Act Your Age, Eve Brown, Talia Hibbert

I was lucky enough to get to interview Talia Hibbert in 2021, which was lovely! She was a delight, as you’d expect, and her most recent romance novel is a confection and a treat. Act Your Age, Eve Brown is the last in a trilogy about the Brown sisters (Chloe, Dani, and Eve), and if I hadn’t already staked out a claim on Take a Hint, Dani Brown as my favorite in the series (which it is still), Eve Brown would have given it a run for its money. It’s a romance novel about the youngest Brown sister, who’s always felt like the fuck-up of the family, unable to settle down to one thing, always running out on her commitments. She takes a job managing a B&B after hitting its owner, Jacob, an extreme Order Muppet, with her car. Guess what happens to them then. Guess. Guess.

Guess.

THEY FALL IN LOVE.

It’s laugh-out-loud funny; it’s a touching exploration of how families support and hurt each other; it’s a sexy, romantic love story; I adored it.

The Space Between Worlds, Micaiah Johnson

Maybe because I’ve recommended this book to absolutely everyone this year, it feels like I read it much longer ago than January. But as I thought about it, I sort of remembered saying things in the genre of “it’s halfway through January and I’ve already found my favorite book of the year,” so I guess the story checks out. Anyway, I was right! The Space Between Worlds is my favorite book of 2021, and I am absolutely giddy with the knowledge that the author will be writing another book set in this world.

Cara has died in most of the worlds in the multiverse. This means that she is tremendously well suited to be a multiverse traveler, given that nobody can visit a world in which their counterpart in that world is still alive. Cara works for the Eldridge Institute, which plucked her out of the slums and promises her a life of ease and plenty (and citizenship) if she does her job like a good little cog in the machinery of her world’s inequality. Except that one of her counterparts dies under mysterious circumstances, and…

Well, actually, that’s all I can really say about it! The Space Between Worlds is one of those books that constantly makes its characters — and you, the reader! — question their assumptions as they learn more about the world they live in. If you’re in it for hard science fiction and lots of technical details about what makes the multiverse run, this book won’t be for you — but that isn’t Micaiah Johnson’s project. Her project is sociological SF, exploring questions of inequality and colorism, borders and criminals and family dynamics. It’s a book that takes on a lot of issues and handles them deftly, all while dancing the reader through so much plot it’s dizzying.

Fireborne and Flamefall, Rosaria Munda

I wrote about these ones! It’s hard to say a lot about a trilogy of which only two books are out, and I can’t exactly imagine how Rosaria Munda’s going to land this plane, given that the premise of the series to date is “everyone is a monster to someone, and good intentions will never be enough to protect you from that basic reality.” But I am interested to watch her try!

Fireborne is set a decade on from a revolution against the oppressive and hierarchical Dragon Lords were overthrown by a juster, merit-based system. Lee and Annie are two orphans (Annie orphaned by the old regime, Lee a son of the old regime) competing for the lead position among the dragonriders, at a time when the old regime is putting together its plans for a comeback. In this book, you generally have a sort of notion about which regime is the lesser of two evils — the Fireborne post-rebellion regime isn’t good, but they’re not like, actively setting whole towns on fire. (Usually.)

By the time Flamefall rolls around, though, Annie and Lee have become more completely folded into their governing system. The onset of war means that the cracks in the equality facade have begun to show, and Annie and Lee and their friends are, all too often, the people whose job it is to enforce their unjust systems. Where they’re able to push for change, they do it — but is that enough? It pretty clearly isn’t, yet they’re also keenly aware that the alternatives on the table are just as bad, and possibly worse.

I guess the reason I haven’t seen much buzz about this series is that not everyone gets super excited about the policy proposals of rebel groups, and I guess Winning is easy, young man; governing’s harder is a message that displeases more people than just a fiery young Alexander Hamilton. But if any of those things sound appealing to you, I really recommend this series. While it shares DNA in common with many of the stop-a-bad-regime YA novels out there, it’s miles more thoughtful than most of them, and I absolutely can’t wait to see how Rosaria Munda brings it to a close.

The Theft of Sunlight, Intisar Khanani

I ran out of time to do this, but for a while I had the idea of writing a holiday-themed post that was just a book recs list of books where family estrangement is Good and Fine, Actually. My sister got very enthusiastic about the idea and kept yelling book titles at me, and they were all good ones, but then I ran out of time. If I do ever write it (maybe for Easter! or, like, Fourth of July?), Intisar Khanani’s books will certainly feature.

The Theft of Sunlight is a companion novel to Thorn, centering on a young disabled woman called Rae who’s hired as lady’s maid to the young princess (Thorn from Thorn! I missed her!). Her secret mission is to find out all she can about the human traffickers who have been snatching children off the streets for years, while the crown denies that it’s happening at all. While this isn’t a sequel to Thorn, it does feature some of the characters we remember and love from that book, and it emphasizes again the absolute validity of Thorn’s decision to cut off contact with her family to the fullest extent she’s able to do so. Sometimes family estrangement is Good, Actually!

For her own part, Rae is a tenacious and — in true Intisar Khanani style — deeply moral heroine who’s determined to find out what’s going on in her city. On a more personal level, she’s also desperate to find her own missing sister. Along the way, she has to learn how to navigate the treacherous upper class of Menaiya, not to mention the dangers she faces as she begins to ask questions about the human traffickers that have plagued her country for years. The Theft of Sunlight is also notable for the fact that someone on the trail of a mystery actually thinks to comb through financial records — more bookkeeper allies for fantasy protagonists, please! Nothing pleases me more than a fantasy-world bookkeeper being like “hmm this is weird” while the protagonist is like WHAT WHAT.

The Chosen and the Beautiful, Nghi Vo

Gosh, okay, yeah, actually, I am suddenly unsure if The Space Between Worlds was my favorite book of this year, or if it was The Chosen and the Beautiful. It is, to be honest, a very fucking difficult call. I think I will simply decline to choose. The Chosen and the Beautiful is the queer, magical, Vietnamese American, Jordan Baker-POV retelling of The Great Gatsby that I did know I wanted but then also felt sure was going to fail to live up to my expectations for it.

LOL.

Not to overstate the case, but I suspect that any year Nghi Vo writes a book, my best-of-that-year post is going to contain a book by Nghi Vo. She has now written two novellas and one novel, this one, and her work has been so consistently, blazingly superb that it’s hard to believe The Chosen and the Beautiful is only her first novel. In some respects, it follows The Great Gatsby quite closely, except that there are lightly magical elements scattered throughout and, of course, it’s from Jordan Baker’s point of view rather than Nick Carraway’s. While I wouldn’t wish a pandemic publication year on any author, it feels particularly suitable for this book to have come out this year, at a time when so many of us are desperately wishing to have the space and freedom for some high-quality decadence; but also at the same time there is this looming, terrifying xenophobia and deep hostility towards people who are different. (Like, in this book, Jordan.)

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Upon finishing this book, I discovered within myself that it would never again be necessary for me to read The Great Gatsby. The Chosen and the Beautiful contains all of what I loved about The Great Gatsby — vibes; accidental homicide; terrific writing — while adding further layers of magic and social critique. Whew, I made myself want to reread it. I did that just now.

The Ones We’re Meant to Find, Joan He

I swear that at some point in 2021, I thought the thought “perhaps I have gone off YA” and then when I could not discover that to be true in my reading habits, I thought “perhaps I have gone off SFF YA and only love contemporary YA,” and that has been my working theory for a few months. In going back over my reading list for the year, though, I discover that a lot of my best reads this year have been YA. I cannot pinpoint any reason I might possibly have thought i was going off YA! YA is great, still! I am a silly bunny!

The Ones We’re Meant to Find is Joan He’s second YA novel, and it’s an absolute corker. It follows two girls in two different timelines. One of them, Cee, has been living alone on an island for three years, with no memories of her life before the island. All she knows is that she has a sister called Kay and she absolutely must find her. Worlds away, an isolated teenager called Kasey struggles with the disappearance of her sister Celia. Celia chafed against the restrictions placed on the residents of their eco-city, and then she took a boat out into the dangerous ocean waters and never came back. Missing her terribly and unwilling to accept that Celia is gone forever, Kasey sets herself on a path to find out the things about her sister she never knew.

As with The Space between Worlds, this is a book that doesn’t lend itself to plot summary, just because it’s constantly tossing in new wrinkles that radically alter the reader’s perception of what’s going on and what might come next. This type of book wears on its sleeve the fact that it has secrets to tell, but I was still unprepared for what the secrets would turn out to be. The Ones We’re Meant to Find is about sisters, as promised, but it also turns out to be telling a story about moral responsibility, corporate greed, and collective action. All this plus an ambiguous ending too! The dream!

The Startup Wife, Tahmina Anam

I am not 100% sure that The Startup Wife belongs on this list, in the sense that I don’t know if I’ll ever need to reread it (one of my main yardsticks when I’m determining what books to include in this sort of round-up). But I liked it so much more, and got so much more from it, than I expected, that I think it’s worth a shout-out. I am not the lady who goes around reading books about shitty rich people treating each other shittily! Just. You know. Sometimes there’s a good’un.

The protagonist of The Startup Wife, Asha, isn’t rich to start with. Instead she’s in a PhD program, part of a program that’s slated to alter the way we think about artificial intelligence. When she reconnects with her high school crush, Cyrus, her life takes a whole other turn. She teams up with Cyrus’s best friend Jules to create an app that will custom-design rituals (weddings, funerals, celebrations of new births) according to the specific interests and passions of the user. The idea is that humans have moved away from organized religion, but we still desperately need communal rituals. It’s a lovely idea. And at first, it’s an ideal partnership: Asha codes the algorithm, Cyrus is the idea man, and Jules handles the business side.

Asha starts to be sidelined a little bit, but of course that doesn’t have anything to do with malice. On the contrary! Cyrus doesn’t want to be the face of the organization. It’s just that because he has this unique, and uniquely weird, perspective on ritual, it’s his vision they’re selling with the app. Increasingly, Asha is pushed to the fringes of her own business, while Cyrus becomes more and more visible. Press coverage focuses on Cyrus and his ideas, while Asha — the power behind the algorithm that makes the app possible — is treated as a footnote.

Also, though, the app is starting to become kind of a cult. So. There’s that.

The Startup Wife reminded me why I keep trying to read books of this type. They always promise to be Saying Something about our culture and its prejudices and its hangups, but most often they just feel like a combination of praise ode and half-assed elegy to conspicuous consumption in late-stage capitalism. The Startup Wife, by contrast, truly is saying something about the need for human connection and the gifts that connection can give us and the dangers it can pose. I really really liked it, and I’m eager to see what this author does next.

And those are my top books for the year! Whether because of pandemic, because there was no new Locked Tomb book this year, or because I’m too pandemic-listless to really devote myself to books and reading, it was a slightly quiet year in books for me. But the standouts were so superb, so instantly guaranteed a permanent place on my bookshelf, that I can’t say I have anything to complain of.

What were your best reads this year? What should I make sure not to miss in 2022?

The post 2021 in Books appeared first on Reading the End.

The Theft of Sunlight is a companion novel to Thorn that doesn’t (in my opinion) require prior knowledge of Thorn in order to read it. It follows Rae, a country girl who comes to the royal court and becomes handmaiden to the new queen, Alyrra (Thorn from Thorn!). There she begins to learn how to navigate the treacherous world of the monarchy and aristocracy, all while trying to discover who or what is behind the epidemic of child-snatching that has been plaguing Menaiya. Determined to recover the lost children, or at least find answers for their families, Rae faces the dangers and intrigues the city has to offer — and the confusing, irritating charms of a thief called Bren.

Intisar Khanani’s trademark as a writer is “good girls trying their best.” I felt such affection for Rae almost immediately — she’s spent much of her life being told that she’s not good enough because of her clubfoot, and she is fiercely protective of her sister, who can do magic. (It is important that nobody finds this out, because Rae’s family doesn’t trust the Circle of Mages and doesn’t want them anywhere near Niya.) When she goes to court — initially to visit her cousin Melly, who has married up — she hopes to have the chance to push more powerful people into doing something about the child snatchers. She emphatically does not want to be the queen’s attendant. Like, at all. But she can’t pass up the opportunity to gain the ear of the queen, who (presumably) can pursue the child snatcher problem in a more organized way; so she agrees to this life that she knows will be hostile and unfamiliar to her. She is a good girl. I want the best for this good girl.

Like her past novels, The Theft of Sunlight has its fair share of darkness and moral ambiguity: not just the ever-present threat of the child-snatchers, but Rae’s own feeling that she is becoming morally compromised by staying at the court, by spending time with Bren and other members of the city’s underworld, by spending time following the queen around rather than pursuing the child snatchers. But there’s something tremendously comforting about Khanani’s writing, despite the darkness, and I think it has to do with her careful, weighty articulation of values.

“Bren. Would it have been all right if I angered you and you punched me instead?”

“No.” His voice is suddenly hard, brooking no argument.

“Then why is it fine if I punch you?”

He looks at me, and the silence spreads out between us until I feel like I’m drowning.

“You see,” I say, my voice hoarse in my throat.

“No,” he says again. “Rae, there are certainly times when a woman punching a man is an irredeemable act of violence. When she is stronger, or more vicious, and she uses her actions to abuse him. But that wasn’t what happened…. In a fight between you and me, I would always win. We both know that. So your hitting me — it’s a sign of trust, in its way, that you could lash out and know that I wouldn’t hurt you back. It wasn’t abuse.”

“You’re right. I knew you wouldn’t hurt me back.” It hadn’t even occurred to me. “That doesn’t change the fact that I wanted to hurt you.”

“And you’d do it again?”

“No.”

“Then it is not all that you are, and it doesn’t have to define you. It’s something you did, which you regret. It’s not actually you.”

I look at him, his words clicking together in my mind: that this is the difference between me and [spoiler character], for his is a practiced violence, and mine was a single act, regretted. That I am not the same as him, for all that I was willing to let my anger ride me as it does him. I am and can and will be different; I do not have to let this break me.

I’ve seen plenty of books where a female protagonist hits a guy character who’s not specifically her enemy, but rarely have I seen the characters exploring the moral implications of the act afterward. I just appreciated this conversation so much! Rae knows that hitting someone in anger isn’t in line with her values, and the book gives her the time to explore what that action does and doesn’t mean about her.

Trust and truth are major themes in The Theft of Sunlight. Along a vast number of axes, Rae doesn’t know whom she can trust: Who will reliably accommodate her disability? Who will tell her what she needs to know in order to be Alyrra’s attendant? Who can share information about the child snatchers without placing Rae or themselves in danger? Who will tell her the truth, and who will lie? And the answers are, nearly always, complicated. Coming from a background where she has been able — most of the time — to speak the truth herself and trust the truth of what others tell her, Rae struggles to adapt to her new environment, where everyone around her is keeping some secrets, and she is, too.

I would like, also, to shout out the fact that a big piece of solving the mystery is TAX RECORDS. This is going to sound like a joke, but I am genuinely so high on this fact. Like, that’s so real! Financial records genuinely and truly answer questions, and point up new avenues for exploration. The fact that Rae acquires a friend and ally in the tax office just made my heart sing.

The presence of enslavers looms large in this book, so I do want to address how that’s handled (as the presence of enslaved people in fantasy novels tends to make me nervous). Khanani notes in an endnote that what’s being depicted here is inspired by, and draws from the experiences of, modern-day human trafficking, rather than historical instances of slavery. Because this book is the first part of a duology, Rae doesn’t come out of it with all the answers, but it’s clear that the problem of child theft depends on … drumroll please… corporate greed! While I tend to get nervous about depictions of fantasy slavery, I really appreciated that the book and its protagonist never lose sight of the horror of what’s happening. Any time another (upper-class) character casts doubt on what’s happening, someone else is there to insist on the urgency of the problem.

As a small warning, The Theft of Sunlight ends on a hell of a cliffhanger! I was forewarned about this by Legal Sister, and I was glad to know in advance what to expect. It’s a wonderful book that made me feel warm inside, a classic YA adventure that will leave you wanting more.

Note: I received a review copy of The Theft of Sunlight from the publisher, for review consideration. This has not impacted my review.

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