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Books read in March:
Mar. 31st, 2025 09:21 pmA third month in a row of reading six books! *confetti*
This month I read:
Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
Horror (subgenres: haunted house, political, queer) - ebook novel
4*/5
Three best friends go together to spend the night in a haunted house. One of them never leaves. The two that do are both scarred—physically, mentally, and emotionally—by the trauma they remember the other inflicting on them.
Years later, Alice, a trans woman, is still unable to escape the haunting that has followed her ever since. She tries to continue with her life, with drink, drugs, and questionable friendships. Ila, once Alice's best friend, has instead thrown herself into the UK's TERF movement as an attempt to cope with her own remembered trauma.
The house itself is still there. It is waiting, and it is endlessly hungry. And it wants both of them to come back. To come "home."
*It was hard to rate this one, because generally my ratings are a measure of subjective enjoyment, not necessarily an attempt at measuring objective quality. I thought this was a very good book, and I do not regret reading it at all, but I have a hard time saying it was truly an enjoyable read, per se. ("Enjoyment" might be more of a 3, but it feels unfair to rate the book a 3 because I thought it was better than that implies.) At the same time, I was never reluctant to continue reading it. To the contrary, I was finding little five-minute gaps in my day to get through another page or two.
The author states up front that this is a book about trauma and about fascism. It is very much about those, and it is not subtle about them. It features a lot of bigotry (as one might expect, given the two primary themes), including sexism, racism, antisemitism, and especially transphobia. A lot of it is cultural and external, some of it is internalized. There is also a lot of assault, physical and sexual, including a fairly graphic rape scene. It's also often very deliberately grotesque. It's an intense read, and I thought it was very good. But like I can't quite say it was "enjoyable," I'd have a hard time saying I recommend it, because it deals with some really dark stuff.
The story does interesting things with perspective. The chapters rotate their focus. Alice's perspective starts in super close first person, sometimes bordering on stream of consciousness for her. Ila's is in omniscient third, focused on her and what she's doing, but more distant and going off on tangents about other characters and situations and past or future events that she is not aware of. These perspectives blur as the book goes on, in a way that I thought was really interesting to read. The house also has perspective chapters, which were both horrifying and engaging.
I know more about a few of the internet communities that get mentioned in the book than I sometimes wish I did, and I can tell the author does too.
The house is a personification of Britain's inherent fascistic roots, how it is an evil that can never be sated, that will sometimes promise safety that is always a lie, that will warp and destroy everything it touches to turn them into some twisted form of its ideal, how it corrupts everyone who comes in contact with it as it encourages them to give in to their worst impulses and cruelest thoughts... That sure is fascism! It's a very real horror!
This is the first book (or any piece of media) for a long while that's infiltrated my dreams. The first or second night I read some of it, I had a very horror-tinged dream that Alice showed up in.
As far as successfully doing what it set out to do, I think the book absolutely achieved it. It was maybe a little too intense for me at times, but I'm glad I read it.
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
Fantasy - physical novel
5/5
The unicorn has lived alone in her wood forever, an immortal creature with no real concern for the passage of time. Then she overhears a hunter claim that she is the last unicorn; all others have vanished from the world. She sets off on a quest of her own to find out whether this is true, and to try and find the others if she can. Eventually she is pointed toward King Haggard's kingdom, a barren wasteland, where it is said The Red Bull took the other unicorns. She is aided on her quest by Schmendrick the Magician, whose powers are sometimes questionable, and Molly Grue, a disillusioned woman glad to finally find something that feels worthwhile.
I think this is technically a reread, but only very technically... I think I read it as a child, but mostly I remember attempting to read it and not finishing it, and can't remember with 100% certainty whether I eventually succeeded or not. The film was a favorite of mine as a young, unicorn-obsessed child, and the book is an important one to Taylor, so I've wanted to read it for some time again anyway.
I do spoil some plot points, but like... the book is from the 60s and the animated film adaptation is from the 80s, so... kind of hard to feel like I'm spoiling much!
It is hard to imagine more of a tonal whiplash from Tell Me I'm Worthless to this.
I will say, the animated film is an excellent adaptation. A lot of the scenes and dialogue are taken completely word for word from the book. (My younger sibling said something to the effect of "the only downside of reading the book is that I am not *hearing* Christopher Lee deliver Haggard's lines," and they are right! Lee is so fucking good as Haggard.) There are a few things the book includes that the film does not, like the town of Hagsgate, and the curse on both the town and on Haggard himself. The book also has more detail about Schmendrick and his arc.
Hagsgate gives us some pretty depressingly relevant banger lines such as the cursed townsfolk opting not to have Schmendrick try to remove the curse on them for "If it were lifted we might not become poor again, but we would no longer grow steadily richer, and that would be just as bad" after *just* telling him that they should be pitied for how sad their wealth made them, as they'd never allowed themselves to enjoy it for fear of when they would lose it. Well if that ain't a real world fucking attitude problem...
And the whole situation with Schmendrick, and the fact that he's been made immortal until he becomes a true wizard, makes him a little more morally grey and a little more of a... not quite foil, but provides a connection with the unicorn, straddling immortality and mortality that way. It also means that in the movie we miss out on the story of how his mentor once turned a unicorn into a human man, and having the unicorn be utterly horrified by that. ("Foreshadowing is a literary device...")
Part of what makes Taylor love this book as much as they do is that it's got some serious trans vibes. These are vibes/choices to interpret it that way rather than truly overt, but some of it... yeah, I see it very much! One of the main themes is about who you are vs. how you are perceived, with particular emphasis on when the entire world perceives you as something other than you are, and that it can be a rare thing to find someone who can accurately see you. There's also the very literal theme of being forced into a form that isn't truly who or what you are, and how that can be a horror. Taylor has been doing an intermittent reread liveblog, noting scenes or lines that feel trans to them, and I don't know that I saw *all* of the scenes the same way, but... the interpretation also doesn't feel at all like a reach to me. (And I'll also say that for what it's worth, Peter S. Beagle has always been a trans ally from all I have heard, as well as my occasional exposure to his social media presence, which is nicer than I can say for some once-beloved childhood authors.)
I enjoyed the prose a lot more than I remembered. It's got a bunch of fun imagery and humor. There are some individual lines that I wish I'd bookmarked as I went, because some were really good.
Another thing that felt a lot more present in the book, and may have simply been something I understood less well as a kid, was how much of a tragedy the unicorn's time as Lady Amalthea is presented as. I knew that it was sad for her to be trapped in human form, and I knew that part of the fear was that she was becoming mortal in more than just her appearance, and I of course wanted her to change back... but the book hit home a lot more fully just how tragic it is for her to lose herself so completely (and especially for her entire self and history and perspective and quest to all be lost solely in service to a love story, even or especially as that love story is someone else's idea of "happily ever after.") It also pushes that theme of losing yourself a little more, because they acknowledge that she could be happy with this ending as well... but only because she would forget everything that made her a unicorn, and therefore be unaware of the loss. (Which I can also see as suiting that trans read of the whole thing, or a general "closeted queer" sort of narrative.)
I complained recently about stories that are self-aware in a way that makes it feel like they're trying to trash their genre or insult the genre as protection against the audience doing so. This is an example of self-awareness that I feel does it well. Schmendrick points out that they're in a fairy tale, and they have to follow fairy tale rules, because that's how these things happen... crucially, except the unicorn, because while he believes the rest of them to be characters and archetypes that must follow their roles, he believes her to be real... Until she's transformed, and then she must fulfill the fairy tale role of the princess. Then later Schmendrick uses the same awareness to (secretly/subtly) force Lir to remember that he is a hero, and he must behave as a hero, even if he sacrifices his own happiness for it.
I also forgot a bit how bittersweet the ending is. It's a bit more so in the book than the film, as in the book it's made obvious that Lir could become just like Haggard if he is not careful, though there is plenty of hope that he will not.
Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire
Wayward Children book 5
Fantasy (background f/f) - physical novella
5/5
In Christopher's bedroom at Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, a door appears. Through it comes former student Jack—trapped in her twin sister Jill's body—and Alexis, Jack's twice-resurrected girlfriend/fiancee. Jack had previously returned through her door to her home in The Moors, the horror-tinged world she and her sister had been welcomed to as children. She brought Jill's body to The Moors with her, after [redacted spoiler for book one]. The plan had always been to resurrect Jill, except having already died, Jill would no longer be capable of becoming a vampire, which had been her fondest desire. Infuriated by this, Jill and her vampire master forced Jack to swap the twins' bodies, so that Jill could inhabit Jack's body (which had never died) to become her master's true vampire daughter... even if it throws off the balance of power in The Moors.
Jack, trapped in Jill's body, enlists the help of her friends from the school—Kade, Christopher, and Sumi, plus new student Cora—to come with to help save herself and the world she calls home.
I really enjoy The Moors as a setting: just all the classic horror settings squished together. Forbidding castle with a vampire terrorizing the local village? Check! Mad scientists holed up in windmills, harnessing the power of lightning in ways that defy conventional laws of nature? Check! Towns full of slightly-inhuman cultists worshiping monstrously unknowable gods below the sea? Check! The setting and the chance to play all of those sorts of horror tropes straight is just a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed that we got to come back to this world.
Jack and Jill's story, in Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Every Heart a Doorway is one I find compelling and sad, and seeing that arc to its (in many ways tragic) conclusion is satisfying. The sorrow of having tried your best for someone else, in some cases to your own detriment, and having those efforts ignored or dismissed or belittled is one I think a lot of people are familiar with, even if not on quite the scale of these events.
I liked getting to see the students from the school interact more fully with a world that isn't "our" world, but also isn't "theirs." It felt more... dynamic, maybe, this time than it did in Beneath the Sugar Sky. Christopher with Bones and Cora being called by The Drowned Gods were really fun and enjoyable ways of seeing these characters getting to do things in a setting that isn't *quite* right for them.
It hasn't been a hidden theme up until this point, and Kade has outright stated that his world expected him to live and die for them right up until he was no longer what they wanted (when it turned out he was a prince, not a princess) and they cast him aside... but this time it was Sumi who brought up that the worlds select children to become their heroes, then treat them as utterly expendable. It's surprising to get it from the candyland nonsense girl, though it probably shouldn't be, considering the real danger in her world and the fact that she herself did die! Some of the worlds perhaps don't fit that pattern, like Nancy's world (despite being an underworld) and maybe Christopher's (despite being all skeletons all the time). But many of the worlds do seem to do exactly that, even if those children desperately long to return to them. I guess it's sort of an expression of that tension between children enjoying reading about characters their own age put in life and death situations, saving the world or vanquishing evil, and the adults who read those stories and are horrified at children being in those situations at all, and see it as a failure of all the adults who allowed it to happen.
Boys in the Valley by Philip Fracassi
Horror (subgenres: religious, possession) - ebook novel
3.5/5
Peter has been at the St. Vincent's orphanage for most of his young life, after his parents died in a murder-suicide. He's coming up on a decision about where he wants his life to go: to leave the orphanage and try to have a life with a girl who lives on a neighboring homestead, or stay and finish his training to become a priest.
Right as winter hits, the sheriff comes to the orphanage with a dying prisoner—the sheriff's own brother, caught committing unspeakable acts of brutality and child sacrifice. But something seems wrong with the man, something inhuman and evil... and after his death, it seems like something is suddenly wrong with some of the boys...
While I've certainly watched a lot of horror movies about demonic possession, I haven't ever read a novel about it. I did enjoy it! There are ways in which getting the interiority of the characters really makes it a more immediate horror than something like a film does. At the same time, the writing itself felt fairly cinematic, in that it was easy to picture most of the events, and I had a mental movie to watch as I read.
One thing I mildly struggled with was trying to keep track of the characters. It wasn't too difficult, but there are something like 30+ kids, plus a handful of adults. Not all of the orphans are named or get any specific attention, but there are enough that do that I wasn't always able to remember which was which. Most of them were pretty well distinguished with something that made them unique, and it didn't ever cause true confusion within the story, but I feel like there were probably some specifics I'd forgotten about the individuals, or certain kids I got mixed up with each other. Occasionally a mild annoyance, especially when trying to remember which kids were on which "side" of the conflict. But overall I'd say the book handled a huge cast well (even if some of them are just there to be cannon fodder.)
The description, the tension, the dread and fear are all really excellently portrayed. It's a lot of horror and a lot of people die in horrific ways! (There is no "infant immortality" here.) It was definitely a page-turner for me. The chapters are short, and it's super easy to just keep reading, because the tension was always so high.
However, I feel like there were ways in which I wish the book had done more. This is, as always, possibly a mark of the difference between expectation and product: just because I expected or wanted the book to go somewhere it didn't doesn't mean the book was a failure, but it did mildly disappoint me in a couple of ways.
1 - There were a couple times where things were told more than shown, in a way I found frustrating. Overall the book does not shy away from showing: there are gruesomely detailed deaths and descriptions of the demon-possessed, conflicted inner narratives, terrible abuses that are described in detail... It made it feel that much more obvious when something did fall on the "tell" side. The perspective changes a lot throughout the book, following different characters, but the only one to get first-person narration is Peter, and he's the one with the biggest character conflict outside of the direct plot, so he's more the protagonist than any of the other characters. He says multiple times that he feels like there's some sort of darkness within him, some terrible aspect of himself he can't confront, things to that effect... but we never really see or feel that. While he struggles with whether he wants to become a priest or marry his sort-of-sweetheart Grace, he isn't struggling with any evil or harmful desires/impulses that we see... he just says he is sometimes, without any specifics. (Maybe this was supposed to be him talking about confronting the trauma of witnessing his parents' deaths, but that seemed like something he thought about and remembered freely, not something he struggled to confront, or bore any guilt over?) And the book does examine conflicted characters: Brother Johnson, the indentured convict, is mostly horrible, but we get the glimpses of his thoughts about sometimes wishing he could protect the boys, being concerned for them when they suffer, even when he enacts petty cruelties (or is directed to do so) against them as well. So it felt weird that our "main" character claims to have some big soul-deep conflict that we just... don't see. Particularly with demons preying on many of the other children, it seemed like it was setting up some conflict over the fate of his soul, or providing something for the demons to seize on... but no.
2 - It's set up a few times that the priests themselves are not necessarily paragons of good and holy behavior, that while the demonic forces are horrific and truly evil, some of the priests themselves can also be unnecessarily cruel, taking sadistic delight in chances to inflict "righteous" punishments, in a few cases having even led to children dying. David (one of the other older teens) talks about how Father Poole would beat him, still thinks about the scarring he has from it, and tells Peter that the orphanage is his idea of hell... But I feel like the book never really does much with that. It's acknowledged, but shallowly. The "good" priest and the "bad" priest get basically the same narrative treatment, with neither being more or less able to confront/resist/withstand the demonic forces. There's never really any grappling with what it means that cruelty within the framework of the church exists and does real harm, yet is not in any way condemned (literally or narratively.) It doesn't complicate anything about the good vs. evil struggle: God is always good, and the demons are unequivocally evil... and even when "good" "holy" men abuse those in their care, that is not a conflict with the idea that they are on the side of Good. There was a parallel between Brother Johnson being unable to resist demonic commands he was given once he gave them his soul, and David at one point feeling unable to resist doing what Poole told him to, even when he wanted to. I wanted that to go somewhere! It didn't!
(And of course it's obvious that in the real world there are many people in religious positions who do terrible things. And in real life, and fiction in general, and this book specifically, people are not all good or all bad, because people are complex; you can't necessarily split people into one category or the other. But in a work of fiction that makes the existence of good and evil a very literal, obvious, known thing as opposed to a matter of faith... I wanted it to matter. Which is also also one of my biggest problems with Christianity in general: that being saved and believing in Jesus is what makes you Good, regardless of your previous or ongoing actions. The book is just following that framework, and I shouldn't be surprised, but I still have beef with that. I guess it's better that the book acknowledged it at all, rather than having all the priests be undeniably good people and ignoring the question entirely.)
Ultimately, I think this might feel very different to someone who is religious. (Or is a believer in some sense.) That part is very much a me thing, in that I don't find the power of God vanquishing evil particularly compelling or affirming, nor do I find the idea of converting or devoting oneself to that religion an inspiring character arc. I can enjoy it as fiction, but I imagine someone who believes in it in a very real way would feel more strongly about it, ha.
Breaking the Rules by Jen Katemi
M/M/F romance/erotica - ebook novella
2.5/5
Stacie is doing everything she can to get a fresh start. Shunned by her previous community after her now ex-husband's affair, she is starting over in a new town, setting up her new business, and enjoying the fact that no one knows who she is. Then her car breaks down on her way home, where she is luckily rescued by two very handsome men. It seems nearly meant to be: James and Teale are both handy mechanics and happen to be her neighbors, and she's extremely attracted to both of them. The three share a wonderfully hot night together, but that's all it can be: Stacey moved specifically to allow herself a "normal" life, away from gossip and judgement. There's no way she can allow herself to be openly part of a non-conventional relationship... no matter how much she wants it.
It's possible I'm being too harsh on this one, as it pretty clearly telegraphed what type of story it is, and it's not the story's fault that I wish it was something a little different. The story is subtitled a "forbidden menage romance," so I shouldn't be surprised, but it still leaned way too hard on "gasp, this is so wrong and weird and dirty and scandalous!" for me. I'm into poly romance. Poly relationships are real things that exist, (and while not now, I've been in multiple poly relationships in the past!) and it feels mildly icky when it's treated as that particular kind of weird. (Which is also a matter of really subtle differences sometimes. Angsting over the dynamics or feasibility of a poly relationship, or wondering if the connection exists outside of sex, or worrying about the reactions of family/friends/community can be just fine, and a part of what I like! This was just leaning too hard into the "ooh, it's so bizarre and badwrong" angle for me.
It was also a little weird about James and Teale being bi... though not in the scandalous badwrong way, at least. The two have a long-term involvement with each other, but almost exclusively use this to have threesomes with women... which isn't like, wrong, or anything, but it came across a bit like the threesomes were what defined their bisexuality, as well as pushing a little too hard that while the two of them will sometimes sleep together, and all their flings with women are portrayed as casual, they couldn't ever be in a relationship with just each other because they aren't gay. (And yeah, this is probably supposed to be romantic "centering the female character, who is intended as the one the reader is most sympathetic to" thing, but it came across as an unfortunately common stereotype that rubbed me the wrong way.)
It was also a little too porn-logic for me at the very start. (I expected smut! I was here for the smut! Just... Man, no warm-up, haha.) Maybe it's my kinda ace-ness, but I have never thought about my own anatomy during non-sex activities as much as these characters do. I know it's a genre standard, but damn. Also, while I know this is a novella that's trying to keep the pace snappy, having the main character worrying about whether she's about to get serial-murdered when the guys pull over on the road after her car breaks down, then immediately thinking in detail about how turned on she is by them before she even speaks to them was a jarring dissonance I just couldn't quite get past. (Maybe it was meant to be funny, but it just came across as weird to me.) Stacey also kept thinking things like how she should find it impossible to find two men attractive at the same time, which seems weird, too. This isn't even a "how can I have romantic feelings for two people at once", it's just "how can I find two different people physically attractive?" which doesn't seem like the sort of leap that most people have that hard a time with.
The sex itself was fine, though if I remember there were a couple euphemisms or descriptions that made me make a face, haha.
The arc is basically exactly what it says on the tin: hot threesome -> regretful rejection due to a desire to be seen as "normal" -> everyone is angsty and sad and angry about it -> reconsideration of priorities -> gesture of reconciliation -> HEA. It's fine if not groundbreaking, and I was happy for the characters to get that HEA and all. The plot all comes after the whole "hot threesome" thing, so it sort of felt like an afterthought? The meet-cute and immediate sexing it up take up almost 70% of the novella, with all of the time apart and sad about it and then reconciling happening in less than 20%. (A full 10% of the novella is a preview of the next book in the series.)
The 2.5 feels a little low, because it wasn't BAD for a pretty what-it-says-on-the-tin story, and it wasn't unreadable or anything. I'll read a dozen of this kind of story rather than some AI generated slop, and I can see this appealing to someone who isn't me. The vibes just didn't work for me. The search for poly romance that does suit my preferences continues.
Installment Immortality by Seanan McGuire
Incryptid book 14
Urban fantasy - physical novel
4/5
As a ghost, Mary Dunlavy isn't supposed to be able to die again. After being caught in the blast of a bomb her family set in the Covenant's training center, she got about as close as it's possible for a ghost to come. Six months later, the anima mundi has put Mary back together, allowing her to return home to her family and her babysitting duties... but the anima mundi also has a job for her. Mary isn't terribly keen on working for a divinity again, not after her time working for the Crossroads, but it's not like she can say no. The Covenant knows that there was a ghost involved in the attack on them, and they're taking their revenge by capturing every spirit they can find along the east coast, locking them away, and torturing them. With her charges Elsie and Arthur in tow, Mary is headed to the east coast on a mission to stop the Covenant's attack, before the ghosts they're torturing become dangerous weapons in their own right.
This book did not have a slot assigned on my TBR list, but was one that I knew I would let jump the line as soon as it was released.
This was a fun entry in the series! It was nice to get a bit of Elsie and Arthur, two characters that have always been more side characters than mains to this point. (As well as getting to see a bit more completely what is Up with Arthur post accidental brainwipe. Definitely wondering how that's going to play out!)
I really enjoyed getting to see more ghosts of varying types. (That was one of my favorite parts of the Ghost Roads trilogy, which is set in this same universe.) I particularly enjoyed the "what happens when a Covenant member turns into the thing they were supposed to destroy" bit... but was sorry we never got to see things play out between the ghost and her brother. (I was actually really pulling for him to get to be an ongoing character, but alas.) The potential for more ghosts in the series (per Mary's assignment) is something I look forward to, and I like the idea of the set roles that ghosts get in the afterlife being a little more changeable than we've been led to believe. (Which we've already seen with Mary herself, and obviously Rose... but it's fun to see more of it. A White Lady just shrugging off the whole vengeance thing because she's got a garden to tend is delightful.)
This book also ramped up the gore factor a bit. Like, there've always been some nasty deaths and injuries and such... but there are a few pretty gruesome bits of this one! Couldn't have happened to nicer folks, though.
I was admittedly feeling a bit emotionally raw due to other life stuff, but the bit about the ghost boy meeting the ghosts of dogs that haunt the animal shelter made me cry, haha.
This is the first of the series with a new publisher (having moved from DAW to Tor.) My strongest hope (except for "I hope the series continues in a supportive environment and that the author is happy with the move") was that maybe Tor would have better copyediting. I was really disappointed with how many typos and errors there were in the last few books, especially as they moved to a more expensive trade format.
Unfortunately... still enough to notice. I only remember two errors that really yanked me out of the book, but I still find it unfortunate to come across them. One was a wrong name in an action tag. (Elsie was grabbing a spirit jar, but the text said Mary was doing so, which for various reasons did not make sense.) The other was the word "protein" when I am pretty sure they were going for "protean".
I think this is something I just have to get over, but it really does bother me. I get that there are a lot of factors that go into this, in terms of what publishers do and don't do, how little time and money they allocate for people to do the copyediting, etc. I mostly shrug off errors that creep into self-pub books, or of course things like fanfic, unless it reaches the point of making it hard to read or understand... but part of what I expect from a mainstream published book is a professional level of polish. Of course typos and stuff still slip in, and that's been the case forever, and I find it fairly easy to ignore most of them... but sometimes they do jump out and it frustrates me every time.
I am currently in the middle of three books:
Space for Growth, a sci-fi romance. This one was meant to be my brain candy side-read, but I'm letting it be the main read instead. Back to my regularly-scheduled TBR after this!
Lord of Souls with Alex
Aftermarket Afterlife with Taylor
Let's see how April goes!
This month I read:
Tell Me I'm Worthless by Alison Rumfitt
Horror (subgenres: haunted house, political, queer) - ebook novel
4*/5
Three best friends go together to spend the night in a haunted house. One of them never leaves. The two that do are both scarred—physically, mentally, and emotionally—by the trauma they remember the other inflicting on them.
Years later, Alice, a trans woman, is still unable to escape the haunting that has followed her ever since. She tries to continue with her life, with drink, drugs, and questionable friendships. Ila, once Alice's best friend, has instead thrown herself into the UK's TERF movement as an attempt to cope with her own remembered trauma.
The house itself is still there. It is waiting, and it is endlessly hungry. And it wants both of them to come back. To come "home."
My thoughts, some minor spoilers, and serious content warnings:
*It was hard to rate this one, because generally my ratings are a measure of subjective enjoyment, not necessarily an attempt at measuring objective quality. I thought this was a very good book, and I do not regret reading it at all, but I have a hard time saying it was truly an enjoyable read, per se. ("Enjoyment" might be more of a 3, but it feels unfair to rate the book a 3 because I thought it was better than that implies.) At the same time, I was never reluctant to continue reading it. To the contrary, I was finding little five-minute gaps in my day to get through another page or two.
The author states up front that this is a book about trauma and about fascism. It is very much about those, and it is not subtle about them. It features a lot of bigotry (as one might expect, given the two primary themes), including sexism, racism, antisemitism, and especially transphobia. A lot of it is cultural and external, some of it is internalized. There is also a lot of assault, physical and sexual, including a fairly graphic rape scene. It's also often very deliberately grotesque. It's an intense read, and I thought it was very good. But like I can't quite say it was "enjoyable," I'd have a hard time saying I recommend it, because it deals with some really dark stuff.
The story does interesting things with perspective. The chapters rotate their focus. Alice's perspective starts in super close first person, sometimes bordering on stream of consciousness for her. Ila's is in omniscient third, focused on her and what she's doing, but more distant and going off on tangents about other characters and situations and past or future events that she is not aware of. These perspectives blur as the book goes on, in a way that I thought was really interesting to read. The house also has perspective chapters, which were both horrifying and engaging.
I know more about a few of the internet communities that get mentioned in the book than I sometimes wish I did, and I can tell the author does too.
The house is a personification of Britain's inherent fascistic roots, how it is an evil that can never be sated, that will sometimes promise safety that is always a lie, that will warp and destroy everything it touches to turn them into some twisted form of its ideal, how it corrupts everyone who comes in contact with it as it encourages them to give in to their worst impulses and cruelest thoughts... That sure is fascism! It's a very real horror!
This is the first book (or any piece of media) for a long while that's infiltrated my dreams. The first or second night I read some of it, I had a very horror-tinged dream that Alice showed up in.
As far as successfully doing what it set out to do, I think the book absolutely achieved it. It was maybe a little too intense for me at times, but I'm glad I read it.
The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
Fantasy - physical novel
5/5
The unicorn has lived alone in her wood forever, an immortal creature with no real concern for the passage of time. Then she overhears a hunter claim that she is the last unicorn; all others have vanished from the world. She sets off on a quest of her own to find out whether this is true, and to try and find the others if she can. Eventually she is pointed toward King Haggard's kingdom, a barren wasteland, where it is said The Red Bull took the other unicorns. She is aided on her quest by Schmendrick the Magician, whose powers are sometimes questionable, and Molly Grue, a disillusioned woman glad to finally find something that feels worthwhile.
My (apparently extensive) thoughts, some spoilers
I think this is technically a reread, but only very technically... I think I read it as a child, but mostly I remember attempting to read it and not finishing it, and can't remember with 100% certainty whether I eventually succeeded or not. The film was a favorite of mine as a young, unicorn-obsessed child, and the book is an important one to Taylor, so I've wanted to read it for some time again anyway.
I do spoil some plot points, but like... the book is from the 60s and the animated film adaptation is from the 80s, so... kind of hard to feel like I'm spoiling much!
It is hard to imagine more of a tonal whiplash from Tell Me I'm Worthless to this.
I will say, the animated film is an excellent adaptation. A lot of the scenes and dialogue are taken completely word for word from the book. (My younger sibling said something to the effect of "the only downside of reading the book is that I am not *hearing* Christopher Lee deliver Haggard's lines," and they are right! Lee is so fucking good as Haggard.) There are a few things the book includes that the film does not, like the town of Hagsgate, and the curse on both the town and on Haggard himself. The book also has more detail about Schmendrick and his arc.
Hagsgate gives us some pretty depressingly relevant banger lines such as the cursed townsfolk opting not to have Schmendrick try to remove the curse on them for "If it were lifted we might not become poor again, but we would no longer grow steadily richer, and that would be just as bad" after *just* telling him that they should be pitied for how sad their wealth made them, as they'd never allowed themselves to enjoy it for fear of when they would lose it. Well if that ain't a real world fucking attitude problem...
And the whole situation with Schmendrick, and the fact that he's been made immortal until he becomes a true wizard, makes him a little more morally grey and a little more of a... not quite foil, but provides a connection with the unicorn, straddling immortality and mortality that way. It also means that in the movie we miss out on the story of how his mentor once turned a unicorn into a human man, and having the unicorn be utterly horrified by that. ("Foreshadowing is a literary device...")
Part of what makes Taylor love this book as much as they do is that it's got some serious trans vibes. These are vibes/choices to interpret it that way rather than truly overt, but some of it... yeah, I see it very much! One of the main themes is about who you are vs. how you are perceived, with particular emphasis on when the entire world perceives you as something other than you are, and that it can be a rare thing to find someone who can accurately see you. There's also the very literal theme of being forced into a form that isn't truly who or what you are, and how that can be a horror. Taylor has been doing an intermittent reread liveblog, noting scenes or lines that feel trans to them, and I don't know that I saw *all* of the scenes the same way, but... the interpretation also doesn't feel at all like a reach to me. (And I'll also say that for what it's worth, Peter S. Beagle has always been a trans ally from all I have heard, as well as my occasional exposure to his social media presence, which is nicer than I can say for some once-beloved childhood authors.)
I enjoyed the prose a lot more than I remembered. It's got a bunch of fun imagery and humor. There are some individual lines that I wish I'd bookmarked as I went, because some were really good.
Another thing that felt a lot more present in the book, and may have simply been something I understood less well as a kid, was how much of a tragedy the unicorn's time as Lady Amalthea is presented as. I knew that it was sad for her to be trapped in human form, and I knew that part of the fear was that she was becoming mortal in more than just her appearance, and I of course wanted her to change back... but the book hit home a lot more fully just how tragic it is for her to lose herself so completely (and especially for her entire self and history and perspective and quest to all be lost solely in service to a love story, even or especially as that love story is someone else's idea of "happily ever after.") It also pushes that theme of losing yourself a little more, because they acknowledge that she could be happy with this ending as well... but only because she would forget everything that made her a unicorn, and therefore be unaware of the loss. (Which I can also see as suiting that trans read of the whole thing, or a general "closeted queer" sort of narrative.)
I complained recently about stories that are self-aware in a way that makes it feel like they're trying to trash their genre or insult the genre as protection against the audience doing so. This is an example of self-awareness that I feel does it well. Schmendrick points out that they're in a fairy tale, and they have to follow fairy tale rules, because that's how these things happen... crucially, except the unicorn, because while he believes the rest of them to be characters and archetypes that must follow their roles, he believes her to be real... Until she's transformed, and then she must fulfill the fairy tale role of the princess. Then later Schmendrick uses the same awareness to (secretly/subtly) force Lir to remember that he is a hero, and he must behave as a hero, even if he sacrifices his own happiness for it.
I also forgot a bit how bittersweet the ending is. It's a bit more so in the book than the film, as in the book it's made obvious that Lir could become just like Haggard if he is not careful, though there is plenty of hope that he will not.
Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire
Wayward Children book 5
Fantasy (background f/f) - physical novella
5/5
In Christopher's bedroom at Eleanor West's Home for Wayward Children, a door appears. Through it comes former student Jack—trapped in her twin sister Jill's body—and Alexis, Jack's twice-resurrected girlfriend/fiancee. Jack had previously returned through her door to her home in The Moors, the horror-tinged world she and her sister had been welcomed to as children. She brought Jill's body to The Moors with her, after [redacted spoiler for book one]. The plan had always been to resurrect Jill, except having already died, Jill would no longer be capable of becoming a vampire, which had been her fondest desire. Infuriated by this, Jill and her vampire master forced Jack to swap the twins' bodies, so that Jill could inhabit Jack's body (which had never died) to become her master's true vampire daughter... even if it throws off the balance of power in The Moors.
Jack, trapped in Jill's body, enlists the help of her friends from the school—Kade, Christopher, and Sumi, plus new student Cora—to come with to help save herself and the world she calls home.
My thoughts, some spoilers for the series as a whole:
I really enjoy The Moors as a setting: just all the classic horror settings squished together. Forbidding castle with a vampire terrorizing the local village? Check! Mad scientists holed up in windmills, harnessing the power of lightning in ways that defy conventional laws of nature? Check! Towns full of slightly-inhuman cultists worshiping monstrously unknowable gods below the sea? Check! The setting and the chance to play all of those sorts of horror tropes straight is just a lot of fun, and I really enjoyed that we got to come back to this world.
Jack and Jill's story, in Down Among the Sticks and Bones and Every Heart a Doorway is one I find compelling and sad, and seeing that arc to its (in many ways tragic) conclusion is satisfying. The sorrow of having tried your best for someone else, in some cases to your own detriment, and having those efforts ignored or dismissed or belittled is one I think a lot of people are familiar with, even if not on quite the scale of these events.
I liked getting to see the students from the school interact more fully with a world that isn't "our" world, but also isn't "theirs." It felt more... dynamic, maybe, this time than it did in Beneath the Sugar Sky. Christopher with Bones and Cora being called by The Drowned Gods were really fun and enjoyable ways of seeing these characters getting to do things in a setting that isn't *quite* right for them.
It hasn't been a hidden theme up until this point, and Kade has outright stated that his world expected him to live and die for them right up until he was no longer what they wanted (when it turned out he was a prince, not a princess) and they cast him aside... but this time it was Sumi who brought up that the worlds select children to become their heroes, then treat them as utterly expendable. It's surprising to get it from the candyland nonsense girl, though it probably shouldn't be, considering the real danger in her world and the fact that she herself did die! Some of the worlds perhaps don't fit that pattern, like Nancy's world (despite being an underworld) and maybe Christopher's (despite being all skeletons all the time). But many of the worlds do seem to do exactly that, even if those children desperately long to return to them. I guess it's sort of an expression of that tension between children enjoying reading about characters their own age put in life and death situations, saving the world or vanquishing evil, and the adults who read those stories and are horrified at children being in those situations at all, and see it as a failure of all the adults who allowed it to happen.
Boys in the Valley by Philip Fracassi
Horror (subgenres: religious, possession) - ebook novel
3.5/5
Peter has been at the St. Vincent's orphanage for most of his young life, after his parents died in a murder-suicide. He's coming up on a decision about where he wants his life to go: to leave the orphanage and try to have a life with a girl who lives on a neighboring homestead, or stay and finish his training to become a priest.
Right as winter hits, the sheriff comes to the orphanage with a dying prisoner—the sheriff's own brother, caught committing unspeakable acts of brutality and child sacrifice. But something seems wrong with the man, something inhuman and evil... and after his death, it seems like something is suddenly wrong with some of the boys...
My thoughts, minor spoilers:
While I've certainly watched a lot of horror movies about demonic possession, I haven't ever read a novel about it. I did enjoy it! There are ways in which getting the interiority of the characters really makes it a more immediate horror than something like a film does. At the same time, the writing itself felt fairly cinematic, in that it was easy to picture most of the events, and I had a mental movie to watch as I read.
One thing I mildly struggled with was trying to keep track of the characters. It wasn't too difficult, but there are something like 30+ kids, plus a handful of adults. Not all of the orphans are named or get any specific attention, but there are enough that do that I wasn't always able to remember which was which. Most of them were pretty well distinguished with something that made them unique, and it didn't ever cause true confusion within the story, but I feel like there were probably some specifics I'd forgotten about the individuals, or certain kids I got mixed up with each other. Occasionally a mild annoyance, especially when trying to remember which kids were on which "side" of the conflict. But overall I'd say the book handled a huge cast well (even if some of them are just there to be cannon fodder.)
The description, the tension, the dread and fear are all really excellently portrayed. It's a lot of horror and a lot of people die in horrific ways! (There is no "infant immortality" here.) It was definitely a page-turner for me. The chapters are short, and it's super easy to just keep reading, because the tension was always so high.
However, I feel like there were ways in which I wish the book had done more. This is, as always, possibly a mark of the difference between expectation and product: just because I expected or wanted the book to go somewhere it didn't doesn't mean the book was a failure, but it did mildly disappoint me in a couple of ways.
1 - There were a couple times where things were told more than shown, in a way I found frustrating. Overall the book does not shy away from showing: there are gruesomely detailed deaths and descriptions of the demon-possessed, conflicted inner narratives, terrible abuses that are described in detail... It made it feel that much more obvious when something did fall on the "tell" side. The perspective changes a lot throughout the book, following different characters, but the only one to get first-person narration is Peter, and he's the one with the biggest character conflict outside of the direct plot, so he's more the protagonist than any of the other characters. He says multiple times that he feels like there's some sort of darkness within him, some terrible aspect of himself he can't confront, things to that effect... but we never really see or feel that. While he struggles with whether he wants to become a priest or marry his sort-of-sweetheart Grace, he isn't struggling with any evil or harmful desires/impulses that we see... he just says he is sometimes, without any specifics. (Maybe this was supposed to be him talking about confronting the trauma of witnessing his parents' deaths, but that seemed like something he thought about and remembered freely, not something he struggled to confront, or bore any guilt over?) And the book does examine conflicted characters: Brother Johnson, the indentured convict, is mostly horrible, but we get the glimpses of his thoughts about sometimes wishing he could protect the boys, being concerned for them when they suffer, even when he enacts petty cruelties (or is directed to do so) against them as well. So it felt weird that our "main" character claims to have some big soul-deep conflict that we just... don't see. Particularly with demons preying on many of the other children, it seemed like it was setting up some conflict over the fate of his soul, or providing something for the demons to seize on... but no.
2 - It's set up a few times that the priests themselves are not necessarily paragons of good and holy behavior, that while the demonic forces are horrific and truly evil, some of the priests themselves can also be unnecessarily cruel, taking sadistic delight in chances to inflict "righteous" punishments, in a few cases having even led to children dying. David (one of the other older teens) talks about how Father Poole would beat him, still thinks about the scarring he has from it, and tells Peter that the orphanage is his idea of hell... But I feel like the book never really does much with that. It's acknowledged, but shallowly. The "good" priest and the "bad" priest get basically the same narrative treatment, with neither being more or less able to confront/resist/withstand the demonic forces. There's never really any grappling with what it means that cruelty within the framework of the church exists and does real harm, yet is not in any way condemned (literally or narratively.) It doesn't complicate anything about the good vs. evil struggle: God is always good, and the demons are unequivocally evil... and even when "good" "holy" men abuse those in their care, that is not a conflict with the idea that they are on the side of Good. There was a parallel between Brother Johnson being unable to resist demonic commands he was given once he gave them his soul, and David at one point feeling unable to resist doing what Poole told him to, even when he wanted to. I wanted that to go somewhere! It didn't!
(And of course it's obvious that in the real world there are many people in religious positions who do terrible things. And in real life, and fiction in general, and this book specifically, people are not all good or all bad, because people are complex; you can't necessarily split people into one category or the other. But in a work of fiction that makes the existence of good and evil a very literal, obvious, known thing as opposed to a matter of faith... I wanted it to matter. Which is also also one of my biggest problems with Christianity in general: that being saved and believing in Jesus is what makes you Good, regardless of your previous or ongoing actions. The book is just following that framework, and I shouldn't be surprised, but I still have beef with that. I guess it's better that the book acknowledged it at all, rather than having all the priests be undeniably good people and ignoring the question entirely.)
Ultimately, I think this might feel very different to someone who is religious. (Or is a believer in some sense.) That part is very much a me thing, in that I don't find the power of God vanquishing evil particularly compelling or affirming, nor do I find the idea of converting or devoting oneself to that religion an inspiring character arc. I can enjoy it as fiction, but I imagine someone who believes in it in a very real way would feel more strongly about it, ha.
Breaking the Rules by Jen Katemi
M/M/F romance/erotica - ebook novella
2.5/5
Stacie is doing everything she can to get a fresh start. Shunned by her previous community after her now ex-husband's affair, she is starting over in a new town, setting up her new business, and enjoying the fact that no one knows who she is. Then her car breaks down on her way home, where she is luckily rescued by two very handsome men. It seems nearly meant to be: James and Teale are both handy mechanics and happen to be her neighbors, and she's extremely attracted to both of them. The three share a wonderfully hot night together, but that's all it can be: Stacey moved specifically to allow herself a "normal" life, away from gossip and judgement. There's no way she can allow herself to be openly part of a non-conventional relationship... no matter how much she wants it.
My thoughts:
It's possible I'm being too harsh on this one, as it pretty clearly telegraphed what type of story it is, and it's not the story's fault that I wish it was something a little different. The story is subtitled a "forbidden menage romance," so I shouldn't be surprised, but it still leaned way too hard on "gasp, this is so wrong and weird and dirty and scandalous!" for me. I'm into poly romance. Poly relationships are real things that exist, (and while not now, I've been in multiple poly relationships in the past!) and it feels mildly icky when it's treated as that particular kind of weird. (Which is also a matter of really subtle differences sometimes. Angsting over the dynamics or feasibility of a poly relationship, or wondering if the connection exists outside of sex, or worrying about the reactions of family/friends/community can be just fine, and a part of what I like! This was just leaning too hard into the "ooh, it's so bizarre and badwrong" angle for me.
It was also a little weird about James and Teale being bi... though not in the scandalous badwrong way, at least. The two have a long-term involvement with each other, but almost exclusively use this to have threesomes with women... which isn't like, wrong, or anything, but it came across a bit like the threesomes were what defined their bisexuality, as well as pushing a little too hard that while the two of them will sometimes sleep together, and all their flings with women are portrayed as casual, they couldn't ever be in a relationship with just each other because they aren't gay. (And yeah, this is probably supposed to be romantic "centering the female character, who is intended as the one the reader is most sympathetic to" thing, but it came across as an unfortunately common stereotype that rubbed me the wrong way.)
It was also a little too porn-logic for me at the very start. (I expected smut! I was here for the smut! Just... Man, no warm-up, haha.) Maybe it's my kinda ace-ness, but I have never thought about my own anatomy during non-sex activities as much as these characters do. I know it's a genre standard, but damn. Also, while I know this is a novella that's trying to keep the pace snappy, having the main character worrying about whether she's about to get serial-murdered when the guys pull over on the road after her car breaks down, then immediately thinking in detail about how turned on she is by them before she even speaks to them was a jarring dissonance I just couldn't quite get past. (Maybe it was meant to be funny, but it just came across as weird to me.) Stacey also kept thinking things like how she should find it impossible to find two men attractive at the same time, which seems weird, too. This isn't even a "how can I have romantic feelings for two people at once", it's just "how can I find two different people physically attractive?" which doesn't seem like the sort of leap that most people have that hard a time with.
The sex itself was fine, though if I remember there were a couple euphemisms or descriptions that made me make a face, haha.
The arc is basically exactly what it says on the tin: hot threesome -> regretful rejection due to a desire to be seen as "normal" -> everyone is angsty and sad and angry about it -> reconsideration of priorities -> gesture of reconciliation -> HEA. It's fine if not groundbreaking, and I was happy for the characters to get that HEA and all. The plot all comes after the whole "hot threesome" thing, so it sort of felt like an afterthought? The meet-cute and immediate sexing it up take up almost 70% of the novella, with all of the time apart and sad about it and then reconciling happening in less than 20%. (A full 10% of the novella is a preview of the next book in the series.)
The 2.5 feels a little low, because it wasn't BAD for a pretty what-it-says-on-the-tin story, and it wasn't unreadable or anything. I'll read a dozen of this kind of story rather than some AI generated slop, and I can see this appealing to someone who isn't me. The vibes just didn't work for me. The search for poly romance that does suit my preferences continues.
Installment Immortality by Seanan McGuire
Incryptid book 14
Urban fantasy - physical novel
4/5
As a ghost, Mary Dunlavy isn't supposed to be able to die again. After being caught in the blast of a bomb her family set in the Covenant's training center, she got about as close as it's possible for a ghost to come. Six months later, the anima mundi has put Mary back together, allowing her to return home to her family and her babysitting duties... but the anima mundi also has a job for her. Mary isn't terribly keen on working for a divinity again, not after her time working for the Crossroads, but it's not like she can say no. The Covenant knows that there was a ghost involved in the attack on them, and they're taking their revenge by capturing every spirit they can find along the east coast, locking them away, and torturing them. With her charges Elsie and Arthur in tow, Mary is headed to the east coast on a mission to stop the Covenant's attack, before the ghosts they're torturing become dangerous weapons in their own right.
My thoughts, minor spoilers:
This book did not have a slot assigned on my TBR list, but was one that I knew I would let jump the line as soon as it was released.
This was a fun entry in the series! It was nice to get a bit of Elsie and Arthur, two characters that have always been more side characters than mains to this point. (As well as getting to see a bit more completely what is Up with Arthur post accidental brainwipe. Definitely wondering how that's going to play out!)
I really enjoyed getting to see more ghosts of varying types. (That was one of my favorite parts of the Ghost Roads trilogy, which is set in this same universe.) I particularly enjoyed the "what happens when a Covenant member turns into the thing they were supposed to destroy" bit... but was sorry we never got to see things play out between the ghost and her brother. (I was actually really pulling for him to get to be an ongoing character, but alas.) The potential for more ghosts in the series (per Mary's assignment) is something I look forward to, and I like the idea of the set roles that ghosts get in the afterlife being a little more changeable than we've been led to believe. (Which we've already seen with Mary herself, and obviously Rose... but it's fun to see more of it. A White Lady just shrugging off the whole vengeance thing because she's got a garden to tend is delightful.)
This book also ramped up the gore factor a bit. Like, there've always been some nasty deaths and injuries and such... but there are a few pretty gruesome bits of this one! Couldn't have happened to nicer folks, though.
I was admittedly feeling a bit emotionally raw due to other life stuff, but the bit about the ghost boy meeting the ghosts of dogs that haunt the animal shelter made me cry, haha.
This is the first of the series with a new publisher (having moved from DAW to Tor.) My strongest hope (except for "I hope the series continues in a supportive environment and that the author is happy with the move") was that maybe Tor would have better copyediting. I was really disappointed with how many typos and errors there were in the last few books, especially as they moved to a more expensive trade format.
Unfortunately... still enough to notice. I only remember two errors that really yanked me out of the book, but I still find it unfortunate to come across them. One was a wrong name in an action tag. (Elsie was grabbing a spirit jar, but the text said Mary was doing so, which for various reasons did not make sense.) The other was the word "protein" when I am pretty sure they were going for "protean".
I think this is something I just have to get over, but it really does bother me. I get that there are a lot of factors that go into this, in terms of what publishers do and don't do, how little time and money they allocate for people to do the copyediting, etc. I mostly shrug off errors that creep into self-pub books, or of course things like fanfic, unless it reaches the point of making it hard to read or understand... but part of what I expect from a mainstream published book is a professional level of polish. Of course typos and stuff still slip in, and that's been the case forever, and I find it fairly easy to ignore most of them... but sometimes they do jump out and it frustrates me every time.
I am currently in the middle of three books:
Space for Growth, a sci-fi romance. This one was meant to be my brain candy side-read, but I'm letting it be the main read instead. Back to my regularly-scheduled TBR after this!
Lord of Souls with Alex
Aftermarket Afterlife with Taylor
Let's see how April goes!
