Review: Geek Actually, Episodes One and Two

Review copies provided by the publisher.

GEEK ACTUALLY is the first general fiction offering from Serial Box, my favourite purveyor of episodic fiction. Pitched as “SEX AND THE CITY for the modern geek girl,” it follows five diverse women as they navigate life in general and geekdom in specific.

Michelle is an editor at a prestigious SFF publisher. Aditi is a fantasy writer with the potential to become a superstar. Taneesha’s a badass developer at a game company. Christina’s a production assistant on a post-apocalyptic TV show. And Elli is an uber-talented cosplayer with zero interested in life beyond fandom.

Writers Cathy Yardley, Melissa Blue, Rachel Stuhler, and Cecelia Tan launched the serial last week with its premiere episode, “WTF.” The second episode, “The Invisible Woman,” dropped this past Wednesday.

Serial Box kindly gave me the first four episodes to preview, and it was all I could do not to tear through them in one go. I had an especially hard time pausing after “The Invisible Woman” so I could write this intro-to-the-series post without letting my thoughts on the subsequent episodes creep in.

Because this is great stuff, people. I’m excited.

Review: Simon Vs the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli

I had no choice but to read Becky Albertalli’s debut novel, SIMON VS THE HOMO SAPIENS AGENDA [Amazon | Scribd], in two sittings. (It would’ve been one, but I was too sleepy to keep going.) It won my love right from the first line, and kept on earning it as it took me deep into every facet of Simon’s wonderful, difficult, hopeful, beautiful life.

It will be on my Best of 2016 list. I’ll tell you that for free, spoilers for future posts be damned.

I loved it so much, and on such a visceral level, that I want to rant about it to the rooftops without the limitations of coherence, so we’re gonna take the short, gushy, ungrammatical route:

Review: The Bourbon Thief by Tiffany Reisz

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

Cooper McQueen is pretty damned miffed when his gorgeous one-night stand tries to make off with his million-dollar bottle of bourbon. He’s even more incensed when the woman, Paris, insists the bourbon rightfully belongs to her, as he’ll soon acknowledge if he listens to her story. Hearing her out beats involving the police, so McQueen reluctantly agrees--and soon finds himself immersed in a torrid tale of secrets and lies steeped in the best bourbon Kentucky has ever produced.

THE BOURBON THIEF [Amazon | The Book Depository] is Tiffany Reisz’s first full-length work outside the Original Sinners series. It’s not erotica (though there are certainly sexy times herein), but in every other way it offers up all the goodness Reisz’s fans have come to expect from her books.

The most important of these, and the one I revelled in as I read, is the feel. Reisz’s style is the perfect fusion of Jackie Collins and vintage Anne Rice (assuming we're talking Rice’s pure historical novels, rather than her vampiric and witchly offerings). Shit gets wild here, y’all. Reisz has zero interest in nurturing cliches or placing limits on plot or character. Reading her is like exploring a long-abandoned chateau in the heart of a reclaimed swamp; ie, it's dark, terrifying, beautiful, and irresistible. You know there’s always more to discover, and you can’t wait to poke into every nook.

Fair warning: you’ll probably never find your way out again. Once you’ve had one Reisz, you want more and more and more and more.

Review: Status Update by Annabeth Albert

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

Noah Walters is exactly happy in the closet, but he’s not about to mess up his life as a field archaeologist and tenure track professor at a conservative Christian college for the sake of a little action. Abstinence seems like the best route all around, but it gets a whole lot harder when an oh-so-attractive game designer turns up on his RV’s doorstep.

Adrian trusted the wrong guy, and now he’s stranded in a Utah campground with no way home for Thanksgiving unless he throws himself on his mother’s well-meaning (if judgmental) mercy. Noah tells himself he only agrees to drive Adrian to save him that indignity--and okay, maybe to score exclusive access to the hot new game Adrian’s working on--but as the miles tick by he begins to wonder whether Adrian could be worth the risk to his carefully planned future.

OMG THIS BOOK IS SO AWESOME.

LIKE, SERIOUSLY, SERIOUSLY AWESOME.

At least part of my intense, must-tell-everyone response to STATUS UPDATE [Amazon] comes down to timing. I don’t read nearly enough romance these days, and I happened to open this particuar example just as my craving for the stuff reached its peak. Most of it, though, is down to Annabeth Albert’s fabulous feel for relationship dynamics and interest in the sort of details that render her protagonists in sharp relief.

Review: The Queen by Tiffany Reisz

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

You’ve read THE SIREN, yes? The first book in Tiffany Reisz’s Original sinners series?

If not, you’ll do best to make for your local library or bookstore and grab yourself a copy well before you approach THE QUEEN. This particular book is the eighth and final volume in the series, and you’ll experience 98% less confusion if you've already read the seven that go before it.

I know, I know. It’s a lot of homework, but it’s good homework and you’ll have a blast with it--unless you object to kinky, character-driven erotica with a strong religious component, in which case you’re probably best off reading something else.

If sexy times and religious discussion sounds awesome to you, though, you’ve gotta get your hands on this series. Let me explain the appeal of this final volume, sans spoilers for the earlier books.

THE QUEEN [Amazon | The Book Depository] is a direct sequel to THE VIRGIN and picks up shortly after the earlier book’s finale. It employs the same structure as the rest of the four-volume White Years subseries: a present-day framing story surrounds Nora’s recollections of what occurred in the years immediately before THE SIREN. The framing story takes place at the wedding we learned about in THE VIRGIN, while the core story picks up immediately after Nora’s return to Manhattan and details how she transforms herself from a well-known submissive into the Red Queen of the Underworld.

And if that makes no sense to you whatsoever, please refer to paragraphs one through three of this review.

Review: A Countess Below Stairs/The Secret Countess by Eva Ibbotson

Friends, there’s only one way a girl can possibly review A COUNTESS BELOW STAIRS (aka THE SECRET COUNTESS¹), Eva Ibbotson’s nonmagical historical fairy tale about an impoverished Russian countess who takes a job as a chambermaid and falls in requited love with the unattainable owner of the estate at which she works.

That’s right. We’re gonna gush.

The Short, Gushy, Ungrammatical Version (also the only version)

OMG YOU GUYS this book is the best thing ever no seriously it is my FAVOURITE I know the little description up there makes it sound like an average romance but it is not IT IS PERFECT it’s one of the eight books I’ve love straight from the first word² to the last because it is so so so beautiful the prose is staggering Eva Ibbotson has this GIFT to reach straight into any given emotion and make it manifest so you don’t just read it you FEEL it I cried my way through the whole damned thing³ with some extra-intense wretched sobbing at the end⁴ Anna is so wonderful like she could easily be too perfect but she’s not because you REALLY SEE why everyone loves her and you love her too and her relationship with Rupert is so understated they mean so much to one another and they connect so beautifully but it’s all between the lines⁵ and it’s like that with every single character Ibbotson excels at showing by telling you meet a person and suddenly you know everything about them but it’s not overkill you WANT to know these things you LOVE them except the villain Muriel you don’t love her she is a terrible horrible person who’s all ableist⁶ and anti-Semitic⁷ and totally into eugenics which everyone initially thinks is about breeding chickens because Hitler hasn’t happened yet⁸ but it’s not she’s trying to make a master race OMG I HATE HER SO MUCH and you will too she does wrong by the Honourable Olive and NOBODY DOES WRONG BY THE HONOURABLE OLIVE AND GETS AWAY WITH IT⁸ and also there are a great many Russians and I’m still so bummed I can’t go to Russia perhaps the Russians are unrealistic but whatevs I love them so I don’t care if people don’t actually react to their changes in circumstance with such aplomb⁹ sometimes I call Murchie Pupsik¹⁰ and the Honourable Olive gets to hold Pupsik it’s a total awwwwww moment and don’t you even get me started on that fucking ball I will start bawling right here right now so help me bawling over a ball how appropriate is that DAMN I can’t even say enough about this book so I’m not even gonna try just believe me on this okay I acknowledge it’s not perfect because of Sebastien and the maids¹¹ but everything else about it is spot-on and I give it seven stars out of five because IT IS MY FAVOURITE BOOK PLEASE READ IT¹².

An Assassin-Free Recs List, For Once

I write a lot of recs lists these days, partly because people keep asking me for them, partly because of My Year With Marvel, and partly because I like telling the world what to read. These lists cover a variety of territory, from knee-jerk recs to my top-rated Marvel comics, but whatever their focus, they all have one thing in common: they’re packed with assassins.

Turns out, all my top recs are assassin-oriented. Like, guess what profession Fitz trains for in Robin Hobb’s ASSASSIN’S APPRENTICE! (Go on. You’ll never get it.) The Will, the sorta-kinda villain of Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples’s SAGA, calls himself a freelancer, but dude, he’s been paid the big bucks to put an end to Our Heroes, and we all know what category that puts him in. Mildmay, co-narrator of Sarah Monette’s MELUSINE, dodges his assassin roots but can’t escape them entirely. Jos, protagonist of Karin Lowachee’s WARCHILD, doesn’t technically kill people for money (except for the whole soldier thing), but he’s trained as an assassin-priest so he gets the title free and clear.

And so on and so forth. Assassins, they follow me around.

Soon as I noticed this trend, I challenged myself to make a recs list without a single assassin on it. No assassin protagonists; no assassin antagonists; no secondary characters who occasionally assassinate people. No assassins lurking the background doing nothing of any great importance, even.

No assassins. None.

I opened my LibraryThing account and scrolled through my top-rated books in search of qualifying titles. A wealth of possibilities spread themselves before me. I could rec THE DREAM THIEVES by Maggie Stiefvater--except no, wait, the Grey Man is a hit man. Damn. Michelle West’s fabulous Averalaan novels were a clear choice until I remembered they’re packed with demonic assassins. I can’t immediately recall any assassins in THE SNOW QUEEN or THE SUMMER QUEEN by Joan D. Vinge, but neither can I swear to their absence given how that world works. The same is true of Kristin Cashore’s BITTERBLUE. And some of my other less frequently pushed top picks--A GAME FOR SWALLOWS by Zeina Abirached, THE MAGICIANS AND MRS QUENT by Galen Beckett, and THE SIREN by Tiffany Reisz--contain sneaky-ass, hidden assassins.

Even SKIP BEAT, my comic-du-jour, has an on-screen assassin tucked away in one of its storylines.

The hell, self? Why you gotta fixate on books about contract killers?

For that matter, why you gotta sneak a ton of assassin-laden recs into what is supposed to be an assassin-free recs list?

Um.

Moving on, I present to you five books I’m 98% sure are assassin-free, and which I loved and adored and think you should read:

Review: Skip Beat! vols 1-34 by Yoshiki Nakamura

A little more than a month ago, I toddled off to my local library and plucked SKIP BEAT! off the shelf. I’d never heard of it before, but it met my two important criteria for the comics I choose on a whim: it was the first volume in a series, and it was written and drawn by a woman¹.

It changed my entire world.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter have no doubt noticed my feels-laden tweets about it all. SKIP BEAT! quickly joined the likes of SAGA, BONE, and STRANGERS IN PARADISE as one of the comics; a lovely, rare occurrence, and something to gush about from the rooftops.

Which, fair warning, is what I’m about to do, at great length and with the occasional gif from the anime or elsewhere.

But perhaps you're clueless as to what SKIP BEAT is all about. Fear not! I can explain!

Sixteen-year-old Kyoko Mogami² follows her childhood friend and uber-crush, Sho, to Tokyo so she can help him on the road to stardom. She buys all his albums, stokes his ego by hanging his posters all over their apartment, and works two jobs so she can keep him in the manner to which he’s become accustomed (because heaven forbid Mr Big Singer Man should dip into his own pay cheque once in a while). Blinded by love, Kyoko is happy to accept a few scraps of affection from him--until she overhears his true opinion of her and realizes he’s been using her all along.

Enraged, Kyoko swears off love and vows to get revenge against Sho in his own sphere: showbiz!

Easy to say; hard to do. Kyoko soon realizes it’s tough to become famous, even if you’re willing to dress up in a chicken suit and/or join the number one talent agency’s deathly embarrassing Love Me Section, a group devoted to developing its members' loving instincts by assigning them odd jobs that let them give back to the showbiz community. Things only grow more awkward for her when she begins working with Ren Tsuruga, the agency’s top star, who takes acting very seriously and has nothing but disdain for someone with Kyoko’s motives.

The next thirty-four volumes are THE BEST THING EVER OMG.

They’re so very much THE BEST THING EVER OMG that right here, right now, for the first time in the history of the world, I’m going to write three reviews.

I think Lory, Kyoko’s boss, would be proud of me for such flamboyant excess, not to mention my deep and enduring love for all things SKIP BEAT!.

We shall begin, of course, with a Short, Gushy, Ungrammatical Review so’s you can get an at-a-glance idea of what SKIP BEAT is all about. From there, we’ll run through a List of Things You'll Find In SKIP BEAT in case you ain’t much for short, gushy, ungrammatical paragraphs. And finally, for the main event, I present to you a Sensical Review in which I gush for an ungodly number of words.

It is not for the faint of heart.

Review: The Virgin by Tiffany Reisz

THE VIRGIN is the third book in Tiffany Reisz’s White Years sequence and the seventh Original Sinners novel overall. Like the previous books in the subseries, it’s a prequel wrapped in a present day framing story; and like all the rest, you’ll enjoy it most if you’ve already read everything that came before it.

That’s your mission, friends. Find yourself a copy of THE SIREN. Read it. Move along to THE ANGEL. Proceed in publication order from there, with occasional breaks to read the various short stories set in this captivating world. And once you're primed and ready, you can start THE VIRGIN.

Yeah, yeah; I know it seems like I’m asking a lot, expecting you to read six other books so you can read this one, but trust me: it’s worth it. You’re gonna have a hell of a good time. Just see if you don't.

So, yes. This book. THE VIRGIN begins in 2015, the night before a wedding often described as "Nora’s." Everyone needs a break from the stress of event-planning (and partner-satisfying), so Nora, Søren, and Kingsley hole up together and trade stories of the year they all spent apart after Nora left Søren. Which is to say, Nora describes the most exciting parts of her time in her mother’s convent (which: nun sex and writerly shenanigans), Kingsley tells the other two how he met Juliette (which: beach-moping and hot-lady-wooing), and Søren listens.

It’s a structure designed to hook the reader right off the bat. Of course we want to know whose wedding it is (I guessed right! Hurray!). Of course we want to know what went on with Nora and Kingsley during the year nobody ever talks about. Of course we’re gonna dive straight in and come up for air as seldom as possible.

The story proper is packed with Reisz’s trademark blend of hot-ass sexy times and emotional payoff. Everyone has lots of kinky, enjoyable sex. Everyone fosters deep connections with people, some of whom they sleep with and some of whom they don’t. I live for this, y’all. Give me a book packed with kinky bisexuals who feel a lot of things and I’m a happy girl indeed.

2015's Most Wanted

I love me a bandwagon, so let's talk about a few of my most anticipated releases of 2015.

Some of these are probably wishful thinking, and I'm sure I've forgotten a few frightfully important titles, but I figured I might as well give y'all a snapshot of what I'm looking forward to reading as soon as ever I can.

None of the post-August releases have cover art yet, so I've used author photos to represent those books. All such images were pulled from the authors' websites, Wikipedia, publishers' websites, or Goodreads.

Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman - March 10

This sequel to SERAPHINA was perhaps my most anticipated book of 2014--until it got bumped back a year. Still, the wait is nearly over! Hurray!

I'm so excited about the book that I'm tempted to actually ask for a review copy, but I'm also way too shy/anxiety-ridden to cold-email a PR rep. Since it never showed up on NetGalley (sadness), I guess it's the library for me.

Review: The King by Tiffany Reisz

Review copy provided by the publisher via NetGalley.

Listen, I know how y'all look at series reviews. I say, "THE KING is the sixth book in Tiffany Reisz’s fabulous Original Sinners series," and you decide to read some other post on some other blog because you figure this one ain't relevant to your interests. I'll either yammer on about characters you don't care about or I'll spoil the rest of the series for you. Right?

Not so much. While THE KING is the sixth book overall, it's the second chronicle of the White Years; that is, the period in the early- to mid-90s when the Sinners came together and began sinning in sync instead of all by their lonesomes. It's not a standalone prequel--the framing story contains some spoilers, and you'll get the most out of the core story if you've already read the first five books--but it's the sort of thing a body can review without spoiling the rest of the series, even as she (hopefully) gives some sense of whether the newbies among you want to rush out and get THE SIREN.

(You do want to rush out and get THE SIREN. It's awesome, and it leads into even more awesome¹. I understand if you want a few more reasons to do so, though, so read on.)

THE KING begins in 1993 and focuses on the origins of Kingsley Edge’s BDSM empire. Kingsley is 28, newly wealthy, and at loose ends when his former lover, Søren, reenters his life in need of a big favour. In the process of helping Søren deal with a certain fifteen-year-old delinquent’s legal problems, Kingsley lights upon an idea: he’ll use his considerable resources to build the kinky kingdom he once promised to lay at Søren's feet. And if his efforts also give him the chance to take down a fundamentalist church that ruthlessly torments LGBT youth, well, so much the better.

Review: Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi

Endings mean everything.

*

Late in 1953, Boy Novak flees her abusive father for the comfort and beauty of Flax Hill, Massachusetts, a town of artists. Unused to family life but eager for it all the same, she marries Arturo Whitman, a widowed jeweler who comes complete with parents, siblings, and the main prize--a beautiful little daughter named Snow. Boy craves a daughter just as ardently as Snow craves a mother, but their relationship sours when Boy gives birth to brown-skinned Bird, who proves the Whitmans have spent the last few decades passing as white.

*

I was desperately in love with BOY, SNOW, BIRD by page fifteen.

If you've known me for any length of time, you'll recall how rarely that happens. I'm a suspicious reader. I withhold my love for as long as possible lest the book in question prove unworthy of it. It's a bitter thing, falling in love with a book that turns on you. The sense of betrayal runs so deep that I, for one, find it impossible to shake off even years after¹. It never goes away. It never really gets better.

BOY, SNOW, BIRD immediately reminded me of another book I loved just as intensely, and continue to love without regret: THE SECRET HISTORY by Donna Tartt. It's not that the two are anything alike, except insofar as they're about young people who lust after something outside their everyday experience--a common plot indeed. It's that they smell the same. They have the same underlying bouquet of competence and complexity and ultimate tragedy.

I loved the book all the more because I was sure Boy would know exactly what I meant if I said this to her.

A More Diverse Universe

Signups are now underway for A More Diverse Universe (aka #Diversiverse), a yearly reading event. Founder Aarti asks participants to read and review at least one book by a person of colour during the last two weeks of September. In previous years, Diversiverse has focused on speculative fiction of all varieties; this year, it's open to every genre and marketing category under the sun.

Many people avoid reading diversely because they feel like they need to completely alter their habits and/or impose restrictions on themselves in order to do so. They worry they'll end up reading unsatisfying books in unappealing genres.

This is far from the case. White, heterosexual mens' stories are so prominent in many readers' lives not because they're the best books, or because anyone has a natural preference for them, but because those are the books that get the most publicity. They're the ones you see when you enter a bookstore or click onto your favourite online retailer's main page. They're the ones that get the majority of the reviews and social media buzz.

You don't limit yourself when you decide to read diversely; you open yourself up to tons of exciting books you might not have discovered without a little extra effort. As Aarti has said on multiple occasions:

You may have to change your book-finding habits to include POC authors in your reading rotation. You absolutely do not need to change your book-reading habits.

I myself decided to aim for at least 25% books by POC in 2014. As of this morning, 50% of what I've read has either been solely authored by a people of colour or has featured POC contributors (I read a lot of multi-author works like anthologies, literary magazines, and comics). And I haven't altered my reading habits in the slightest; I've simply sought out a few more author photos to ensure POC are well represented on my TBR and in my weekly library pile.

No matter what you like to read, I guarantee people of colour write it. And Diversiverse gives you the perfect excuse to seek it out.

Review: A Tale For the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki

Novelist Ruth is in the throes of extreme writer’s block when she finds a freezer bag on the beach. The bag contains an English diary, a French diary, a bundle of Japanese letters, and a WWII Kamikaze pilot’s watch. Eager to unravel their mystery, she researches the diary’s antecedents one entry at a time.

Teenage diarist Nao intends to write the story of her great-grandmother’s life as a feminist-anarchist-novelist-Buddhist nun, but the tale she spins is far more personal, and far more connected to Ruth’s own British Columbian existence, than either writer or reader could have predicted.

I knew A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING was special from the get-go. The opening chapter--the first entry of Nao’s diary--sets the tone for the entire book as it slips back and forth between contemplative, adorable, and horrific with little regard for any boundaries that may exist between the three. It's immediately clear that this is a gorgeously written, meticulously constructed piece of fiction about how we tell and react to stories, about recollection, and about the self.

Y’all know I’m a total sucker for stories about stories, and A TALE FOR THE TIME BEING fits the bill to a tee as it interweaves two very different womens’ lives. We have Nao’s first person account of her family’s move to Japan, and of the troubles she experiences there. Every so often, we pause for Ruth’s third person reaction to the text, and for updates on her own life on a small island off the coast of British Columbia. Ruth’s story helps relieve some of the tension from Nao’s, whilst simultaneously adding greater tension on another level altogether.

Review: The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

i.

When I was a young person, I had a pen pal who described herself as "well read in Russian literature."

I at once wished I could make the same claim. How elegant, to be well read in Russian literature; how posh.

The kicker is, of course, that in order to become well read in Russian literature, one must actually read some Russian literature.

I sucked at that bit.

Over the years, I’ve read a little Chekov and a little Dostoyevsky, with a brief peek at Ayn Rand¹ and a most enjoyable foray through Sergei Lukyanenko. That's it. I am in no way qualified to call myself well read in this area.

I guess part of the problem is that the most famous Russian novels and plays are a) from the 19th or early 20th centuries, meaning their syntax is not particularly friendly to my eyeballs, and b) by dudes, whereas I gravitate more strongly towards female-authored fiction.

There’s something to be said for reading work that’ll enrich your mind and expand your knowledge of the literary canon, even if you don’t necessarily like it; however, I believe that once you reach a certain point in your life, there’s a great deal more to be said for reading shit you’re reasonably confident you’ll enjoy.

Okay, then. I needed a Russian novel (or play, or essay collection, or whatever) that fit the bill.

Television In 2013, Part IV - Current Viewing

We’ve spent the last three weeks talking about my favourite new-to-me shows of 2013. Now let’s look at the stuff I watch on a weekly basis.

Or, well, a semi-weekly basis. Sometimes even a monthly basis. I added a lot of shows to my roster late last year; so many that I now watch more TV as it airs than I have ever watched in my entire life.

I guess this is what happens when you catch up on every current show you started watching on DVD even as people keep recommending stuff to you.

I’ll try to break them down for you as briefly as I can, omitting ELEMENTARY and SUPERNATURAL because I’ve already discussed them elsewhere. I’ll also limit myself to shows that aired new episodes between September and December; so, nothing that wrapped up early in the year, like GAME OF THRONES or TRUE BLOOD, and nothing that’s just begun, like DOWNTON ABBEY or BITTEN.

Review: Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

Before we go any further, let's get this out in the open: ATTACHMENTS has a squicky premise.

It’s the tail end of 1999. Lincoln works tech support for a newspaper that has only just allowed its staff access to the Internet. The company is super-duper paranoid about productivity, so they've hired Lincoln to monitor everyone’s e-mail accounts and make sure they stay on task. He’s supposed to send official warnings whenever people forward jokes or talk about personal matters on company time.

It’s a crap job and he knows it, but he does look forward to the ongoing e-mail exchange between Jennifer and Beth, two best friends who share everything about their lives. By the time he realizes he should’ve sent them a reprimand instead of, like, cyber-stalking them, he’s become fond of them both--especially Beth, upon whom he’s developed something awfully like a crush.

So, yeah. Squicky.

But if you can ignore the squickiness, ATTACHMENTS is wonderful. Seriously. I shit you not.

Television In 2013, Part I - TV on DVD

2013 was an awesome viewing year as well as an awesome reading year. I revisited old favourites like GILMORE GIRLS¹, delved into cult hits like MERLIN², and continued series I began in 2012 like THE ALMIGHTY JOHNSONS³.

While I don’t intend to write about television on anything like regular basis, I can’t resist taking some time away from the usual Thursday focus on food to gush about a few of the shows that moved me most. Let’s kick things off with four offerings I adored on DVD (or on YouTube, as the case may be), reserving my two favourites and my current viewing schedule for subsequent weeks.

Memory's Most Anticipated Releases of 2014

If the internet is anything to go by, 2014 will be a most excellent year for books. With both my library list and my wallet set to take a beating in the coming months, I thought I’d highlight a few of the titles that have me squirming with gleeful anticipation.

SHADOWPLAY by Laura Lam – 7th January

I adored PANTOMIME, Laura Lam’s first novel, and can’t wait to see what’s next for Micah Grey. This SF-tinged fantasy (or fantasy-tinged SF; take your pick) is totally going on my Kobo as soon as it’s available for purchase.

THE GOBLIN EMPEROR by Katherine Addison – 1st April

Katherine Addison (who has published eight previous novels and short story collections as Sarah Monette) is my very most favouritest of favourite authors. It’s been years since we’ve had a new solo novel from her, so I’m wicked excited about this one. I trust her to deliver awesome characters who face compelling problems.

Plus, I believe this one contains airships! Airships are one of my weird bookish hooks. Give me airships and/or automata and I’m a happy girl indeed.

April can’t come fast enough.

Review: Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

Time for another dual review.

The Short, Gushy, Ungrammatical Version:

OMG YOU GUYS FANGIRL IS SO AWESOME I feel the love oh yes I do why did I wait so long to read Rainbow Rowell this was exactly the book I needed exactly when I needed it which is to say it was TOTALLY AWESOME and it came at a time when I needed TOTAL AWESOMENESS in my life oh my goodness it was so wonderful I got so invested in Cath’s world and her emotional truth and all her friends OMG it hurt so much when Levi did the thing I can’t believe how much it hurt and also I was really worried about Wren and Reagan was great and OMG Cath’s dad and I love every little thing about how they all connect and there’s so much room for forgiveness and emotional maturity and working through stuff with people you care about but at the same time the narrative acknowledges that you don’t owe anybody your forgiveness OMG I CAN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT IT I HAVE SO MANY THOUGHTS and I’m still totally freaking out over Levi you have no idea and I love Cath so much I want to give her a great big hug and fangirl obsessively with her she is amazing so is this book you need to read it please and thanks goodbye.