There’s this moment in Flamefall, the second book in Rosaria Munda’s Aurelian trilogy, where the protagonist asks one of the leaders of a scrappy band of rebel freedom fighters what they’re fighting for. She’s like “Equality!” and he’s like, “Neat, cool, great, but like what are your policy proposals?” How many dystopian YA novels have you read where the scrappy rebels our protagonist is allied with just have the basic policy “we won’t throw you in a fiery hellpit filled with ravenous snakes like these current bastards”? Like, that is a great start and I’m all for toppling your dystopian…
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Anyone who didn’t read A Song Below Water last year missed a trick, and I would also like to report that I, while reading it, missed a trick. The heroine of A Song Below Water is a siren, though she dedicates a lot of energy to hiding this fact about herself. While the world is friendly to some types of magic–particularly the charming and melodical eloko, of which Tavia’s school’s resident mean girl Naema is one–they’re acutely hostile to sirens. It is no coincidence that only Black girls and women can be sirens. A Chorus Rises is a companion novel…
Leave a CommentAs I may have mentioned twenty-two thousand times, I gave up magical thinking in 2019, and this was very smart of me because 2020 turned out to be a magical thinking minefield. Luckily I have a — actually, I have lost control of this metaphor and do not know what sort of a thing you’d use to protect against a minefield. I’m coming up all mine-sniffing animals, and I don’t want my very successful self-administered cognitive behavioral therapy to feel in any way connected with exploding rats or whatever. What I’m saying is, I am safe from the minefield of…
Leave a CommentTavia and Effie are sisters — not by blood, but in every way that matters. Both of them badly need the support and love of a sister. Like her late grandmother, Tavia is a siren. But the world, not to mention Tavia’s father, dislikes and distrusts sirens, and Tavia lives in fear of her secret being discovered. Meanwhile, Effie was long ago the only survivor of a terrifying incident in a Portland park, and she has begin to fear that the incident is coming back for her. After a few years of hearing about — but not being able to…
Leave a CommentSince the death of the Maha, the Ambha Empire has been breaking down. The Emperor is near death, and his sons are preparing to fight to inherit his throne. Arwa is the only survivor of a fearsome supernatural massacre that killed her husband and everyone else at Darez Fort, and she has come to make her life at the widows’ refuge in Numriha. But once she’s there, she realizes that her Amrithi blood — inheritance from the biological mother she never knew; evidence that she is not the good Ambhan noblewoman she has always claimed to be — could help…
Leave a CommentNote: Riot Baby is published by Tor, an imprint of Macmillan. Macmillan has established a policy of embargoing its ebooks to libraries. It’s a policy that hurts authors, libraries, and readers, and the American Library Association is sponsoring an initiative to promote fair library ebook policies. You can support that initiative here! Riot Baby is a primal scream of a novella, ranging through America’s racist history into a near-future version of the country that continues the climate emergency and militarization of the police. Our protagonists are siblings Ella and Kev, both of whom are gifted — Ella more noticeably than…
Leave a CommentEver since her father’s death, years ago, Casiopea Tun has been a poor relation to her mother’s wealthy family. She’s stuck doing drudge work for any member of the family who wants something from her — particularly her cousin Martin, who resents that she will never stop insisting on her personhood, no matter how much he tries to make her submit. (Not in a sexual way! I mention this because I kept worrying that there was going to be a sexual element to this relationship, but there’s not. So don’t worry.) Her wants are small, but completely out of reach:…
Leave a CommentRemember that series on The Toast, Children’s Stories Made Horrifying? Where you would be like, hmm, but that story is already kind of horrifying, and then you’d read the piece and be like, “Ah.” Bob Proehl’s sophomore novel, The Nobody People, is X-Men Made Horrifying. Journalist Avi Hirsch is our way in to this story: An adrenaline junkie who’s done his best to settle down for his wife and kid, Avi is pursuing two seemingly unrelated stories, a bombing at a mall and another at a local black church. He learns that the man responsible has special powers, that there…
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