Archive
Book Review: Herculine by Grace Byron
Summary:
Herculine’s narrator has demons. Sure, her life includes several hallmarks of the typical trans girl sob story—conversion therapy, a string of shitty low-paying jobs, and even shittier exes—but she also regularly debates sleep paralysis demons that turn to mist soon after she wakes and carries vials of holy oil in her purse. Nothing, though, prepares her for the new malevolent force stalking her through the streets of New York City, more powerful than any she’s ever encountered. Desperate to escape this ancient evil, she flees to rural Indiana, where her ex-girlfriend started an all-trans girl commune in the middle of the woods.
The secluded camp, named after 19th-century intersex memoirist Herculine Barbin, is a scrappy operation, but the shared sense of community among the girls is a welcome balm to the narrator’s growing isolation and paranoia. Still, something isn’t quite right at Herculine. Girls stop talking as soon as she enters the room, everyone seems to share a common secret, and the books lining the walls of the library harbor strange cryptograms. Soon what once looked like an escape becomes a trap all its own.
While trying to untangle the commune’s many mysteries, the narrator contends with disemboweled pigs, cultlike psychosexual rituals, and the horrors of communal breakfast. And before long, she discovers that her demons have followed her. And this time, they won’t be letting her go.
Review:
Just like any horror reader, I have my favorite settings, and a commune gone wrong is one of them. (Do communes ever go right? Certainly not in horror). But I also like unique takes and twists in my horror, so when I saw this was an own voices trans woman horror (or trans girl, as the characters say), I smashed the request button on NetGalley. I was preemptively thrilled when I received the download, but that just increased as I read the book.
A note on my perspective:
For new blog readers, hi, I’m a queer, progressive Christian who was raised fundamentalist evangelical in the rural US.
Demons in the book:
What immediately struck me about this book is that the narrator literally was put through conversion therapy as a teen and yet still has a functioning relationship with God. Unlike a lot of representation we see in literature, there isn’t this binary thinking that you must either be straight and Christian or a wounded queer kid who grew up to be an atheist scientist. The narrator is wounded (and nameless), yes, but she still finds comfort in her faith. And the demons are not good guys here to help her. Absolutely not! In fact, one aspect that I particularly enjoyed is that the demons latch on to both straight religious folks (her conversion therapist) and other trans folks (people at the commune). The demonic influence has nothing to do with gender identity or sexual orientation. That was absolutely delicious to me.
A wounded yet powerful character:
Our narrator is wounded by life and allowed to be. She struggles with dating and exes and her own history of conversion therapy and yet she is able to articulate just how human her experience really is.
I was not special in my grief. And strangely, I was not alone.
And yet. She makes so many powerful choices. Precisely because she holds onto that humanity. Because she knows she just is who she is. She’s a trans girl, as she would say. She’s from rural middle of the country. She’s having a really hard time making it in NYC.
Own voices trans representation
It’s impossible to read the narrator without seeing her as a full and complete character. Unlike other trans characters I’ve read, her being trans wasn’t something that was the constant center of attention, even with the trauma from conversion therapy. Her being herself was. And yet of course she also reflected on being trans, not just herself but being a part of the trans community.
Loving trans girls is hard, even when you are one. Loving us is like reaching into a waterfall and trying to pull.
My only complaint:
Like a lot of good rock songs that start of strong but don’t know how to end, Herculine doesn’t seem quite sure how to end. The ending fizzled for me compared to the rest of the book. But the progressive Christian in me loved the last word. Selah. It is a word that appears in the Psalms and Habakkuk. We aren’t quite sure what it means. That, in and of itself, is a beautiful way to end a book about the trans experience, I think. But also it’s often interpreted as a liturgical pause or a call to reflect. In the church I grew up in, I was taught to treat it like an exclamation akin to the “So say we all” in Battlestar Galactica. Like a “hear hear.” Any of these meanings make it a cool way to end. I just personally think the rest of the final chapters weren’t quite there compared to that.
Overall:
This is a unique read in both horror and trans main character books. For horror, everything about the characters make the commune gone wrong plot unique. For trans main characters, a main character who went through conversion therapy, remained living her trans identity, and has sorted out faith for herself in her own way is something that isn’t seen so often. (See my reviews of other books with trans characters). This book is worth picking up.
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, using one of my referral or coupon codes, or tuning into my podcast. Thank you for your support!
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 272 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: NetGalley
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
Book Review: The Haunting of Alejandra by V. Castro
Alejandra, deep in the throes of postpartum depression, starts to see the specter of the Mexican folk demon La Llorona.
Summary:
Alejandra no longer knows who she is. To her husband, she is a wife, and to her children, a mother. To her own adoptive mother, she is a daughter. But they cannot see who Alejandra has become: a woman struggling with a darkness that threatens to consume her.
Nor can they see what Alejandra sees. In times of despair, a ghostly vision appears to her, the apparition of a crying woman in a ragged white gown.
When Alejandra visits a therapist, she begins exploring her family’s history, starting with the biological mother she never knew. As she goes deeper into the lives of the women in her family, she learns that heartbreak and tragedy are not the only things she has in common with her ancestors.
Because the crying woman was with them, too. She is La Llorona, the vengeful and murderous mother of Mexican legend. And she will not leave until Alejandra follows her mother, her grandmother, and all the women who came before her into the darkness.
But Alejandra has inherited more than just pain. She has inherited the strength and the courage of her foremothers—and she will have to summon everything they have given her to banish La Llorona forever.
Review:
The concept for this book is super original. A family with a genetic predisposition to postpartum depression is also haunted by an interdimensional being who takes advantage of that among the first-born daughters. It tackles both intergenerational trauma (especially of the colonized) and postpartum depression through a speculative lens. This speculative horror book also shows the main character going on a healing journey.
I particularly appreciated that the postpartum depression wasn’t a mere symptom of the haunting. Alejandra has postpartum depression. The being essentially targets the negative things Alejandra’s brain is already telling her. An example from the very beginning of the book is Alejandra is crying in the shower because she is so sad, and the being shows up and starts suggesting her family would be better off without her. An idea Alejandra has probably already had, but now she’s hearing it from this being that she thinks only she can see. This strategy becomes clearer when we see the flashbacks to Alejandra’s ancestors. The being also sometimes takes advantage of physical ailments but it primarily targets mental ones. I appreciated how this meant the story still took the reality of postpartum depression seriously while also tackling the issue of the multi-generational haunting. The story is told both in the present and through extended flashback chapters to previous generations.
The main character is Chicana married to a white man. In the flashbacks to the previous generations we see the racism her grandmother endured in the 1950s, and we also learn some about Mexican history (both recent and in immediate colonization by the Spanish) through two ancestors further back. The main character is bisexual, and there is a significantly important trans side character in a historic time period flashback. I particularly appreciated seeing a trans person represented in a historical time period.
The writing was at times a little clunky, especially towards the end. It just felt like I was reading a book, as opposed to getting lost in it, and it felt like different characters sounded the same. Again, this wasn’t throughout the book but limited to occasional scenes especially toward the end of the book. I also found it an odd choice to inform the reader the present-day was 2020 and then never acknowledge any of the 2020 issues. (For example, expected the mother with postpartum depression to end up dealing with distance learning for her two school-age children. But nothing ever came up.) Everything else could have stayed the same and been in 2019, so I’m not sure why it wasn’t 2019. I also felt that the husband character was treated in a two-dimensional way, as was the marriage. Marriage is very complex and yet complexity was only allowed to the postpartum depression and not the marriage. While I enjoyed this read, I did prefer the author’s previous book, The Queen of the Cicadas / La Reina de las Chicarras (review). One reason that is also evident in the title, was that book had more Spanish in it, which let me practice my Spanish more.
Overall this is a really unique read that explores postpartum depression and intergenerational trauma through a speculative lens. It’s a plot that will keep you guessing and intrigued.
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, using one of my referral/coupon codes, or signing up for my free microfiction monthly newsletter. Thank you for your support!
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 272 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: NetGalley
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
Book Review: Stage Dreams by Melanie Gillman
Summary:
In this rollicking queer western adventure, acclaimed cartoonist Melanie Gillman (Stonewall Award Honor Book As the Crow Flies) puts readers in the saddle alongside Flor and Grace, a Latina outlaw and a trans runaway, as they team up to thwart a Confederate plot in the New Mexico Territory. When Flor—also known as the notorious Ghost Hawk—robs the stagecoach that Grace has used to escape her Georgia home, the first thing on her mind is ransom. But when the two get to talking about Flor’s plan to crash a Confederate gala and steal some crucial documents, Grace convinces Flor to let her join the heist.
Review:
This is a graphic novel for readers who love Westerns but are tired of them erasing BIPOC and queer people. In this read you get all the fun of a Western but it’s peopled with both BIPOC and queer people.
The book starts with a stagecoach robbery by Flor (a Latina woman) and her pet hawk. She kidnaps a white damsel (Grace) who turns out to be a young trans woman on the run both to avoid her family’s wish for her to serve in the Confederate army and to seek out performing on the stage. Grace convinces Flor to let her help in a plot to spy on some Confederate documents.
Since this is a short book, there aren’t a ton of characters. It’s mostly the other folks on the stagecoach with Grace (all deliciously hateable), the tailor who helps them get ready for the Confederate gala, and the Confederate gala attendees. This doesn’t leave a ton of room for additional BIPOC in the story, but the tailor is Luis who is Black and completely supportive of Grace.
The book does an artful job of establishing that Grace is trans without ever using the word or deadnaming her. I had been concerned that Grace’s visible depiction might fall into the cringer category of visibly “man in a dress” like in the old movies when male characters dress as women to escape something. This absolutely does not happen with Grace. She simply looks like a larger woman. (Larger than Flor, close in size to the men in the stagecoach). There are also multiple times when the existence of other trans people are established. Luis says Grace isn’t the only larger woman he’s designed for. Flor discusses other women like Grace performing on stage out west.
I enjoyed Flor but wanted a little more backstory on her. What made her start robbing stagecoaches? How did she get the pet hawk? How does she know Luis? I get it she’s a more close-lipped character, but Luis could have dropped a few tidbits about the two of them, and I get the vibe from Grace that she might be the type to be able to lure information out of people with her charm.
The spying plot worked and fit into the small amount of space allotted. I liked that it gave Grace and Flor a reason to team up and showed them as active rather than passive. I did wish for a little more detail in these scenes, though. Specifically, when someone recognizes Grace, what is their relationship to her?
I love the art and thought it worked great for a Western story. Only when I looked it up later did I discover Gillman does everything by hand with colored pencils. Truly amazing and translated into a book that was beautiful to read.
Overall, this was a fun, beautifully drawn, sapphic read with a lot of diversity that establishes trans people as existing in history. It just left me wishing for more – more background and for Flor and Grace’s adventures to continue.
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 104 pages – novella
Source: Library
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
Get the Reading Group / Book Club Discussion Guide
A beautifully graphic designed 2 page PDF that contains: 1 icebreaker, 9 discussion questions arranged from least to most challenging, 1 wrap-up question, and 3 read-a-like book suggestions
View a list of all my Discussion Guides.
Decoded Pride Issue 3 Wrap-Up
If you missed my announcement on May 30th, this month my short story “The University of Late-Night Moans” was part of Decoded Pride. It’s a story-a-day anthology of queer science fiction, fantasy, and horror by queer authors. Throughout the month on twitter, I’ve been maintaining a thread of my favorite line (or small screenshot, in the case of comics) from each story. I wanted to give that thread a more permanent place here.
You can still buy access to the anthology, even though the month is over. Plus your subscription will get you access to the full-color, pdf version coming out later this summer or early fall, which will include interviews with all the authors (including me!)
| Date | Story Title | Author (links to their website or social media) | My fave line (or image if a comic) |
| 1 | Ode to After Eulogies | Remy Chartier | “if she’d marked even just the follow-through of every impulse to marry the wonder that was Char, her hands would be too heavy with rings to flex her fingers” |
| 2 | Christ-like | Leo D. Martinez | “Your light is unwilling to fade, determined to exist” |
| 3 | The Vetala of Crystal Vellam Inlet | Simo Srinivas | “ “You have brought plague to the city.” “It is the city,” the vetala said, “that has brought plague to us.” “ |
| 4 | The Wildest Dream | S.M. Hallow and Izzy Singer |  |
| 5 | Invidia | Christina Wilder | “My fixation on Adriana became a craving to feel her skin as my own, rather than feel it against mine. I wanted to claim her completely.” |
| 6 | WE ARE ROBOT | Katlina Sommerberg | “There is no room for aberration, but that is our only desire.” |
| 7 | The Prophet from Seventrees | Lowry Poletti | “The burrow becomes a tunnel of tree roots knotted like threads on a loom.” |
| 8 | The Agents of CLAW Save Christmas | Jeffrey Brown |  |
| 9 | The University of Late-Night Moans | Amanda McNeil (me!) | “Do I look like I’m in hell?”
(Also, check out the promo reel I made over on Instagram.) |
| 10 | Platinum Venus | Illimani Ferreira | “If there was one thing I knew about him it was that he wasn’t the type to save anything flammable from burning, no matter if it was fuel or a reputation.” |
| 11 | Pepper Honey and Cedar Smoke | K.S. Walker | “Katherine had a long list of grievances to attend to. She repeated them nightly like a prayer.” |
| 12 | All Shall Know Their Appointed Time | Lisa M. Bradley | “The Mothman and myna know their appointed times.” |
| 13 | The Mark | Sarah Bat | “I’m tired of only ever giving love to others. I’d rather feel it for myself.” |
| 14 | A Wolf in the Woods | Robin Quinn | “I have simply grown unfamiliar with touch that is intended to comfort instead of harm.” |
| 15 | Incident Report | Sarah Loch |
Not a quote, but the feature that this archival style short story had the manager’s email signature update to what crisis book she was currently reading. |
| 16 | The Bleeding God | Lindsay King-Miller | “And they loved each other with a passion as hot as the water that bleeds from beneath the sands.” |
| 17 | Suspension | K.T. Roth | “And what … life unenrolled us because of inactivity on our accounts?” |
| 18 | Punk Rock Lesbians from Beyond the Grave | Darci Meadows | “The crackle of electricity filled the solstice sky as the eerie tune played out, and on the Westbridge curve a hand burst forth from the loose dirt” |
| 19 | A Date to Remember | Glenda Poswa | “My entire being was simply an extension of the part of me that mattered most to her — my shoulder.” |
| 20 | Nebula | Akil Wingate | “This is the beginning of vengeance. So let it roll off me like molting skin.” |
| 21 | Nothing to Nowhere and Back | Ciko Sidzumo | “I needed air. I needed movement. I needed something. Something more than release. Something less than freedom.” |
| 22 | Parasite | Callie Cameron | “For the longest time, I was what it wanted me to be. My own self was buried under its desires.” |
| 23 | Hands, Heart, Hunger | V. Astor Solomon | “It’s not dignified, she would say. The drums were not for girls like her, she was not meant to be the backbone for someone else.” |
| 24 | The Syncerus Legend | Maurice Moore | “I don’t remember being hunted by anyone during my rituals Auntie. Paulie: Yes, but we are goin according tah de Heaux Tales prophecies bout de last calf’s transition.” |
| 25 | When Day Becomes Night | RENEGAEDZ |  |
| 26 | Dust in the Barn | Elinora Westfall | “the broken arms and legs from one glass of wine too many that saw those same shadows reach out and grab her, crush her, slither into her mouth, her nose” |
| 27 | Devour Me | Sarah Edmonds | “Zoe couldn’t bring herself to take back her request and she hated herself for that.” |
| 28 | Like Cursive | Cameron E Quinn | “the surface tension we’ve sustained over months of proximity broken like a wave” |
| 29 | Kitty’s Gas Station | Avra Margariti | “Kitty listens to Avery blabber about anything and everything as she fixes them a bowl of soup. The white noise is strangely soothing.” |
| 30 | These Whispering Remains | Izzy Wasserstein | “Even when she was at her worst — fifteen was a hell of a year — the reward of having her in my life was more than worth the fear.” |
Book Review: Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (Series, #1)
Summary:
Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere… else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.
Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced… they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care at her Home for Wayward Children understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world.
But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of things. No matter the cost.
Review:
This is the first book in the series but they all also can be read as stand-a-lone stories if you want. One of my siblings-in-law gave me the second book as a gift, and I decided I wanted to read the first book first to ensure I got the greatest enjoyment out of it possible. I felt confident with this decision, because I’ve really enjoyed everything else by Seanan McGuire I’ve read. As expected, this was a fun read.
The worldbuilding is gorgeous and creative. Not just the idea of the doors but also the map of how the other worlds are organized. Stephen King’s other worlds are organized around a tower. These are organized around a compass, similar to those political leaning compass tests, only this is organized on points such as Logic vs Nonsense and Wickedness vs Virtue. The worlds are varied, and so are the children who get drawn in then come back. Although come back is the wrong term for these children. They all want to “go home” to their other worlds. The children who don’t want to go back attend a different boarding school. (Now that’s also a series I’d read, just saying).
I found the plot to be less engaging than the world building. The mystery at the school was both bloodier than I would have preferred and also far too expected and easy to figure out. I viewed the plot as an excuse to continue sojourning in the world.
There is diversity present in the book. Although the main character and owner of the school are both white, Nancy’s roommate is Japanese-American. One of her new friends is Latino. I do wish the races and ethnicities of more of the secondary characters were more clearly stated. There is a trans girl character, who is a strong secondary character with a lot of realistic struggles. Nancy, the main character, is asexual (but romantic), and the word is used. Although I am myself queer and bisexual, I fully admit my understanding of the ace members of our community is less than it might be. I was uncertain about the representation in the book, so I found an ace person’s review. They loved the representation and felt Nancy to be very representative of them.
Some folks complain the book is too short, but largely because they wanted to linger longer. I thought it was just about the right length. I like reading a shorter read sometimes, and this means it’ll be much faster and easier to visit the worlds of the other characters featured in the other entries in the series more in-depth.
Recommended for readers looking for a quick read with a creative and engaging fantasy world. Especially recommended for those looking for asexual and trans representation in their fantasy.
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 176 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Library
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
Book Review: Safe In My Arms by Sara Shepard
Summary:
Three women whose children attend an elite preschool in coastal California find their lives intertwined when they all receive threatening notes in their children’s backpacks.
Review:
Sara Shepard is most famous for writing Pretty Little Liars, the series the hit tv show is based upon. In Pretty Little Liars the threat is text messages. Here it’s old school notes. Only this time, it’s the moms twisted into secrets and lies.
The three moms are at the center of the book, and I only actually liked one. Andrea is a trans woman who moved to California to be able to transition and live openly, away from her elite and judgmental family. Now, I will note I am a cis woman, and I would like to hear what a trans woman thinks of the representation, but I thought Andrea was written very well. I appreciated the realism of having to deal with some transphobia in her family but also being warmly welcomed by the other two women – both as a friend and as a woman. The author’s note at the end makes it clear she sought out a sensitivity reader for Andrea, and I could tell. If only the same efforts had been made for the other two women….
Lauren is struggling with postpartum rage (a symptom tied to postpartum depression). I just felt she was quite two-dimensional, and I just couldn’t bring myself to care about her.
Ronnie is a topless maid, formerly a stripper, who moved here from Pennsylvania with her daughter. It at first appears she did so to get away from an abusive man. I can’t talk about Ronnie without revealing a slight spoiler (it’s revealed about 1/3 of the way into the book), so be warned.
Ronnie’s “daughter” is actually her niece. Her sister was in a relationship with an abusive man and was addicted to something. It’s vaguely explained as drugs. Ronnie, after a violent fight with her sister’s significant other that ends with her discovering her sister wounded on the floor, takes the baby and runs with her. She never follows up to see if her sister is ok. No, no, she just steals her daughter, changes her daughter’s name, and decides her daughter is better off with her anyway. I just simply could not empathize with the child abductor here. Ronnie had other options to help her niece. She had never even tried anything else (beyond living with her sister to “protect” her). I’m ok with a book featuring a less than ideal character. I’m not ok with the whole tone of the book being that I should empathize with her or that what she did was a mistake.
Because that’s the thing. The book kind of wraps up with the message that all moms make mistakes and it’s ok to not be perfect. I mean, sure, within reason. But there’s it’s ok to not be perfect and then there’s you’re only in the mom club because you stole someone else’s child.
Also as someone who cares about addiction and recovery, I found the depiction of Ronnie’s sister Vanessa to be heartless. She isn’t given the same chance and possibility to recover and change and learn from her mistakes as the other mom’s. In fact, the whole “moms don’t have to be perfect” scene features the moms describing all the reasons their children make them drink alcohol. The hypocrisy of this scene sickened me.
Contemporary books are approaching the pandemic in a variety of ways. This one chose to set the story “post-pandemic.” I’m fine with that optimistic choice, and I understand why it was made. But the strange thing is it mostly seems to acknowledge the impacts of the pandemic as purely economic – there’s a lot of talk about economic challenges from when we all stayed home but almost zero mention of anything else. I think there was one mention of face masks? This is set in California. There was way more impact than just economic. It rubbed me the wrong way how it made it out to be all about economic issues, and also how things just immediately snapped back to normal. If one wants a normal contemporary book, fine, just don’t acknowledge the pandemic at all then. Include an author’s note that this is for escapism and move on. Don’t acknowledge it as an economic downturn like 2008 and nothing much else…..
Beyond this, the actual main issue going on at the school was interesting and twisty. I had my suspicions early on, but I still enjoyed the twists. What really saved the book for me, though, was Andrea. We need more positive trans rep in psychological thrillers, and Andrea was very well-done.
3 out of 5 stars
Length: 304 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: NetGalley
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
Book Review: Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters by Aimee Ogden
Summary:
A scifi, queer version of The Little Mermaid that wonders what happens after Ariel leaves the ocean?
In this version, Ariel is Atuale. Eric is Saareval. The sea witch is Yanja. The land folk find themselves the victim of a deadly disease that Atuale is immune to thanks to Yanja’s genetic engineering that let her switch from sea dwelling to land dwelling. She seeks out Yanja who takes her on an interplanetary trip to find help from other humanoids with more advanced technology than their own.
Coming February 23, 2021.
Review:
When I heard a queer scifi version of The Little Mermaid, I couldn’t hit the request button on NetGalley fast enough, which I point out to say, perhaps my expectations may have been a little too high.
This is a novella and so the world-building is tight not deep. In spite of this, I did feel I was able to quickly catch on to the world, but I suppose I might not feel that way if I wasn’t already a big reader of scifi. Its world isn’t that unique for scifi. Gene-edited humanoids live on various planets. There are some more fully alien species. Each planet has its own culture and problems, etc… I like that the gene-editing explains why the “sea witch” was able to move Atuale from the ocean dwelling to land dwelling. Yanja is less a sea witch and more a rogue sea scientist, which is neat.
The queer representation in this book is that Yanja was in a female body when Atuale lived in the ocean, and they were lovers. When Atuale seeks Yanja out again, Yanja is now in a male body. Saareval is male. So Atuale is bisexual and Yanja is trans. I appreciated how rapidly Atuale accepted Yanja’s new gender. There were no deadnaming issues as Yanja kept the same name throughout. I was disappointed in the representation of Atuale, though, mainly because I think one particular plot point falls into stereotypes of bisexual people. I wish a more creative approach to the plot was taken. It felt like a stereotypical and easy way through the story rather than a thoughtful one.
Personally, I struggled a bit to want to read this because I wasn’t expecting the future pandemic plot and that was just a bit too real for me right now. Perhaps other readers will find it comforting to see a pandemic being addressed in scifi, though. You know your own potential reaction the best.
I also want to offer the trigger warning that there is miscarriage in a flashback.
Overall, this novella has fun world building with a plot that looks at what happens after the happily ever after in The Little Mermaid. There is trans and bisexual representation, although the latter falls into stereotypes. Readers looking for a merger of The Little Mermaid with scifi and a scifi interplanetary approach to a pandemic are likely to enjoy this quick read.
3 out of 5 stars
Length: 112 pages – novella/short nonfiction
Source: NetGalley
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
Book Review: An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon
Summary:
Aster lives in the low-deck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, the Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship’s leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster, who they consider to be less than human.
When the autopsy of Matilda‘s sovereign reveals a surprising link between his death and her mother’s suicide some quarter-century before, Aster retraces her mother’s footsteps. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer and sowing the seeds of civil war, Aster learns there may be a way off the ship if she’s willing to fight for it.
Review:
I went into this book hearing it was a space opera take on the American antebellum south with queer characters, written by a Black American author. That was an apt description, but what I didn’t know was that Aster is neurodiverse, and that was the finishing touch that really sent me over the moon about this book. So let’s talk about Aster first.
Aster is clearly autistic. (I am using this language, rather than person-first based on the wishes of the overall autistic community). Being autistic is just a part of who she is at her core of her being. It’s not perceived as something to be overcome or a superpower. There are parts of her autism that are strengths and parts that are weaknesses. Her ability to learn in-depth about plants and their healing powers is a strength and her tendency to take people literally and miss the point is a weakness, but only in situations where others aren’t considerate of how she perceives the world. When they are considerate and think about how to frame what they say in a way Aster will understand, it is totally fine. I loved everything about Aster. I want more books starring people like her with the representation handles so smoothly.
Other representations that exist in the book in beautiful ways include, but are not limited to: asexual, bisexual, trans*, lesbian, and a wide variety of abilities and disabilities.
The intermingling of spaceship and Antebellum American south was heartbreaking. Imagine everything about how Starship Enterprise is largely a utopia and turn that on its head, and you have the Matilda. It’s not that systemic inequality is not already clear to me, but I do think depicting it on the confines of a spaceship heightens the awareness of it seeps throughout everything.
The mourning of a child’s murder is not one of my moods, so please do not dismiss it thus.
[location 71%]
Although I think it should be obvious from the fact this is telling a story of the Antebellum south in outerspace, I do want to give trigger warnings for rape, abuse, violence, executions, and torture (all things that of course happened in the Antebellum south and anyplace with systemic inequality).
Everything about this was simultaneously richly imagined and depicting the diverse world we really do live in. I thought this was gorgeous and hope to meet Aster again (or someone like her) in future worlds by Rivers Solomon.
5 out of 5 stars
Length: 351 pages – average but on the longer side
Source: Library
Buy It (Amazon or Bookshop.org)
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
Book Review: If You Could Be Mine by Sara Farizan (Audiobook narrated by Negin Farsad)
Summary:
Seventeen-year-old Sahar wants three things in life: 1) to become a doctor 2) for her widowed father to come out of his depression and be the Baba she once knew 3) to marry her best friend Nasrin. The problem is, she lives in Iran, and she and Nasrin could be imprisoned and beaten for just their stolen kisses in private, let alone if they tried to marry each other. When Nasrin’s parents announce that they’ve arranged a marriage for her to a well-to-do doctor, Sahar is heartbroken. Nasrin thinks they can continue on as they have been, but Sahar wants to love her exclusively, and she is determined to find a way.
Review:
This book was all the rage on GLBTQ book blogs a couple of years ago, and it’s been on my tbr pile ever since. When I saw it on Audible and heard a clip of the narration, I knew it was time to read it. I found an interesting, unique piece of YA.
First, let me say, if you at all enjoy audiobooks and have the chance to listen to this rather than read it in print, please do so. Farsad’s narration adds so much to the book. From her light Persian accent to her unique voice for each character to her perfect pronunciation of Persian words and Iranian place names, her narration made the reading of the book much more immersive than it would have been if I had read it in print. Plus, at just over 5 hours, you can read it very quickly. I finished my copy in under a week, thanks to commutes and runs.
Let’s start with the things in this book that really worked well for me. First, I really appreciated seeing a teenage girl’s relationship with her single father at the forefront. It’s difficult to find a YA book talking much about a girl’s relationship with her father, let alone a single father. The book pushes beyond even this though and addresses how a parent’s depression affects a teen. Part of why Sahar is so desperate and attached to Nasrin (bare in mind, they are only 17), is that her mother died and her father fell into a depression. He is there every day but it doesn’t feel like he is. At one point, Sahar skips school and says that her baba will not even notice. And he doesn’t. Until the school calls him directly. Her father’s depression is situational, not genetic or chemical, but it still affects him and their relationship, and I thought this and its resolution was well depicted.
The depiction of a non-western culture and issue in a book marketed to western teens is well-handled. Iran is not demonized. The good and bad sides of the country are depicted (and of course there are good and bad sides of every country). Teens who may not personally know someone from the Middle East will benefit greatly from seeing things like the fact that even Sahar’s mild father will sneak a bootleg copy of a DVD to watch but also will be intrigued by and appreciate elements of Iranian culture such as the well-protected oasis-like back yards. Farizan also does a good job establishing things like recent wars in Iran, how the current political situation came to be, etc… without infodumping.
While I sometimes found myself rolling my eyes at the level of emotion Sahar was showing, it was to the appropriate level for a teenager. Also, other people in Sahar’s life clearly see that she is acting like a teenager and attempt to lovingly and understandingly speak with her about what is going on.
Before I move into speaking about what didn’t work for me, I’d like to talk about the trans content. It’s no plot spoiler that Sahar seeks to keep Nasrin to herself by pursuing a sex reassignment (I am not calling it a gender confirming surgery because for her it is not). This is in the official book blurb, just not mine. Essentially, in Iran (and this is still true), having same-sex attractions is haram/forbidden but being transgender is not. The state will even pay for having the treatment and is known for pushing people with same-sex attraction to get a sex reassignment. Sahar meets Parveen, a transwoman, at her cousin’s party, and this plants the idea in her head that she could marry Nasrin if she gets the surgery. Now, I’m not a transperson, but I do think that the author does a good job depicting real trans people and contrasting that with Sahar’s rather adolescent idea to get to be with Nasrin. Sahar tells Parveen she thinks she’s trans, and Parveen brings her to a support group where most of the people are actually trans, except one woman, who we later find out was forced to get the sex change. Thus, both the genuine trans experience and the forced sex change experience are depicted in the book. Iran is lauded for its support of trans people (there is even one passage talking about how trans people have to pay for their own surgeries in the US unlike in Iran) but also it is clearly shown how harmful it is for the state to demonize same-sex attractions. Additionally, the trans characters do talk about how while the surgery is supported by the state, culturally they still face discrimination from some of their families, when dating, and when looking for jobs.
So what didn’t work for me? I get it that Sahar and Nasrin are adolescents, but I just could not get the appeal of Nasrin to Sahar. I felt I would have been much more empathetic to the whole situation if Nasrin hadn’t been so selfish and annoying. To be fair, multiple characters point out Nasrin’s selfishness to Sahar, and Sahar even at one point questions why she’s willing to risk so much for Nasrin. There is one scene that I believe is supposed to redeem Nasrin of her bad behavior, but I still struggled to like her or feel empathy for her. It bothers me that Sahar never tells her father about her sexual orientation, in spite of him being depicted as quite modern and understanding. I also felt that the ending didn’t push things far enough, compared to beginning of the book. I wanted more from and for Sahar. Perhaps the ending is more realistic, but it did disappoint me.
Overall, this is a unique piece of YA showing the GLBTQ experience in a non-western culture that will elicit both an understanding of a non-western culture and empathy for other life situations and experiences from YA readers. Readers will identify with Sahar’s genuine adolescent voice, which will draw them into the perhaps quite foreign-feeling situation.
If you found this review helpful, please consider tipping me on ko-fi, checking out my digital items available in my ko-fi shop, buying one of my publications, or using one of my referral/coupon codes. Thank you for your support!
4 out of 5 stars
Length: 256 pages – average but on the shorter side
Source: Audible
Announcement: I Am Open to Review Requests Now Through December 30th for Review in 2016
Hooray!!
I am happy to announce that as of now I am open to review requests for books to be reviewed in 2016!!!
Now through December 30th, feel free to fill out the submission form if you are interested in being reviewed right here on Opinions of a Wolf at some point during 2016.
Here’s how it’s going to work:
- You lovely indie authors and indie publishers read my review policies to determine if your book is a good match for me.
- If it is, fill out the submission form. I do NOT accept submissions via comments or emails.
- Between December 1st and 30th, I go over the submissions and determine which ones I will accept. The number I accept will depend upon both the number that interest me, and the number I feel comfortable committing my time to in 2016.
- I send out acceptance emails to all the accepted authors/publishers anytime between December 1st and January 8th.
- By January 15th, accepted authors/publishers reply to this email either with a copy of the ebook or confirmation that they have sent out the print book to me. If I do not hear back from accepted authors/publishers by January 15th, the review acceptance will be rescinded.
- By January 31st, I will write a post right here announcing the books I have accepted for review. This means that if you are accepted for review, you have the potential for three instances of publicity: 1) the announcement 2) the review 3) a giveaway (if you request one AND your book receives 3 stars or more in the review). You may view 2015’s announcement post here. I highly recommend checking it out, as it reveals some interesting data on genres that have many versus few submissions.
I would like to note that I strongly encourage women writers and GLBTQA writers to submit to me, particularly in genres that do not normally publish works by these authors. I was quite disappointed last year to get only 38% of my submissions from female authors. I would like to get at least 50% of my submissions from women authors. Although I received 14% of my submissions from authors who self-identified as GLBTQA, I would like to see this grow to at least 25%. Please help me get the word out that I am actively seeking works by these authors.
If you are interested in the full breakdown of submissions I received last year and what was ultimately accepted, check out my 2015 accepted review copies post.
Thank you for your interest in submitting your books to Opinions of a Wolf! I’m looking forward to reading through all of the submissions, and I can’t wait to see what review copies I’ll be reading in 2016!
Support my work with a tip or browse my shop for curated book club guides, how to guides, cross-stitch patterns, and more!
This work by Amanda Nevius is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
