Review: The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home

The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor 
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The third official novel of Welcome to Night Vale...aka the reason why I finally started binge-listening to the podcast today, at long last. This secret backstory of Mara Wilson's character is so vastly different from any of the other Night Vale media I've yet seen, being specifically a period piece and centered on a backstory set all over Europe in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Lots of Franchia and Svitz, and Luftnarp, and Russia, and even Malta - I'm not kidding, there's a whole scene of pomegranate- and lemon-heisting on the docks of Valletta and redistributing the fruity wealth as the villagers on the other side of the island deserve. And by the time this mostly linear, but occasionally flashing back forward to the near-present day, story ends, and the truth of its great twist comes out...holy crap, do Fink and Cranor have that game down or what? No wonder I had to finally start the podcast from the beginning today. 11 episodes in, 159 to go as of today...

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Review: A Song of Wraiths and Ruin

A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Sorry, SJM, but this is now the best fantasy novel to use "Ruin" in the title. Sorry, I don't make the rules! Lol.

But seriously, though, after at least a year or two of dying for this debut - one of oh so many awe and some success stories from Pitch Wars (one day I'll be one of them too, one day...) I am happy to report that Roseanne A. Brown does NOT disappoint in the slightest. A lavishly built fantasy world rooted in West African legends, with some pretty strong Ancient Egyptian and Islamic influences as well, and some of the highest stakes you'll ever see, with our protagonists both forced into somewhat anti-heroic roles as they need to kill each other in order to complete their respective supernatural missions. 

Review: This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story

This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story by Kacen Callender
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Right now everyone's raving about Kacen Callender for their newest book Felix Ever After, but sadly my library isn't open to distribute copies, and for some reason doesn't have ebooks of it either. I'm mystified that they haven't, especially during Pride Month, but at least they had the ebook of Callender's YA debut, which I've clearly been sleeping on for quite a while. Casually inclusive in its casting just like a lot of the best YA in recent years, this book focuses on a Black bi boy, Nathan Bird, trying to navigate both applications to a creative-writing program (he's looking to get into screenwriting, which I very much appreciate) and the numerous on-again, off-again relationship shenanigans his circle of friends gets into. (Notably, his ex-girlfriend, with whom he's trying to relearn how to be friends platonically, now has a girlfriend herself - and nobody bats an eye, as well they shouldn't.) And then in comes his old childhood friend Oliver James Hernandez (frequently referred to by his first and middle name both), back in Seattle after having lived in Santa Fe for quite some time. Nathan kissed Oliver James before the latter moved away, and now that they're back in each other's lives, they can finally rekindle that spark...but is it truly still viable after so many years? You'll just have to wait and find out. And I'll be honest, I almost cried reading this book because it's just one of so many that is so realistically sex-positive that it hurts me, a boy who's never had a chance at living a sex-positive life. Well, maybe when I move to Oregon or Washington, as I recently brought up in a quote-tweet from Callender themself asking about people's future plans. It'll take a miracle, but if there's one thing Callender showcases in their work, it's the truth that miracles do happen...even if they don't quite turn out like how you expect.

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Review: Aurora Burning

Aurora Burning by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First off, Ms. Kaufman and Mister Kristoff, HOW DARE YOU. 

I mean, that's standard operating procedure for any book by these two (especially the notorious latter, one of SFF's most rockstar writers there is), but with this book's ending, especially... HOW VERY DARE YOU.

Building on Aurora Rising and its brilliant hybridization of Alien and The Collapsing Empire, now we get to see the consequences of the conspiracy being unearthed - and hoo boy, is this book a doozy. Once again laden with a vast array of POVs from all across Aurora Squad, with a better balance of all of them this time - like, in Book 1, Zila was severely underused and got the shortest chapters by far. But now it feels like everyone has much more equal time, which only makes the final chapter - and that horrifyingly Aveyardian cliffhanger that I've been hearing Mister Kristoff troll us about on Instagram for months - hurt that much more. I really don't see how they can possibly fix this for a third book...but it's Kaufman and Kristoff. Maker's breath, of course they bloody will.

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Review: A Song Below Water

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Much highlighted as one of several big Black YA releases from last week, this one was pretty quick to get to me as an e-book loan through my local library - and damn, did it prove timely. Set in an alternate world where there are various fantasy beings living amongst humans, and where one of our two protagonists, Tavia, is a siren forced to deal with extreme bigotry at all times - this on top of her being a Black girl, one of very few in Portland, though Portland is also home to a pretty good network of sirens within the Black community - it comes as no surprise that she has her work cut out for her if she's to survive in this world. A world where a murder trial in southern Oregon is expected to end with the defendant's acquittal just because the victim was a siren. A world where Tavia inadvertently uses her voice to get out of a police stop - and attracts the wrong kind of attention from a cop whose son she knows pretty damn well. And, of course, one of the most popular reality shows in this world features a siren who willingly puts on a collar that suppresses her voice - if you could see the number of times my stomach turned over every time that came up... 

Review: Shuri: A Black Panther Novel

Shuri: A Black Panther Novel by Nic Stone
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nic Stone's really on a roll this year, first with her MG debut in Clean Getaway, and now, with a welcome side trip to the world of Marvel, a solo story for T'Challa's whip-smart, sharp-tongued sister Shuri. A truly all-ages adventure, Shuri takes us to Wakanda and Kenya and even London, following Shuri on a journey with her friend K'Marah, an equally wisecracking (in a way only Nic Stone could write) young Wakandan who wants to get into the Dora Milaje. The objective: figure out, before T'Challa's upcoming Challenge Day, who or what is causing the Heart-Shaped Herb, the source of the Black Panther's legendary powers, to mysteriously die off. It's a short but sweet little story, laden with feminist commentary (Shuri really wants, rightly, to prove how much she could be the Black Panther someday), extremely on-point humor that the movie version of Shuri would appreciate (all those American movie and meme jokes...), and quite a few unexpected cameos to make any and all fans smile. I was especially surprised to see a grown-up Hunter, the white boy whom T'Chaka had adopted after his family's plane crashed on Wakandan land (and made his debut in Ronald L. Smith's MG novel, Black Panther: The Young Prince), making an appearance as this particular Marvel-verse's version of the White Wolf as opposed to Bucky Barnes. The other big cameo, well, you'll have to see it for yourself, but I'm really hoping to see that particular character enter the MCU in Black Panther 2 someday - that'd be sooooooo perfect. All in all, I'm glad Nic Stone got this book out there, and I'm also really hoping to see more Shuri adventures with her name on the covers!

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Review: Clean Getaway

Clean Getaway by Nic Stone
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Nic Stone's fourth book is, once again, a wildly different piece of fiction compared to the three she published first. Not only because it's MG as opposed to YA, but also because it's a bit less experimental and more straightforward in its storytelling style than her previous books, which each had their own unique stylistic twists. But Clean Getaway is no less important and timely than any of Stone's YA novels, dealing heavily in the impact of racism on not only today's generation, but generations past as well. Scoob, our main character, is such a good kid, and such a well-rounded personality too - struggling with doing what's right vs. doing what'll make him popular in school, and doing what'll keep his strict father off his back. So it's no surprise that he goes on a cross-country RV trip with his G'ma, an effervescent and vibrant lady who takes him across the South from Georgia through Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas. Along the way, he learns some unexpected family history which even his father never knew, secrets about what happened to G'pop so many years ago, the great difficulties of an interracial relationship (G'ma being white while G'pop was Black - and, notably, even in the present day, Scoob and G'ma still get a lot of negative attention from random passersby), and of course all about the Green Book. The Green Book is just one of many topics this short but powerful book covers, and in far greater detail than any school history book I've yet seen. So while Nic Stone's books should be on every high schooler's reading list, now we can start them off in middle school as well with Clean Getaway.

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