"Our eyes meet. I think she might blush. She pulls her hand back. Are we having a moment over a plate of cheese, or am I merely wishing we were having"Our eyes meet. I think she might blush. She pulls her hand back. Are we having a moment over a plate of cheese, or am I merely wishing we were having a moment over a plate of cheese? This is agony. I want to stay in this room with her forever."
Do you like queer sci-fi, murder mysteries, and space operas? Do you like The Penumbra Podcast, Gideon the Ninth, and Six of Crows? This is the book for you.
Stars, Hide Your Fires is a queer, sci-fi, royalty-themed murder mystery/heist, and it's exactly as much fun as it sounds. This book was a really engrossing read, the pace was excellent, and the characters were so loveable and well thought-out. I think what Best does exceptionally well in this book is creates a completely unique fantasy/sci-fi universe, without it being overly complicated. I know it's a slightly unpopular opinion, but I always tend to stay away from high fantasy and sci-fi books that have universes and lore that are too complex, because I'm focused more on trying to understand how the book's universe works than on the actual plot. But Best introduces this familiar hierarchical monarchy-style political structure with some of the most interesting queer-normative societal rules I've ever seen.
This book is unashamedly queer, and god, I love fantasy/sci-fi books where queerness isn't necessarily a revelation, but it's simply the norm. From the use of pronoun-indicating beads to certain speech conditions, Best creates a world where gender nonconformity is the norm, and even the most despicable, unlikeable characters are apart of that system. There's no queerphobia or homophobia to be seen, and it's refreshing to have that in a book.
Aside from that, while Stars, Hide Your Fires doesn't have the most unique overarching plot in the world, it's the little things that make all of the difference. Introducing the Voyria as an intergalactic terrorist group, before slowly starting to subvert expectations and switching perspectives? Amazing. Little hints about Cass's past and her mother? Genius. The enemies to co-workers to friends to lovers trope between Cass and Amaris? So much fun. And that's coming from someone who doesn't tend to like romance as a genre in general.
My only criticisms of Stars, Hide Your Fires are that, one, the ending felt a little bit rushed. Everything that happened in the last 50 pages could've easily been spread out across another 100 or 150, and would've felt a bit more natural. My only other issue here was that (no spoilers, of course), well, I saw the twist coming from a miles away. It wasn't exactly a big shock for how this book ended, and I would've liked to have been a little bit more surprised, but maybe other people had that experience and I just didn't. Still though, the murder mystery plot wrapped up really nicely, and I absolutely flew through the last third of this book.
All in all, Stars, Hide Your Fires was an absolute pleasure and joy to read, and I'd recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat. I'm genuinely amazed that this is Best's debut novel, and you can tell she has experience with audio dramas and fiction podcasts. 10/10, one of my favourite books of 2023....more
"Whenever I see you with your pixies, I am reminded of psychopomps, who guide souls into the underworld. You as their master makes you more of a Hades"Whenever I see you with your pixies, I am reminded of psychopomps, who guide souls into the underworld. You as their master makes you more of a Hades than I am; though I am not sure if I fit the part of Persephone very well. Pomegranate seeds always get stuck in my teeth."
Lots of thoughts and feelings about this one, so bear with me! I'm just going to get some of the iffy things about this book out of the way first, but I swear, this review will get better.
The first thing I wanted to unpack about Prince of the Sorrows, especially for any potential future readers, is the content warnings. Graves lists them in the front of the book (so glad indie authors do this, all authors should do this), but not all of them are equally weighted. Yes, there are warnings for mental and physical abuse, bullying, and torture (amid more general warnings like crude language and death), but I really wasn't quite prepared for this book's cruelty. No spoilers, of course, but what's most important here is that beantighes (humans) are subservient to fey in this world. They're bullied, abused, pushed around, basically slaves to the fey - but it can get brutal, sometimes. Yes, you have the occasional fey shoving a beantighe to the floor, but you also have beantighes getting their bones broken as punishment for disobedience, or having words carved into their backs, or not being allowed to have their wounds treated. There is such a harsh, abusive dynamic between the fey and the beantighes, and if you're not prepared for that going into this book, it's a little upsetting in some places.
Piggybacking off of that, our main couple in this book is Saffron (our MC beantighe) and Cylvan (high fey). Naturally, because of this, there is a really unbalanced power dynamic. That gets better the more Saffron and Cylvan connect, but at the start of their relationship? Cylvan does some seriously fucked up stuff. [BRIEF SPOILER STARTS HERE] I think what bothered me throughout this book is a scene early on when Saffron is with Cylvan at a fey party, and Cylvan and Saffron have this really intimate dynamic between them. It's great, it's intense, it's fun, love it; and then, Cylvan completely knowingly and non-consensually drugs Saffron in a room full of fey who could use, abuse, and kill him, for no other reason than Cylvan thinks it's funny. It's really not addressed later on, and becomes minimal to the plot, but that one really got under my skin. [BRIEF SPOILER ENDS HERE.]
Throughout this entire book, I just feel like Cylvan is so wrapped up in his own problems (and don't get me wrong, he has some really awful shit of his own to deal with) that he doesn't even spare a thought for the power dynamic between him and Saffron. Saffron is getting abused and tortured for simply being a beantighe, and even when Cylvan helps him, it's always momentary, not something in the long run. He never stands up for Saffron, never tries to help him, never tries to make Saffron's life even remotely easier; meanwhile, Saffron is enduring abuse from not just fey, but the abusive fey lord that has an obsessive fixation on him, while navigating beantighes being murdered and their deaths not being cared about, and he's taking all of Cylvan's emotional labour on, too, without being given the same courtesy in return. Saffron is carrying the entire world on his shoulders, and not being given any support in return from his love interest.
TL;DR, if things like severe abuse, particularly domestic abuse, or unbalanced power dynamics can be a trigger for you, tread lightly with Prince of the Sorrows.
Now, all of this being said - did I still love this book? Absolutely I did. I put off finishing it for nearly a week because I was just so sad to have to step out of the world, even though I know there are more books in this series (which, thank god for that, because I haven't had a book leave me on a cliffhanger like this in literal years).
Graves is a singularly talented writer, and the way they write fantasy is absolutely beautiful. Their descriptions are vivid, their worldbuilding is spectacular, and the plot twists had me genuinely gasping out loud. I was so sure I knew where things were going, but then there were two gut-punch twists, and I had to set my book down for a hot second. I love it when books can surprise me like that.
What I adore most about Prince of the Sorrows, however, is Graves's characters. They give such careful attention to their characters, and give them such distinct details that aren't necessarily plot-relevant, but still add so much to who these characters are. For me, the details I loved the most were Cylvan's allergies and Saffron's illiteracy, two things that the plot of Prince of the Sorrows don't hinge on, but knowing those facts about Cylvan and Saffron make them so much more intriguing. Cylvan's allergies, which we learn about early on, give him a vulnerability: there are things that he can't control in his life, and if he doesn't watch out for them, he can die. Meanwhile, Saffron's illiteracy could be a point of vulnerability which make him feel less-than, but really, Saffron takes it as a challenge. His determination to learn to read tells you everything about his drive and his thirst for knowledge, and how something he is teased for doesn't stop him. It's little things like that that make characters come alive, that make them complicated and interesting, and that make you feel more attached to them. I would be lying if I said I haven't gotten a little teary-eyed just thinking about Saffron, sometimes. I love him very dearly.
Absolutely I'm going to read the rest of the Rowan Blood series - it's just a matter of finding out if I need to wait for Rainbow Crate editions of the others to match my Prince of the Sorrows! Without a doubt, Prince of the Sorrows is a book that you will get incredibly emotionally invested in, either for better or worse....more
"I called and the light answered. It surrounded me, blazing with heat, more powerful and more pure than ever before because it was all mine. I wanted "I called and the light answered. It surrounded me, blazing with heat, more powerful and more pure than ever before because it was all mine. I wanted to laugh, to sing, to shout. At least, there was something that belonged wholly and completely to me."
Oh, boy, this book was quintessential 2010s YA fantasy series, huh? First-person, 'chosen one' girl POV forced into a love triangle between two incredibly mediocre, if not outright terrible men? Oof. I went into Shadow and Bone knowing full well this was something I would've read (and adored) in high school, and I know hindsight is always 20/20, but I think that there was just so squandered much potential in this book.
First off, sorry, this love triangle sucks. Not just because both Mal (the childhood best friend who doesn't deserve Alina) and the Darkling (the man who sold Genya into sexual slavery and spent the rest of the book making a literal collared slave out of Alina) are awful love interests, but because there was so much room for there to be no romance whatsoever. Part of Alina's whole storyline in suddenly finding out she's Grisha is about personal power, about her abilities and her capabilities not being tied to anyone other than herself, let alone a man. But she's always either one-hundred-percent relying on Mal, or relying on the Darkling, and those scenes of 'I'm coming into my own power' are dented and damaged by how quickly she'll sacrifice all of that power to kiss a boy. Fine, yes, she's a teenager, and fine, yes, this book is written for teenagers, but still.
My other thing with Shadow and Bone is that I really didn't like that it was written in first-person. I think there's definitely a time and place for first-person POV in books, but in the case of Shadow and Bone, it was detrimental to the story. There is so much going on around Alina - a literal entire war, Mal trekking into Tsibeya to hunt down the stag - that she doesn't actually witness first-hand, and because she doesn't, we're missing out as readers on critical parts of the story. I would've much rather read about whatever Zoya's deal is or what Genya is enduring because of the Darkling than a hundred sustained pages of Alina's daily routine at The Little Palace. This book would've been so much more interesting if it switched perspectives, or even just followed any of the other characters for a few chapters: but in the end, we just get hundreds of pages of Alina's get-ready-with-me routine, and so, so, so many pages just about travelling. We get it. Tsibeya is far away from Os Alta. Move on.
What I really did love about Shadow and Bone, though, is that Leigh Bardugo has created some really interesting and unique fantasy elements, here. The whole idea of Grisha is really fascinating, and it's written in a way that doesn't make you feel overwhelmed. I often stay away from adult high fantasy novels because they're so enriched in new-world lore without explaining it in layman's terms that it's just exhausting to spend time learning about how an entirely different universe works. But Shadow and Bone is written so that you understand the equivalences to our own world, while still constructing something unique. I also really enjoyed that the different countries in the Grishaverse take cultures and languages from our own world (Ravka being Russia, Kerch being Germany, Fjerda being Scandinavian, etc.), and molding it into something more fantastical.
Now, I've already read the Six of Crows duology (fav books of all time), and I found Bardugo's writing style to be a lot more descriptive and in-depth in the duology than in Shadow and Bone. I think it just took Bardugo some time to settle into the Grishaverse and to find her footing with how she wanted to write this universe, but honestly, I think Six of Crows just proved how much more effective a third-person POV vs. a first-person for this world. There's too much going on to just see one person's perspective.
Still, I'm going to read the rest of the Grishaverse if it kills me, so onto Siege and Storm!...more
"The knowledge that they might never see each other again, that some of them - maybe all of them - might not survive this night hung heavy in the air."The knowledge that they might never see each other again, that some of them - maybe all of them - might not survive this night hung heavy in the air. A gambler, a convict, a wayward son, a lost Grisha, a Suli girl who had become a killer, a boy from the Barrel who had become something worse."
This was my first Bardugo book, and my first entrance into the Grishaverse, and it was so, so, so fucking good. I get why all the youth on TikTok are really into Six of Crows, because whatever hype you've heard about it, it meets those expectations. No, exceeds those expectations.
Considering that this is considered a YA book (which I have mixed feelings about, but that's where you'll find it in a bookstore regardless), Bardugo fleshes out some of the most intricate, detailed, and complicated characters I've ever seen in any work of fiction. What Six of Crows does really well is gives you a cast of heroes who aren't heroes at all; protagonists who are likeable, but sometimes, not necessarily the good guys; characters who are very real, who have good traits, but who have openly bad traits, too. Misfit, found-family stories are always a favourite, but this is what I mean when I say I want a motley crew: everyone is so entirely unique, so different, and has such a distinct personality that seeing them all work together should be nothing but a chaotic mess, but instead, it works. Every single character in Six of Crows has a completely unique relationship with every other character, and there's always layers to their interactions. There's never anything as reductive as "x and y are in love," or "y and z are enemies" - much like in real life, no one's connection to anyone else is purely black and white. Real-life relationships are intricate and messy, and so too are the relationships in Six of Crows.
Bardugo's writing style was genuinely impressive to me, especially for a YA author. That's not a dig at YA authors - I love YA, especially YA horror. But writing for teens can be difficult, because there's a need to use language that doesn't skew too simple or too infantilizing, while finding a way to tell a story that doesn't become so dark or complex it becomes adult. Six of Crows is an easy read, but it's immaculate, detailed, and has some absolutely beautiful lines and descriptions. Bardugo knows how to give clear, descriptive images of her world, without spending too much time on any one thing to keep the reader's interest. Really, Bardugo's writing style alone has convinced me to try the rest of the Grishaverse after I finish Crooked Kingdom, even though I don't have a particular interest in Alina's story.
My only concessions with Six of Crows are pacing and dark content. With pacing, yes, I think every chapter and every scene moves along well, but it takes more than half of Six of Crows for the Crows to even step foot in the Ice Court, and I think the set-up just dragged on a little bit too long. Content-wise, I can't really blame Bardugo for this, so much as I blame how female fantasy authors are treated: I really don't think Six of Crows should be a teen novel, because damn, this series gets dark sometimes. There's gore (even though I absolutely love the scene of Kaz ripping a man's eye out, I think it's genuinely important to show the blunt brutality that he's capable of), and at length, there's discussions of child sex trafficking, sexual assault, and rape. I'm not saying that Inej should've had a different backstory (in fact, I think seeing her journey from being sold in the slave trade to rediscovering what personal autonomy means for her is an incredibly important story to tell), but to have that sort of thing shelved alongside books meant for anyone 13 and over is a little questionable. I had this discussion with a friend, and we talked about how Six of Crows and some of Bardugo's other Grishaverse books likely could've been intended as adult novels, but publishers push female fantasy authors to write YA instead, because they think it'll be more profitable. You see the sort of hatred Sarah J. Maas gets from rabid sexists, and there's a reason that so many female adult fantasy authors go by acronyms of their names (V.E. Schwab, R.F. Kuang, S. A. Chakraborty).
Anyway, that really doesn't have anything to do with Six of Crows itself, but that was definitely something nagging on my mind while I read this. I'm so immensely excited to read Crooked Kingdom, and even though I probably should've read Six of Crows a long time ago, I'm glad I didn't, because the cliffhanger at the end would've killed me. Bardugo knows how to tell a good story, but as equally important? She knows how to leave you wanting more....more
"Crowded houses rarely make themselves known to strangers. They waited, courting their regular occupiers with budding tension and tested boundaries. C"Crowded houses rarely make themselves known to strangers. They waited, courting their regular occupiers with budding tension and tested boundaries. Colin hadn't earned his place yet, but he typically didn't have to: haunted places never failed to recognize haunted people."
Fuck. Me.
Do you ever read a book that you know will stick with you forever? The kind of book that you'll return to once a year, every year? That's Heart, Haunt, Havoc. The blurb on the back cover doesn't even begin to do Moon's writing justice, and whatever fun little queer horror story you think you've signed on for, it's so much more than that. It's so much deeper, so much more substantial, so much more beautiful.
This is my first time reading any of Freydís Moon's writing (and it certainly won't be my last), but I'm quite literally in awe that this book wasn't put out by a major publisher, and that Moon isn't a bestselling author. Their writing style is completely unlike anything I've ever read before: it's beautiful, it's haunting, and it's intricate, without sacrificing realism or character tone. When you have an author so good with description, the dialogue can often suffer in comparison, but that isn't the case for this book. Really, there isn't a single weak part of Heart, Haunt, Havoc.
I'm typically a little bit wary of shorter books (anything under 200ish), because I think it's genuinely difficult to do a short book/novella well. It's either too fleshed-out and felt too short, or it's too brief, and didn't give the reader time to sink into the world of the story. Heart, Haunt, Havoc was exactly the length it should've been - though, well, Moon could've made this book 900 pages, and I still would've read it cover to the cover, but that's not the point. Reading this felt like watching a favourite television series come to an end when the writers felt like the story had run its course: they put exactly what they wanted to out into the world, and didn't stretch things insufferably long to get a few extra bucks. Moon knows exactly what they're doing with writing The Gideon Testaments, and I'm so immensely fucked up over it.
On top of all of this, the queerness in this book is so beautiful. This book is horror, is haunting, is broken people having suffered through unimaginable trauma, but it's still beautiful, in the both the breaking and the healing. Honestly, maybe the bar has been set low for me in the horror genre, but it's nice that even the demons in this book use people's correct pronouns.
I'm so glad I read this book on the heels of Wolf, Willow, Witch's release, because this series has so much incredible potential, and Moon could make a thirty-book series if they wanted to, and I'd read every single volume. Reading Heart, Haunt, Havoc was a genuinely moving, profound experience, and I wish Freydís Moon all of the success that they deserve....more
"The thing about Shakespeare is, he's so eloquent... He speaks the unspeakable. He turns grief and triumph and rapture and rage into words, into somet"The thing about Shakespeare is, he's so eloquent... He speaks the unspeakable. He turns grief and triumph and rapture and rage into words, into something we can understand. He renders the whole mystery of humanity comprehensible. You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough."
Wow. I can't believe BookTok was actually right about this one.
If We Were Villains is not only a love letter to Shakespeare, but I think in a lot of ways, an exact, modern translation of Shakespeare's work. There are so many facets to it: you have the obvious, of course, being that our main characters are all specifically studying and embodying Shakespeare's works for their academic career; you have the language in which they speak to each other, which is not Old English, but rather Shakespearian exactly, communicating through references and lines across all of Shakespeare's work; you have the overall plot and theme of the book, which is, of course, a Shakespeare play reincarnated. But what I think is most remarkable about Rio's writing is that, as both an actor and an academic, Rio truly understands Shakespeare's significance. Shakespeare gets a bad rap because, completely fairly, high school curriculums beat the Bard into the ground. Everyone has to learn a new set of linguistics while trying to identify with characters and plots from hundreds of years ago, and it's more torture than education.
But what I think the most important thing about Shakespeare is, which lower education curriculums gloss over, is that Shakespeare wrote his plays for the common man. We consider Shakespeare to be high art now, yes, but back in his day, he wrote things that average, uneducated commoners really enjoyed. Studying Shakespeare now should be an analysis on timeless themes, on common slang and updated parallels, and that's exactly what If We Were Villains gives us. Rio takes lines from Shakespeare's plays as homages, and sets this book with Shakespeare's works as colour and parallel, while still getting across everything Shakespeare himself set to get across with his own tragedies. Yes, I won't deny that If We Were Villains is infinitely more enjoyable if you're already a Shakespeare fan, but even if you aren't, I genuinely think this book teaches Shakespeare more succinctly than any high school course ever will.
On top of that, something else I loved about If We Were Villains is the way the book is formatted. You could replace the 'Scenes' and 'Acts' with chapters and parts easily, but it's just one of those little things to help you become more consumed by the world Rio is creating. The way dialogue is phrased, the back-and-forth between modern English and Shakespearian in the same conversation, it's all such amazing worldbuilding, and I'm still in awe.
If We Were Villains was, for me, one of those rare, unputdownable books. The 'just one more chapter' trend rarely resonates with me simply because I have a short attention span and generally can't read more than 50 pages in one sitting, but there were days I did 100 pages at once because I couldn't bear to stop reading. Also, just to touch briefly on it, If We Were Villains has one of the best endings to any book I've ever read. I won't spoil it, of course, but the last page is what separates If We Were Villains from being a Shakespeare retelling - that subversion of expectations, that shock, that tragedy and that hope all wrapped up in one? It's entirely unique. I would read another ten books in a series set in this world, but at the same time, I think that I like leaving If We Were Villains were it lays. Some endings are best left to the imagination.
My one issue with this book - which isn't even really an issue, so much as something I'm going back and forth on a lot - is the queer representation. [SPOILERS START HERE.] Right off the bat, you have Alexander as an openly gay character, which is great. I have no issues with Aleksander, or Colin, or any of the canonically, openly queer characters. Where I start to wonder is when it comes to Oliver and James's relationship. I go back and forth on this, because I think there's a very fine line that separates homoeroticism and yearning, and queerbaiting. Oliver loves James, and James loves Oliver, that much is obvious, because Oliver says as much - and yet, there's something about the way If We Were Villains frames their relationship that makes it seem like one of those 'in a thousand years, historians will call them really good friends' kind of way. I go back and forth on this because on one hand, a character doesn't need to come out as queer in order to be in love with someone of the same sex. The feelings aren't in the saying of the word. That, combined with Rio's homages to Shakespeare's plays - which are fraught with homoeroticism and queer readings - make it feasibly clever that Rio wants to replicate those readings with how she wrote Oliver and James. On the other hand, however, Oliver and James's relationship isn't treated like any other relationship in this book (the rest of which are heterosexual), and it shows. It feels at times like a 2000s TV show: we want these characters to be gay, but censors and critics won't let us do it, so we'll just have to allude to stuff in such a way that we have plausible deniability if it gets called out. Clearly, queerness isn't an issue in-world, because Alexander is out and open, and there's zero homophobia in this book - so what, then? Even James and Oliver's kiss tiptoes around 'brotherly.' I struggle a lot with the queerness in If We Were Villains, but that didn't take away from my enjoyment of the text in the slightest. [SPOILERS END HERE]
All in all, If We Were Villains is easily one of my favourite books of 2023, if not of all-time. What a worthwhile, fulfilling, and engaging book. BookTok actually had my back on this one. ...more
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