Books read in January

Well, January wasn’t quite the heroic initial push to conquer the TBR list that I’d hoped… but I think I have a reasonably good excuse for that, ha. I had a vestigial organ try to murder me to death! I’d hoped that the time in the hospital, and the subsequent recovery would, at the least, provide me with extra time to read. Unfortunately, it was sort of the opposite. My attention span and brainpower were basically utterly fried. The first couple days in the hospital I couldn’t even attempt to read, though Alex brought me my book. While I did finish it eventually, I then still struggled to read more than a few pages at a time, even once I was home. Oh well. This at least seems to be improving, though now I feel behind and am trying to chill out on myself a bit, ha.

Ultimately, I finished four books for January:


(A very... evocative cover, ha.)
Manhunt by Gretchen Felker-Martin
Horror (subgenres: queer, post-apocalyptic, contagion/mutation/zombie, splatterpunk) (f/f, m/f) - ebook novel
3.5/5

Years ago, a virus swept across the world. It caused anyone with a large enough amount of testosterone in them to mutate, turning them into animalistic, violent creatures, driven to attack, rape, kill, and devour everything they can catch.
In this post-apocalyptic world, various settlements have found some sort of balance. Trans women Fran and Beth are “manhunters,” traveling around to kill rampaging “new men” and harvest their organs; one of the few ways they have to get the hormones they need in order to avoid succumbing to the plague themselves. On one of their trips, they also encounter Robbie, a trans man who has been living on his own for years.
More dangerous than the packs of feral men are the TERFs who have started to take over most of the region. They do not look kindly on the trans women who remain, wanting to wipe them out even more than the remaining new men. But one of the only “safe” refuges from the TERFs is a bunker under the control of a wealthy heiress, where everyone is forced to bow to her whims. Having fled there for safety, Fran, Beth, their long-time friend Indi, and Robbie quickly learn that the bunker may be just as dangerous as anything they were trying to escape. As the TERFs escalate their ideological war, there may be no safety left to find.

My thoughts (too many of them), some spoilers, content warnings:

I don’t always do content warnings for books, but this one definitely comes with a content warning. Warnings for blood, gore, moderately-graphic on-page rape, body horror, torture, and cannibalism. Warnings also for a lot of often extremely virulent transphobia: much of this is external, but there’s also a lot that’s internalized, or sometimes directed at trans characters by other queer and trans characters. There’s a lot of dysphoria. Fatphobia, also both external and internalized. Coerced sex work (though there is also uncoerced sex work.) Pregnancy, including experimentation done on pregnant people, and impregnation with monstrous fetuses that leads to violent death.

(With my ratings, I’m now trying to specifically weigh the aspects I liked/found great or good against the aspects I did not like/found to be bad or less good.)

Starting with the aspects I did find pretty great:
This is extremely queer, and I appreciate the amount of queer rage it contains, honestly. (And very specifically trans rage.)
The tension is so excellent. There’s an early scene where Beth has to restring her bow while the men they’re trying to escape are drawing closer, and it had me completely on-edge the entire time. (There are other examples throughout, but man, that early scene set up the tension extremely well.)
The characters are all extremely conflicted and imperfect. Sometimes this is infuriating! But I appreciated all of them.
The TERFs are so much worse than anything else. Even held up against murderous, ravenous, rampaging monsters, the TERFs and their brand of entitled cruelty is the worst thing on page.
The book portrays different types of exploitation really well… it feels weird to call that a thing I “like,” but I definitely did. Exploitation and manipulation happen in a ton of subtle and overt ways, just as it always does.
This book has a lot to say about palatability. What type of queer is palatable or desirable vs. what kind of queer is “gross” or “expendable.” This feels like it’s far too often at the forefront of real-life issues, and the sanitization of queer communities, and respectability politics, and on and on.
As miserable as a lot of the world itself is, and how often communities and individuals fail each other, there is an ultimately hopeful feeling of a queer community winning out, but in a way that to me did not feel trite or unearned or easy.

The stuff that I felt a bit more mixed or neutral about:
This is not an aesthetic or pretty apocalypse. It is pretty unrelentingly grim and miserable… which doesn’t bother me on the whole, but just how unrelenting the misery was got to be a bit much eventually.
The book is extremely body-focused, in a way that verges on sometimes feeling grotesque. But that also sort of made me assess my own feelings on some things, because… is it grotesque? Or is it just focusing on things that are “traditionally” not something considered “desirable”? (There’s a lot of focus on fat, on armpits, on bodies looking/smelling/feeling strange, on flaws being narrowed in on, on the “unattractive” features that a given narrator is focusing on.) I feel like it’s a bit of both.
Of course, it also makes sense that there’d be a focus from several of the characters on their own physical presence. Trans bodies (Fran, Beth, and Robbie are all trans) and fat bodies (Indi is a fat cis woman), are marked. Even in this hypothetical apocalypse, there are certainly understandable reasons that the characters we have would be very aware of their own bodies and the bodies of others.
There were some painfully familiar bits of queer infighting. The most obvious is probably when a character is thinking back to when the virus first struck… how the “you are safe here” completely queer-friendly housing collective, the people who wanted to portray themselves as the most accepting and loving and open-minded people possible… were willing to turn on those less-palatable members of their “community,” particularly the trans women who don’t pass sufficiently. (While, of course, weaponizing social-justice terms to justify it to themselves.) This feels #tooreal, but also…a bit too real. Like it was almost vindictively About Someone. (Though perhaps not! I’ve seen mentions of drama regarding the author, but I don’t know anything about it, and don’t care to look.)

The stuff I was less fond of:
Alas, splatterpunk remains Not My Genre.
I really don’t consider myself squeamish (and it’s not like it made me nauseous, or I had to put the book down, or anything like that), but some of the gore and torture got to be a bit much for me. Blood and guts and gore don’t particularly bother me, but cruelty, and particularly sexualized cruelty does. (The same issue I had with Maeve Fly last year, though I liked this book more.)
I do not know anyone who wants to fuck as much as basically every single character in this book does. (And it really was basically all of them.) I don’t think this is me being prudish, or being weird about what kind of characters these are or what kind of sex they’re having. I’m good with all of that! I just fundamentally Cannot Relate. Too ace to be interested in fucking so much, especially under the circumstances, ha. It didn’t bother me so much as just make me kind of eyeroll with an “again?!” a few times. (And like… yes, I do also read romance and erotica and things by choice, where the expectation is a whole lot of sex. But I know that’s what’s on the menu when I read those genres; this had more of a “come on, time and place!” feeling.)
There was a line near the end that left a sour taste for me. A character watches the TERFs in a final retreat, trying to save themselves over trying to help their so-called “sisters,” having turned to the worst and most extreme violence they could muster in order to root out their enemies—a queer, mostly trans group. The character watches them and thinks, “They’re just men.” And like… I get it. They are the worst of what they said they hated: all the traits they were proud to try and get rid of, the things they claimed were only the immutable purview of evil, culturally-poisoned and inescapably monstrous men, plus the “new men” that are functionally zombies, who truly do only have the instinct to enact violence… It’s pointing out that for all that, the TERFs embody the worst of everything they claimed to naturally be above, everything they were supposed to be excising from the world in pursuit of their cis female utopia. But particularly so late in the book, it rubbed me the wrong way to still have this statement that horrid amoral attitudes belong to men, and if women are displaying those attitudes then they simply are men, actually.

This was the final of the Tor Nightfire Humble Bundle books! Knowing that this isn’t really my subgenre of choice, I don’t know that I ever would have picked it up otherwise… though perhaps I would have, looking for queer horror. I have picked up another book by this author, which is sitting on the infinite TBR.

(I do like the subtle creepiness of one blood-spattered pillar.)
Through Gates of Garnet and Gold by Seanan McGuire
Book 11 of Wayward Children
Fantasy (subgenre: portal) - physical novella
4/5

In Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, one of the rules is “no quests.” When former student Nancy returns through her Door, several of the current students break that rule yet again. When someone finds their Door, they’re supposed to get to go home, to the place that they truly belong. For Nancy, that was always the Halls of the Dead, where she could be a living decorative statue, dedicated to a peaceful and contemplative existence. Now that peace has been shattered: something has awoken and enraged the spirits of the dead in the underworld, causing them to attack the living, hunting and killing her fellow statues. Nancy risks her place behind her Door to come and seek help. Students Kade, Christopher, Sumi, and a newer girl, Talia, agree to help find out what is causing the attacks. As they investigate, they begin to discover uncomfortable truths about how much or how little the Lord and Lady of the Dead have been caring for their servants.

My thoughts, fairly brief, only vague spoilers:

It’s nice to be caught up on this series, finally! (Man, it’s been more than a decade since it started??) One of my goals from last year was to catch up on this series, and I’m glad that I succeeded.

This was a good entry. I was honestly delighted to get to see Nancy again, our very first protagonist from the series. This book also did a good job of, again, showing why her world was appealing to her. Being a living statue sounds horrible to me, but it succeeds in selling why it works so perfectly for Nancy.

There is a reveal midway through the book that I saw coming only as it was approaching the characters finding out, and it was great. Absolutely my ideal way to call something is calling it right before the confirmation.

I really liked Talia and her moths. I don’t know if we’ll have her with us for long. She might be here to fill the party out a bit (since we’ve had a few characters at this point find their Doors as the adventures continue, which whisks them off-page.) She also might be a future protagonist or one of the next to find her Door. (Which is her stated goal; she’s noticed that the people who keep going on the forbidden quests are the ones finding their ways home.)

It’s hard to call it a huge complaint, but sometimes I wish these weren’t novellas. Often it feels like I’m just really getting sunk into the world and the story, and then suddenly the story is over. “I want more” is a pretty mild complaint, but one that I definitely felt this time around.

The ending definitely gave me a bit of an “oh no! But oh yes!” feeling.

(I love the snake.)
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Book 1 of the Alex Stern series
Fantasy (subgenres: dark, contemporary, dark academia, occult) - physical novel
5/5

Alex Stern was certainly not the type to end up in an Ivy League school. She’s a high school dropout and small-time drug dealer, traumatized too many times over to count. After a terrible event, something about her catches attention: she sees “Grays,” or ghosts, a unique and desirable (to some) ability. This grants her the offer of a full-ride scholarship to Yale, with the caveat that she take on a role within the powerful secret societies at the university. She must work for the “Ninth House,” House Lethe, a group dedicated to monitoring and policing the rituals of the other societies, to ensure they don’t go too far.
When her mentor disappears under questionable circumstances, Alex is left even more adrift than she already was. Then a town girl is murdered, and Alex suspects it has something to do with the other societies that Lethe is supposed to keep in check.

My thoughts, vague spoilers, a couple content warnings:

Finally! Something I was looking forward to that I enjoyed just as much as I thought I would!

Content warning: sexual assault, in some cases including substance use to override consent. Blood, violence, gore. Classism. I feel like those are the big ones that stood out to me, but that’s probably not an exhaustive list.

I guess this book (though I initially mostly heard praise) is now “divisive” but. Whatever. I loved it.

I really enjoyed the magic system in this. It’s built off of a bonkers array of different relics and rituals, with everything from extremely minor effects to world-altering ones. In some cases, this sort of system would bother me; I don’t usually like a system that feels too convenient, where every hurdle winds up with an “easy” magical solution. Despite the answer to “is there a spell/relic/magical answer to this problem?” almost always being yes, it didn’t ever feel like a convenience. The costs are often high, or the limitations are strong enough that it introduces new problems, and the wide array of those magical fixes also, I thought, enriched the world a bit. It really highlights the premise that these secret societies have a TON of history—much of it stolen and plundered, some of it gained through their own knowledge or effort—to draw on.

I know I’ve heard a lot of people say they didn’t like the “dark academia” aspects, that they hated the way the societies are portrayed… I did like it. I liked that it leans on the occult aspects as being key to their existence, and uses this to really heavily emphasize the corruption and privilege and nepotism that are inherent in this kind of society in reality. It also emphasizes the very real attitudes that so many wealthy and privileged people hold. Of course much of their magic is stolen in the form of looted artifacts and appropriated ritual; that’s an extension of the mentality that the upper class holds, where anything they want can and should be theirs! Of course “but it’s a funding year” is used as an excuse not to hold someone accountable; that happens all the time! So, so much of what these societies do is… petty. They kidnap a hospital patient to vivisect him and read his entrails… so they can predict the stock market. They utilize a magical drug that compels unwavering submission as a date rape drug. And yep, I fully believe that’s exactly how a wealthy, privileged frat boy would behave if he had access to these things.

I’ve also heard that this portrays the setting really well. It certainly conveyed to me a very strong sense of place, though I have no personal experience with New England. But I’m told by someone who does have firsthand knowledge that it was a very good portrayal. I loved that!

The book weaves back and forth between two timelines: one when Alex first arrives at Yale, and is learning what her role will be from her mentor Darlington; the other when Alex is on her own after Darlington’s disappearance. I thought that the two timelines, while not being very far apart chronologically from each other, contrasted really well. Both involve Alex feeling somewhat lost, but in different ways, and her mentality is different enough in each of them that I never had a hard time tracing which of the two timelines we were in. I thought it also did an excellent job of doling out information: we slowly find out more about the incident that led to Alex being noticed, we slowly find out more about Darlington’s disappearance. Alex gets to serve as a bit of an unreliable narrator, but it never came across to me as her obscuring that information in an unnatural or contrived way.

There are three fairly rapid-fire… I won’t say twists so much as reveals toward the end. One I’d expected. One I didn’t see coming at all, but it did a lovely job of reminding me of the various subtle hints that had been dropped earlier, so it did not feel like an ass-pull. The third I had been hoping for, but was afraid it was a vain hope, and it leads us toward what I expect the second book will deal with, and I’m excited to read it as well.

A lot of what I liked really comes down to feeling like aspects were pulled off well. Several of these things (the availability of magic, the dual timelines, the rate at which we find out information the protagonist does have but does not share freely, the way a twist is handled, etc.) could have felt weak or like a contrivance to me, but in my opinion they were done skillfully enough that I enjoyed them instead.

(Delightfully creepy, and of something specific from the book.)
What Feasts at Night by T. Kingfisher
Book 2 of the Sworn Soldier series
Horror (subgenres: monster/supernatural) - physical novella
4/5

Alex Easton and kan* retainer, Angus, are taking a vacation, heading to the hunting cottage that’s been in the Easton family for generations. Alex isn’t thrilled with the plan—ka would honestly prefer to stay in Paris—but the cottage provides an opportunity for Angus to invite Miss Potter, the mycologist they met when visiting the Ushers, to visit as well.
When they arrive, they discover that the man who kept up the lodge has passed away after a severe illness. Rumors and superstitions fill the nearby town: that these illnesses are caused by a moroi, a supernaturally monstrous woman who comes in dreams and steals people’s breath.
Alex and Angus hire an older, widowed woman and her grandson to help around the lodge, the only people from town enough in need of the money to ignore the superstitions. Then the grandson gets sick with the same symptoms that apparently killed the previous caretaker. Alex doesn’t put any stock in the stories of the moroi… but when nothing seems to help the young man’s illness, and ka starts having strange dreams of kan own, it starts to seem like there’s something strange happening after all.

*Alex’s native language has multiple sets of pronouns, including “ka/kan,” a set of pronouns used only for soldiers, which supersede any other pronouns that a person may have used before.

My thoughts:

While I didn’t love this book quite as much as I did What Moves the Dead, I did still really enjoy it!

Best aspects:
I still really enjoy the recurring characters. Alex is enjoyable and different enough from the “usual” protagonists that I’m used to reading that I find it really enjoyable to spend time with ka. (Even as kan skepticism frustrated me a little bit, although ka still does a decent job of pointing out that in hindsight it might frustrate ka a bit, too.)
I was happy that Miss Potter came back! I like her and her mix of proper English lady and resentment over not being taken seriously in her field. I’m happy she got to find some interesting mushrooms.
I really liked Alex’s descriptions of the past as a place that is still in some sense real and happening… it’s a thing that really made sense and connected for me. This connects to the way Alex experiences PTSD, which also feels relatable to me. It’s not something that I feel is dwelled on, but it is an aspect of the character that comes up.
The descriptions of Alex’s dream, and how unutterably hellish it seemed also really worked for (and horrified) me. It’s possible that this was in part because I was reading this part while I was in the hospital post-emergency surgery, and had a really awful night that seemed never-ending before I read that part, ha.
The moroi was very creepy. I also liked all the weird little superstitious tricks that the Widow was trying to utilize.

The stuff that felt like a slight drawback:
One of my favorite parts of the previous book was how there were little details that served multiple purposes. Something would serve as a subtle current detail (Alex is feeding an apple to kan horse), while also laying groundwork for something else in a way that didn’t feel obvious (this establishes the presence of the apple orchards that later become relevant.) In this case, there was a similar detail, but it felt more heavy-handed, and indeed I was correct that it was specific foreshadowing. This wasn’t terrible, because ’foreshadowing is a literary device…’ but it didn’t have quite the subtlety that I’d admired the first time around.
I didn’t find the plot quite as gripping as the previous one, but honestly that’s a pretty minor complaint. It was interesting and engaging enough that I always wanted to read more and find out what was happening, but I just didn’t feel quite as attached to this book’s new characters as I did the ones in the previous book. Bors (the grandson) is sweet and I wanted things to go well for him, but I never felt hugely connected to the Widow or the priest.

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This is a bit belated into February, so I’ve already finished two more books for this month:
- We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction 2023, a short story anthology edited by Darcie Little Badger
- The Sun Dog by Stephen King, Alex’s and my most recent read

I am currently reading four books:
- Our Bloody Pearl by D.N. Bryn, my ebook side-read
- Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo, my main read
- Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, co-reading with Taylor
- The Illuminated Dead by Caitlin Starling, co-reading with Alex

After this, my plan remains the same for my main TBR:
- What Stalks the Deep (Christmas gift; sequel to What Feasts at Night)
- Point of Dreams (Pride storybundle ebook)
- The Hobbit (Tolkien!)
- The Map and the Territory (Pride storybundle ebook)
- The Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien!)
- These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart (Pride storybundle ebook)
- The Two Towers (Tolkien!)
- Be the Sea (Pride storybundle ebook)
- Return of the King (Tolkien!)

I am a bit sad that this seems likely to take longer than I’d hoped… My most ambitious plan was to have the above completed by the end of March, but I think that’ll be a struggle. More realistically, this seems likely to be the plan into April or even May. I’ll try to find some more reading time and brainpower out to get through more than I have been.

(My favorite place to read is when I’m taking a bath… and I can’t take a bath for another month+ until my incisions are fully healed, sobcry.)

I’ve also had, ahem, a “compelling argument” made to me that perhaps I should just give in to the shoulder devil telling me to bump Heated Rivalry up the list. I haven’t seen the show or read the book, but it’s certainly the in thing right now! I’m never into fandoms when they’re happening! And I do own the first three books as ebooks…

I’ve had Heated Rivalry on my “official” TBR list, where it’s sitting at #212… but I could choose to put it on the “ebook side-read” list instead, in which case I just have to finish that current book instead of… two hundred or so, haha. And I always reserve the right to “promote” the ebook side-read to primary read status if I’m super into it… So that one may be jumping the line, haha.

(I did also give myself the handful of “free spots” on my TBR as “rewards” for when I finish a reading goal, but I won’t hit one of those until I finish LotR, which would still be a few months out.)

The most full and complete TBR list that I have (including all main reads, ebooks, short story anthologies, ebook humble bundles, etc.) is up to 601 books, which is frankly ridiculous.