible, read books by Canadian authors. Barring that, I'm reading LGBTQIA+ books... though I'll be breaking that soonish to read a particular 2026 book.
Now, if we're talking 2026 releases, I gave 4.75 stars to Greer Strothers' debut novel, Apparently, Sir Cameron Must Die which was absolutely fantastic, but didn't hit me as emotionally as Last Dragon of the East did. It's not terribly often I keep up with the current year's releases, so there may not be many other 2026 books to talk about as the year passes.
Any least favorite book of the year?
Other than my DNFs (which I talk about in the post I already linked to), Rachel Reid's Game Changer is definitely the book I enjoyed the least. I have described that book in various places as "aggressively fine" and that's kind of all I can say about it. I don't think it's terrible. It has some redeeming qualities in the fact that I read it after watching Heated Rivalry, which left a sheen on it. I think Reid creates charming characters, and she's pretty good with dialogue, and I don't find the sex scenes cringey, just a bit... a lot. There's a lot of them. But Reid's craft leaves a lot to be desired, especially in that she's one of those writers who leans way, way, way, way, way, too heavily on emphasis italics. It's like they're emotional support formatting. This is not the place for my emphasis italics in prose rant, though.
Most read genre?
Ooh, must count.
Oh no. With 8/17, it's contemporary romance, and that's entirely due to having read all of Rachel Reid's Game Changers, plus two Alexis Hall. That is not my genre, though I am very much now an Alexis Hall convert so.
There are 5 titles that I would call romantic fantasy (the romance was a strong component, but not forward enough to be the A-plot as the romance is). One fantasy romance. Then two fantasy and one historical fantasy.
A book that surprised me?
Alexis Hall's Glitterland. I went into it with zero expectations, and only listened to the audiobook because it's narrated by Nicholas Boulton, who played my personal favourite Dragon Age protagonist (sassy gay m!Hawke). And I was just utterly enthralled. It was incredible. I've seldom read a contemporary romance with a more deserved and necessary third-act break up, one that the characters needed very badly to have before reaching their HEA.
A book that has come out in 2026 that I haven’t yet read?
Off the top of my head: The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan; The Poet Empress by Shen Tao; and Heartsong by SE Wendel.
One goal you made that you’re succeeding at?
My focus on Canadian books and, barring Canadian, LGBTQ+ books. I am going to be breaking it soonish, because as a longtime Elisa/Goliath shipper, I can't resist Heartsong for much longer, because that book had to be written with people like me in mind.
One goal that you need to focus on?
Reading more than one book a month, as much as "read a book a month" is always my baseline. I've really slowed down in April, but part of that is because I have an upcoming eye surgery, which means that I'm not going to be able to read in the traditional and pedantic definition: by using my eyeballs. I'm only going to be able to listen to things for a solid week in May.
There's also the fact that I gave up basically all my other hobbies to read as much as I have, because I'm a pretty slow reader, and I think I made myself more depressed by focusing so hard on the one hobby for three solid months.
Because apparently I'm just not afraid to possibly be seen as an asshole, here's a tier list of the books I read in the first quarter of 2026. They are organised within each tier by how much I enjoyed them.
I have things to say about those DNFs, and why there's two different kinds, and some of it's gonna make me seem like an asshole, but I'm mostly fine with that.
Neutral DNF means it just wasn't for me for reasons beyond the book and its writing. Derogatory DNF is… well. Derogatory.
Midnight Bargain would have been just right for me if I was part of its target age demographic. It's a YA novel, which is a category I enjoy less and less as I get older. In part because, yeah, I'm afraid that I just struggle with the maturity levels of characters still in their teens, but also because of the past 8 years or so? I think? I've really started to struggle more and more with reading about young people--especially young people who are children or barely adults--being in distress, danger, difficult situations, etc. If it's something I was already familiar with, it's fine. But it's difficult with new books.
And then there's the maturity issue; I have a lot less patience for that with, again, characters who are new to me. And then it gets really uncomfortable for me if there's any kind of romance involved, especially when the characters are under 18.
So Midnight Bargain's does have a romantic subplot, but the character is 18, so that could have been fine. And where I got to, there wasn't any major perils... yet. But the world's misogyny was rough, and quite heavy-handed. However, if it was for an adult audience and the protagonist had been a 28-year-old spinster dealing with her world's misogyny, I would have been keen to keep reading it alongside the other 4 CL Polk books I read this year so far. But with her being freshly 18... I just couldn't do it. However, if I'd read this when I was the YA category's actual target audience, I think I'd have read the book with gusto.
For the first book in the derogatory DNF category, it was not written in a way that I enjoyed and, frankly, it wasn't even "eh, this isn't for me" the way I felt with Midnight Bargain. I'm trying so hard with media not to go "oh my God this is so bad!" and make those kinds of judgments because they're usually so very subjective, y'know? But unlike Midnight Bargain, Serpent and the Wings of Night was actively pissing me off with some of its writing choices. It was actively demonstrating some of the things that get on, in, over, under, around, and through every single one of my nerves about MF romantasy.
There's this curious "accent" I hear in MF romantasy written from first-person POV, that I can't describe or explain that really bugs me. It was in this book in spades. I'm not a prude, I swear like a sailor, I don't care when there's cursing in dialogue, but something about the frequent profanity in the narration of this book just felt immature and edgy instead of dark and grown up and gritty. There's the "my leathers" nonsense, the "I can't/don't wear pretty frilly things", the "I'm wearing 'my leathers' to a fancy party" thing that MF romantasy likes to do with its heroines, because you can't be a badass stabber-of-vampires AND wear pretty dresses. There's the use of the word "Arabesque" to describe wallpaper in this secondary world fantasy novel. There's the fact that the vampires are so far past what I expect vampires to be, that they're basically just another species entirely with the name "vampire" slapped on them.
And then there's the other DNF. I started reading it. A little later that day, I decided to go to the author's socials. And the videos used to advertise his books are so very clearly AI generated. I still can't pick out if the cover is AI generated (there are no people, no real objects on it), but I think if an author is willing to use generative AI for advertising like that, willing to use something that steals from other artists, steals likenesses, destroys the planet... I can't trust that the words inside the book didn't use the same machine. He got my money. I hope he put it towards keeping a roof over his head. He won't get any of my time. Writers cannot cannot cannot stab other artists of all stripes in the back like that, even if every word in their books are actually written by them.
The Last Dragon of the East and Apparently Sir Cameron Must Die are phenomenal books, and for any Canadian fantasy, romance, and fantasy romance fans and you're trying to buy Canadian as much as possible: they're Canadian.
this post has been mirrored from my other tumblr account
So excited to reveal the cover to my new book today, The Wisdom of Emperors! You can check it out on Kickstarter, along with the full summary!
Inspired by the story of the Ancient Roman emperor Hadrian and his lover Antinous, The Wisdom of Emperors is a second-world adult fantasy novel written in the style of a fictional academic text. It documents the translation and study of a world-changing artifact discovered in an archaeological dig: a manuscript which provides the clues to finally unravel the mysteries surrounding one of the most famous emperors of the ancient world.
The Kickstarter campaign is for the deluxe collector's edition, but you'll be able to preorder the standard hardback/paperback, PLUS the early-access ebook, available to backers well before general publication to everyone else. And there's going to be some really, REALLY cool merch as well (genuine papyrus bookmarks, designed and blockprinted by my own hands!)
Anyway, the Kickstarter goes live on May 5th at 4:00pm EST, so if you are the sort of person who reads news articles about major new archaeological discoveries and gets SUPER MAD that they don't tell you absolutely everything about why it's important and what it changes about what we thought we knew..... this one's for you, babe. ;)
Also I was told by a publishing industry insider that this book probably wouldn't sell because publishers are explicitly saying that they don't want "challenging" books, they want books that (and i QUOTE) "aren't necessarily making readers think"
So if that pisses you the FUCK off, sauce me a signal boost.
Please keep interacting with this post because when I come to tumblr to procrastinate, this shows up again in my notifications and guilts me into writing again
If you haven't heard, the em dash has been getting a lot of attention lately…
Because it was trained on pirated work—including freely accessible online writing (like fanfic, academic texts)—ChatGPT picked up patterns and quirks native to human writing.
Including (sigh) the em dash.
There are other victims here (RIP tapestry and delve 🫠), but the appropriation of the em dash—a punctuation mark beloved by writers everywhere—feels especially personal.
A kind of low-grade panic is ensuing. Writers who once memed their own em dash overuse—the greatest punctuation mark ever to grace the control-freak’s lexicon, frankly—are suddenly backing away to avoid accusations.
No. More. We have centuries of dash-abusing writers behind us. We will not sit quietly while AI repurposes our beloved stilted aside—or the just-one-more clarification the sentence demands—or the dramatic pause your comma could never—etc.
You don’t write like AI—AI writes like you.
Defend the em dash.
(Feel free to download/share/stick it where it matters!)
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For my own reference and for anyone who may actually find my blog and is curious, this is how I rate books. Thank you, Storygraph, for having a quarter-star system. GoodReads, thanks for the DNF shelf, but get your act together and be a better website already.
0 - DNF at less than 50%.
1 - Did not like; nothing to recommend it, waste of my time and possibly money, almost certainly DNF'd past 50%. There was obviously something there to keep me going that long, but may have been simple curiosity.
TL;DR in my subjective opinion, still a bad book / D-tier
2 - Deeply flawed, very little to recommend it, but something was there to keep me going. Would not recommend it to anyone. I'm probably relieved when it's done.
TL;DR acceptable / C-tier.
3 - It was a good, serviceable book that I don't regret reading, however, it doesn't excite me much. May have many mechanical/craft flaws, but other things to recommend it, eg, character, dialogue, plot. I'm satisfied when it's done, however, I feel no drive to re-read. This is probably where most books fall for me, in the 3.0 to 3.75 range. I won't let the whole "anything less than 5 stars is bad!" nonsense from retail/customer service ratings or "a 3-star book is bad, actually" discourse deter me on this one; 3 to 3.75 is not a bad rating for a book, at all, I will die on this hill; it is good, just not great or excellent.
TL;DR good / B-tier
4 - I really, really enjoyed it! A very well-done book I would absolutely re-read someday. There are undoubtedly some flaws, including on a mechanical/craft level, enough to lessen overall impression of the book, but not enough to ruin overall enjoyment. Both satisfied and a little sad it's over.
TL;DR a great book / A-tier
5 - Loved it! The book thrilled me on various emotional levels. I want to re-read it right now. Please inject this directly into my veins. I can't stop thinking about it. It changed my brain chemistry. Almost certainly still has flaws because so few books are perfect, but the book's strengths far outweigh any problems, in my opinion. I am left bereft upon reading the final word on the final page, wanting to go back into the book and experience it all over again for the first time.
TL;DR an excellent book / S-tier
