That's...better? More like it? I read significantly less this month not least because my insomnia, no better, has made my attention span what we in the industry call "hot fuckin garbage." Let's get started.

Playing for Keeps - Mur Lafferty

I think I read this book almost every year. Talk about a comfort read: it's one of those capepunk-ish "the superheroes aren't heroic" stories, like Hench or The Boys or even beloved film masterpiece Mystery Men (1999). Nothing groundbreaking. Nothing astonishing. But warm and easy and with a weird rushed ending I adore.

Network Effect / System Collapse - Martha Wells

“Be safe, SecUnit,” she said. I don’t know how to respond when humans say that. It was always my job to get hurt.

Look, I'm not gonna evangelize these fuckin books. There is a wave of let's say unrest with the most recent one, at least in the reviews I didn't manage to avoid, and to those people I say, "welcome to a series with characters who grow and change."

The Genesis of Misery - Neon Yang

This is a homecoming: from the stars we are born, to the stars we return. Zie is archangel and the archangel is zie.

If you don't find "magical sci fi even more explicitly queer Joan of Arc retelling" appealing, I don't know what to tell you.

The Devil Takes You Home - Gabino Iglesias

Viewed from the border itself, the conflict is not between two countries; it’s an argument between neighbors that occupy the same land but don’t share the same privileges, and it’s an argument often policed by people who don’t even live anywhere near that neighborhood.

This was very good, for all it took me ages to finish. Trafficking and the death of a child and also monsters and also a long-running vicious rage. All good things.

The Spear Cuts Through Water - Simon Jimenez

“They fought for nothing, which is why you see yourself in them.”

So the thing is that I accidentally read several books this month in which it's a queer story largely about the gods and destiny and faith and fate and this was one of them, probably my favorite for all it took me a hot minute to get into it. Just utterly and devastatingly beautiful.

The First Sister - Linden A. Lewis

I swallowed his words with all of the hope that only a girl who has nothing can. Why would he lie to me, I thought then, when I have given him everything he wants, a silent, obedient companion, and asked for nothing in return?

This is another of those. I again took a bit to really get into this, but found that it was, unfortunately, exactly my shit. There's a whole entire character whose name might as well be "hey Sara here's your fucked up lil guy who uses violence to make his place in the world because he believes it to be the only thing he is capable of and oh yeah the locus of his identity and morality is not only utterly external but also has betrayed him so like. have fun!"

The Dawnhounds - Sascha Stronach

She’d refused to sleep with one ratty man five hundred years ago and was still paying for it. Woe is me, my dick goeth unsucked, it must be the actual end of the world.

As is this one. Like. This is a murder mystery? Sort of? But also it's about oppressive regimes and gods, and prophecies and rebellions, and love and hurt and tea. It's very much about death, too. All the good ones are.

Black Water Sister - Zen Cho

“You can bargain with anybody, spirit or human. All you need to know is what do they want and what are they scared of. That's all.”

Hey gang, so is this one. I don't know what to tell you. Maybe more modern-wise but very much the story still about gods and fate and memory, about what we choose to do with the stories that get placed in our head and about fear. Good god, the whole fuckin' book was about fear, and I just!

I read more new-to-me books this month than usual, and I enjoyed every single one, and they were not all about gods stuck in the minds of queer people who have to then navigate their rage and pain and the world around them with this god (or ghost or delusion or all of the above) watching and listening and talking and pushing them.

Which. Not a bad way to take the second month. Keep your wits about you, pals.

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