ladybusiness | Entries tagged with reviews

Cover of The Water Dragon's Bride Volume 1

A modern-day girl gets whisked away to a strange land where she is sacrificed to a water dragon god!

In the blink of an eye, a modern-day girl named Asahi is whisked away from her warm and happy home and stranded in a strange and mysterious world where she is sacrificed to a water dragon god! What plans are in store for her, and what will happen when she comes face to face with this god?

A young boy named Subaru comes to Asahi’s aid, but despite his help, Asahi must endure a test of survival! Will she be able to make it out alive, or will she end up being sacrificed?

Rei Toma's The Water Dragon's Bride crossed my twitter feeds a fair bit last year, and it turns out that it's for good reason! Our Heroine, Asahi, is a normal little girl living in the modern world, until she's dragged into a fantasy world where people worship a humanoid water dragons as a god, up to and including ritually sacrificing a maiden every year to be his "bride." You see where this is going.

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[Caution warning: human sacrifice, child abuse and neglect, attempted murder, imagery of suicide, torture, floods]

spindizzy

Esther is a stowaway. She's hidden herself away in the Librarian's book wagon in an attempt to escape the marriage her father has arranged for her--a marriage to the man who was previously engaged to her best friend. Her best friend who she was in love with. Her best friend who was just executed for possession of resistance propaganda.

The future American Southwest is full of bandits, fascists, and queer librarian spies on horseback trying to do the right thing.

I don't think that I can review Sarah Gailey's Upright Women Wanted without mentioning "Between the Coats," an essay that Sarah Gailey wrote about queer tragedies and realising that they didn't have to be inevitable. The question at the heart of that essay – Do you know that queer people are allowed to have happy stories? – is one that I felt like I could see beating at the heart of Upright Women Wanted.

Esther is on the run. She's smuggled herself out of the town where her father executed her girlfriend, hiding in the back of the librarian wagons in the hope that the librarians – perfectly appropriate women who travel around distributing government propaganda – could maybe help her be the person society expects her to be before being herself gets her killed. ... She wasn't expecting the queer gun-slinging librarian spies, okay!

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renay

This summer I read one of the most charming romance novels...and then promptly took a job on a congressional campaign and ceased writing anything about books unless I was also being paid. Whoops! But I wanted to go come back now that everything has calmed down and rec this book, because I loved it so much.

The Kiss Quotient was perfect for me because it had a) fake dating, b) sex being awkward and not necessarily something you're automatically good at like some sort of Sex Wizard, c) characters with complicated problems and lives independent of each other that inform the romance itself.

I've been thinking about The Kiss Quotient all year because it was exactly what I needed when I read it—something realistic but ultimately happy. Stella, who has Asperger's, is a wonderful main character and I loved her and rooted for her so hard. When she finally realizes that she's awesome it was GREAT. The whole premise is her interpreting the pressure from her family to settle down and have kids in the most rational way possible: she has no clue how to date, so she clearly needs an expert to learn from. Cue hiring an escort to teach her to bang. He teaches her to bang and then (OBVIOUSLY) they fall in love. There's family drama and miscommunication that feels authentic to the characters instead of forced (although it may depend on how much romance you read), with lots of chewy backstory for Michael.

I really like reading books containing my favorite tropes and will pick up any book with them (FAKE DATING) and give it a shot, but I really appreciated how much Stella's personality and perspective on the world changed the trope to make it feel polished up and brand new. I'm super excited to read more by Helen Hoang, and we get to in 2019 because The Bride Test is out and I'm HERE for it.

renay

Artificial Condition, the sequel to one of the breakout novellas of 2017, All Systems Red, returns us to the adventures of Murderbot, a human-like security android that broke the governor module used for control.

Murderbot has used the freedom to watch a lot of television during their downtime after keeping humans alive for another day.

After the events of All Systems Red, Murderbot is on a quest to find out more about their past. Murderbot got their name from a mission they assumed they failed—killing quite a few humans they were meant to protect. But the company that used to own them hushed things up and wiped Murderbot's memory of the most of the event—but not their knowledge of it. Murderbot is determined to find out the truth. Murderbot once again pairs up with some humans to gain the access they need—and gets tangled up in their very human drama while also trying not be to be discovered as not very-not-human security bot they truly are. But this time around Murderbot makes a friend! And what a friend—you may finish the story wanting more of Murderbot and their new pal on space adventures.

Last year, social media was full of people posting nothing but "MURDERBOT!" followed by five to ten heart emojis. Murderbot was truly a bot that we all saw a piece of ourselves in: anxiety; the desire to just hide away from humans and their feelings; the comfort in watching hours and hours of television. One of the best parts of this series is the way Murderbot's experience of humans hews so closely to how neurodivergent folks deal with stress and social interaction. It's hard not to empathize with Murderbot as they try to navigate all the weird human social needs and expectations. Who among us hasn't wanted a break from human interaction and found comfort in the lives and stories of fictional humans we never have to interact with?

If you loved All Systems Red, you'll want to read Artificial Condition as soon as possible. Please go read it and then come tell me how much you love Murderbot's new friends!

spindizzy

Mates, everyone has been telling me that Matt Fraction's Hawkeye is the best intro to Human Disaster Hawkeye and Awesome Hawkeye that I'm going to get, and they are exactly right. In this book, Clint Barton: acquires a pizza dog called Lucky, takes on a tracksuit mafia, becomes a landlord, ruins minimum two of his relationships, and is very upfront that Kate Bishop is his favourite Hawkeye. It's delightful.

(Bonus: now I know why everyone has been laughing so hard at the existence of Only Sane Man Hawkeye in the movies.)

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bookgazing

Book cover of Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

Ninefox Gambit is a novel built from numbers. Big numbers. Deep space equations.

If, like me, your last encounter with serious maths was in the 90s then Ninefox Gambit may seem a daunting prospect. Stick with it — all those chains of calculation lead to some exciting places. A fortress of impenetrable ice. A spaceship helmed by an undead General. A world in need of change, revenge and justice. Forget those Statistics textbooks you used to doodle in. This is science fictional maths where there's space travel and explosions for everyone!

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spindizzy

The cover of The Assignment; two shirtless men whose faces are not visible.

Detective Nicholas Valenti, tall, dark and stoic, has been best friends with his partner, Sean O'Brian for six years. The two men have seen each other through divorce, disaster and danger and saved each other's asses more times than Valenti can count. Exactly when he started seeing his blond, intense partner in another light Valenti isn't really sure. He only knows that he wants O'Brian in a way that has nothing to do with friendship and everything to do with possession. It is a desire that he will have to hide forever because O'Brian is undeniably straight.

Just as Valenti is coming to grips with his new, unacceptable feelings for his partner, their police Captain puts them on a new case that could blow Valenti's cover once and for all. He and O'Brian are going undercover at the country's largest and most infamous gay resort to bust a notorious drug lord and stop the shipments of poison cocaine that are flooding the gay bars all over the city.

Now Valenti will have to make a choice between friendship and desire. He and O'Brian will play the roles of gay men that will push the limits of their relationship to the breaking point. Will their time at the RamJack forge a new bond between them or destroy their partnership forever?

Guys. Guys.

What the fuck did I just read?!

( NSFW quotes and screaming behind the cut! )

bookgazing

White, yellow and red book cover of Kameron Hurley's The Geek Feminist Revolution featuring an illustration of a llama

It's the start of July. I am trying to review Kameron Hurley's essay collection, The Geek Feminist Revolution. In my wisdom, I have decided an analysis of her essay, "I'll Make The Pancakes: On Opting In And Out of the Writing Game", would make a great entry point for my review. I reread it to remind myself of the piece's fundamental points:

The more women writers I read, from Margaret Atwood and Octavia Butler to Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Toni Morrison, the less alone I felt, and the more I began to see myself as part of something more.

It wasn't about one woman toiling against the universe. It was about all of us moving together, crying out into some black, inhospitable place that we would not be quiet, we would not go silently, we would not stop speaking, we would not give in.

It's hard to see the keyboard when you're trying not to cry.

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bookgazing

Black Wolves is the first book in a new epic fantasy trilogy set in lands of The Hundred, the same world that features in Kate Elliott's Crossroads trilogy. When the book opens, Captain Kellas, the man who long ago illegally climbed to the top of the impenetrable Law Rock without a rope, is hunting for a traitor among King Anjihosh's elite Black Wolves. Successful in his hunt, Kellas is summoned to eat with the royal family and from there becomes embroiled in palace life after the young Prince Atani disappears. Following Atani, Kellas is reintroduced to a beautiful woman he met briefly long ago. Turns out, she has mysterious connections to the palace. This meeting will change the course of his life, and potentially the lives of everyone in The Hundred, as it reveals long hidden secrets about the royal family.

Then, after 87 pages, Black Wolves abruptly skips ahead 44 years. Take a moment to digest the measure of Kate Elliott's mettle. She spends 87 pages settling the reader into her story; establishing the reader's connection to Captain Kellas, and encouraging readers to care about a particular cast of characters. In those 87 pages, she also re-establishes the connection fans of the Crossroads series had with Anji and Mai. Then she pulls the rug out from under everyone's feet by jumping 44 years into the future. In the process, she changes not just the time period of her novel but the makeup of the book's world. In that 44 year gap, which takes place in the blink of an eye for the reader, The Hundred undergoes extreme changes. Two main characters die. And, when the story begins again, it is told from an entirely new point of view; following the life of a (now grown) character the reader briefly met as a young adult in those early 87 pages. Captain Kellas doesn't become the centre of the narrative focus again until page 257. Allow me to express my admiration for Elliott's moxy.

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spindizzy

Cover of Beyond Eyes; a little girl walks into a woods.

Beyond Eyes is about a little girl, Rae, who is blind, as she goes looking for her missing cat. I wasn't sure what to expect from it, as it was something I picked up in the Steam Sale for cheap, but I'm still not sure how to feel about it even after I've finished it.

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Entries tagged with reviews

What are you doing now, Water God? — The Water Dragon's Bride Volumes 1-5 by Rei Toma

"A librarian shouldn't ever have need of arguing" — Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang

Let's Get Literate! Artificial Condition by Martha Wells

Hawkeye Volume One: Okay, this looks bad.

Review: Ninefox Gambit by Yoon Ha Lee

The Assignment by Evangeline Anderson

The Geek Feminist Revolution by Kameron Hurley

Black Wolves by Kate Elliott

Exploration, Assumptions, and Cats: Beyond Eyes from Tiger & Squid

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