Review: Pet

Title: Pet

Author: Akwaeke Emezi

Genre: The author doesn’t like genre categorizations, and this book doesn’t really fit a particular genre. Utopian/Low Fantasy is my best guess, but Pet kinda defies categorization.

Trigger Warnings: Violence, child abuse, pedophilia (implied), incest (implied), blood, sexual assault (mention), body horror, medical content (mentions), adultism. Highlight to read spoilers.

Back Cover:

There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with this lesson all their life.

But when Jam meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colors and claws, who emerges from one of her mother’s paintings and a drop of Jam’s blood, she must reconsider what she’s been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster, and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption’s house.

Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also to uncover the truth, and the answer to the question–How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?

Review:

This is a weird little book with a lot of big things to say. The genre absolutely defies categorization. It’s set somewhere in the future, where some sort of rebellion got rid of all the “monsters” – police, billionaires, racists, bigots, anyone who wouldn’t support the social justice utopia that the town of Lucille (or possibly the entire country?) has become.

This story is driven somewhat by plot and mostly by themes. It’s short (5.5 hours in audiobook, about 200 pages per The StoryGraph), and doesn’t devote much of that space to characterization or worldbuilding. When it comes to characters, it focuses more on the dynamics and relationships between them than giving any of the individuals too much depth. I didn’t mind that very much, though. The characters here are more of a vehicle to experience the story than anything, and I liked seeing the different dynamics between Jam’s family (just her, her mom, and her dad) and Redemption’s family (three parents, a little brother, and aunts and uncles all over the place). Jam and Redemption have one of the healthiest friendships I’ve seen in fiction, and I love that Jam is plot-savvy about the kinds of things that tend to hurt friendships in stories.

The plot is short and straightforward. There are no twists, there are no surprises, and I called the identity of the monster Pet was hunting about halfway through. But it’s engaging enough, and the theme is what matters. This book asks “How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?” but it also asks, more subtly, “If we get rid of all the evil in society, how will we put systems in place to make sure it doesn’t appear again?” It’s a story about two friends and an inhuman creature that crawled out of a painting hunting a monster, yes, but it’s also a story about how a one-off rebellion isn’t the final solution, how people who did very good things can also do evil things, and how society needs to have systems in place to stop the evil acts no matter who did them.

The most interesting part of this book to me was how the utopian city of Lucille seemed like something that is theoretically possible in real life, but there are the little details that keep throwing the perfectly realistic world just a bit off-kilter. Sure, there is the terrifying creature of feathers and claws that emerges from a painting, but there is also Jam’s ability to feel what’s happening in her house – who is where, their mood, what they’re doing – with no cue except feeling through the floorboards. Those kinds of fantastical elements don’t fit into the otherwise-plausible world, and I’m not sure what they mean thematically. Maybe that a utopia like Lucille is only possible in fantasy and creating something similar in reality would require more maintenance and vigilance to keep the “monsters” from coming back?

You could probably make an argument that the themes in this book are heavy-handed. They kind of are, but I think it works. I enjoyed it as a story, and I appreciated the wise things it had to say. To me, Pet has the vibe of a book you read in an English class for its important commentary on social issues, but one of those rare English class books that you also happen to enjoy. It’s the kind of book that wins awards and gets lauded for being both a good story and an Important Book. Balancing entertainment appeal and being Important is a difficult act, but I think Pet mostly managed it. It’s definitely worth reading – if you’re not into creatures crawling out of paintings, at least for the philosophical questions it poses.

Review: Not Your Villain (DNF)

Title: Not Your Villain

Series: Sidekick Squad #2

Author: C.B. Lee

Genre: Superhero

Trigger Warnings: Heights, needles (mention), motorcycle crash (brief, no injuries), body horror (mild)

Note: Trigger warnings in DNF books only cover the part I read. There may be triggers further in the book that I did not encounter.

Spoiler Warning: This book is second in a series and this review does contain spoilers of book one, Not Your Sidekick.

Read To: 21%

Back Cover:

Bells Broussard thought he had it made when his superpowers manifested early. Being a shapeshifter is awesome. He can change his hair whenever he wants, and if putting on a binder for the day is too much, he’s got it covered. But that was before he became the country’s most-wanted villain.

After discovering a massive cover-up by the Heroes’ League of Heroes, Bells and his friends Jess, Emma, and Abby set off on a secret mission to find the Resistance. Meanwhile, power-hungry former hero Captain Orion is on the loose with a dangerous serum that renders meta-humans powerless, and a new militarized robotic threat emerges. Everyone is in danger. Between college applications and crushing on his best friend, will Bells have time to take down a corrupt government?

Sometimes, to do a hero’s job, you need to be a villain.

Review:

I really enjoyed the first Sidekick Squad book, Not Your Sidekick, and since that one ended with revealing a major conspiracy, I had hoped this one would continue that. I wanted to see what happened next.

But it backs way up, to even before Jess got her internship in book one, and does the same time frame from Bells’s perspective. Admittedly there isn’t a lot of overlap, since Bells is at superhero training camp and not in Andover, but it felt really jarring to end the previous book by discovering the superhero organization is the bad guys and then start this book before the characters know that and Bells super enthusiastic about being a hero and joining the organization.

Admittedly, I didn’t get very far into it, but Not Your Villain seemed to lean harder on the dystopian elements of the world, especially related to Bells’s family’s farm. It’s different from a standard dystopian, though, because the government never actually shows up or sends agents or anything, characters just say that the government is doing bad things and that’s it. It’s like there’s a dystopian setting hovering in the background but it never truly touches the story.

Bells is increasing as a character. His shapeshifting is awesome, and I’m kinda jealous because what trans person doesn’t wish they could shapeshift? I think it could have been really cool to have the next installment of the series told from his perspective, so it was really disappointing to find that the story wasn’t continued, it was rewound. I may come back to it – like I said, I didn’t read very far and it may have kept going after the events of book one – but not right now.

The Sidekick Squad series:

1. Not Your Sidekick
2. Not Your Villain
3. Not Your Backup
4. Not Your Hero

Review: Cemetery Boys (DNF)

Title: Cemetery Boys

Author: Aiden Thomas

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Trigger Warnings: Transphobia, misgendering, deadnaming, death, blood, ghosts, death of parent, injury to animals (mention)

Note: In DNF books, warnings listed only include the amount of book I read. There may be other triggers further on that I did not encounter.

Read To: 30%

Back Cover:

Yadriel has summoned a ghost, and now he can’t get rid of him.

When his traditional Latinx family has problems accepting his true gender, Yadriel becomes determined to prove himself a real brujo. With the help of his cousin and best friend Maritza, he performs the ritual himself, and then sets out to find the ghost of his murdered cousin and set it free.

However, the ghost he summons is actually Julian Diaz, the school’s resident bad boy, and Julian is not about to go quietly into death. He’s determined to find out what happened and tie off some loose ends before he leaves. Left with no choice, Yadriel agrees to help Julian, so that they can both get what they want. But the longer Yadriel spends with Julian, the less he wants to let him leave.

Review:

I like to think I am a forgiving reader. Sometimes I will look past a lackluster world for amazing characters, or mediocre characters for a stellar plot. But very rarely will I finish a book where none of the elements are strong enough to grip me. And unfortunately, that’s what happened with this book.

I really did like the idea. I am not usually into gendered magic systems, but I’ll put up with it for trans-affirming gendered magic. Yadriel’s family has magic in their blood – the women can heal and the men can summon spirits trapped on earth and release them to the afterlife. Yadriel is a trans boy and the gendered magic gave him boy magic but his hyper-traditional family won’t let him do the ritual to become initiated into magic as a boy. He decides to prove himself, summons a spirit to release, the spirit doesn’t want to be released until he finishes some unfinished business, and Yadriel falls for him. Death magic, getting a transphobic family to accept your gender, and falling in love with a dead guy are all a good start.

And the transphobia in this book is really well done (if you can say that about something like transphobia). Yadriel’s family isn’t malicious at all, they’re just stuck in tradition and don’t make an effort to understand. They still love him, but only their idea of him and they don’t want to learn that who he actually is is anything other than what they expect him to be. And Maritza was an interesting addition – someone who accepts and affirms Yadriel as he is, but thinks she completely understands transphobia because she’s vegan and their family doesn’t understand that either.

And then we get to all the things I did not like.

First, the characters. Yadriel wanted to be an official brujo so badly he did the ceremony himself – a good start. But when the spirit he summons has its own opinions, he wouldn’t or couldn’t do anything without looking to other people (mainly Maritza) for instructions, and when he didn’t get instructions he did his best to avoid acting. Maritza’s entire role seemed to be to deny Yadriel the instructions he wanted and then watch with amusement as he’s forced to figure his own stuff out. Julian swung wildly between “stubborn asshole jock” and “ADHD toddler with too much sugar” with no rhyme or reason, and whatever romance is being set up between Yadriel and him seems to be based on “he’s hot” because Yadriel seems to view him as inconvenient at best and active opposition at worst. (Although it could be an enemies to lovers romance, who knows.) Despite three very real ticking clocks, Yadriel avoided acting at all costs, and Maritza has no skin in the game and is just along to laugh at Yadriel.

The magic system actually isn’t bad, but there’s no worldbuilding around it. Yadriel’s family is a big extended Latinx family and his house is in the family graveyard, but there’s nothing beyond it besides “This graveyard is in Los Angeles, you know all about Los Angeles.” It feels like the family graveyard is an island disconnected from the real world it’s supposed to be in, and I have no idea how the magic fits into the world outside of the family graveyard, or if it actually is confined to the graveyard.

The plot does bring in a mystery of who killed Julian and how Yadriel’s cousin died, but it wasn’t enough to keep me interested. It was mainly Yadriel’s refusal to act that frustrated me so much. It isn’t terrible or even unreadable (if I had been in a more magnanimous mood while reading I may have finished it), and it definitely has some good things to say about transphobia, but perhaps I am just not as forgiving a reader as I think I am.

Review: Full Fathom Five

Title: Full Fathom Five

Series: The Craft Sequence #3

Author: Max Gladstone

Genre: Urban Fantasy Legal Thriller, sort of

Trigger Warnings: Unreality, death, blood, medical procedures, torture, body horror, mind control/outside forces controlling your body

Spoiler Warning: This book is third in a series, but since I haven’t read any of the other books, any spoilers of the rest of the Craft Sequence are purely accidental.

Back Cover:

On the island of Kavekana, Kai builds gods to order, then hands them to others to maintain. Her creations aren’t conscious and lack their own wills and voices, but they accept sacrifices, and protect their worshippers from other gods—perfect vehicles for Craftsmen and Craftswomen operating in the divinely controlled Old World. When Kai sees one of her creations dying and tries to save her, she’s grievously injured—then sidelined from the business entirely, her near-suicidal rescue attempt offered up as proof of her instability. But when Kai gets tired of hearing her boss, her coworkers, and her ex-boyfriend call her crazy, and starts digging into the reasons her creations die, she uncovers a conspiracy of silence and fear—which will crush her, if Kai can’t stop it first.

Review:

It’s a little weird of a decision to jump into the middle of a series without reading the previous books, but I had good reasons. First, the Craft Sequence is a bunch of stand-alone books (and a few games, weirdly) in the same world with a few repeating side characters but no overarching plot across books. Second, I read the descriptions of some of the other books but Full Fathom Five sounded the most interesting. I’m a sucker for unique takes on deities, and a person who makes gods to order was too good of an idea to pass up.

That said, the Craft Sequence doesn’t seem to be a great book to jump into wherever. The world in this book is rich and fascinating and well fleshed out … somewhere that isn’t on the page. Things are thrown in here and there that hint at there being much more history and culture and technology and whatnot than you actually get to see, and I ended the book mostly confused about whether this . Honestly, reading the link I put explaining the genre (relink here) and playing one of the Craft Sequence choose your own adventure mobile games helped me understand more about the world than this entire book did. I highly recommend both; the game is free with ads.

That is my only criticism of the book, though, and it probably is partially my fault for skipping the first few books. I adored the idea of building gods, and Kai as a priestess who creates made-to-order idols for people to keep their souls safe from the more dangerous actual gods. I loved seeing Kai work in her job and work to uncover what exactly is going on with all of these idols dying. There’s a lot of twisty turns and surprises, and Kai is stubborn and a rulebreaker and that makes her fun. She somehow manages to be shocked and surprised a lot yet still end up plotting three steps ahead of everyone else. I can’t really put into words all the coolness that is Kai in this story.

Izza is another point-of-view character who isn’t even mentioned in the back cover. She’s a street kid who steals in order to eat, and she wants to leave the island because she’s almost old enough that getting caught would get her put in a Penitent – horrific stone exoskeletons that subject you to physical and mental torture until you submit to the law. She’s also the street kids’ storyteller, the one who talks to the gods that come to them and leads the mourning ceremonies when those gods die. She’s not essential to Kai’s plot, but she has her own story and provides more perspectives on the central issue of gods and idols and maybe-deities dying, plus another interesting cast of characters and settings on this god-creating island.

There is a lot to this book, and in some ways I’m not surprised worldbuilding got mostly left out because everything else wouldn’t have fit otherwise. Even lacking much of the context of the world, it was a fantastic adventure with a fantastic premise and fantastic characters, and I love so many of the ideas that went into this book and this world. I may read some other Craft Sequence books just to see what happens. (And maybe play some more of the mobile games. The one I linked previously is a TON of fun and very replayable.)

The Craft Sequence:

There are two potential “orders” for this series – the order in which they were published, and the chronological order within the world. I’ve listed them below in publication order, and you can put them in chronological order from the numbers in the title (except Ruin of Angels, which is last. This article explains more.

1. Three Parts Dead
2. Two Serpents Rise
3. Full Fathom Five
4. Last First Snow
5. Four Roads Cross
6. Ruin of Angels

Review: Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel

Title: Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel

Author: Julian K. Jarboe

Genre: Science Fiction/Short Stories

Trigger Warnings: Transphobia, prejudice/bigotry, ableism, menstruation, body horror, self-harm

Back Cover:

In this debut collection of body-horror fairy tales and mid-apocalyptic Catholic cyberpunk, memory and myth, loss and age, these are the tools of storyteller Jarboe, a talent in the field of queer fabulism. Bodily autonomy and transformation, the importance of negative emotions, unhealthy relationships, and bad situations amidst the staggering and urgent question of how build and nurture meaning, love, and safety in a larger world/society that might not be “fixable.”

Review:

I had never heard of Julian K. Jarboe before picking up this book, likely because they are mainly a short fiction writer and the only time I read short stories is when they’re collected into books like this. But I think I’m going to have to keep an eye out for new work from them, because these stories are so wise and insightful.

The main theme across all of these stories is queerness, especially transness, and what it’s like to be trans in a world that’s not friendly to transness. Only-slightly-less-main themes are neurodivergance and poverty and the experience of being neurodiverse and poor in a world that’s not friendly to either. It’s very raw and very powerful and very real, capturing much of the nuance of those situations. All of these stories are 100% written by someone who knows what it’s like to be trans, neurodiverse, and poor.

All of these stories are great (although I did think the title story, “Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel,” was a little longer than it needed to be), but I want to touch on a few of my favorites.

• “Self Care.” Raw and full of anger – at capitalism, religion, transphobia, and being poor. Relatable and validating.
• “The Heavy Things.” The sad truth that sometimes even people who should (and said they did) love you unconditionally care more about what they can get from you than you yourself.
• “Estranged Children of Storybook Houses.” The changeling myth made real. For all the children whose parents feel like they are owed someone different than the child they have.
• “We Did Not Know We Were Giants.” I’m still not completely sure of the philosophical or emotional meaning behind this one but I love it. It may be my favorite in the book.

Saying that these stories are “deep” sounds weird and cheap, but they’re full of layers of emotion, philosophy, and wisdom. I highlighted so many quotes from so many of the stories. The stories don’t always make a lot of sense to my head – full of tangents and strange turns of phrase, feeling no need to include any “traditional” elements like plot or character arcs – but they felt real and they hit hard. These stories are fantastic.

Review: Avi Cantor Has Six Months to Live

Title: Avi Cantor Has Six Months to Live

Author: Sacha Lamb

Genre: Contemporary with Supernatural elements

Trigger Warnings: Misgendering (mention), deadnaming (mention), bullying, depression, suicidal ideation

Back Cover:

Avi Cantor Has Six Months To Live

Avi comes across these foreboding words scrawled on the bathroom mirror, but what do they mean? Is this a curse, a prediction, or a threat from Avi’s emboldened bullies? And how to they know his real name when he hasn’t even told his mother yet?

Then there is Ian—the cool new guy at school, who is suddenly paying attention to Avi. Ian is just like Avi, but he is also all sunshine, optimism, and magic. All the things that Avi doesn’t know how to deal with…yet.

Review:

I know I just posted about a Sacha Lamb story yesterday, but I think I’ve found a new favorite author. I’m not even into contemporary stories that much but everything Sacha Lamb writes is just so good!

This is a novella, so it’s pretty short, but it still manages to draw a wonderful set of dynamic and real characters. Avi is a closeted Jewish trans guy relentlessly bullied at school, depressed, and very much alone. It doesn’t even bother him that he supposedly has only six months to live because he’s not sure how much he wants to keep living anyway. Ian is also a trans guy, but personality-wise the exact opposite of Avi – he’s happy, optimistic, and pulls Avi into his orbit of light and joy and his happy and accepting and magical family. It’s a story about Avi’s relationship with Ian and its ups and downs and it’s affects on his life, and you know, if it takes literal magic to give Avi a happy ending then I’ll accept it.

Despite there being literal magic in this book, it definitely had a more contemporary feel. This is first and foremost a story about Avi healing, and secondly a story about a very sweet relationship. The magic is just icing on the cake. It’s not a story about a relationship fixing someone, but it’s about how much having a support system and people who love and care about and accept you can help.

This is just such a sweet story. Avi is deep in depression but Ian is just so full of hope that it rubs off everywhere. And did I mention the happy ending? It gets dark at times but I love this story so much.

And the whole novella is available online for free here!

Epistolary, the cutest short story you will ever read

I have just discovered “Epistolary” by Sacha Lamb, which is a rather uninteresting title hiding the cutest story I have ever encountered. Leo, a trans Jewish kid, makes extra money rescuing stuffed animals from thrift shops and reselling them online with stories about them being haunted. Another trans Jewish kid finds their lost stuffed frog listed for sale on Leo’s site and wants it back. And so begins the story that’s told mostly through email and text exchanges tied together with some narration from Leo.

It’s a little bit enemies to lovers (although more accurately rivals to mutual-crush-but-too-shy-to-actually-admit-we’re-dating), both of these kids are so sweet with their own distinct (and adorable) personalities, Leo has an amazing voice, and it’s awkward but in the cutest possible way (no cringe at all). I just can’t get over how sweet and cute and adorable this story is.

Here is the link, go read it now!