Interests: climate, science, sci-fi, fantasy, LGBTQIA+, history, anarchism, anti-racism, labor politics
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While Western accounts of North American history traditionally start with European colonization, Indigenous histories of …
Seems like a book that would be best appreciated as a paper volume with all the accompanying maps.
Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. …
Was told that this fantasy tale is "very much about militant Buddhism in Sri Lanka," but that one doesn't need deep knowledge of that history or politics to grasp the story. Color me intrigued!
Edwin St. Andrew is eighteen years old when he crosses the Atlantic by steamship, exiled …
Too slow-paced for me. For the moment at least. Pretty, though
This genre-bending Africanfuturist horror novel blends The Handmaid’s Tale with Get Out in an adrenaline-packed, …
Every page brings a new and disturbing meditation on bodily autonomy, personhood, memory, colonization, gender politics, or something else along those lines. It's a fucking lot. Like, we haven't even gotten to the event that changes the course of things for the main character, and we just had a reveal that her love interest (who's not her husband) has a nephew who is actually, secretly, his great-grandfather decanted into a new body with memories intact. Since the word on the street is that people lose their memories when they "body-hop," the MC suspects that this is a convenient fiction that makes the less privileged easier to control. And don't even get me started on this book's imagined politics of body-hopping across borders.
Sometimes you just gotta dive into the shit.
find an angry spirit. send it on its way before it causes trouble. Leave before …
New queer paranormal found family fiction!
I will say, first off, that the final scenes at the end are thrilling.
The slow start that I mentioned has to do with us getting to know a new character, a young widow who's a nurse in a Confederate hospital. In this alternate timeline, the Civil war lasts for decades instead of 4 years. She journeys across the continent from Tennessee to Seattle, and along the way, she gets a bit of anti-racist education. My main critique is that the author takes too long to make it clear to the reader that she's not trying to build up sympathy for the Confederacy, and there's one moment where Nurse Mercy stops herself from calling a Black character she's just met the n-word, but Priest doesn't stop herself from writing it out. It's just my opinion that if it's inappropriate for the character to speak aloud to a Black character, then …
I will say, first off, that the final scenes at the end are thrilling.
The slow start that I mentioned has to do with us getting to know a new character, a young widow who's a nurse in a Confederate hospital. In this alternate timeline, the Civil war lasts for decades instead of 4 years. She journeys across the continent from Tennessee to Seattle, and along the way, she gets a bit of anti-racist education. My main critique is that the author takes too long to make it clear to the reader that she's not trying to build up sympathy for the Confederacy, and there's one moment where Nurse Mercy stops herself from calling a Black character she's just met the n-word, but Priest doesn't stop herself from writing it out. It's just my opinion that if it's inappropriate for the character to speak aloud to a Black character, then it should be inappropriate for the author to speak to her readers, which is what she did.
Other than that, it's a decent travelogue with steampunk adventure and dashes of horror. Train enthusiasts will especially appreciate it.
Jules is a trans man trapped in his life as a nun. The devil that …
A tad bit white considering that it takes place in a fantasy world chock full of anachronisms. But it is colorful, sensual, and meaningful.
In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike …
Swashbuckling middle-aged mom of a teen boy battles zombies in steampunk Seattle. What's not to love? Satisfying ending in that the battle with the Big Bad isn't easy but also isn't the book's main attraction and doesn't get dragged out.
In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike …
Monochromatic but fun.
Excellent adventure writing; it's a bit slow to build up but the final showdown on the rails through the Rockies is campy steampunk excitement. The protagonist being a Confederate nurse counts against it, unfortunately; her journey to racial tolerance includes her thinking but not saying (and thus telling the readers but not the Black character) the n-word about a Black character. I say, if she wouldn't say it to a Black person in 1887, then surely the author should not say it to her readers.
Ki is a petty thief. Her best friend wills her his solo-flyer--call it a space …
This just looks like fun.
In the early days of the Civil War, rumors of gold in the frozen Klondike …
"Womb City" was so intimately painful. I needed a break, something adventurous and not too serious. This is perfect. Steampunk Seattle with zombies. The main character is a middle-aged woman trying to find her son.
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming is a 2019 book by David Wallace-Wells about the …
There's a lack of info I didn't already know. One of the many downsides of having an environmental science degree.
sometimes just talking/thinking about trauma is too traumatic