The Earth is...Not a Good Place?
Review: Litany For A Broken World by LJ Cohen
Multiverse books are often hard to write and this one is a multiverse in more ways than one.
The book centers around an interdicted reality, one to which you can travel but which you can't leave. The Multiverse Traveler Network refers to it as Earth. Whether it's our Earth is left unclear.
It also centers around Boston...and this is not the shining Boston. This is the Boston inhabited by the addicted and the unhoused. Melissa is helping Stirling count homeless people while Jay travels looking for answers to the MTN...which are not the good guys and others chase him down.
Reina, Jay's daughter, is the only third generation Traveler, but she doesn't travel in the normal way. She tends to not take her body with her...so getting home is rather important.
And getting out comes before getting home.
This Earth is a shithole, too...can it be saved?
This is an interesting exploration of the trope, but is also very much a novel about pain. About grief. About mental illness. About society not wanting you...and what kind of society the unwanted build.
I enjoyed it, but it's not always a pleasant or easy read.
Review: Faylinn: The Cup of the Sidhe by Rachel Salten
CW: Rowling-style goblins
And should I put in a CW for mangling faerie lore completely? Faylinn is best seen as a fantasy world accessed through a portal, not a version of fairyland. For example, our human protagonists have no issues related to eating fairy food (other than not liking it).
At the very least, Salten's young protagonists (this is a MG book, but long for MG) act their age and the parents are got out of the way in a more interesting way than normal.
However, I still hesitate to recommend this book. First of all, Salten uses the g-y word as, basically, a synonym for witch, intended as an adult. It's 2025. I don't give as much grace to Americans as I used to for not knowing that word is a racial slur.
But the bigger issue is the goblins, which are exactly like Rowling's. And again, it's 2025. Salten may well not know this is an antisemitic stereotype, but she kind of should.
Unfortunately, these problems really impacted my enjoyment of what was otherwise a pretty neat MG quest fantasy. I'd have loved it at that age...especially as I wouldn't have known about the goblins. Would still have side-eyed her for that word, though.
So...my honest review is this should have been a decent book, and I'd let the knowing nothing about faerie part pass. But I can't let the other stuff pass.
Of course, YMMV on all of this.