Review: Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V.E. Schwab
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As with Addie LaRue, this latest standalone dark fantasy from V.E. Schwab, spanning the centuries, is one that's a classic for the ages, but I'll never want to read it again. Just like Addie LaRue, this book focuses on a set of three women throughout history who fall for a dreadful curse - and in this case, they're all linked by one vampire that started it all. Schwab marketed this book as being her book of "toxic lesbian vampires," and while it's very clear that it's about lesbian vampires pretty quickly, the toxic aspect doesn't make it clear until much later, as our two historically deceased vampires show different reactions to how they have to hurt and kill other women in order to prolong their own undead existences. Given Schwab's notoriety for writing quite unlikable characters, I'd say this time, she does a great job of making them sympathetic first.

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Review: The Republic of Salt

The Republic of Salt by Ariel Kaplan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ariel Kaplan returns with the second book of the Mirror Realm Cycle, following Toba, Naftaly, Elena, Barsilay, and all the Maxim cohort on a journey away from Rimon to Zayit - the Olive Gate, a city corresponding to Venice in the real world. As with the previous book, the characters aren’t really the most interesting - though Barsilay far and away shines as my fave - but the richly detailed magic system, rooted in Jewish legend with elements of fae and djinn - continues to make this book stand out even as it suffers from a touch of middle book syndrome. Naturally, there’s a pretty rough cliffhanger to endure on this one, and I’m really hoping to get Book 3 next year to wrap up this prospective trilogy. Or more, if Kaplan’s imagination (fertile as it is) calls for it. And I hope it does.

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Review: Isles of the Emberdark

Isles of the Emberdark by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sanderson’s latest Secret Project, released as part of his fundraiser for the leather bound edition of Words of Radiance, follows in the footsteps of The Sunlit Man as it delves into the far future of the Cosmere. Expanding on his previous novella “Sixth of the Dusk” with the title character one of many in focus, Sanderson also sets up a future clash between Roshar and Scadrial in particular, planting seeds for what to expect in the upcoming future arcs of Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive. While this book proves long and meandering, and at times difficult to maintain interest in, it’s one scene in particular that bumps this up from 3.5 to 4. And as you can imagine, it’s another one of Hoid’s greatest hits, that wily old trickster God (no seriously, that’s how I’ve come to see him at this point.)

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Review: The Listeners

The Listeners by Maggie Stiefvater
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Maggie Stiefvater gives us her adult fiction debut in a book that plays like a World War II version of The Magic Mountain, set in Appalachia. Inspired by true events, Stiefvater tells the story of June, a hotel manager forced to accept Axis diplomats as unwanted guests in her fancy hotel most famous for its healing sweetwater (actually pretty foul tasting, but the local folks swear by it all the same.) While the book does suffer from Stiefvater’s usual issues that have plagued many of her YA books - dreamy prose masking thin plot, most of the characters are less than likable - I can imagine this particular story would work far better as a movie to really immerse viewers in a gothic atmosphere. Especially gothic in the literary sense, since it shows our government coddling diplomats from then enemy nations in a way that almost would make sense today, given that our country has been hijacked by traitors who would give comfort to our enemies just to make a quick buck.

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Review: Ten Incarnations of Rebellion

Ten Incarnations of Rebellion by Vaishnavi Patel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The latest novel from Vaishnavi Patel shifts away from the ancient settings of the original Hindu legends which she typically adapts, in favor of a more modern but still historical (or, more accurately, alternate historical) setting that still takes inspiration from the same Hindu legends. In this new timeline, it's the 1960s going into the 1970s, and India remains a British colony decades past the point where she gained independence in real life, due in large part to the British stamping out Gandhi and other leaders of the independence movement with even greater violence. By this point in the timeline, the city we know as Mumbai has been burned down and rebuilt as British Kingston, with the colonizers pitting all the local ethnic and religious groups against each other...until such time as Kalki, Fausha, and their friends and families can slowly rise up and overthrow their oppressors. It's a slow burn, especially for a short book, but it's quickly become my new favorite of Patel's for numerous reasons.

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Review: These Vengeful Gods

These Vengeful Gods by Gabe Cole Novoa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Gabe Cole Novoa brings us his latest dark YA fantasy, this time shifting away from his historical settings of the last few years (two books of piracy and magic, and his retelling of Pride and Prejudice with a transmasculine protagonist.) Now, he takes on the fantasy dystopian style, bringing in a lot of his stylistic hallmarks - queer-centric cast, Latin American inspired setting (not every character is Hispanic, but many of them are at least coded as such), sharp social commentary about class division and genocide (protagonist Crow being one of the last living descendants of Death, whom all the other gods betrayed out of fear), and also disabled rep, with Novoa incorporating elements of his own autoimmune disorder into Crow. I feel like this book will get a lot of comparisons to Aiden Thomas’s The Sunbearer Trials, but my comparison is that, having been disappointed with the second book of Thomas’s duology, this book gets right in one what Thomas couldn’t quite pull off in two. It’s a very worthy addition to Novoa’s bibliography, and while Crow is a new favorite of mine among his protagonists, Chaos takes the cake as my fave overall in this book, easily.

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Review: Badlands

Badlands by Douglas Preston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The fifth Nora Kelly novel feels like a throwback to some of Preston & Child’s best scary stories, especially way back in their earlier days like in Still Life With Crows. It also verges on X Files territory, particularly with its emphasis on the ruins and artifacts of Indigenous peoples in New Mexico, from the Chaco to the Ancestral Pueblo to the Gallina, and of course the Navajo, with an old woman of that tribe getting a laugh out of Nora and Corrie’s clumsy attempts at speaking her language. Though they aren’t Native Americans, Preston & Child take great care to depict various tribal cultures past and present with sensitivity, which is more than I can say for the ultimate villains of this book. Without spoilers, let’s just say there really is a special hell for cultural appropriators and they deserve it.

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