Riot Baby, Tochi Onyebuchi

Riot Baby felt terrifyingly topical when I read it in January of this year, and then it just got more and more and more topical somehow. It’s about two Black siblings, Ella and Kev, who each have special powers. Jumping around in time, Riot Baby shows us a dystopian America that’s functionally just… America, and Kev ends up incarcerated for living in the world while Black. Using their powers, Ella and Kev pay telepathic (?) visits to each other, as well as to a number of scenes in America’s racist history, and search for ways to bring the whole racist system down.

Tor’s novella line continues to publish absolute bangers, and Riot Baby felt like a gift in a year when America has felt even more like a dystopia than usual. Its leaps through time are deliberately disorienting, so that the reader is never quite allowed to settle into any certainty about what the book is going to be. Instead you’re carried through time and space in a sort of grand tour of American oppression. Riot Baby is imaginative, strange, dizzying, exhilarating.

Butterfly Yellow, Thanha Lai

I can’t remember who recommended Butterfly Yellow to me, but it was this wonderfully quiet and careful YA novel about a Vietnamese girl who comes to America in search of her little brother, from whom she was separated during the Vietnam War. She’s certain that he’ll be delighted to be reunited with her, but instead she finds that he’s comfortable in his new life with his adoptive parents. Hằng befriends a cowboy named LeeRoy and sticks around, patiently trying to rebuilt her relationship with her brother.

Because we see Hằng so much through LeeRoy’s eyes, I kept thinking that she was younger than she was, so it threw me off a bit when she develops a romance with LeeRoy. And overall I think Butterfly Yellow feels slightly more middle grade than YA. Aside from that small area of disorientation, though, it was a book with a great deal of emotional depth. No matter how much we want easy answers, such answers aren’t forthcoming. Instead, it’s a story about perseverance in love and finding joy in an imperfect world.

Harrow the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir

On a grim day in January, I opened my mail to find an ARC of Harrow the Ninth, upon which I shrieked like a banshee and dived into it with an enthusiasm. Gideon the Ninth, you’ll recall, was the lesbian necromancers in space book, and this is the middle book in the series. We follow Harrow as she struggles with her imperfect Lyctorhood and her fractured memories of what happened at Canaan House.

This book is bonkers. It is bonkers. Every choice that Tamsyn Muir makes in this book is bonkers. It is a symphony of what-the-fuck, with every instrument playing a perfect, terrifying what the fuck variation, and all I could do was let myself be swept along by it. I know that some folks have said they found this one a harder read than Gideon — in Gideon the Ninth you’re in Gideon’s head enjoying her irreverent take on all the horrifying blood and murder events, whereas in Harrow the Ninth you’re living with Harrow’s rage, grief, and self-loathing. So I hope it won’t make me sound like a callous monster when I say I don’t remember the last time I had so much fun reading a book. I was grinning from ear to ear every time I opened it. I cannot wait for the third one.

Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo

WHEW did somebody say “mastery of the novella form”? I got Empress of Salt and Fortune as an ARC and was not immediately sucked in after reading the first few pages. Then on a Saturday I was like “I’m going to dedicate some actual time to reading this bastard” and sat down and read it all in one sitting. It’s the story of cleric Chih, who is collecting stories on their travels through a country that has been shaped by a powerful empress. They encounter an old woman who used to serve in the royal palace, and settle in to hear her version of the empress’s rise.

Just, wow. I absolutely loved this book. I am not one for secondary world fantasy, usually, but Vo builds her world around material culture: the tooth that was part of the gown the empress wore when she came as a bride to the palace; the dice that she used to play games and cast lots; a map of pilgrimage shrines throughout the empire. The things are the hook into the story of this empress, and the story is about women’s rage. It’s about the refusal to accept the oppression and denial your life has given you, and the overlooked ways women use to communicate among themselves, using tools that powerful men can’t be bothered glancing at twice.

I still don’t quite know how Vo managed to pack so much worldbuilding, emotion, and plot into 118 pages, but I do know that I’m excited for her future career and inevitable superstardom in the world of SFF.

The Good Luck Girls, Charlotte Nicole Davis

ROAD TRIP ADVENTURE YA!!!

Every year for the last few years, there’s been at least one YA novel where I was like “this is just a good fucking adventure story, what a pleasure, what a dream,” and as I look back on them, they are all, one hundred percent of them, road trip adventures. So in case there was any lack of clarity about what I like and whether I am predictable, the answers are road trips and yes, I am very predictable.

The Good Luck Girls tells the story of a group of girls fleeing from the brothel to which they were sold as children, trying to escape the consequences of a patron’s death. They are seeking asylum in a place they’ve only heard about, a place that for all they know doesn’t even exist — but they have to try and get there, or else resign themselves to spending their lives being hunted by the raveners who have been tasked with finding them and punishing them.

As dark as this premise is, Davis does a terrific job of writing a book that doesn’t feel doomed, yet also doesn’t gloss over the genuine trauma these girls have been through in their lives. Aster is determined to get all her friends to safety, whatever the cost to her; she’s smart and resourceful and angry and driven, and I cherished her. There’s a slow build-up of grudging respect between her and the house favorite at their brothel, Violet, which of course I adored, and the stakes of their road trip escape remain high, high, high, so there’s this lovely release of tension any time they have the chance to stop and rest and be happy for even a short time. And the set-up for book two just really thrilled me. Can’t wait for more!

The Dark Fantastic, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas

Whoever decided to get Paul Lewin to do the cover for this book deserves a trophy. Also, I love Paul Lewin’s art. One of my goals for this year is to read Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, not just because I need to read more of Octavia Butler’s work, but also because if I like it then I can maybe buy the editions that feature Paul Lewin’s fancy, gorgeous covers.

Anyway, The Dark Fantastic: Race and the Imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games digs deep into major fantasy properties to explore the ways Black characters in those franchises have been used and abused by both the stories themselves and the audiences who received them. Thomas is a terrific, insightful cultural critic, and her work is particularly notable for how clearly she loves these properties and wants better for them. Her readings of the texts and their audiences enriched my understanding of these books, movies, and TV shows, and I’m so excited for whatever this author plans to do next.

Norma Jean Baker of Troy, Anne Carson

Before *waves hands* all this, I attended a conference at which New Directions had a booth, and you just wouldn’t believe the shriek of joy I emitted when I realized that Anne Carson had a new book. Anne Carson is the translator, poet, and genius behind If Not, Winter (an amazing translation of Sappho) and Nox, a book-in-a-box I incepted myself into being able to afford the first year I lived in New York.

Norma Jeane Baker of Troy combines the story of Helen of Troy with the life of Marilyn Monroe, whose name before fame was Norma Jeane Baker. It’s expectedly strange and funny and devastating.

In ancient Greece you use the verb [I am too lazy to recreate this in WordPress], which comes over into Latin as rapio, rapere, raptus sum, and gives us English rapture and rape — words stained with the very early blood of girls, with the very late blood of cities, with the hysteria of the end of the world. Sometimes I think language should cover its own eyes when it speaks.

Anne Carson is a queen on etymology. If you liked the above quotation, I refer you to Nox, which does a lot of this kind of thing.

Realm of Ash, Tasha Suri

Remember when I was lowkey obsessed with Empire of Sand, Tasha Suri’s debut? Well, in an exciting twist, I loved Realm of Ash even more. It maintains the same Angry Girl / Soft Boy romance dynamic, but dials the anger and the softness up by several notches.

Even saying that feels like a disservice to Realm of Ash, because it ignores the absolutely wonderful worldbuilding and plot work that Tasha Suri is doing. It’s the kind of sequel that Diana Wynne Jones would write, where the book is set in the same world under (some of) the same set of assumptions, but it’s far more of a companion novel than the type of sequel where you’re like, aw, yeah, gonna get some answers now. Realm of Ash is about the crumbling Ambhan Empire, and the efforts of a widow and a prince to understand the limits of their forbidden magic.

I just… I loved this? Again I say that I tend to struggle with secondary world fantasy, but authors like Tasha Suri and Nghi Vo seem determined to undermine my carefully established opinions. Tasha Suri comes out of fanfic, and you can really tell by the way she makes relationships so central to her plotting. I loved this book, and I cannot wait for Suri’s 2021 book The Jasmine Throne. I love her.

Because Internet, Gretchen McCulloch

This round-up includes three nonfiction books (unless you count the book of poetry; in which case, four), and I stand by all of them. Because Internet is a linguistics book about the language of the internet, and it’s 24-karat gold in my opinion. Gretchen McCulloch talks about all the things you’d expect, like the development of emojis and the reason why memes work or don’t, as well as a whole slew of things you wouldn’t, like how Arabic-speakers convey the Arabic alphabet on Twitter and why old people use so many ellipses in their emails.

If you’ve ever been like “I am extremely online, but why?”, I highly recommend that you read Because Internet. It won’t explain why you are so online (who could?), but it will describe your life in terrifyingly accurate terms.

The True Queen, Zen Cho

I could just as well have put The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water on this list, because Zen Cho blessed us with two new releases in the last two years, but The True Queen was the one that I really loved. This may reflect my general preference for the novel-length format. The True Queen is a follow-up to the 2015 Sorcerer to the Crown, and I loved it so so so so so much. It’s set in an alternate version of the nineteenth century, as Sorcerer to the Crown was, but it focuses much more on people who aren’t English. Yay!

I love Zen Cho for so consistently writing books that could have been dark and grim but are, in fact, funny and light-hearted. In these quarantimes, it feels like a particularly revolutionary writing choice. The True Queen deals with a lot of heavy themes (imperialism, family conflict, etc.) in a way that isn’t too grim but also doesn’t feel like a cop-out by the author. I just truly loved this book, as I have all her books to date. I had so much fucking fun reading it, and in a year where fun was few and far between, I value that so so so much. ZEN CHO.

The City We Became, NK Jemisin

Yes, I was furious at the offhand way in which NK Jemisin dismissed New Orleans in this book, and yes, it made me cry on podcast. But apart from that gripe, which while not minor to me was minor in terms of the space it occupied in the book, I really loved NK Jemisin’s latest novel. It’s about the city of New York becoming sentient, manifesting itself in the avatars for each borough, who must come together to fight against an evil white Lovecraftian tentacle creature.

In perhaps the clearest measure of success, The City We Became made me feel agonizingly homesick for New York City. I was supposed to visit it in 2020! Reading this reminded me so keenly of what the city is like, in all its boroughs, in every iteration, and I just got really fucking emoshe about it. NK Jemisin’s writing is typically beautiful, her plotting typically tense, and I was left with a mighty yearning for more of this series.

A Song Below Water, Bethany Morrow

It’s the misogynoir fantasy novel of your dreams! Tavia has known for years that she’s a siren, and she knows that she must be careful never to reveal what she is. Living in the city of Portland, she has plenty of opportunity to see the kind of oppression faced by other Black people, especially Black women, especially sirens. In the aftermath of a siren murder trial, Tavia learns that an idol of hers is also a siren, and she begins to understand that she has no alternative but to use her voice to pursue her values.

I loved the worldbuilding in A Song Below Water, and I dearly hope that Bethany Morrow has plans for more books in this universe. Though Tavia struggles mightily with understanding what it means to be a siren, sirens are not the only magical being in this world. I would love to see books that deal with other kinds of magic and their implications — not least because Tavia’s beloved sister Effie has secrets of her own that are uncovered in the course of the novel. I love sister stuff! I love it! And this book is about sisters who are absolutely ride-or-die for each other, which was great to see — I love a complicated sibling relationship, but I also love the kind of relationship that’s all about love and loyalty.

Boyfriend Material, Alexis Hall

Mirabile, Janet Kagan

Okay, I confess that this one’s on me. My aunt has been trying to get me to read Mirabile for, like, six years, and every time I was like “oh yeah yeah I’ll get to it for sure” and then because I couldn’t easily access the book, I did not for sure get to it. Last year, my aunt totally got me by just lending me the mf book, so it was either I read it promptly or I became one of those people who borrows a book and never remembers to return it. And y’all know I refuse to be that person.

Mirabile, which was published in 1991, is about xenobiologist (?) / xenoecologist (??) Mama Jason, who is responsible for researching and keeping under control the many mutant life forms that inevitably arise on the planet colony of Mirabile. This is a novel in stories (not usually my favorite thing), most of which were published in Asimov’s Science Fiction before being collected in novel form, and each chapter deals with a specific life form, from the Kangaroo Rex to the Loch Moose Monster. It’s the kind of low-stakes SFF novel that I’m constantly searching for: Though Mama Jason is tasked in some ways with the survival of the colony, there’s never any real question that she’ll succeed in her endeavors. She has a funny, wry narrative voice, and it’s overall just great to see an older woman protagonist in SF. My aunt was right. I should have read this sooner.

Part two is coming your way soon! Probably!

The post All the Books that Blew My Mind in 2020, Part 1 appeared first on Reading the End.

The first thing to mention is that while Realm of Ash is the second in the Books of Ambha series, it functions more as a companion novel than as a sequel. Arwa was the beloved baby sister of Mehr, our heroine from Empire of Sand, but she’s now an adult, widowed at twenty-one and traumatized from the massacre at Darez Fort and angry, angry, angry. For all the years of her life she has done her best to conform to what’s expected of her as an Ambhan noblewoman. She was the perfect daughter her parents wanted; the perfect wife for her late husband; now the perfect servant to the Empire. But none of that has truly given her the space to be who she is and express what she wants. Working with Zahir offers her some hope of agency, but at the cost of the facade of Ambhan normalcy that she has preserved all her life. All the time she works to save the Empire, it’s crumbling faster than she and Zahir can possibly shore it up; and nobody around them in the capital city can be trusted.

Tasha Suri comes out of fandom and it shows. Realm of Ash begins and ends with emotional stakes, such that I was immediately swept away by Arwa’s emotional journey. Even before it became clear that Arwa was on a quest to save the whole-ass empire, I was in on her, simply because of her rage and her desperation for her suffering to mean something. I liked Empire of Sand an awful lot, but Realm of Ash was maybe even more up my alley: Arwa wants to be good in a world that disallows the possibility of her goodness. Her person is the curse — at least, that’s what she’s always been told. No wonder she’s angry. You are angry for her, and there are few things more immediately resonant to me than an angry woman who wants like hell to figure out how to be moral.

Then of course there is Zahir. Like Empire of Sand, Realm of Ash functions in many ways like a romance, though Arwa’s own self-actualization is the most important plot element, the thing that begins the book and will mark its ending. The romance is pretty excellent, though. Zahir and Arwa have to build, and I know y’all know I’m about this, a grudging respect. Again as in Empire of Sand, this book is keenly aware of the power differential between its principals. Here’s what Zahir says when his sister implies to Arwa that she should be sexually available to Zahir:

“She cannot give what I won’t take then,” snapped Zahir. “You came here of your own free will, Lady Arwa, came to this service out of loyalty and love for the Empire, and I am grateful. But I know how free will can bend to necessity and survival. I know. And I do not ask for more….I called you my apprentice, my assistant, and that is all I want, and all I need from you.”

For the sensible friends who, like me, desire angry women and soft men, Realm of Ash is what you’re after. Zahir is a soft, careful, bookish, morally upright nerd who rightly thinks the world of Arwa, but also trusts her to know her own mind and make her own choices. Suri does a brilliant job of writing the development of this relationship into a true partnership, and it’s lovely to read.

The central theme of Realm of Ash is how to live ethically in an empire that sleeps on a bed of bones. Arwa and Zahir are constantly aware that the collapse of the Empire will mean the deaths of thousands of people. And Arwa has witnessed such deaths firsthand, at Darez Fort. She wants at all costs to prevent it from happening again. The Emperor’s warlike son Parviz wants to improve matters by cracking down on so-called heretics. Zahir has a plan that he thinks might maybe restore them to the status quo. These are the only ideas anybody seems to have. It is horrible because like, as Arwa has cause to learn, the status quo was horrible! But nobody else has any ideas, and a lot of people are going to die if the whole thing crumbles! Sooooooooooooooo…. ?

(As you may have discerned, I found this both timely and relatable.)

Realm of Ash is a tense, smart, beautifully insightful fantasy romance. If you are getting tired of quarantine and wishful of something brilliant to read, I can’t recommend better than Realm of Ash.

The post Review: Realm of Ash, Tasha Suri appeared first on Reading the End.

Anyway, the arranged marriage in Empire of Sand immediately made me think “now here is an author who has been in fandom,” and thus we are back! Once again! Doing an Authors in Fandom interview with the inimitable Tasha Suri. Enjoy!

How did you get into reading/writing fic? What were your earliest fandoms, and what’s the newest one you’ve fallen for?

I got into fandom almost twenty years ago, but I remember exactly how I fell into reading and writing fanfic: I’d become totally obsessed with Sailor Moon and I was googling it when I stumbled on a fanfic and fell in love with it. I started writing my own stuff immediately and flinging it onto the web. I’m pretty sure the first thing I posted was a .txt file Neptune/Uranus fanfic to the long defunct A Sailor Moon Romance/moonromance.net. I was ten.

I feel really old now. Anyway.

Lately, I haven’t really had a fandom, which feels kind of weird, though I still go back and read old favourites. If someone wants to point me to some good Star Trek: Discover fanfic about Georgiou though, I wouldn’t say no.

How has fic (reading or writing it!) influenced your professional work? Are there things that you find fic generally does better than pro writing?

I don’t think my professional work would exist without fanfic. Fandom is an amazing place to learn how to write, because other fans are so hugely supportive. I wrote a lot of bad stuff and a lot of stuff that was better, and all the way through other fans cheered me on.

Fanfic does relationships really, really well. I’m not sure I want to say it does relationships better than pro fic, because I think pro fiction and fanfic have different audiences and purposes. But that edge-of-your-seat, breathless feeling good fanfic gives you? It’s special.

And if you’ve written fic in the past: What have you found to be different about writing fanfiction vs pro fiction?

Fanfic was 100% a labour of love for me: love of writing, of the source material/canon, and of fandom itself. The more you engage with fandom the more it gives you the energy to keep on writing. Pro fiction is a lot lonelier, at least at first. You don’t have that same community around you, unless you actively build one, and rejection is built into the process of publication. You have to churn all that love and excitement up in yourself without the impetus of a fandom. It was only when I decided to be a fandom of one for my own stuff that I was able to finish any pro fiction, honestly.

What makes you ship a set of characters together? Or what elements in canon make you want to read or write fic?

I love shipping characters who have conflict. I’m a sucker for it. I don’t necessarily mean hero/villain, but I like when there’s something thorny in the relationship between two people that fanfic has to unravel for a romance between Character A and Character B to work. Do two characters have animosity, a tragic history, conflicting missions or secrets? I’m there, cheering them on.

Do you have fanfics or fanfic authors that most influenced you, or that you often return to? (I remember you saying that some fics should be counted as modern classics – tell me some!)

I’m not sure how much they’ve directly influenced my own writing, but these are all fanfics I’ve read over and over again for years. I’ll leave it up to you to decide if they’re modern classics, though I do think at least some of them are!

Truth and Measure is an alternate universe The Devil Wears Prada fic that asks: what would have happened if Andy Sachs hadn’t quit her job and left Miranda Priestly in Paris? I started it reluctantly then fell deep in love with it. It’s a properly epic love story that takes canon and runs with it, winning you over like only the best fanfic can. The sequel The Parting Glass is also wonderful.

If you like your fic a little more meta, then Steve Rogers at 100: Celebrating Captain America on Film is hysterical. United States v. Barnes, 617 F. Supp. 2d 143 (D.D.C. 2015) is no comedy, but it tells a heartfelt story through constructed social media and news items.

I’m also a big fan of a bunch of DC and Superman-related fic and I could read Reconcilable Differences over and over again.

What are your favorite things about fic as a medium? Are there things about the fic world that you’d like to see changed or improved?

Honestly? My favourite thing about fanfic is that it looks at a piece of media and says ‘this is mine now, and I’m going to explore the bits of it that the author won’t’. It’s transgressive and transformative and both an act of love and rebellion. What’s better than that?

The one thing that always used to sadden me about the fic world was how easily fanfics could be lost. There are so many fics I’ve read that are gone forever, thanks to websites going down, fanfics being intentionally deleted by their authors, or sites being purged. But Archive of Our Own has fixed that issue by providing an archive for fanfic and also creating a system for orphaning works, and I’m so thankful for that.

Tell me your favorite tropes! What tropes are your catnip, and what tropes do you tend to steer clear of? (I admit I am not typically a fan of arranged marriage stories, but Empire of Sand made me love it, dammit.)

I love soul bond fics! Love ‘em. Also stories where characters have to fake a marriage or relationship. The arranged marriage trope is my absolute favourite, of course. Maybe that’s obvious in Empire of Sand, haha.

I’m one of the few people in the world that hates coffee shop AUs. I just don’t get it. Otherwise, I’ll read pretty much any trope, I’m a trope omnivore.

Tasha Suri was born in Harrow, North-West London. She studied English and Creative Writing at Warwick University, and now lives in London where she works as a librarian. To no one’s surprise, she owns a cat. A love of period Bollywood films, history and mythology led her to begin writing South Asian influenced fantasy.

Tasha hangs out on Twitter, Instagram and has a Newsletter.

The post Authors in Fandom: An Interview with Tasha Suri appeared first on Reading the End.

Set in an empire inspired by the Mughals, but with magic, Empire of Sand follows a biracial girl called Mehr who is forced into a marriage with one of the Emperor’s mystics. The Maha, leader of the empire’s religious community, has detected the powerful magic that lives in Mehr’s Amrithi blood, and intends to compel her cooperation in a dark rite that will bind the world to the Emperor’s will (and his own). Alone in a foreign land, separated from everyone she loves, Mehr must find a way to protect her people without sacrificing her beliefs.

Listen, you’re going to be shaken when I tell you this news, but I really? loved? the worldbuilding??? I AM NOT A WORLDBUILDING LADY. Yet here we are. I actually consulted the map. Suri did an incredible job of tying worldbuilding in with emotions, and I think that’s what worked for me. For instance, Mehr has grown up with her Ambhan father and his new wife, but maintains a feeling of connection with her Amrithi mother through the Amrithi religious practice of danced rites. (This is actually what puts her on the wicked Maha’s wicked radar!) We learn that Amrithi blood wards off daiva when Mehr’s baby sister Arwa sees one and calls for Mehr to come protect her. It’s all done in this lovely, organic way that both builds the world and connects the reader to the characters.

Another thing I loved was the slowly developing relationship between Mehr and her husband, Amun. Forced marriage is one of those tropes that can be very, very hard to do well, but Suri made it work for me. The big thing for me is that Amun makes it clear immediately that he doesn’t want to have sex with Mehr, not just because it would be a violation for her (which he recognizes), but because it would be a violation for him too. It made me sad that this felt so revelatory to me, but it did; so often, media suggests that men are willing/excited to have sex under absolutely any circumstances. And it’s the start of Mehr’s, and the reader’s, realization that Amun is doing his best under miserable circumstances, just as Mehr herself is.

Empire of Sand is the first in a series WAIT COME BACK but it’s a standalone novel. The next book will be set in the same world, but will deal with the adventures of a minor Empire of Sand character many years on from the events of Empire of Sand. This is thrilling for me because of how thoroughly invested Suri got me not just in these characters (although come on, I’m a sucker for an MC making unthinkable sacrifices to protect their siblings), but also in this world. I’m dying to see what happens to the Empire after the choices Mehr makes, and I’m so excited that I’ll have the opportunity to do that.

The post Review: Empire of Sand, Tasha Suri appeared first on Reading the End.

What I Read Last Week:

One of my reading resolutions for this year was to read fifteen of my own damn books, of which ten were to be nonfiction. I am killing it so far! In the past week, I finished reading Joan Aiken’s The People in the Castle (a short story collection) and Clyde Edgerton’s Walking across Egypt, a book I should have known better than to imagine I would like. I don’t like Southern fiction! When will I get it through my head that I don’t like Southern fiction!

What I Culled:

Okay, this isn’t an official section of this meme, but I’m including it because I’m pleased with myself. In addition to culling Walking across Egypt, I also got rid of a Lynn Flewelling series (The Bone Doll’s Twin et seq.) that I don’t think I’m going to reread. It was so cleansing! Getting rid of things is magical!

What I’m Reading Now:

Empire of Sand, by Tasha Suri. It’s been terrific so far, even though I am not the world’s hugest reader of secondary world fantasy (see also: culling Lynn Flewelling). I have no idea what’s coming for the protagonists (apart from, hopefully, smooching), but I am excited to find out.

Anything else you want to brag about?

I AM SUCH A FINISHER. This year I decided kind of informally that I was going to start finishing TV shows instead of being so wishy-washy about picking them up and liking them but never finishing them. It is only March, but I have already caught myself up on Jane the Virgin, One Day at a Time, and Killjoys. I am now turning my attention to The Magicians, which I am given to understand is good, actually. I remember finding the first season oddly addictive despite all the things that annoyed and upset me about it, so I am excited to go back to it. I am three episodes into season two, and I love Julia and Alice as much as ever I did in years gone by.

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