Reviews and Comments

I really loved the way Charlie Jane Anders immerses you in the internal lives of the characters to make you care about the tiny and large stakes of their personal lives.

Anders does a great job laying out the day to day struggles of Jamie, a trans grad student wishing for an end to her dissertation, and her mother Serena, who's been wasting away ever since her wife Mae died. Jamie decides to teach her mother about the witchcraft she's done since she was a teenager to empower her mother to move beyond her grief. But is Jamie ready for what giving this much power to the activist lawyer means?

The structure tying parallels of Mae and Serena's relationship with Jamie and her partner Ro's as well as with the literature Jamie studies for her PhD is just done so incredibly well. It's a book that the small stakes feel like it should feel slow but on the contrary, I got so invested in what came next that I couldn't put it down. I really enjoyed this one.

If you like stories about the little bits of magic in the everyday and stories of when children become the teacher to their parents, you'll enjoy this one.

The Choir and its cryst-born navigators, who eventually return to the crystal they were born from, has guided humanity through the stars for a millenia. One of these navigators discovers that all is not well with her order on the day her mother dies and her mentor leaves her behind. When she teams up with a pirate captain, can they get to the bottom of the conspiracy at the heart of the Choir?

The Two Lies of Faven Smith is a pretty fast paced space opera that centers itself around the budding relationship forming between the titular navigator Faven and the pirate captain Bitter Amandine. There's sexual/romantic tension between the two through the whole book. It's a well-played tension that the narrative attention always stays right on the line of keeping it interesting and never overstaying its welcome. Like I said, it comes out through great banter and an explanation for why a character is making the stupid move that they acknowledge is the stupid move. Great characterization between the two

I really enjoyed this one, the back and forth between the sheltered Faven and the roguish Amandine was really fun to read and the plot went through all sorts of twists and turns that kept me going with one more chapter, what's another chapter, just one more.

The Choir and its navigators reminded me of a sort of cross between the Bene Gesserit and the Navigator's Guild from Dune, though the pacing for this conspiracy fueled plot moves a lot quicker.

Thanks to Orbit books for providing me a review copy through NetGalley