July is for Reading

The air quality is terrible and it’s muggy even when it’s not a million degrees. And it is, frequently, a million degrees.

See, this is why I like winter. I can always put more clothes on.

At least I have a good excuse to stay inside and read instead of going outside where there are mosquitoes and ticks and smoke. And people.

CUlt Classic (Eric Carter #9) by Stephen Blackmoore (Daw, 7/11)

Cult Classic is purported to be the last Eric Carter book and if it truly is well, I am going to fucking riot. I won’t tell you why because that would ruin it and I need you all to be as absolutely feral as I am so you’ll band together with me and convince someone to pick the series up for at least one more book in some form because damnit HARPY SCREECHING NOISES.

Of course, Carter does know a thing or two about resurrection, so there’s hope…

If this is our last ride, well, it was an excellent one: a gory, squishy, urban fantasy thrill ride with the dark, horrific treasure that is Eric Carter. Though he himself would deny it, he is one of the most human bastards in a genre full of swings and misses, a trope turned living, breathing, snarky, self-sacrificing, mean, sweet, brutal, broken man those of us lucky enough to meet have loved to hate and hated to love across nine books. From the moment Blackmoore introduced us to him, we’ve been in it for life.

I will never understand why this series didn’t explode. The writing is tight, the characters are nuanced, and Blackmoore is very good at doing his homework, which brings cities and magical creatures to life in a way other urban fantasy authors wish they could (I’m looking at someone in particular, feel free to guess). I don’t know that I’ve ever wanted to crawl inside a fictional world so badly and that’s saying something because this one? It’s pretty fucked up. It’s also vivid, visceral, and so very present.

If you haven’t read the Eric Carter books, you’re lucky. You get to read them for the first time now without waiting years in between. Though if I were you, I’d ration them. You don’t want to run out too fast…

Cherry Magic: Thirty Years Of Virginity Can Make you a Wizard! Vol. 7 by Yuu Toyota (Square Enix)

This is where we get our first major departure from the show and, I have to be honest, I’m digging it. I mean, Adachi and Kurosawa continue to be dumbasses in love, they wouldn’t be our beloveds if they weren’t, but I appreciate Adachi taking some initiative in showing Kurosawa he’s interested while he’s away on a work project. Sure, he’s still a disaster human on the inside - and aren’t we all - but this sweet, ridiculous man didn’t get much character development until the very end of the show and it’s nice to see that happening sooner in the manga.

Loki’s Ring by Stina Leicht (Tor)

Loki’s Ring is phenomenal: go for the queer, rebel Star Trek vibe, stay for the butt jokes and the intense, heart wrenching meditation on what it means to be human.

Is what I said on Twitter and honestly, I’m not sure what else to say because if that doesn’t sound interesting to you, you’re beyond help.

Just kidding.

Maybe.

A lot of sci-if writers have lost the spirit of the genre (yes, genre is a construct that tells book sellers where to put things on a shelf etc. etc). In the quest to be gritty or utopian or build the biggest ships with the fanciest hardware or recapture the spirit of exploration (cough, colonization), they forget that Mary Shelly was, well, #1) trapped for a weekend with a bunch of fuckbois, but #2) asking questions about how far the human mind could, and should, go (which, as Jurassic Park reminds us, are two entirely different things). Sci-fi started a genre of if - then and warned us that if if became then, we bore the responsibility for then.

We lost that sense of responsibility somewhere along the line in the flash and glamour.

Leicht’s Loki’s Ring brings us full circle, deftly weaving sleek racers together with sentient AIs, spy drama, first contact, and what it means to be family. The book tells a well-paced, intense, exciting story and yet, somehow, at the same time, asks very essential questions: what does it mean to be alive? What are we to the universe? Do we even deserve the consideration of another species? Can we? Should we? What if, just once we didn’t?

Loki’s Ring is sci-if at it’s absolute best because it’s honest. It reflects our best and lays bare our flaws. It reminds us that no one is perfect but if we don’t at least try, we don’t deserve the stars.

Snapdragon by Kat Leyh (First Second)

Snapdragon has lost her dog and she’s determined to find him. When she does, he’s in the most unlikely of places: at the home of the creepy old woman all the kids in town say is a witch, being well-cared for after being seriously injured. Snap also finds the creepy old woman and lots and lots of bones.

But, like so many other things in life, not everything is as it seems.

Loved, loved, loved Snapdragon. There are a lot of be who you are, love who you are books out there these days and that’s great. There should be. The more there are, they easier it is for kids on both sides of that divide to internalize and accept that’s the way it should be. But so many of those books make the process look easy: one minute, people are laughing and pointing and the next, everyone’s singing in a circle around a campfire or doing projects in the library together, or whatever. And as much as I wish that’s how it worked, usually, it isn’t. Peace takes time. It’s often incomplete. Sometimes, there are people who refuse to change their minds, who you’ll never get along with. And that sucks. But it’s also the world we live in. How do we explain that to kids and teens without crushing them?

Find your tribe. Love them hard. And know they’ll be there for you when you need them.

The Jasad Heir (The Scorched Throne: Book One) by Sara Hashem (Orbit, 7/18)

Rogue One is my favorite Star Wars movie (Shiri, this is a book review. I know, chill, I’m going somewhere with this). One of the (many) reasons it is my favorite is that it doesn’t try to make rebellion pretty. Are they built on hope? Sure. But they’re also built on that dead body Cassian Andor drops in an alley in the first few minutes and on Jedda and Alderaan, which Galen Erso decide are worth sacrificing (he knows there’s a chance the Death Star is going to be tested before it’s destroyed, of course he does, even if he doesn’t know the specific target), and on every civilian who dies in the crossfire, let alone the Rebels who volunteer.

Someone needs to be an idealist. Someone needs to wear white. Someone needs to be a symbol because of course they do.

But someone else needs to take the hit. Someone else needs to take the fall. Because of course they do.

Most of the time in fantasy, hidden-heir books, the hidden heir is the one wearing white, taking up the mantle of idealist. Becoming the symbol. It’s fine. If well written, those books can range from good to very good. I’m selective about the ones I read though, because it’s been done. Pretty much to death.

The Jasad Heir, though? This book is the Rogue One of hidden heir books and I am one hundred percent here for it because it hasn’t been done. Not really. And not like this.

Essiya, or Sylvia, as she’s chosen to be known, doesn’t care about her lost kingdom or the throne stolen from her. She just wants to live a quiet life as a chemist’s apprentice in a small town far away from her old life.

Right, like that’s going to happen.

Enter Arin, heir to the kingdom that orchestrated the downfall of her own, who for reasons (I’m not going to spoil it for you) chooses Essiya/Sylvia as his Champion in an inter-territorial tournament of great import, knowing only part of her story.

Here is where we get to the good stuff.

No learning how to use the right cutlery and good china for our heroine. No dwarven forged blades or elven archery instructors or bags of holding here. Nope, she gets punted into the forest, thrown into tunnels, beaten up by the guards, fed subpar food, and attacked by people who claim to be her allies. Surrounded by enemies, those she once thought beloved family are out to get her. Her magic, which is supposed to be her greatest weapon is both restrained and turning itself against her and, on top of that, she is both a snarky bitch (affectionate) and a complete disaster human who has all the feelings and no idea what to do with them.

I love her, she is my new fantasy daughter and I don’t care if she murders everyone, never speak to us again.

Also, hooray for another non-Western European fantasy setting, the not-dude authors are killing it spreading these fantastic stories around the world for readers to enjoy, please continue.

I need the next one in this series post-haste.

Spirit World Issues 1&2 by Alyssa Wong, Haining, Sebastian Cheng, and Janice Chiang

I don’t read a ton of monthlies these days and, when I do, I usually wait for the trade but Xanthe popped up in this year’s DC Pride Anthology and I was intrigued by the whole, “dead but it dead” thing so I read issue one and kind of got hooked and here we are. Definitely digging the mixture of magic and slice of life that DC writers are doing extremely well right now (see the Tim Drake and Connor Hawke team-up store in the Pride Anthology as well as the Harley, Ivy, and Crash foray), especially the sensitivity Wong displays when dealing with Xanthe’s family dead naming them (my 11 year old is non-binary trans masc and some of the grandparents… so this is close to my heart right now). I am also here for the John Constantine protects trans kids agenda.

City Boy and The Vigil launched around the same time as part of an effort by DC to add more AAPI characters to their lineup. The Vigil has some interesting concepts but the story is a little flat; it’s a six issue limited so I’m willing to stick around for now. City Boy started out with two really strong issues; issue three was kind of meh. I’ll keep ‘em coming for now, though, they can’t all be bangers.

What’s on your list for the sweaty months? Hope you found something here to keep you in the air conditioning!