#( pretend that i posted art at regular intervals prior to this )

[itheume]

doodle of shatterstar to make sure i still knew how to draw him

#x force #shatterstar #( this is also my attempt to get familiar with using krita again after nine hundred thousand years #dont think i could do anything serious in there #but what Is there is very fun #its brush system works better than sai2's tbh ) #( i also tried on purpose to make him look less brick-y now that im more familiar with l/ongshot but ;; #idk if i like it like maybe it has to grow on me ;;;;; ;; hm ) #arting #( pretend that i posted art at regular intervals prior to this )

[redgoldsparks]

January 2023 Reading and Reviews by Maia Kobabe

I post my reviews throughout the month on Storygraph and Goodreads, and do roundups here and on patreon.

Piranesi by Susanna Clark (Bloomsbury Publishing)

I am a big fan of Susanna Clark. I've read Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrel two or three times, and will probably read it again someday. I love The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories but I've been waiting to read this one until the time was right. When I saw a half off paperback at my favorite indie bookstore right before the holidays, I knew that was my moment! I associate Clark's work deeply with winter, and love reading her stories by a warm glow around the shortest and darkest days of the year. This one opens in a House of apparently endless size, filled with statues, great vaults, marble floors, and many staircases. The lowest level is full of the sea, with fish, sea creatures, seaweed and seabirds. The upper floors recede into cloud and mist, which rain at regular intervals. In this cold but beautiful world lives a man called Piranesi by the only other living inhabitant. Piranesi journals diligently about his days, his discoveries, his catalogue of the tides and statues. The Other Man arrives at irregular intervals and gives him tasks and the occasional gift. Piranesi is very happy in his world, but soon it is threatened by outside forces: another person, with possibly malicious intent, begins to invade. The peace of the House is broken. What does this say about the bones of 13 dead which Piranesi has found, and the occasional fast food wrappers that regularly blow in one of the vestibules? Some might savor this book, but I instead devoured it in three days and wished for more. 

The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer (Katherine Tagen books/HarperCollins)

I will be withholding my review until the HarperCollins strike ends. More info here.

M is for Monster by Talia Dutton (Harry N Abrams)

A girl wakes up on a lab table, stitched together from pieces of a previous girl, Maura, who died in a lab accident. Maura's sister is an experimental scientist and when she wakes up a spirit, she's convinced she's gotten her sister back. But the new girl, M, has no memories from a previous life. She looks like Maura- and when she looks in the mirror she can see Maura's ghost- but she feel compelled to pretend to be someone she isn't. This is an interesting take on resurrection, the afterlife, and identity. It's beautifully drawn in black ink with teal shading, and includes a minor nonbinary character. The book flirts with some real danger and existential fear around our lead, but ultimately takes a gentler route towards a happy ending. 

You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi (Atria Books)

This was my fourth Akwaeke Emezi book, and so far my favorite! A lush, interesting romance that tackles grief, recovery, processing trauma through art, and falling for someone in a complicated family dynamic all against the background of gorgeous tropical island. The main character, Feyi, is very tentatively stepping into dating again after loosing her husband five years prior in a car crash. It's taken a long time before she's even felt alive again herself, let alone willing to open her heart to someone new. The writing is so sensual, full of food descriptions to make your mouth water, landscapes and vistas to make you yearn to travel, and witty banter that will make you want to call your best friend to dish about your ex or your new crush. Highly recommend! 

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho (Ace Books)

Jess is a queer, closeted, Malaysian-American college grad with a long distance girlfriend and no job prospects. She decides to move back to Malaysia with her parents, partly to help them handle the move. When she starts hearing voices, she tacks it down to the stress of being broke and alienated in a country she hasn't lived in since she was a toddler. But it quickly becomes clear that the voices are real and one of them is Ah Ma, her estranged grandmother, who was a spirit medium to a violent god called the Black Water Sister. A real estate developer has purchased the land around the Black Water Sister's temple and plans to turn it into apartments. Ah Ma enlists Jess to fight back, not realizing or not caring that this could throw Jess into deadly conflict with both humans and gods. I listened to this as an audio book and enjoyed it a lot, though it does have some semi-graphic violence, and a morally grey conflict. The writing is very vivid and quite different than anything else I've read before. 

Into The Riverlands by Nghi Vo (Tordotcom)

Nonbinary historian-cleric Chih and their talking bird companion Almost Brilliant travel to the riverlands, an area rich with myths about near-immortal martial artists and the bandits and monsters they battled long ago. Chih ends up walking a mountain road with two young women- a martial artist and her long-suffering companion- and an older couple, all of whom prove to be more than meets the eye. All of them share tales with Chih, and when they stumble right into an ongoing conflict, Chih realizes that they might be in one of the very tales they'd been collecting. This third book didn't hit me quite as hard with the ending twist as the first two books of this series, but I still really enjoyed it and hope for more! 

The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickerson (Tor Books)

I have to open my review with content warnings: violent homophobia, polyphobia, genocide of an indigenous culture by intentional plague spreading, brainwashing, rape threats, eugenics, murder, torture. This is a book about a horrible oppressive empire using the tools of colonialism to try and control more and more of the world. Baru is a child of a tropical paradise, with two fathers and a mother, who is taken away from her parents and placed in a residential school from which she watches the total destruction of her culture. This plants a seed of ferocious rebellion in her heart, and she vows to excel past the wildest dreams of her abusive teachers, to rise up in the ranks of the empire, and eventually to destroy it from within. Baru is a savant in the study of power, money, economic control, and the science of breaking the human spirit. The open question of this series is whether she will be able to achieve her goal without being utterly ruined as a person. This book is brutal, and so well written, by turns a confusing mystery and a heart-pounding page turner. It is not a light read, and I definitely need a break before I continue on in the series, but I can see why this gets put on lists next to some of my very favorite series such as The Locked Tomb and Teixcalaan.

The Past is Red by Catherynne M. Valente (Tordotcom)

Another strange little tale from Valente! This one is set in the future, when all of the dry land on Earth has been submerged by water, and the remaining humans live on the floating continent of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Long before our protagonist, Tetley, was born, people sorted the garbage into huge piles of similar kinds of things, leading to neighborhoods made all of candle ends, or all of pill bottles, or of molding books. This lends the landscape a fairytale-like aspect that reminded me of McGuire's Wayward Children series. Tetley was born to disinterested parents, and committed a crime in her teenage years which turns her into a physically abused and hated outsider. But she still finds things to love about her home and her world- a kind of childlike delight in a hibiscus plant, a plastic trophy, the inventiveness of her fellow survivors at the end of the world. The story takes several unexpected twists and turns, some more believable than others, but the playful language and rich audiobook narrative carried me through and overall I quite enjoyed it. 

Lights by Brenna Thummler (Oni Press)

A rich and emotional conclusion to the series, which deepens the themes of friendship, grief, and healing. I loved seeing Marjorie find ways to balance her commitments to both the living and the dead, Eliza learning that compromise is part of any relationship, and Wendell unraveling the truth of his own story. Thummler has grown a lot as a storyteller over the course of writing and drawing this trilogy. This is the quietest and most beautiful volume so far, and my favorite of the three. The art is absolutely next level, both in terms of color panels and page design. I was lucky enough to get to read an advanced copy for review; the book is due out in September 2023. 

#books #book reviews #reading #comic book reviews