Tarot, Treats, and Tolerance
… and we’re back. Again. Moving. Covid. Life, the universe, everything as always. But, hey, I did a bunch of reading so at least there are lots of recommendations forthcoming.
The God of Lost Words (Hell’s Library #3) by AJ Hackwith (Ace)
I wish I could read the Hell’s Library trilogy again for the first time. Original, lush, gorgeous, and still so, so human, anyone who loves books or libraries, anyone who’s ever loved a story, will adore this trilogy and those who inhabit it.
I’m absolutely devastated that I won’t have more moments with Claire and company, though I have to admit that Hackwith has given them an absolutely immaculate send-off, growing the story from a fascinating seed to a wild, magical garden I still find myself thinking about, still wishing I could find the secret door to access.
Oh, and yes. I do ship it. All of it.
And I can’t wait to lose myself in whatever Hackwith creates next.
Fault Tolerance by Valerie Valdes (Harper Voyager, 8/2)
Another ending though there is, at least, a glimmer of hope we might get more tales of La Sirena Negra’s crew someday. I’m going to make as much noise as I can because I’ve loved Eva and her crew since the jump and I’ll continue to love them forever because I’m a sucker for the underdog and a morally gray protagonist who ended up on darker side only to turn around and use the skills they learned there for good. Ish. Good-ish.
Valdes’ books (Prime Deceptions, Chilling Effect) are funny, honest, exciting, and a wonderfully weird. The plots are twisty, engaging, and exciting and you can read just for that but there’s also found family, LGBTQIA+ rep, interspecies relationships, people screwing up and loving one another through it, giant mechs, and psychic cats. There’s natural bilingual language flow in space, reconciliation between siblings, and people doing the best they can. And all of it is so naturally integrated, you don’t necessarily realize it’s there until you start having feels.
Come for the shooting and blowing things up and space battles, stay for characters who are piloting mechs and sitting around the galley bitching about their parents.
Valdes’ books are sci-fi/space opera that focuses on people, teasing out the best of the genre at the macro and giving us something to care about at the micro, a perfect confluence of the best in genre synthesis.
Read it. And then join me in yelling for more.
A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland (TordotCom, 8/30)
This is the homage to that C-drama you heard it was going to be and that is wonderful and I loved it. Other people will talk about this part.
Here’s what I want to talk about: this is a very important book for those who do battle with anxiety on a daily basis. Because we don’t see it much in fantasy novels and when we do, it’s usually viewed as a weakness. Something that’s mocked, to be overcome, to be obliterated. It’s pathetic, unattractive, something the person with anxiety has to compensate for if they’re lucky enough to find a partner who will tolerate it.
But in the real world, anxiety doesn’t just vanish, even if you find medication or therapy that will temper it. There are always triggers. Sometimes, it just shows up because it feels like it. There are times you can reason with it and there are times you can’t.
And like the characters in books, stigma drills the idea that we’re lucky to be tolerated, to be loved, into us. We swallow this part of us and hold it inside and it eats away at us slowly and it is exhausting.
Yuri on Ice!! Taught me I didn’t have to live that way. No, I’m not kidding. The way Victor takes time to talk to the people who know Yuri, to figure out the best way to interact with him, to encourage him, to build his confidence isn’t something anyone had ever done for me. I didn’t realize it was something I could ask for. To demand. No one has ever been that patient with me (except my current therapist) and I didn’t know that I was worth it until Victor convince Yuri that he was. That I deserved someone who would sit with me while I worked through the whys, who understood that not every day was going to be a good day, and that some days, all the tools in the world are going to be rusty and useless and that’s hard but it’s also okay. That it didn’t make me less, it made me strong because I decided to live through it and find myself with it.
That’s the relationship Kadou and Evemer grow into in A Taste of Gold and Iron. It takes a long time. They both screw up. A lot. And that’s okay too. People are hard, even fictional people, especially when court politics and exes and trauma and anger are intrigue are in play. It’s work and both people have to want to do it. And from a writer’s perspective, it takes space; being able to keep readers engaged in a plot while balancing that character development is a tall order but Rowland has done it perfectly.
More of this in fantasy, please.
Georgia O’Keefe by Maria Hererros (Self Made Hero)
I am amassing quite the collection of graphic biographies about artists and I love it. What better way to tell the stories of those who created visual works than in a visual format?
Herreros’ book isn’t a typical graphic novel; while there are some pages that are divided into panels, much of the book is arrayed in “splash pages,” full page paintings with text from the letters O’Keefe wrote to husband (it’s complicated) Alfred Steiglitz. Visually, Georgia O’Keefe is an absolutely stunning book, designed in the green/gray/blue palette O’Keefe herself favored, highlighted in an array of browns and pinks. The text varies in size and font, which in some books, would be distracting but in this one works perfectly with the flow of topics and tone.
I also learned a lot about O’Keefe and learning it from her directly made it that much more impactful. I’m not always a fan of epistalitory style but, again, in this completed package, it really is perfect.
A must have for everyone who is a fan of O’Keefe, her work, or who wants to learn a bit more about her on a personal level.
Witchlings by Claribel Ortega (Scholastic)
Looking for an alternative to that magic academia book? Look no further. Inclusive, insightful, witty, parent-inclusive, engaging, and well-written, I read Witchlings in two sittings and I absolutely adored it, then handed it to my non-binary nine-year old.
Outcast witches sticking it to the authority? Check. Girl and non-binary power? Check. A society with LGBTQIA+ relationships and all genders accepted as a manner of course? Check. Pre-teens learning to talk their problems out? Check. Enemies to friends to group problem-solving? Check.
Gotta love it and I do.
The Fae Keeper by HE Edgmon (Inkyard Press)
I did a lot of screaming about The Witch King, the first book in Edgmon’s duology, because it’s amazing. The Fae Keeper is also amazing and I really can’t recommend the series highly enough.
This is a book so many kids need. Trans kids specifically, for the ability to see themselves in Wyatt, the trans masc protagonist, but also so many other LGBTQIA+ teens who are only now having the opportunity to their parallels in the media they consume. Hell, adults of a certain age who didn’t have the chance to be queer teens because no one talked about it and we didn’t know what the fuck was going on or did but weren’t allowed or able to express it for Reasons… To see Wyatt accepted by a found family, and then gradually accept himself… that’s a powerful thing.
I mean, also watching him and Emyr go after the patriarchy is pretty great.
Watching them struggle though… I felt that in my chest. I wanted to fix it, just like I want to fix it for my nine year old who comes home from school and tells me that another student told them that being non-binary was nonsense (wonder where he heard that) or that there’s no gender neutral bathroom at school (teacher overheard and handled, emailed the social worker) and that no matter what I do, there will always be some asshole and things I can’t fix. It reminded me how important it is to work for our kids in this world so they don’t have to bear the whole burden on their own, so that they know we care, so they learn how to fight for the kids who come after.
They deserve what we didn’t have.
Us.
Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn (Berkeley, 9/6)
Every day, I see social media posts from children lamenting the end of their lives because the clock has rolled over to twenty-five and I laugh.
I turn 44 next month and this has been the best decade of my life so far for so many reasons. My tattoos have not wrinkled up to indecipherable blurs. My hair, while generously streaked with silver, still takes orange, pink, and blue just fine. I still have three pairs of Doc Martens, I still cosplay, and, most days, I still wear pants with anime characters on them.
Middle-aged women are interesting. We’ve seen things. We’ve done shit. We’ve been places.
Some of us (not me) have been killing people for forty years. Like the protagonists of Raybourn’s delightful Killers of a Certain Age.
They’re done. They’re out.
Of course they’re not. Even though that, in and of itself, would be a fascinating book because they all have plans but watching them go back into action when someone tries to kill them during their retirement cruise? Immaculate. I love it. Because they know their shit. They are experts. And the people who are after them make the same mistake men always make: not fearing a mature woman with skills because she is mature.
Whoops.
As Anya Forger would say: Heh.
Enjoy this one, ladies. And never doubt yourself. Because as Billie, Nat, Mary Anne, and Helen remind us, someone else will and that is our most powerful weapon.
The Anime Tarot Deck by Ann McCalla and Mercenary of Duna (Insight Editions)
When I agreed to take a look at a review copy of The Anime Tarot Deck, I was expecting cards that had specific characters from specific properties on them. Which would have been cool.
I like what I received even more.
While the deck definitely plays with tropes from different anime and manga, the art is original and it’s absolutely gorgeous. The minimalist figures and detailed background create ethereal works of art that suit the medium perfectly and the suits/arcana specifically. The watercolor washes add to the mystique while pops of brighter colors draw the eye, and attention, to more potent cards. It’s clear that the artist and creator worked together to style each card and match meaning to aesthetic.
Tarot decks are a huge undertaking and there are many places they can go awry. The Anime Deck is a perfect synthesis, and will be a beautiful and meaningful addition to any practitioner’s collection if they have an affinity for the medium whether they buy it for themselves or receive it as a gift.
My only complaint is that I keep pulling swords. Clearly someone is trying to tell me something.
Must be Bakugo.
Fitwaffle’s Baking it Easy: All My Best 3-Ingredient Recipes and Most-Loved Cakes and Desserts by Eloise Head (Weldon Owen, 7/26)
Are they really 3 ingredient recipes? About 50 of them, yes. What is the greatest number of ingredients in a single recipe? 20-ish, I think and that’s a cake with a glaze. Are they good? Pretty good, yeah. I tried five or six of them out on my family and they got pretty unanimous applause.
This is a great baking book if you like having fresh desserts around the house: you’ll probably have the majority of the ingredients in the pantry or on shelves if you bake often. It’s also fantastic if you like to bake with kids; the recipes are simple and quick so they’re in the oven or freezer before even the littles lose patience. Cookies and bars are always a hit both for stuffing your own faces with or for giving as gifts to teachers and neighbors or to bring to potlucks and such.
These are not, however, rich desserts. If you want a big, fat, buttery piece of cake with thick, sugary frosting, you won’t find it here. And truth be told, one probably doesn’t need that every day (listen, if you want it every day, I’m with you 100% and I’m not saying don’t do it. I would never deny you fat, buttery pieces of cake). Most of Fitwaffles recipes are, if not “slimmed down” (I do not like that term, btw) then reconfigured to remove some of the “bad” fats. They’re still plenty sweet and delicious but they’re not as heavy and I found some of them to be a little bit dry (I messed around with adding a little extra fat-free half and half or almond milk to those I needed a slightly different mouth feel on). This is not a negative - just information to make sure you’re getting what you want for your daily fix.
Lots of goodness. Happy kids. Delish.
Whoo. Marathon. Once this move is over… I know, I know. Promises, promises.