fffriday | Entries tagged with genre: fantasy

The day after finishing The Traitor Baru Cormorant I had to rush over to the library to pick up book 2, The Monster Baru Cormorant, which I finished earlier today.

Spoilers for The Traitor Baru Cormorant below!

The second book of a fantasy series of any kind often bears a very difficult burden. It is most often the place where the scope of the story grows significantly. A conflict which before was local to the protagonist's home and surrounding area may expand, often to the extent of the known world. New players are often added to the cast, bigger and scarier problems and challenges arise. The protagonist may have gone up in the world, wielding new power and influence, with new responsibilities. As a result, this is where many series lose their footing; a tightly-woven book or season 1 may give way to a muddled, watered down part 2 as the writers struggle to juggle this expanded focus.

The Monster suffers from none of those things. It is the place where Baru's story expands—in The Traitor, her focus was almost entirely on Aurdwynn; it was the full field of play and outside players mattered only as they influenced events on Aurdwynn. In The Monster, Baru has become a true agent of the Imperial Throne of Falcrest, and with these new powers, the entire field of the empire is opened up for her play, and it is fascinating to watch.

In The Traitor, Baru was narrowly focused on managing the situation in Aurdwynn; everything she did was to that end. In The Monster, Baru can do whatever she wants, and we get to see her finally on the open field. Even where she flounders and flails, it's delightful to watch the machinations of her mind constantly at work. Her cleverness rows against her bursts of sentimentality to produce some impressively chaotic effects, but she is as slippery as an eel to pin down, even when her rivals think they've gotten the best of her.

( Read more... )

rocky41_7

On Saturday afternoon, on the bus ride home, I finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant, because I couldn't wait until I got home to reach the end, despite a long history of reading-induced car sickness. It was totally worth it.

The Traitor Baru Cormorant is all fantasy politics. There's no magic or fairies or prophecies, just Seth Dickinson's invented world and the titanic machinations of Empire. And it is electric. Tentatively, I'd make a comparison to The Goblin Emperor, except that where TGE is about how Maia, completely unprepared for his role, is thrust into a viper's nest of politics, Baru Cormorant is about how Baru has painstakingly taught herself the ways of the empire and enters into the game fully prepared to rewrite the rules to her liking.

Dickinson creates a wonderfully believable world. The Empire of Masks—popularly known as the Masquerade—is sickeningly plausible, with their soft conquests of money and ideas backed by a highly-trained and well-equipped military. The Masquerade is not content to conquer land—it must conquer minds, people. It is relentless in its push to force its colonies and territories to adopt its ways of thinking, to the point of dictating who may and may not marry based on their bloodlines. With this comes a heaping dose of homophobia, frequently enforced on cultures who had formerly been relaxed or even accepting of queer identities and relationships. This presents a specific problem for Baru, who is the daughter of a mother and two fathers, and who is herself a deeply closeted lesbian.

The story makes use of incredibly mundane tools in its schemes, something that also rings realistic. It's not all backstabbing, murder, and blackmail—at one point, a serious political threat is nullified through currency inflation. Baru, who becomes an imperial accountant, is in a prime position to use these seemingly dull tools to marvelous effect. Many schemes are strangled in the cradle, such that only the plotter and the defeater are even aware that they existed. But the game goes on.

( Read more... )

chestnut_pod

Metal From Heaven by August Clarke

I recommend to everyone

skygiants' review for a perspective from someone who enjoyed this book more than me. I respected it, but I can't say I liked it. However, it is clear to me that many people would like this very much! A violently purple, ambitious fantasy story about lesbians who hate each other and the workers' revolution (sort of).

I felt like it careened out of its own control around the 2/3 mark (which is also where one can audibly start hearing the Evangelion theme song). However, if you like swirly-marbled psychedelic books with 90s anime antecedents where every character can be described as The [attractiveness adjective] [morality adjective] Lesbian, evil blue tangerines, and other people's trip diaries, this is for you. It's very very different, ambitious, and fresh, which one likes to reward, so I hope it gets lots of attention, even if it wasn't totally for me.

But Not Too Bold, by Hache Pueyo

This was… basically okay. "Lady Mary and Mr. Fox" but lesbian horror-spiders. I appreciated how the Folklore Flavor details were specific in a way that I find sadly uncommon in this species of contemporary "monster" "romance" fantasy. It is stuck halfway between the broad strokes of a fairytale and the demands of a lengthier novella trying to have a mystery plot, and the romance is really just armature.

The Cautious Traveller's Guide to the Wastelands, by Sarah Brooks

This is a blown egg of a book. There's a shell of cool things, like trans-continental trains, eco-horror gaslamp-style, a quasi-Rusalki in ambiguous love with the orphaned Chinese train-foundling, and alt-history, but the shell is all there is. Bombastic but substanceless.

Hopefully in the next few months I will read some new-to-me F/F which I can wholeheartedly love.

rocky41_7

This week I finished The Dawnhounds, the first book of the The Endsong series by Sascha Stronach.

This book has been compared to Gideon the Ninth, which I think does it a disservice, because while there are enjoyable things about it, if you go into it expecting The Locked Tomb, I think you're going to be disappointed. They are not on the same level.

Protagonist Yat's homeland—the port city of Hainak—is implied to have been colonized and fought a revolution to escape that, but while some of the changes have been welcome—the embrace of "biotech," freedom of determination—her home is in the throes of sliding from one abusive regime to another. They have thrown off the yoke of colonization, but as Yat comes to slowly realize over the course of the novel, what they replaced it with isn't much better.

Yat is in a prime position to realize this. A former street rat turned cop who joined the police in hopes of making a positive change for people like herself, she's been slowly worn down over the years into someone who simply closes her eyes to the worse abuses by the government and partakes herself in the lesser offenses. The kick-off for the story isn't any of that though—it's that Yat is demoted after her coworkers learn she's patronized a queer bar. She's blundering through the fallout of that—continuing to patronize that same bar, and using drugs to cope—when the fantasy plot hits her in the head.

Unfortunately, here is where the novel began to lose me. I think the comparisons with The Locked Tomb arise from the way The Dawnhounds throws the reader into the plot with the promise of revealing more information later. Except that where TLT is a masterclass in subterfuge and gradual reveals that make perfect sense in retrospect, and in some cases reframed entire characters and story arcs, The Dawnhounds just...never really reveals the information.

( Read more... )

rocky41_7

Frontier by Grace Curtis is a space western, which takes place far in the future after much of Earth's population has abandoned it due to catastrophic climate change.

Then a ship falls from the sky, bringing the planet's first visitor in three hundred years. This Stranger is a crewmember on the first ship in centuries to attempt a return to Earth and save what's left. But her escape pod crashes hundreds of miles away from the rest of the wreckage.

The Stranger finds herself adrift in a ravaged, unwelcoming landscape, full of people who hate and fear her space-born existence. Scared, alone, and armed, she embarks on a journey across the wasteland to return to her ship, her mission, and the woman she loves.

I really enjoyed the way this novel revealed its story. Rather than simply track the traveler from place to place, the story shows us the traveler's journey through the eyes of the people who encounter her: a small-town librarian at odds with the local mayor, the young son of a preacher with a nasty secret, a shady woman on a quest of her own. Each chapter opens with setting the perspective of this onlooker before the traveler comes into the scene, and I felt like this was a very fun and creative way of telling her story, as well as giving us a lot more information about the world and culture of Earth in this story's universe than we could get from the traveler's perspective alone.

The traveler herself is an excellent blend of competent and human: as an astronaut among a deeply Luddite population which has technologically stagnated for centuries, she has certain advantages, like her advanced weaponry, which can quickly resolve some situations. However, she can be divested of these advantages without enormous effort: if she loses her gun, if she's facing too many enemies, if she succumbs to bodily weakness like exhaustion or injury, she's no better off than any Earthling in her situation would be.

She certainly possesses a skillset that helps her through her journey, but she's also a person. She feels fear, anxiety, weariness. She has tells when she lies, she has moments of awkwardness, she makes mistakes. She's not Terminator in a cowboy hat blasting her way to victory while the challenges slide off her without a mark.

The romance was fine. Sweet, but unremarkable. I do enjoy more queer fantasy that doesn't center romance though, so that's a win!

Some other reviews felt the ending wrapped up too quickly, but personally I was satisfied. I didn't need a confrontation with the main antagonist drawn out any more; he was such a loathsome character that I simply wasn't interested in seeing more of him. I was content with where the book left things.

On the whole, I enjoyed this book more than I expected. It was just long enough to tell its story satisfactorily without overstaying its welcome. I enjoyed the detours into side characters that gave us colorful glimpses into what life is like on Earth for the locals rather than relegating us merely to the traveler's outsider perspective. It does leave lots of loose threads behind, but it felt realistic and never, for me, unsatisfying. Life goes on after the traveler has moved onto her next goal.

A fun read!

rocky41_7

This is the second book in the Wayward Children series (first book: Every Heart A Doorway). This book focuses on Jack and Jill from Every Heart, and what happened to them before they came to Ms. West's school.

Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were packed off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.

This is the story of what happened first…

Spoilers below!

( Read more... )

rocky41_7

I'm slightly unsure this one really belongs here, as it's not totally clear the protagonist of this novel still identifies as a woman by the end of the book, but it's close enough to share and still likely to be of interest, I think. She Who Became the Sun is a historical fantasy novel by Shelley Parker-Chan. It is the first in a duology and the description is:

She Who Became the Sun reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor.

This one I grabbed on impulse at the bookstore back in January because I vaguely remembered hearing about it somewhere. As with my last review, I'm going to keep this short because I simply do not have the energy for more. I liked this book and I do plan to read the next one. There were moments I wasn't sure about it, but I'm glad I stuck with it and I think Parker-Chan crafts some very interesting characters here.

The main protagonist Zhu is fascinatingly driven and unrepentantly ambitious. She is also ruthless in her pursuit of her destiny, which starts to get pretty interesting at the end of this novel, and I expect will feature even more prominently in the next. She also reads, to me, as asexual or something close to it, which as an ace person myself was fun to see, especially because it isn't treated like a problem in her relationships. Neither does it stem from her own complex relationship with gender--it's just how she is.

The deuterogonist Ouyang is every bit as interesting, even though we don't see his POV until the middle part of the book. He is someone who is so viscerally torn between feeling compelled towards revenge and yet not desiring anything that will actually come of it that it's so interesting to watch his fate play out. I think Parker-Chan does a great job getting you into Ouyang's head during his perspective chapters and it was so interesting to me how Zhu leans into their connection while Ouyang is repulsed by it.

Recommend if you:

Enjoy morally gray/amoral protagonists--both Zhu and Ouyang do shady to outright horrifying things in pursuit of their goals.
Want queer relationships--won't give spoilers on this but both Zhu and Ouyang have queer experiences ,
Enjoy a historical setting that leans into the contemporary cultures--we get a good look both at the culture of the Mongols and of the Chinese.

Do not recommend if you:

Like heavily detailed stories--my only real criticism of the novel is that it often skims over things I would have liked explored in more depth.
Like a happy ending--of course this is only 1 of 2 books, but based on how it's going, I would not hold out hope for a happy end. The end of this first novel was not an uncomplicated victory.
Prefer romance to be a core of the story--as noted there are queer relationships here, but for the most part they are not the central part of the novel.

Crossposted from my main and

books

hebethen

Happy Femslash February, folks! Long time no post. I haven't been through the entire CHEx collection, but I can feel my energy plummeting due to life/work reasons, so I figured better to post recs from what I've seen even if it's not comprehensive! All of these are rated T or below; there are others that I enjoyed but these were my favorite four out of all of them. (I suppose favorite five would have also worked for alliterative purposes, but four is more symmetrical.)

Two original work recs:
moth and flame have a sweetheart deal (fantasy, guard/princess, ~1.9k)
Pining is a way to put it, but not just in the saccharine way of crushes and romantic longings -- pining for freedom, clarity, leverage. It lets the characters be jagged and brutal and sympathetic, which makes them matter.

Space Aliens! On an Adventure with Pirates (contemporary, actor/stunt person, ~1.8k)
A fluffy little kinda-meet-cute with really excellent dialogue between charmingly nerdy craftspeople.

And two fanwork recs:
Who Could Ask For Anything More? (Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City, Josefina/Misty, ~3.4k)
An achingly beautiful sequence that brings life to (a sliver of) Rowan's past as well as the tragedy of her firework-glittering affair with Josefina.

As the Ocean Courts the Strand (Fallen London, Hephaesta/Pirate Poet, ~300)
A short, resonantly poetic snippet that perfectly captures the tone of the source material; it wouldn't be out of place in a Sunless game.

rocky41_7

As of now, only two books of the trilogy have been released, beginning with The Jasmine Throne, followed by The Oleander Sword. The author is Tasha Suri. The jacket description from The Jasmine Throne is:

Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of powerful magic – but is now little more than a decaying ruin.

Priya is a maidservant, one of several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to attend Malini’s chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, as long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides. But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled . . .

I covered a more in-depth review on my blog, but TBK is a south Asian-inspired fantasy with a fantastic cast of characters and an interesting leading romance.

The books are ~500 pages each, but the prose makes for pretty quick reading.

Recommend if you:

Want to read some fantasy that is not culturally European/Western
Want a F/F relationship where the characters feel genuinely for each other but struggle with "duty vs. love"
Enjoy multi-POV stories that cover several plotlines simultaneously
Want female-centered fantasy

Do not recommend if you:

Are turned off by in-universe homophobia
Want an action-heavy story (there is action but it usually is not described in depth)
Want an uncomplicated "fluffy" romance

definitely_not_an_alb

This is one of those fantasy books that is inexplicably marketed with three vague lines basically everywhere, so have an actual dust jacket blurb up front:

Eadaz du Zāla uq-Nāra of the Priory of the Orange tree has been sent undercover to the far-away court of Inys to protect Queen Sabran Berethnet the Ninth in secret. Sabran, young and unwilling to marry, is suffering under the burdens of her office; to be not just the Queen of a country, but also the religious head of three countries, direct descendant of the saviour and founder of Virtuedom, living seal against an unspeakable evil and future mother of the next Berethnet. Sabrans and Eads shared close friend Arteloth Beck has recently disappeared; he and his friend Kit are on a mission to the draconic nation of Yscalin. In the East, Tané, a village orphan chosen by the gods, is fighting for her place in the Clan Miduchi, the famed sea fighters and dragon riders that protect Seiiki from pirates and evil firebreathers both. She crosses path with Sabran’s denounced, exiled and bereft former court alchemist who seeks the secret of eternal life. All of them live in the shadow of an era ending and an old threat to all humanity, the Nameless One, ruler of wyrms, rising once again.

Priory of the Orange Tree is a sprawling Pseudo-Arthuriana/Mythical Epic Fantasy novel with an appropriately fraught, clandestine courtly-chivalric love story and at its centre. It's over 800 pages long, so it take a while for anyone to actually kiss, and it plainly is a high fantasy, not a romance novel, so I wouldn't read it solely for any promised relationships.

Less formally, I described it over in my more in-depth review on my blog as having everything: giant evil dragons, good wise dragons, horse-girl dragon riders, lady knights, identity shenanigans, chivalric knights and dames, secret orders of lady fighters, lesbians with swords, pirate ladies, tragic romances, tragic bromances, non-tragic romances, secret romances, chivalric romances, ancient horrors and also a giant flying tsundere weasel.

My main complaints/(non-cw) caveats are that if you love Tané in the beginning ... well, she gets way less plot/page-time/attention than she deserves, which is a shame and secondly that despite being an 800+ page door stopper, a lot of locations and plot points did not get the breathing room they imo needed.

( Some content warnings )

blueshiftofdeath

This is a two-volume yuri light novel that's about exactly what the title says. It's clear early on that it's largely feminism 101: it talks about what sexism is, what it looks like, why it's bad, and various ways it manifests. There's a plot, but feminism 101 is very interwoven with every major plot point. I thought the author did a great job with that-- I think it's easy to find something like that too preachy or too focused on the message, but actually I found the story and characters very engaging.

The author also did a great job with the feminist messaging, which I think can be super tricky with something like this, especially since there's so much division within feminist thought. The narrative manages to not be patronizing towards women (shaming them for dressing a certain way etc.) while acknowledging how societal pressures can lead to women not prioritizing themselves. Basically, I think the feminist messaging is something almost everyone (that isn't sexist) could get behind. I was also afraid that it would be a huge bummer to be reminded of real sexism issues throughout my read, but I personally thought it succeeded at being cathartic.

The yuri component is definitely secondary to the feminism, but it's still present and cute. Overall, a sweet and funny story!

(Here's also a review from Okazu.)

blueshiftofdeath

I just read this and the first book in the series, Gideon the Ninth. I absolutely loved both! Harrow the Ninth is very very different tonally, and ultimately (relevant to this group) delivers more f/f. I think it's enjoyable without that though-- this is a great pick for someone in the mood for "a book that happens to be f/f". Also a great pick for people that love human anatomy, because boy does this book have a whole lot of references to that.

This book felt kind of "intellectual" to me, especially compared to the more action-y first book. Which makes sense since this follows Harrow, the nerd to Gideon's jock character. I thought the conclusion of the book was just brilliant.

(I also made a little post on the series on my journal.)

rmc28

(crossposted from my own blog)

This is a short novella: Amazon says 106 pages, I read it in less than an afternoon. It's dense and bittersweet and comes to a ... hopeful, if not necessarily a happy ending. Thanh is a princess of Binh Hải, returned two years ago from a childhood and early adulthood as a "guest" (hostage) in powerful, northern Ephteria. Now Ephteria has come to put pressure on her home country, and Thanh's former lover, the Princess Eldris, is in the negotiating party for personal as well as expansionary motives. Meanwhile Thanh is haunted by the dreams of the fire that destroyed the Ephterian palace during her stay, and small flames that burn impossibly in her presence.

Highly recommended.

el_staplador

I gulped the Harwood Spellbook series down last week. This is a light fantasy set in an alternate universe nineteenth century Britain, one in which Boudicca successfully repelled the Roman invaders. Getting on for two millennia later, society is modelled after her marriage: women are the leaders, and men, magicians, play a supporting role. There's also an uneasy relationship with Elfland. I found the whole series delightful, just the thing for a chilly January.

I'm only talking about Moontangled here, but I'd recommend reading the other books in the series alongside it. The f/f relationship which is central to this book also appears in all but one of the others.

( Very mildly spoilery ) As with other books in the series, I'd have liked to see more of the world: this was a glimpse of a magical version of What Katy Did At School, and I'd happily have read an entire novel's worth.

I've been watching a lot of winter sports lately (biathlon and Alpine skiing, mostly) and went off to buy Edge of Glory (Rachel Spangler) very soon after learning about its existence and its premise. Which is: Alpine skier returning from a serious injury is convinced to lighten up by a snowboarder approaching the end of her career. Both have their eyes on the upcoming Winter Olympics...

I appreciated the focus that both Elise (skier) and Corey (snowboarder) had on their respective sports. Both take them extremely seriously, and both were convincing as (existing or potential) champions. At the same time, the focus on athletic excellence provided a natural source of tension around their developing relationship without any need for manufactured conflict.

One thing that didn't ring quite true for me was Elise's lack of interest in her rivals, given her determination to make the Olympic team. The portrait of a withdrawn, defensive, athlete was convincing, but it seemed implausible that she wouldn't at least have been keeping an eye on the competition, if only to know what sort of time she had to beat.

My other nitpick was the final misunderstanding and resolution. While this was set up very plausibly, and the dialogue was OK, I didn't quite buy it on an emotional level.

But overall I very much enjoyed this book. Elise and Corey are both engaging characters in their very different ways, and the supporting cast is great too. I really enjoyed the camaraderie around the snowboard team, and the way that Corey took a younger snowboarder under her wing rather than resenting a rising star was a very pleasant surprise, setting the tone for the rest of the book.

el_staplador

I'd never heard of this book before a kind BookCrosser sent it to me, though the cover tells me that it won a Lambda Literary Award.

Anyway, it's a lot of fun. Rainbow Rosenbloom is a lesbian, a London taxi driver, and a non-observant Jew. She's also the great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of a woman who jilted her lover two centuries back. Kokos is a dybbuk who's been contracted to possess the female descendants of that woman - although, having been stuck in a tree for the past two centuries, Rainbow is the first one she's got to. Hilarity, as they say, ensues.

I enjoyed the glimpses of lesbian London (with the exception of the biphobia), and Jewish London, and the intersection of the two, in the early 90s. Beyond that, it reminded me of nothing so much as Good Omens in its portrayal of a supernatural bureaucracy which is all too reminiscent of the earthly sort. Kokos is an engaging if unreliable narrator, and the ending has a satisfying twist (though the direction the plot takes to get there feels a bit forced and melodramatic).

Good fun, though with a hefty dose of fridge horror.

cesy

It's been recommended here before but I want to mention it again - Heather Rose Jones's Alpennia series is delightful historical fantasy of just the right amount of fluff and wish-fulfilment for me this year. Worth giving it a try if you're in the mood for something fun and happy.

el_staplador

More from my Bookcrossing haul:

Sing You Home - Jodi Picoult

Another of Picoult's 'ethical dilemma' novels, this one featuring a custody battle over some frozen embryos - with the debate being over whether they should be implanted in the uterus of the ex-wife's new partner, or that of the ex-husband's sister-in-law.

The first half of the book seemed a bit of a colour-by-numbers coming out story, with all the stock points about 'not like kissing a man' etc turning up right on cue. (Maybe I read too much fanfic.) However, it picked up considerably when it got to the courtroom drama part of the book, which I think is where Picoult's strengths lie, and it has a satisfying ending.

I was uncomfortable with the use of the old 'but shellfish!!!' rebuttal of Leviticus, which skirts a bit close to the antisemitism line for me, and I have to confess that I skimmed over some of the debates altogether, having heard them all before. I was less than impressed by the egregious bisexual erasure (not one mention of the word in the entire book, despite the main character having significant relationships on page with a man and then a woman).

Power & Magic: The Queer Witch Comics Anthology - ed. Joamette Gil

Does what it says on the tin, really: a delightful and varied collection of comics featuring queer witches, with a lovely diverse range of settings, styles, characters, and creators. I'm not a great comics reader so am probably missing some of the subtleties, but it made for a very enjoyable afternoon's reading.

These Witches Don't Burn - Isabel Sterling

A young adult novel set in modern-day Salem, Massachusetts. The narrator is a seventeen year old witch; so are her parents; so is her ex-girlfriend; and someone's out to get her.

It went darker than I was expecting (possibly the animal sacrifice in the first chapter should have given me a clue): this is a world where the worst can and does happen, and there's only so much you can do about it. Actually, it reminded me a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - this time without the bisexual erasure. In fact, there was quite a range of sexual and gender diversity.

It's clearly setting itself up to be the first in a series, and I'm not sure that it needs to be: I don't feel any particular urge to find out what happens next, and I'd have preferred to have the last loose end tied up to make a satisfying standalone.

I think I need a break from first person present tense now, though, after the Picoult and the Sterling.

sophia_sol

Just realized I've been forgetting to let you folks know about the f/f book reviews I've written in the....year since I last posted here, whoops. Here's links to my reviews, along with a brief description of each!

1. A Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics, by Olivia Waite - Absolutely delightful historical romance featuring one woman who's a scientist and one who's an artist.

2. The Wolf and the Girl, by Aster Glenn Gray - The ending is ambiguous about whether it ships the two women or not but I think it falls under the spirit of this community. Historical fantasy featuring the early silent film industry and werewolves. Lovely.

3. In the Vanishers' Palace, by Aliette de Bodard - A Beauty & the Beast inspired novella. The worldbuilding is compelling, but the romance doesn't quite work for me personally.

4. Gideon the Ninth, by Tamsyn Muir - Okay everyone's already heard about the lesbian necromancers, right? Anyway it's great as advertised, though a bit too far in the horror direction for me to be really happy with personally.

5. Catfishing on Catnet, by Naomi Kritzer - YA novel featuring lots of queer characters as well beyond the f/f relationship. Also a major character is an AI! Fun.

6. A Memory Called Empire, by Arkady Martine - far-future SF, my favourite book I read last year, completely brilliant and riveting.

7. Once Ghosted, Twice Shy, by Alyssa Cole - modern romance novel, I liked the characters but the romance arc doesn't work for me personally.

8. The True Queen, by Zen Cho - historical fantasy, absolutely delightful.

hebethen

The year's still young, yes, but this is my favorite fantasy novel of the year so far! A young orc priestess runs away from her cult shortly before she was planning to offer herself up as a sacrifice to her god. Under the patronage of the mysterious, manipulative wizard who helped her flee to another world, she becomes a fighter and his loyal red right hand. However, her unthinking loyalty is challenged when she meets a frighteningly talented magical adept on one of her missions.

It's a story about breaking free of indoctrination on multiple levels, and I really liked the romance. Fire metaphors are apt here: it's a slow burn to start, but they'll set the world on fire to keep each other safe. For those who didn't click with Gideon the Ninth because GtN was more about gonzo flair than careful worldbuilding, TUN is very strong on the worldbuilding front!

Further thoughts on my journal.

hebethen

On the heels of finding out that "Winter Sojourn", the Muna/Henrietta fic I recced, was in fact essentially a postcanon bonus story from the original author herself, I 1) was filled with awe and glee and 2) thought it was a good opportunity to reread some other recentish short fiction of hers.

"If at First You Don’t Succeed, Try, Try Again", about an imugi trying to become a dragon, took the Hugo for Best Novelette and made quite a bit of a splash (at least among my circles), but did you know she also wrote a sequel short story? "Head of a Snake, Tail of a Dragon" (2,369 words) is a wry, sweet follow-up about love, loneliness, and second chances of all kinds; less a coda and more a new adventure, and tropey in the best of ways. It can be read on its own, but I think having read the novelette made it funnier. ( Very minor spoiler )