The Neurospicy Bean

  So it has been three or four years since I read the first two books in this series, which definitely impacted my experience of reading it a bit – I had to look up summaries of what had already happened so I wouldn’t feel completely lost, and even then there were definitely still things I forgot, like how exactly the magic system worked. That said, I thought this was a strong ending to the trilogy.  It was especially cool to read it after having taken a couple of Chinese history classes, which gave me the context to understand the historical figures and events the series is based on. Rin being representative of Mao Zedong allowed for a really interesting exploration of the forces that lead to leaders becoming larger than life and abusing power in the name of the people. And while avoiding spoilers, I thought the ending hit just about the perfect balance – it doesn’t seek to redeem Rin, but it acknowledges her humanity and gives a sense of hope in the face of the insurmountabl...

  I really have no idea what to think here. It’s not that any individual component of this book was actively bad; it’s just that there are so many different components going on that it all starts seeming very odd and hard to follow. Half of the book takes place in a futuristic world where one of the main characters, Mica, is being hunted by a cult that has infiltrated the government because they believe they can bring forth their god by sacrificing her. The other half takes place in Animkii’s world, where technology is forbidden and clans cling to survival through a system of rituals and structures that seems like a grab bag of a whole variety of indigenous traditions from around the world. It’s all a bit jarring.  Also, Animkii is shown as white on the cover, and although her race isn’t specifically discussed that I remember, like I said her world seems to be drawing very heavily from indigenous cultures, which feels a bit appropriation-y.  Come to think of it, I’m not s...

  Man, there was so much hype surrounding this book (not to mention the gorgeous cover), and it just didn’t live up. Given the whole context and aesthetic it sets up, I was looking for something with a sort of Moulin Rouge vibe – overwrought and angsty and dramatic. But I guess there was just way too much going on to really establish a coherent vibe. Basically our main characters Esme and Sybil, roommates and best friends who are also in love with each other, get roped into a scheme to steal Queen Mab’s jewels for the owner of popular club The Absinthe Underground.  There’s a lot of jumping around, from the streets of Severon to the Absinthe Underground to the main character’s brother’s house to Fae and back again. And there are so many different dynamics going on – Esme and Sybil’s relationship, Sybil’s family history, all the dynamics of Severon, the worldbuilding of Fae, the characters in Fae, and there just isn’t  room for them to all get fleshed out properly. There’s...

  For whatever reason, nothing about this one clicked for me. The premise – girl from a family of brujas doesn’t want to be a bruja, casts a spell that accidentally banishes her family, and has to save them from dark forces – is perfectly compelling, and I genuinely did quite like the wide variety of mythological creatures that were incorporated into the story. There were beings and creatures that rarely come up because, frankly, Latine mythology just isn’t that written about (though this is changing!).  But I found Alex really frustrating as a main character, and Nova was flat-out unlikeable – I know we were supposed to get a flirty banter, rivals to lovers kind of vibe from his dynamic with Alex, but I just didn’t get it. But then the other love interest, who may have had more potential, wasn’t there for half the book! So we didn’t even really get to see her dynamic with Alex much at all, which was disappointing. Beyond that, something about the pacing just felt awkward. I c...

  I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by this one! It’s a fairly traditional enemies-to-lovers setup, and there’s not anything super out of the box, but I was shocked by how invested I got in Rune and Gideon’s relationship (I know – JAY getting invested in STRAIGHT PEOPLE?). There were also a few elements that I particularly enjoyed.  First, despite this being a YA romantasy, there’s actually a shocking amount of complexity and nuance that gets conveyed. We’re introduced to a world in which witches are brutally hunted and executed, which of course sets the reader up to side with Rune, the witch in hiding. But as the book goes on, it becomes very clear that the revolution that overthrew the witches was very much justified. The story does a really good job of showing the ways that privilege can change rapidly and how people can be talking about two entirely different things without even realizing it when it comes to power dynamics. Spoilers on this one! Another thing I tho...

  So uh this might literally be the worst book I’ve ever read. I genuinely don’t even know why I kept reading it except that it was oddly compelling to just watch it get worse and worse and worse. Basically the premise is that a young sorceress named Kami goes on a quest to destroy the Crimson Queen and save her town from monsters, except also the Crimson Queen is into Kami and wants her to come be her wife. And there is just nothing redeeming about any of it. The writing is bad, the plot is uninspiring and takes forever to actually go anywhere, and the way it handles gender and sexuality is just abhorrent. Spoilers from this point on, as it’s necessary to explain just how bad this was. There were a lot of things about this book I found absolutely disgusting, but probably the most egregious was that Kami MAKES FRIENDS WITH HER ATTEMPTED RAPIST. There’s a dragon in human form named Skye and he decides he needs to have sex with Kami because monsters can smell virgins or something??? ...

  Y’all I am absolutely obsessed with this series, and this book wraps everything up perfectly (although please?? More in this world?? Because there are hints that there’s more to come???). We get lovely flashes from Robin and Edwin and Violet and Maud, including a really heartwrenching sublot with Robin and Edwin. It also benefits hugely from Jack and Alan having been introduced in the last book and having an established relationship to build on. We get thrown straight into a house full of all these delightful characters (there’s a great line from Jack’s POV describing the dynamic between Edwin and Violet as two cats with terrible personalities who have been adopted by two people determined for them to coexist and like if that doesn’t sum up this whole series I don’t know what does. Just a bunch of golden retrievers adopting grumpy cats. Anyway), and then get to watch them trying to solve a mystery when all they want to do is make out with their respective partners. So yeah, the c...

  Big time second book vibes here – this book is working really hard to do the heavy lifting of the trilogy’s plot and world-building. It takes place a year after the first book, with a bit of a surprising twist: Robin’s sister, Maud, is on an ocean liner accompanying an elderly woman who knows where part of the Last Contract is. Except the elderly woman immediately dies, leaving Maud to try to solve the murder and avoid becoming the next target. Luckily, she has Robin’s records of his visions to help her, which lead her to Lord Hawthorne and, somewhat accidentally, the beautiful but guarded heiress Violet. Mayhem ensues, with quite a lot of action crammed into one book.  It was really good, don’t get me wrong – I cannot express how much I adored Maud and Hawthorne’s sibling-ish relationship, and the whole thing was delightfully chaotic. But because it was so plot-heavy, it felt a bit like the relationship got sidelined. I mean, we don’t find out what Violet’s backstory is unt...

  OH MY GOD THIS WAS SO AMAZING. This book (and series) is absolutely my new obsession. The perfect blend of intriguing plot, creative world-building, sweet romance, and incredible character development. I could not stop thinking about it for weeks. The way tiny details in seemingly unrelated scenes build up to create an intricately woven plot is just so incredible. I adored Edwin and Robin, but all the side characters were really excellent as well. In fact, the scene that made me laugh out loud was actually one centering Adelaide and Kitty, Robin and Edwin’s coworkers. Honestly I could keep talking about all the things I love, and I have zero complaints, but really everyone should just go read it immediately because it has absolutely everything. My one note of caution is that there is a LOT of quite explicit sex and a lot of the crucial character moments happen during those scenes, so if that’s something that makes you uncomfortable you might not love it the way I do.

  Okay, this was a very interesting approach to a short story collection, and not what I expected at all. It includes a whole range of stories, some that are firmly magical realism, some urban fantasy, some high fantasy, and some that are all three, neither, or too short to really know. Many are tinged with horror; most are pessimistic. Some are nearly thirty pages, while others are under five. While there are some themes (marginalization, dissatisfaction) that run through the book, there are few real continuities. What I love about this is it’s simply a collection of the author’s works, without particular regard for short story conventions; it’s very unique.  Unfortunately, most of the stories ranged from inspiring active dislike to just ambivalence, and I wasn’t particularly compelled by the first two thirds or so of the book. However, towards the end there were a few standouts: I particularly enjoyed “Borealis” (about a sort of modern-day sleeping beauty whose aunt helps wa...

  I did not expect this to be so good. So often queer YA set in the real (ish) world either wants to pretend that queerness is totally normal and accepted and causes no problems, beats the reader over the head with how traumatic it is, or falls into this weird space of making really unsubtle points about how queerness is hard but also cool and sort of reads like it’s written for someone who wants to feel like they’re super in touch with the queer youth. This book was none of those. It did an absolutely amazing job of weaving queerness into the plot in subtle but crucial ways, and it doesn’t shove aside the challenges of being a queer teenager for the sake of focusing on the plot, but the homophobia wasn’t overwhelming and it never felt preachy. It just felt really refreshingly honest.  And that balancing act applied to the other elements of the story as well: the chaos and drama of teenage relationships melted smoothly into the witchy whodunnit mystery, as the main character H...

  I had this book sitting in my room for I kid you not a few years before I finally got around to it earlier this year, and it was absolutely a book that made me think, why on earth did I wait so long to read this? There were so many different stories from so many different creative perspectives, and I loved reading them. It did also make me realize I’m not quite as familiar with King Arthur as I thought I was – there were stories that I struggled to make the connections the author had intended. Still, for the most part thoroughly enjoyable. The Once and Future Qadi ★★★★ This story was a really interesting starting point because it’s essentially just one element of the original King Arthur story (the trial of Lancelot and Guinevere) but from the perspective of a new character coming from a completely different culture. It paints a compelling portrait of Guinevere, and it never misses an opportunity to skewer sexism and xenophobia – often at the same time. A nice little read, though...

  I liked almost everything about this book. Asalin and the rest of the magical world present a fresh, creative approach to the fae that carries the feeling of a fae story, as well as some of the traditional elements like changelings and bargains, without feeling like any fae story you’ve read before. It also integrates technology and the rest of the modern world in a way I don’t think I’ve ever seen – most urban fantasy novels bend over backwards trying to explain why technology doesn’t work. Wyatt is also pretty unique as far as transgender leads go. His experience with gender isn’t watered down or simplified for a cisgender reader, and he doesn’t tolerate any assumptions about his experience, either – in fact, he directly shoots down the straightforward “born in the wrong body” narrative. And the plot develops slowly enough to allow the reader to get to know Wyatt as a character, as well as the world of Asalin and Wyatt’s experiences both as a trans person and a witch.  ...

  A little bit of romance, a little bit of politics, a little bit of magic, and some flamboyant queer poets – this book has a whole lot going for it. Despite the title, the book is told primarily from the perspective of Maeve, a death nun who gets caught up in working to solve the mystery of Imogen’s death and subsequent resurrection. Along the way she must confront assassination attempts, decadent parties, and her own doubts about her spirituality. The story features a vibrant array of side characters, many of whom I would have loved to see more of. Speaking of wanting to see more, I would also have liked to see more worldbuilding. What is there certainly isn’t bad, but I want to know more about the sisterhood and religion in this world, the political system on the island, and what the world looks like off the island. I suppose that’s the mark of interesting worldbuilding – I want to see more of the world, instead of feeling overwhelmed by details. My only serious complaint with t...

This book took a while to warm up, but once it got there it was absolutely brilliant. It tells the story of the titular Amina al-Sirafi, once a famed pirate nakhuda (captain), now retired mother living in an isolated hut with her daughter and her own mother. When she’s approached by a wealthy woman asking for help retrieving her kidnapped granddaughter, Amina doesn’t feel like she can refuse one last job. But it turns out to be much more complicated and dangerous than she imagined, and her employer isn’t interested in letting her turn back. Amina partners with a delightful group of friends (and enemies), who honestly made the book for me. One thing I loved about the Daevabad Trilogy was the way Chakraborty incorporated queer characters, and this book took that one step further. It’s the kind of queer representation that makes me feel like, despite the fact that the main character is straight, the book was still written with me and my community in mind. One particular element of the que...