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Category: 4 Stars

Review: American Prison, Shane Bauer

At last, cry the punters! At last Jenny will write a blog post without reference to These Troubled Times! The reporting for American Prison took place in 2014, a very long time ago, practically before human memory began, and thus can tell us nothing about These Troubled Times. Ah, yes, but unfortunately, though Shane Bauer’s initial reporting for Mother Jones led the Obama administration to end all federal contracts with private prisons, the Trump administration under Jeff Sessions reversed that decision. Also, American prison labor is slavery, so in this regard, These Times have always been Troubled. Happy Monday! tw:…

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Serial Box’s Dead Air, by Gwenda Bond, Rachel Caine, and Carrie Ryan

Is anyone here not yet familiar with Serial Box? It’s a website that creates serial fiction and doles them out in weekly episodes for your delectation and delight. As you can see from the folks who worked on Dead Air — or just by popping in to their website and taking a look around — they’ve developed a terrific stable of authors and a really interesting slate of stories. Subscribing to a Serial Box story makes me feel like I’m waiting at the harbor for the boats carrying the latest installment of a Wilkie Collins novel.1 Dead Air is a…

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Mariam Sharma Hits the Road, Sheba Karim

The short version of this review is that Mariam Sharma Hits the Road is a gem and a treasure that I want to hug very hard directly in its face. Did y’all know about Sheba Karim and not tell me? Is that the situation? Because it’s very hurtful if so. When Mariam’s friend Ghaz ends up on a sexy billboard in Times Square, Mariam and their third BFF Umar come up with a scheme to rescue her from her furious, abusive parents: They take her on a road trip to New Orleans, where this year’s Islamic Association of North America…

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The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, Theodora Goss

The blogger is prepared to stipulate that she bought a certain number of books at WorldCon. The actual number is not important. What we should focus on is that despite temptation, I did not purchase both The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter and its sequel, European Travel for the Monstrous Gentlewoman, in hardback editions. In fact I purchased neither! I confined myself mainly to small, portable books. You may leave your accolades for my restraint in the comments. The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter is the story of Mary Jekyll, who discovers hints among her father’s papers that…

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Review: The Secret Lives of Colour, Kassia St. Clair

Can I confess something? When I see people like Elizabeth tearing through their Mount TBRs like it’s going out of style, I become very embarrassed about my own terrible TBR habits. The trouble is that I own the books I own! The books I check out from the library will be due back in a few weeks! How can I prioritize the books with no deadline over the books with a deadline? I can’t! That would be nuts! Of course, when I do make time for the books that I own but haven’t read, I rarely regret it. I bought…

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Review: Arcanos Unraveled, Jonna Gjevre

What an absolute doll of a book Arcanos Unraveled is! My lovely friend Jeanne gave it to my mother earlier in the summer, and because I’m a disaster of a person, I read it before I read the book Jeanne actually gave me. (I’m saving that one for a rainy day. It looks delightful too. You will hear from me again re: that book.) Anya Winter is a hedge witch who works at a magical university, teaching the textile arts. Hedge witches don’t get nearly the same respect as proper (read: wealthy) wizards, but Anya believes in the work she’s…

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Litfic for Fanfic Lovers: America Is Not the Heart, Elaine Castillo

Some time ago, when my Twitter TL was having many conversations about genre fiction and fanfiction and literary fiction, and I was chatting to my brilliant friend Maureen about how to solve genre wars, I got the notion of writing some posts with litfic recommendations for lovers of fanfiction. Then, as tends to happen, I got distracted by life events and the world being on fire and I didn’t do anything about it. BUT. Then I read this extremely litficcy book, America Is Not the Heart, by Elaine Castillo, and when I say extremely litficcy you should understand that I…

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Review: The Summer of Jordi Perez, Amy Spalding

Well LOOK, since Hollywood is évidemment out of the business of making teen rom-coms or even, it seems, rom-coms whatsoever, at least thank the Lord for YA authors stepping into the breach. In a world where the news is the news and nobody has yet financed a Man from U.N.C.L.E. sequel, at least I got to read Amy Spalding’s new YA novel The Summer of Jordi Perez (and the Best Burger in Los Angeles), the cutest sweetest teen rom-com that I have laid my eyes on since When Dimple Met Rishi. Abby knows that she’s a sidekick. Queer fat girls…

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May Romance Round-Up

Clear your schedules, I am going to talk about a book so entirely in my wheelhouse that it and my wheelhouse are basically coterminous. (That’s an exaggeration but not really.) I refer to KJ Charles’s latest book, The Henchmen of Zenda. Before I get into The Henchmen of Zenda, I need to confess that I have this weird soft spot for old-time British adventure novels. There’s no defense I can or should make about this. These are horribly sexist and racist books that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. I like the swashbuckling. So when I heard that one of my…

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Review: Armistice, Lara Elena Donnelly

I’ll eat my hat if Lara Elena Donnelly hasn’t written a damn lot of fanfic, and I mean that as a very high compliment. Armistice is the sequel to last year’s book Amberlough, which was sold to me as a gayer secondary world Cabaret, an extremely accurate description of its contents. Armistice is, frankly, even awesomer, and I am delighted as hell that it exists in the world. Armistice picks up three years from the close of Amberlough. Cordelia has spent the last three years working for a fragile resistance against the Ospies, whose hold over Unified Gedda has only…

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