September Book Recs
Hello readers!
It’s September, which means we’re headed into my favorite season, fall. I am not a huge fan of summer’s heat; I prefer a nice crisp breeze, and, I admit, pumpkin and various pumpkin-spice-flavored things (I do draw the line at pumpkin spice hummus, however.)
Anyhoo, we’re nearly 3/4 through the year (how’d that happen?!?) and while I don’t have any significant writing-related updates, I’ve read almost 70 books so far this year. So I figured, hey, why not share a few of my favorites! For this newsletter I’m focusing on books published in 2024. (Note: all my commentary is spoiler-free.)
Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi
Descriptions of the book state that Masquerade is “inspired by” the myths of Persephone and Hades, and reading the novel I could definitely see those bones. The book is set in historical West Africa, largely Yorùbáland. Despite the story’s mythical inspiration, the book is not fantasy; Sangoyomi has an excellent newsletter explaining why the book is historical fiction, which I highly recommend. Read it here: MASQUERADE is historical fiction. - O.O. Sangoyomi
This is a brilliant, gorgeous book with a strong feminist slant. So often while reading, I paused simply to enjoy the superb sentence structures. For me, pretty language can often elevate a lackluster plot, but even without the lovely wordsmithing I found the plot engaging as it highlights the complexities of the protagonist, Òdòdó. Her motivations shift over the course of the story from seeking safety, to love, and ultimately power with fluidity. The shocker of an ending is seeded early on, but still left me with a strong “!!!” reaction where I needed to pause and breathe a little, all the more so since the book is a standalone.
Anyway, ignore the tags from various booksellers claiming this is fantasy, read as the author intends, and prepare to be slain.
Someone to Build a Nest In by John Wiswell
In the short fiction SFF community Wiswell has garnered a well-deserved reputation for writing comforting fiction that depicts the best of what humans can offer each other. Someone to Build a Nest In is no different—even when the protagonist is a shapeshifting monster who needs to consume matter, whether the bones of a human or a metal bear trap, to have more physical structure than an amorphous goo pile. But once she’s got that, presto! The monster in question, Shesheshen, can look more or less like a human and avoid the monster hunters who want to kill her.
Shesheshen really just wants to find a person who will be a good parent to her progeny, providing the safe nest her eventual eggs can hatch out of. She finds this person in Homily, who comes from a monster-hunter family, and as Homily believes Shesheshen is a human, the story soon centers on their developing feelings for one another as well as how to protect your loved ones from those who’d do them harm, including yourself (as Shesheshen wants Homily to continue living and not be a host-parent-body for her young, since that’d, you know, kill her). But the book also brings up the question of who the real monsters are, and it’s handled adroitly and with compassion.
Asunder by Kerstin Hall
Having just finished this book a few days ago it’s freshest in my mind, and it has the rare distinction of making me want to immediately reread it so I can catch all the bits I missed the first time out. (But I had some library holds become available and so that reread will need to wait!)
Asunder’s worldbuilding is chewy in the best way. Some of the publisher’s marketing early on had used Witch King by Martha Wells as a comp, and Asunder does have the similar characteristic of not holding the reader’s hand as the story unfolds. After all, the protagonist, Karys, knows exactly how the mechanics work—or well, not everything, as her first significant magic-working on the page leads to a stranger getting attached to/basically put inside her shadow and she doesn’t know how to undo it, plus she also learns that when the two have only one body between them, it’s possible that the resultant fight over the body might lead to the two of them literally pulling her body in half. Whoops!
The book pulls in a lot of themes, from the desperation of the poor when the society around them fails to offer any care or support, to political fights over who gets to be a god, to the lack of care from god-like beings to their adherents. And it’s a very neat take on romance’s “forced proximity” trope. Like Masquerade, the ending here also left me slain, albeit slightly less so than Masquerade because in this case, Hall has said she’s working on a sequel.
Only it’s not contracted yet and thus begins my quest to have others read and adore this book so that Hall can publish said sequel and I can get my grabby hands all over it.
Quick Thoughts on “Horrormance”
Both Someone You Can Build a Nest In and Asunder qualify as horrormance, the portmanteau that appears to be the selected descriptor for books including both elements of horror and romance. I have some thinky thoughts I’m still puzzling out on why genres so ostensibly different from each other can meld well, and while I may at some point get together something more extensive, for now I’ll sum it up as this: both these genres, perhaps more than any others, have the goal of making the reader feel. That one wants to incite fear and the other warm fuzzies isn’t irrelevant, but the way the shifts from warm fuzzies to fear can play off each other and lead to deeper catharsis is, to me, hugely fascinating.
Is that a teaser for or commentary on my own work? Sortakindamaybe!
Till next time!
—Amanda