Author: Grey

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Review

“Little Nothing”

Dee Holloway

I didn’t quite click with this one. The closest I got was with the “little nothings,” the small pieces of magic, and even there, I wanted it to be a bit more. I want magic that actually feels like magic, not magic that feels like someone believing in themselves by telling a story in their head that it’s magic. The biggest ‘little nothing,’ as it’s referred to, that appears in this book is someone getting themselves untied… and the way they do that spell is to spend an hour slowly fidgeting with the rope until the motion and them bleeding on the rope from the sores on their wrists loosen it enough that they can pull the knot the rest of the way undone. The spellwork is simultaneously treated as “enough of a threat that they have to be tied down so they can’t move their hands” and also “basically a form of self-affirmation” and it just bugged me.

Complaints about magic aside, it was an interesting read—I’ve never been much for Civil War-era stuff, so the perspective of people loyal to the Union, living in Florida, in the lead-up to the actual declaration of the Confederacy, was a new perspective to me. Worth it for that, I suppose, though the concept of “what if Florida had carnivorous swimming horses in addition to the alligators” was a bit more fun of a twist. Check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
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Playlist

Playlist of the Month: April 2025

Back to sharing links and doing a bit of annotation this time, but still a short playlist. Listen to the whole thing here, or see my lightly-annotated track list:

Oklahoma Smokeshow – Zach Bryan on Summertime Blues – EP

Towers – Zach Bryan on The Great American Bar Scene

Hotel Bible – Max McNown on Night Diving

i Am A Mountain – Coldplay on Moon Music (Full Moon Edition)

Medusa – Cameron Whitcomb on Medusa – Single

Drunk Again – Aidan Canfield on Rivertown – EP

Old Neptune, He’s Roaring – Brian Sauvé on Hearth Songs

Wake Me up (Country Version) – Cooper Alan & Aloe Blacc on Wake Me up (Country Version) – Single

Blue Jean Baby – Zach Bryan on Blue Jean Baby – Single

Heartbreaker – Hayden Blount on Heartbreaker – Single

Ordinary – Alex Warren on Ordinary – Single

Trauma Kid – Majik on Trauma Kid – Single1

SOTTOMARINI – Mahmood on SOTTOMARINI – Single

Street Level – Jon Bryant on Street Level – Single

Have to Know – Daniel Leggs on Have to Know – Single

Sagittarius – TROY on Sagittarius – Single

Rattlesnake – Jack Van Cleaf & Zach Bryan on JVC

Domini Lost – IcoS on Domini Lost – Single

Alien Cowboy – Gordi on Like Plasticine

to the wilder (from “DEATH STRANDING 2 : ON THE BEACH” Soundtrack) – Woodkid on to the wilder (from “DEATH STRANDING 2 : ON THE BEACH” Soundtrack) – Single

Bad Cameo – James Blake & Lil Yachty on Bad Cameo

Options – Cameron Whitcomb on Clean Country 2025

AWARDS SEASON – Bon Iver on SABLE, fABLE

Everything Is Peaceful Love – Bon Iver on SABLE, fABLE

Like I Do – Dylan Gossett on Like I Do – Single

Well, Me 2 – Pardyalone on FUHLK MUSIC VOL. 1 – Single

GFU – Landon Smith on GFU – Single

93 – flora cash on i’m not okay – Single2

Azalea Place – Max McNown on Night Diving

Missing Man – James Blake & Lil Yachty on Bad Cameo

DELUSIONAL. – Kesha on .

There’s A Rhythmn – Bon Iver on SABLE, fABLE

Canadian – Billy Raffoul on Canadian – Single

i’m not okay – flora cash on i miss you – Single

DREAMBOY – Lil Nas X on DREAMBOY – Single

  1. I’m deeply sad to not have a link here; Majik appears to have pulled it from Apple Music, and his various social media accounts have vanished again. It was nice while it lasted.
    … he said, before going down a bit of a rabbit hole; there’s a new TikTok username, which links to a SoundCloud account with a couple tracks. Not the same sound as Majik, but still worth listening to. ↩
  2. This is the catchy one this month. ↩
Categories
Review

“Off-Time Jive”

A.Z. Louise

An interesting little story. Not long enough for me to really figure out the magic system in any detail, which was a bit of a bummer—I quite liked the idea of there being an Old School of magic and a New School of magic, and tying it together with race relations in the Jim Crow era sure did add an interesting twist. A surprisingly good ending, everything came together better than I was expecting. Worth the read, I think.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“Rabbits of the Apocalypse”

Benny Lawrence

I’m kinda amazed by how much I enjoyed this book, because it’s a hodgepodge of a bunch of things I really don’t like. It’s post-apocalyptic, for god’s sake! And not even a particularly hopeful post-apocalyptic, it’s a “and things are still getting worse!” post-apocalyptic. Gross.

I suppose what shone was the characters—I was interested in all of them, in their relationships. Which, again, kinda surprising, because they’re basically all terrible. Hell, one of the main characters in this spends a whole lot of time justifying their actions, and even towards the end where they’re starting to crack and admit that the Big Bad they work for is, in fact, not the good guys… they never address the fact that said Big Bad is a slave empire. Like, c’mon. Have some self-awareness.

I dunno, though. Like I said, I did enjoy reading it—fairly well-written, and the banter really brought a lot of joy to it. If you’re into… Fallout, but as a sapphic romance(?), and a little bit of X-Men, then this might be the book for you. Worth a shot, anyways.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“Salt & Broom”

Sharon Lynn Fisher

This book probably would’ve felt a bit more familiar and interesting I’ve actually read Jane Eyre, but as I haven’t, it took me a while to get used to the style of it. I nearly gave up about halfway through, in fact; I get the feeling that ‘regency romance’ as a genre isn’t for me. Still, this book managed to add in a fun supernatural mystery element, which I did enjoy; it twisted enough that I kept coming up with theories and then being proved wrong, though in a way I didn’t much mind. A fairly quick read, surprisingly light and fun, occasionally spooky, but overall enjoyable. Give it a go.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“Champion of the Scarlet Wolf, Book 2”

Ginn Hale

As promised, I went right into reading the second book.1 And I quite enjoyed it, though admittedly not as much as I did the first. I think part of my issue was that this seems to be an advance reader copy or something — not the final edition, is all. There’s a few clear errors that a final editing pass should’ve caught.2

That said, I did enjoy the read. I was worried that it was going to do the Syfy thing, and try to continue escalating, but it didn’t — the scope stayed “well, we’re all gonna die, but the world will go on.” Nice to have a sort of series-scale denouement like that, after the first book featured “well, we’re all gonna die, and then also this thing might end the world after that.”

The other thing this reminded me of was Diana Wynne Jones. It had that same kind of “slow build right up until everything comes together at once” feeling; in the same way that I spend the first half of the book going “I dunno, I don’t think this is really capturing me as much as I’d like it to…” and then suddenly I’m forgetting to eat because I can’t put the book down that long. It wound up being fun, and tying up some of the remaining threads from the first book pretty well, so I appreciated that. A good read! Start with Book 1, but then give it a go.3

  1. At some point in the book I thought “is there going to be a third?” and found out that this is, in fact, the fourth book in the series — evidently a great deal of the Mysterious Backstory I’d been piecing together as I read was just the events of the first two books. Whoops, guess I was reading on challenge mode. That said, I think it held up quite well as its own little duology! ↩
  2. And I mean obvious stuff like a word that was meant to be replaced still being there. The subtler things, like a character’s name being spelled differently, are harder to notice if you haven’t just read the first one. And, presumably, particularly if you didn’t spend every appearance by that character in the first book thinking about “her name isn’t ‘Fleur’ like from Harry Potter, it’s ‘Fluer’” so that it suddenly becoming ‘Fleur’ really stands out. ↩
  3. This is an Amazon affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: March 2025

No links or annotations this time around; as with last month, I’ve spent the majority of March being too ill to really engage with music as much as I’d like. You can listen to the whole playlist here.

Sad Girls (feat. Rema) – Clean Bandit & French The Kid on Sad Girls (feat. Rema) – Single

Oklahoma Smokeshow – Zach Bryan on Summertime Blues – EP

Towers – Zach Bryan on The Great American Bar Scene

Hotel Bible – Max McNown on Night Diving

i Am A Mountain – Coldplay on Moon Music (Full Moon Edition)

Medusa – Cameron Whitcomb on Medusa – Single

Bears & Wolves – Lilith Max on Bears & Wolves – Single

Drunk Again – Aidan Canfield on Rivertown – EP

Old Neptune, He’s Roaring – Brian Sauvé on Hearth Songs

Wake Me up (Country Version) – Cooper Alan & Aloe Blacc on Wake Me up (Country Version) – Single

TRANS AM – Jeremiah Kane on TRANS AM – Single

Blue Jean Baby – Zach Bryan on Blue Jean Baby – Single

Heartbreaker – Hayden Blount on Heartbreaker – Single

ONANON – Killen. on ONANON – Single

Silver Spoon – Erin LeCount on Silver Spoon – Single

Clockwork – Masked Wolf on The Devil Wears Prada but God Wears Gucci

22s – KOKO, Nina Chuba & Dillistone on 22s – Single

Dear Me (From The Original Documentary “Diane Warren: Relentless”) – Kesha on Dear Me (From The Original Documentary “Diane Warren: Relentless”) – Single

Ordinary – Alex Warren on Ordinary – Single

Trauma Kid – Majik on Trauma Kid – Single

Opportunity – MÒZÂMBÎQÚE & Vertefeuille on When We Was

SOTTOMARINI – Mahmood on SOTTOMARINI – Single

In Your Eyes – Korine on In Your Eyes – Single

Too Young To Be Jaded – Tep No on Catharsis – EP

Street Level – Jon Bryant on Street Level – Single

Seraph – Lilith Max on Seraph – Single

Have to Know – Daniel Leggs on Have to Know – Single

Bittersweet (feat. Rosie Darling) – Audien & Shallou on Bittersweet (feat. Rosie Darling) – Single

Sagittarius – TROY on Sagittarius – Single

Love Is an Ocean – The Midnight on Love Is an Ocean – Single

Missyouso – Mascolo on Missyouso – Single

See How It Ends – Anderholm on See How It Ends – Single

Rattlesnake (feat. Zach Bryan) – Jack Van Cleaf & Zach Bryan on JVC

Summer of Love (Vip Edit) – James Carter, Leony & Sam Fischer on Summer of Love (Vip Edit) – Single

Domini Lost – IcoS on Domini Lost – Single

Alien Cowboy – Gordi on Like Plasticine

Anhedonia – Korine on Anhedonia – Single

To the wilder (from “DEATH STRANDING 2 : ON THE BEACH” Soundtrack) – Woodkid on To the wilder (from “DEATH STRANDING 2 : ON THE BEACH” Soundtrack) – Single

Categories
Review

“Champion of the Scarlet Wolf, Book 1”

Ginn Hale

I had so much more fun reading this than I expected to. A great deal of giving me exactly what I wanted in the most fun way possible. So much mysterious backstory to piece together! Two missing princes! Quests within quests. A character whose two intertwined emotional arcs are “working through internalized homophobia” and “dealing with PTSD that they’ve spent a lifetime ignoring.” And a truly wonderful “the audience knows but the character doesn’t” scene featuring a shapeshifter who’d been stuck in animal form, and a man in the midst of a severe fever waking up to a twink in his bed wearing nothing but the collar he’d hand-made for the dog he rescued a couple weeks ago. Exactly as hilarious a reveal as I wanted that to be. Absolutely perfect.

The magic system here feels cobbled together out of various other things—there’s hints of Tolkein-style “the magic is going out of the world,” but it feels more like a “… because we’ve deliberately forgotten how to do the really big stuff” in a way that makes the world feel like it has lots and lots of history to dig into. The magic users all at least a little bit know about the other types of magic, some kind of passing familiarity, but there are, indeed, at least three distinct styles that we see. And it feels like they all fit together, like they’re all expressions of the same fundamental thing—reminiscent of the Thirteenth Child series, in that way.1

An absolute delight of a read; I’m about to dive into the second book, because things aren’t neatly tied up at all here at the end, and I’m excited to find out where it goes. Check it out!2

  1. Having just gone to look for a link, it would seem that I’ve never written up a review of those books… so I suppose I now have an excuse to do a reread. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“The Witch’s Lens”

Luanne G. Smith

This held up reasonably well as a story, and had some fun little twists to it. The hidden backstory got revealed at just the right pace, and really changed the tone of the latter half of the book, which I quite enjoyed. There was a bit more ‘monster movie’ to it prior to that, which doesn’t tend to be my favorite, but the action-adventure of it outweighed that long enough to carry me to the end.

The magic system was interesting; there were places where it felt like a hard magic system, but overall, I think it’s really a soft magic system, which contains the occasional regional hard magic system. The presence of a djinn with a wildly different set of powers, including “oh, I actually don’t care about the macguffin, that’s just, like, a normal thing for my people” felt a bit hilarious, honestly. The whole dramatic fight, a large part of World War I coming down to the negotiation about this rarity… and the representative from the middle east is like “oh, I thought you had something interesting to discuss after all this. Peace.” and just up and leaves. Excellent.

The only issue I had with the book was that it was trying to do the “normal people don’t know about magic” thing, but couldn’t actually decide on what level that was a thing. Like, everyone acknowledges superstition and the existence of hedgewitches… but the fact that the government is employing magic users for purposes of war is a deep secret that must be kept from the normals? It’s inconsistent with itself.

That said, since the book is almost entirely the magic users amongst other magic users, it’s not too much in your face, so it’s okay to read past it. Overall, a fun read; check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“Managing Humans”

Michael Lopp

This was an interesting read — it absolutely feels like each of the many chapters is a blog post that got repurposed into being a book chapter, in large part because that’s what it is; this is Rands in Repose, The Book. A few bits of this I felt like I was skimming past—I don’t have any interest in writing a CV right now, thanks—but a lot of it I at least jotted a couple notes on. I may not be a manager, but having a better idea of how management works can’t be a bad thing.

Compared to my other forays into the ‘management book’ genre, I found this more approachable. Lopp does a better job of establishing his bona fides, both as Someone Who Works In Tech, and as someone who’s got the same sort of internet brain I do.1 He’s part of the old guard of bloggers. His writing is, in a word, approachable to my inarguably-a-nerd self.

So, overall, a good read; the book club discussion ought to be interesting, as well. I look forward to finding out how many other folks read the glossary all the way through—it was, in fact, worth it. Check it out.2

  1. He calls it NADD, which works well enough. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“We’re Here”

edited by L.D. Lewis & Charles Payseur

Anthologies are always an interesting thing to read; they offer more variability than a single book by a single author, and tend to be a lot easier to read in bursts. This one made for some great vacation reading — get through one story, go for a dip in the pool, read another while drying off in the sun.1 That said, it’s not a guarantee it’ll be good; sometimes the focus area is too depressing, or the editors made a succession of bad choices.

This, delightfully, was not one of those. “Queer speculative fiction” is a fairly safe topic area to begin with, as it basically pins a single character trait of one or more characters in the story, and a delightfully diverse character trait it is. The title, as well, adds a certain amount of hopeful tinge to it, and the stories almost universally delivered on that.

Favorites include:

  • A rural Oregonian woman having a big fight with her ex-girlfriend, exclusively in the form of flower language.
  • A woman trapped in a three-day time loop before the space station she’s on explodes, using it to sample every restaurant the station has to offer.
  • A lesbian couple running a magic shop together. The story opens with them having a charcuterie board for dinner, and the vibes stay immaculate from there on out; I want to read an entire series of this one.
  • A POV story of the protagonist in a videogame, learning some things about themselves when the player installs a mod.

This collection was a delight; for any one of the above stories, I’d call it worth it, and it includes all of them and more. Give it a go!2

  1. And getting a little sunburned, but oh well. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Playlist

Playlist of the Month: February 2025

This is a bit of a weird one, to me. I spent most of the month very sick, and at least half of it, even listening to music was just… a lot. And while I still managed to put together something of a playlist for the month, it’s a bit misleading; a lot of the time, even when I felt up to listening to music, I was doing a lot of “hit shuffle on the playlist, then scrub through the queue and remove a bunch of stuff that still felt like Too Much.”

Still, though, there was a bit of music in the month. If you’d like the whole playlist in one go, here’s the link, or do the piecemeal-with-occasional-notes style below:

Machine Learning – J. Maya on Machine Learning – Single

Sad Girls (feat. Rema) – Clean Bandit & French The Kid on Sad Girls (feat. Rema) – Single

O Superman (For Massenet) – Laurie Anderson on Talk Normal: The Laurie Anderson Anthology (Remastered)

Oklahoma Smokeshow – Zach Bryan on Summertime Blues – EP

Dicked Down in Dallas – Trey Lewis on Dicked Down in Dallas – Single

Midnight Drive – HurricaneTurtle on Midnight Drive – EP

Towers – Zach Bryan on The Great American Bar Scene

Sorry 4 The Wait – Lil Wayne on Sorry 4 The Wait

Up, Out, and Leaving – Hayden Blount on Up, Out, and Leaving

The Emptiness Machine – LINKIN PARK on From Zero

Overflow – LINKIN PARK on From Zero

Great Mother (feat. Neco Novellas) – HAEVN on Wide Awake (Deluxe)

Hotel Bible – Max McNown on Night Diving

i Am A Mountain – Coldplay on Moon Music (Full Moon Edition)

Breathe – RÜFÜS DU SOL on Inhale / Exhale

How About a Drink? – Billy Raffoul on How About a Drink? – Single

Medusa – Cameron Whitcomb on Medusa – Single

Bears & Wolves – Lilith Max on Bears & Wolves – Single

Rust – Ben Böhmer on Bloom

need dat boy – Lil Nas X on need dat boy – Single

Sometimes We Come Back – THE RUNAWAY WILD on Sometimes We Come Back – Single

Drunk Again – Aidan Canfield on Rivertown – EP

Breathe, Be Happy – Tep No on Breathe, Be Happy – Single

Old Neptune, He’s Roaring – Brian Sauvé on Hearth Songs

Plead the Fifth – Cooper Alan on Plead the Fifth – Single

I’m Good (Blue) – David Guetta & Bebe Rexha on I’m Good (Blue) – Single

Crazy – Doechii on Crazy – Single

Crossfire – Waves_On_Waves, SHKHR & Waves On Waves Armada on Crossfire – Single

Falls Down – James Carter & Lucas Estrada on Falls Down – Single

Wake Me up (Country Version) – Cooper Alan & Aloe Blacc on Wake Me up (Country Version) – Single1

TRANS AM – Jeremiah Kane on TRANS AM – Single2

Living In The Sun (feat. okafuwa) – DALEXO on Living In The Sun (feat. okafuwa) – Single

The Abyss – The Weeknd & Lana Del Rey on Hurry Up Tomorrow

Fright Night – THE RUNAWAY WILD on Fright Night – Single

Open Hearts – The Weeknd on Hurry Up Tomorrow

Blue Jean Baby – Zach Bryan on Blue Jean Baby – Single

Heartbreaker – Hayden Blount on Heartbreaker – Single

Pantheon Passion – Harper Quinn, Michael FAY & Fuat Sunay on Pantheon Passion – Single

ONANON – Killen. on ONANON – Single

São Paulo – The Weeknd & Anitta on Hurry Up Tomorrow

Silver Spoon – Erin LeCount on Silver Spoon – Single3

Clockwork – Masked Wolf on The Devil Wears Prada but God Wears Gucci

22s – KOKO, Nina Chuba & Dillistone on 22s – Single

Revolú – Rauw Alejandro & Feid on Cosa Nuestra

Dear Me (From The Original Documentary “Diane Warren: Relentless”) – Kesha on Dear Me (From The Original Documentary “Diane Warren: Relentless”) – Single

Hit The Ground – Poul & Alberto Ciccarini on Hit The Ground – Single

Always Remember Us This Way – Poul, Alberto Ciccarini & Alexia Di Lorenzo on Always Remember Us This Way – Single

Ordinary – Alex Warren on Ordinary – Single4

Dreaming – Otrebor on Dreaming – Single

Mona Lisa (feat. Kendrick Lamar) – Lil Wayne on Tha Carter V

4X4 – Travis Scott on 4X4 – Single

Chasing Paradise – Kygo & OneRepublic on Chasing Paradise – Single

hey baby – Famestelenia on hey baby – Single

  1. This feels like the kind of thing that I should be a little ashamed that I love. ↩
  2. Something about sampling old ads just hits really well, I dunno. ↩
  3. Slowly picking up the lyrics to this one, “silver spoons and butter knives” just sticks right in my head. ↩
  4. Kept thinking to myself “shoutout to the music history classes for helping me understand all these Catholicism references.” ↩
Categories
Review

“Sooner or Later Everything Falls Into the Sea”

Sarah Pinsker

Absolutely a mixed bag in the way that only an anthology can be. There’s some stories in here that I really didn’t like—I hated “Our Lady of the Open Road,” it just felt crushingly depressing all the way through.

And then there’s some that I really liked. The final story, “And Then There Were (N-One),” was absolutely masterful: a murder mystery set at an interdimensional continuum for various iterations of one person. Now that is a concept!

Weirdly, the ones that I quite liked were the ones about grief. “In Joy, Knowing the Abyss Behind,” and “The Narwhal” were both really touching pieces about loss. “Remembery Day” was beautiful and aching and sad. And I loved it. Usually I don’t; usually I want upbeat things to read. But it worked.

The good outweighed the bad, here; the first couple pieces I didn’t at all enjoy, so stick with it past those, see how you feel about the later ones.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“The Time of the Dark”

Barbara Hambly

This was a fun little swords-and-sorcery isekai kind of thing, which mostly did a good job of taking those tropes and twisting them a little bit. The wizard feels like a less-self-serious Gandalf, and the fact that it takes them a few tries to actually wind up isekai’d, after the wizard himself pops over to our world for a bit, adds some fun variation.

It does, however, still feel like a book written in the 80s; the feminist qualities to it feel very Second Wave Feminism in a way that I don’t dislike, but does date it. The biggest failing, to my mind, was that despite being in a different world with a very different history, there’s still a recognizably Christian church running around. It was mostly okay, being a sort of vaguely monotheistic part of the pastiche of western European medieval tropes… right up until there were mentions of people crossing themselves. That’s what kicked me into “okay, wait, how did the same gesture wind up as the holy thing?”

That aside, it was a fun book. And the big bad being ancient lovecraftian horrors was a nice twist, too; made it bad bedtime reading, but an interesting bit of variety. Check it out.1

  1. This is an Amazon affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do. ↩
Categories
Review

“House of Gold”

C.T. Rwizi

I quite liked this—the three arcs it’s split into each feel different in a fun way, and expand on the universe more.1 Bouncing back and forth between two viewpoint characters also worked very well, and the fact that both of them are the “Proxies”, supporting their “Primes”, the ones who are very clearly driving the action most of the way through, made it all the more interesting. It captures a little bit of that space opera “there’s a lot of big things happening in the background” feeling, whilst staying very close to the action.

Overall, I enjoyed the heck out of this one; it’s significantly longer than my last couple reads, but that didn’t stop me from plowing through it in a single day. Definitely a page-turner. Check it out.2

  1. I’m quite curious if this counts as taking place in the same universe as Scarlett Odyssey – it seems very possible, the magic system in that feels very “sufficiently advanced technology. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩