New Books Read
Ecstasy by Ivy Pochoda*
I attended an author event with Ivy Pochoda in conversation with the incredible Emily Wilson, so I was really excited to read this book. After the death of her controlling husband, Lena finds herself under the thumb of her controlling son. At the luxury resort he now owns in Greece, Lena meets a group of eccentric partying women on the beach and learns the power of female rage and the freedom of ecstasy. This was dreamlike and propulsive and a little gritty. The prose was spare but evocative, and you know I love a story inspired by Greek mythology.
3.5/5 DJs who might be gods
The Bad Ones by Melissa Albert
**Book Hangover Alert
Melissa Albert writes books you inhale in one night and then wonder if it was a fever dream. Was this Albert’s best book yet? I’m not sure. Honestly I don’t remember the previous ones all that well except that I loved them and read them far too fast. Nora receives a mysterious text from her estranged best friend Becca the night that four people in their town, including Becca, go missing. When Nora begins finding clues Becca left her that evoke the Goddess Game, a childhood game from the community, Nora suspects something more supernatural than a kidnapping is going on. I loved the focus on friendship, the eeriness, the propulsive tension, and the fact that a teenage protagonist in a YA novel had two good parents. Very refreshing.
4.5/5 goddesses
The Emperor of Gladness by Ocean Vuong***
CW: suicide attempt, war, trauma, racism, addiction
I was a little disappointed by this to be honest. Ready to take his own life by jumping off the bridge in East Gladness, Hai is stopped by Grazina, an old Lithuanian woman living near the bridge. She invites Hai to live with her and take care of her, but they really take care of each other. Vuong’s writing is gorgeous as always, but this one didn’t hold me like On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous or his poetry. I thought it was a little slow and there was too much description. It was beautiful description, but it wasn’t needed. It was also kind of a bummer, which is an unfair assessment for a book about addiction. I don’t know. There were some lovely moments, but I did struggle to get through it.
3/5 pieces of cornbread
Water Moon by Samantha Sotto Yambao***
I wanted to like this more than I did. I mean look at that stunning cover. On the morning Hana is set to take over her father’s pawnshop, she wakes to a ransacked shop and her father and a precious artifact missing. But this is no regular pawnshop; it accepts only the choices people regret, giving customers a chance to forget. Hana must journey through the dreamlike realm in which the pawn shop exists to find her father and the stolen choice. I liked the world, which was beautiful and inventive, but I felt like the tension was a little lacking. There were stakes for Hana, but for some reason they didn’t seem all that important.
3/5 puddle jumps
The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden***
**Book Hangover Alert
CW: war, trauma, abuse
I loved this so much. When Laura’s brother is reported missing, presumed dead during WWI, Laura, a combat nurse discharged honorably with an injury, returns to Europe to find him. After an explosion that leaves him trapped in a pillbox with a German, Laura’s brother Freddie and the German decide to keep each other alive, but in protecting Hans Winter, Freddie makes a deal with the mysterious and charismatic Fiddler, who haunts battlefields and the stories of half mad soldiers. Will Laura be able to save him before he loses himself? I’m now obsessed with Katherine Arden. I have to find everything she’s ever written and read it immediately. I had to clear off a spot on my favorites shelf to squeeze this in. Gorgeous prose, fascinating characters, haunting and beautiful story. I can’t say enough good things about it.
500/5 motorcycles
Hemlock and Silver by T. Kingfisher*
**Book Hangover Alert
This was such a fun, refreshing Snow White retelling! When the king appears in Anya’s workroom asking her, an expert on poison, to save his daughter, whom he is sure is being poisoned, Anya has no choice but to go with him. But Anya gets more than she bargained for because Princess Snow isn’t ingesting small amounts of arsenic or hemlock, but something far more strange and dangerous. I don’t want to say too much more about it because it was very cool and I want to let you be surprised. I love when a retelling is fresh and surprising.
4/5 roosters
Flux by Jinwoo Chong***
**Book Hanover Alert
CW: racism
This was weird. I’m not sure I know how to blurb this book. When the protagonist is laid off from his job at a magazine at Christmas, he immediately gets a new offer that sounds too good to be true from a hot new start up that’s promised to change the world of energy as we know it. But something strange happens in his office every day at 9am and maybe the company isn’t making batteries after all. I’m stealing this sentence from the Amazon blurb: “Chong’s dazzling, time-bending debut…blends elements of neo-noir and speculative fiction.” Unpredictable and fascinating, I’m going to be thinking about this one for a while. It reminded me of Zeroville by Steve Erickson but I’m not sure why, since they weren’t really alike at all.
3.5/5 clicks
Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers by Jesse Q. Sutanto***
**Book Hangover Alert
Incredible. I loved every moment of it. When Vera Wong finds a dead man on the floor of her teahouse, she knows the useless police aren’t going to solve this one without her help, so she posts an ad in the paper that brings the suspects to her. Now she just has to figure out who did it. She just doesn’t count on building a found family in the process. I’m obsessed with this book. A cozy murder mystery with a nosy little old Asian lady protagonist? Sign me up.
5/5 clues
The Book of Elsewhere by Keanu Reeves and China Miéville*
CW: death, war, trauma, torture, suicide, attempted suicide, gore
I feel like I’m still processing this one, so this is going to be probably a not very articulate review. This book takes place in an alternate universe to the BRZRKR universe, which I’m not familiar with at all. The story follows immortal warrior Unute’s journey through the millennia to understand his own immortality. The way the story orbited Unute was interesting. I think a lot of people might complain that the writing style was too academic for a book about a comic book supersoldier, and I will say I looked up a lot more words in the dictionary than I have recently. But I hope that people will still try books that are a little more challenging and don’t lend themselves to easy conclusions.
3.5/5 babirusas
*This book only includes straight white cis people. I guess Javier in Hemlock & Silver might not have been white, but it was subtle enough to be easy to ignore. The Book of Elsewhere was not only straight white cis people, but somehow it felt like it was?
**Book Hangover Alert indicates the kind of book that will leave you full up on love. Satisfied, but wishing the book never had to end. You’ll be lying on the floor with no idea what to do with yourself (other friends have called this feeling Good Book Depression or say that certain books necessitate Floor Time). This is the kind of book that gets its teeth in you and won’t let go easily. After the last page you’ll be thinking about this book for a long time. You’ll bother all your friends trying to get them to read it so that you won’t be alone in your Hangover.
***This book is part of my Books for a Social Conscience series! I just think you’ll be a better person if you read The Warm Hands of Ghosts. Read Flux for Asian rep in sci-fi and an examination of Asian representation in media. Read The Emperor of Gladness (or one of Vuong’s other books) for LGBTQIA+ and Asian rep. Read Water Moon for a Japanese inspired fantasy. Read Vera Wong’s Unsolicited Advice for Murderers for heartwarming community building across the Asian diaspora.
Reads marked as part of the Books for a Social Conscience series will regularly address topics like race and racism, colonialism and post-colonialism, LGBTQIA+ experience, feminism, BIPOC experience, social and political issues, history, identity, class, disability experience, immigration, gun violence, poverty, colorism, environmentalism, and more! The goal of these books is to diversify the stories we’re reading, grow our empathy for those who are different from us, and amplify voices who are often silenced.
