This was a nice reading month for me! Overall, I enjoyed the books that I read, and was able to get through several audiobooks while cleaning and organizing.
The Scum Villain's Self Saving System by Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù
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So, I believe you should read this after reading/ watching The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation and/or Heaven Official’s Blessing in order to fully appreciate some of the jokes, subversions of expectations, genre expectations, and recognize elements of those later books in her writing. That also being said, I think this book most succientally gives the message “It is easy to write 1 dimensional characters that appeal to everyone, as opposed to having complex characters that have terrible things done to them, and do terrible things in turn. It may not absolve them of what they’ve done, but it is more artistically interesting,” but some people are not ready for that conversation.
Anyways, this continues to amp up the “Absolute bonkers scale” and continues to be silly, fun, and absolutely broke my heart. I was not expecting to cry and yet I did it on multiple occasions.10/10.
We’re Here: The Best Queer Speculative Fiction of 2020
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It’s very rare for me to give five stars to an anthology, because there are always going to be some stories that are duds. However, this collection really lived up to its name! Nearly every story was a four or five star read. They were incredibly diverse in of queer identity, queer experiance, race, ethnicity, and genre. There was post-apocalyptic, fairy tale retelling, high fantasy, video games, and disturbing near future sci-fis. Some of my favorites are Escaping Dr. Madoff, The Ashes of Vivian Firestroke, Portrait of 3 Women with Owl, Rat and Finch are Friends, A Voyage to Queensthroat, 8-Bit Free-Will, The Wedding After the Bomb, Salt and Iron, and Monsters Never Leave You. I would recommend reading the entire collection, but you can also find these stories online on various websites.
However, as much as I loved all these stories, the only one I actively hated was Everquest. This story had disgusting descriptions that I found so revolting that it ruined the entire experience for me. Also, the main character was a trans woman who had some weird opinions on women which made me really uncomfortable.
Overall the direct representation in this book was roughly this: 43% of stories had sapphic characters, 6% had bisexual charchters, 31% had transgender charchters, 6% of stories had gay/ achillean charchters, 13% of stories had ambiguous queer charchters (where sexuality/ gender identity were not explicitly stated, and/or the characters were questioning) and 13% of stories had queer normative worlds with queer background charchters that were not love interests.
Overall, great reading experience, could not recommend this anthology more!
Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel
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I was super excited for this book, and was expecting to give it five stars, so when it was a four star, probably closer to a 3.75, that was disappointing. I gave it four stars, because I recognize my review is a bit more subjective than most of my reviews. I was in the mood for some high fantasy, preferably with some bloodthirsty, brutal, and angsty characters. Instead, I would compare this a lot to Circe, in which it's taking a look at often villainized female characters from mythology and exploring their depth, reasoning, and how a misogynistic history may have unfairly rendered them, and taking in deep consideration their experiences with motherhood. It’s also much more of a slow paced family/ political drama, with excellent prose. In summary, I should have done more research to find out that the battle/ combat scenes are sparse and not the focus. If I had done that bit more of research, read The Ramayana beforehand, and waited until I was in the mood to read this, I would probably have enjoyed this more.
Yona of the Dawn by Kusanagi Mizuho
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This was short, it was entertaining, I don’t have much to say. The art felt kind of dated, but the story still managed to make me laugh, punch me in the gut, and set up an interesting premise. I might continue, I might not, it will depend if I’m in the mood for it.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
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I definitely see why this book has a low rating. It is boring at times, and has the typical Victorian superfluous writing. However, that writing style definitely worked towards the story's advantage multiple times, when the narrator’s overly complicated and sometimes contradictory thoughts which help the theory that she’s making everything up and there are no ghosts. Additionally, if you're interested in Victorian ghost stories, horror, and the Aesthetic movement. I recognize the pioneering use of an unreliable narrator and creepy children used in a horror novel that would later become more popular. Additionally, Henry James is considered the founder of Aestheticism which deeply influenced late 1800’s British culture, including Oscar Wilde, Vernon Lee, Walter Pater and other influential writers of the time. The tension between the unnatural perfection and beauty of the children. and the possibility of wickedness and depict juxtaposed together very well. You can definitely observe the elements of aestheticism in the description of the children’s beauty, and the prevailing fear and obsession because of it, which you can see in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde and “Hauntings” by Vernon Lee.
So, in conclusion I would not recommend this book to the casual reader who just wants a good scary story. Instead, I would recommend it to people who are during research into Victorian ghost stories in literature, and/or people who are interested in the aesthetic movement and some of their early/ prominent writers.
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
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AHHHHHHH. This was so good! As you can tell from the title, this isn’t about solving a murder, as it is about helping cover up for a murder, and looking at the narrator’s psyche as she grapples with the guilt and how far she will go to cover up for her sister’s crimes. It’s an emotionally messy story, and I definitely understood why the narrator both wanted her sister to stop, without her being arrested. I had a lot of fun and enjoyment while listening to this, and the prose, style, and short chapters all made for a very compelling read.
The Thousand Crimes of Ming Tsu by Tom Lin
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I have no idea how to feel about this book but it was overall positive? Imagine if everyone is in a diverse revenge Western with a magic circus and everyone is talking like they’re from Shakespeare. I’m not 100% sure what happened in the end there, but I enjoyed it.
My reading month kind of spiraled off the rails at the end there, because I’m not sure how to feel about several of those books, but that's fine. I did read a book on my DNF shelf, a classic, two 2022 books I had been anticipating, and several five star reads. That makes me feel very satisfied! Well, I hope you enjoyed this post, bye!
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