Those who read the symbol do so at their peril

April was the most successful reading month of the year, so far! (At least by number of books read.) I finished seven books this month, plus a bonus short story.

I’ve been trying to put more time toward reading, particularly since I’ve decided to formally take a break from writing. (I didn’t make that decision until partway through the month, but even so.) I’m not always able to read as much as I’d like, either because there are still other things I need to get done, or because there are other things going on (loud TV, etc.) that prevent me from focusing, but I am still glad that it’s something I’m able to do more of. (Especially on my days off, I’ve read a lot in some cases!)

I’m still not fully “caught up” from my slow January/February, but I’m doing okay. I’d hoped to be farther down the list than I am, but I’m pleased with what I have read, and I’m pleased that it’s largely been at a pace that has let me enjoy what I’m reading, too.


I love this cover! The siren tail within the skull shape is great.
Our Bloody Pearl by D. N. Bryn
Book 1 of These Treacherous Tides (but it appears to be the only book so far, though there are others in the same universe)
2018
Fantasy (subgenre: steampunk) - m/nb queerplatonic relationship, background f/f - ebook novel
3.5/5

Pearl, a siren, has spent too long—how long, they aren’t even sure—in captivity, trapped by the pirate captain Kian. Kian is the only woman to ever manage to neutralize siren voices, and she has a particular hatred for their kind. When a rival crew boards and raids Kain’s ship, Pearl is part of the spoils. The new captain, Dejean, seems utterly unlike Kian, more interested in helping Pearl to heal than keeping them controlled and confined. Their time with Kian has left Pearl paralyzed and malnourished, unable to survive in the open ocean even if they could escape. Humans have never been more than enemies or occasional prey; can Pearl trust Dejean and his friends’ intentions? And if they do, is there hope for anything more than animosity between their species?

My thoughts, slight spoilers:

I’ve had this book in my kindle for a really long time. (2018 doesn’t seem like it should be that long ago… and then I realize it’s six years ago and the passage of time kneecaps me again.) I’m fairly sure I bought it back when I was sort of trying to engage more with the “writeblr” community on tumblr years ago, and wanted to support the author and their independent publishing, so bought it as a new release… and then never got around to reading it.

The book was more enjoyable than implied by the months that it took me to read it…

The good:
This book feels nicely polished. There may have been a few typos, but honestly nothing that stuck out horribly to me or was bad enough to throw me out. This felt especially notable to me for an indie published work, but honestly I’ve been increasingly unimpressed with editorial standards for professionally published work, too.
The setting is fun: pirates and steampunk ships and sirens!
I like Dejean and Pearl coming up with their own sign language to bridge the language gap. (Pearl understands human speech, but the humans do not understand sirens.)*
I am always excited to see queerplatonic relationships being portrayed.** Dejean and Pearl’s relationship is quite sweet.
The development of prosthetics to allow Pearl to return to the water—and the way they eventually utilize those in ways other than intended to give them an edge when it comes to some of the conflict—was really cool.
I actually felt okay with the base conflict between sirens and humans. I typically very strongly dislike “it was just a misunderstanding!” as a solution to an extremely broad conflict, but it worked better here than usual. Communication is an ongoing theme in the book, and it’s a case in which it actually does seem reasonable in a way that miscommunication often doesn’t, because it’s beyond a simple language barrier or just misconstrued tone and gets into broader aspects of culture.

The neutral:
When I got into reading the book it was a pretty breezy and quick read… but it would also easily fall out of sight out of mind, and didn’t really ever drag me back.
** While I’ve listed the relationship between Dejean and Pearl as queerplatonic, because that’s what the author calls it, and while I like a good queerplatonic relationship… to be honest, I’d say it reads as more overtly romantic to me. It’s definitely not sexual, and I know that queerplatonic can be a fairly nebulous category, but I think it still felt romantic. This did not bother me, but I don’t know that I would have called the relationship queerplatonic without knowing that was the intent.
The story very strongly skews toward being aggressively affirming, ha. There’s a lot of hashtag-representation, in terms of different queer identities, mental health, physical disability… I definitely don’t consider any of that to be bad, but at times it really did feel like it was shoving YOU ARE VALID!!! at me. Like… I’m happier for it to exist, and I can imagine it really mattering to someone, or helping someone to feel seen… it just sort of wasn’t for me.

The less good:
* I like the characters coming up with sign language to communicate with each other… but I don’t think the execution always quite worked. We’re in Pearl’s perspective, and so we as readers do understand everything that Pearl is trying to communicate, both verbally and through sign. Dejean frequently seems to respond to both aspects of their communication, when he really shouldn’t understand the verbal parts. The communication issues are also definitely never felt by the reader, since they’re pretty thoroughly one-sided, and the other character seems to fully understand things even in cases where he shouldn’t.
Along with the language, what human concepts Pearl understood or did not occasionally broke my immersion a bit. Most of the time, it seemed like Pearl understood basically everything very thoroughly and completely… and then would refer to alcohol as “human happy juice,” which just felt so weirdly childish and at-odds with their typical level of understanding.
I really wish I’d liked Muriel’s character more. She’s the engineer who helps to design Pearl’s prosthetics, and is in a relationship with Dejean’s first mate. She’s sort of a bubbly comic-relief character, and I found her grating, the way I usually do the comic relief sidekick type. I liked her fine in her more serious moments, but the scenes that seemed intended to be funny were more annoying to me than anything else.
I feel like the book goes a little bit too out of the way to absolve everyone to some degree. It sort of flirts with an “everyone is a monster!” theme, with Pearl contrasting Kian’s abuse and their own previous willingness to prey on humans… but ultimately seems to settle on a “hurt people hurt people” conclusion, where basically all the bad things are tragic but sort of understandable. It’s not terrible, so much as it just felt like it checked itself a bit too much. I wouldn’t say it was narratively excusing monstrous actions, but it did seem to soften them.

I feel like this was definitely a book for someone—maybe many someones—but just not quite for me. I still had fun reading it, and enjoyed the story, setting, and characters.

My classic covers, haha. (Surprisingly hard to find decent images of!)
The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien
Book 1 of The Lord of the Rings
1954
Fantasy - physical novel
5/5

Hobbits have long lived in peace in the Shire, content to be separate from the goings-on of the rest of Middle Earth. Unfortunately, conflict in the world is brewing. After Bilbo Baggins departs the Shire on his 111th birthday, he leaves most of his worldly possessions to his beloved nephew, Frodo Baggins… including the magical ring he obtained on his grand adventure. The wizard Gandalf eventually recognizes the ring for what it is, the One Ring, created by the dark lord Sauron to consolidate his own power in his quest to rule the world and all its people. Frodo embarks on a quest to bring the One Ring to the Elvish city of Rivendell, where a council can decide what is to be done with it.
Ultimately, the decision is made to send Frodo to destroy the ring, taking it back to Mordor to throw it into the fires from which it was forged. Accompanying him will be a fellowship: his Hobbit friends, Sam, Pippin, and Merry; Men, Aragorn and Boromir; Dwarf, Gimli; Elf, Legolas; and Gandalf. The journey to Rivendell was perilous, but the journey beyond it will be far more so.

My thoughts:

Again, I feel like there is very little for me to say at this point. It’s not like there’s anything that hasn’t been said hundreds or thousands of times, haha.
I did have a much better time reading it now than I did back in high school. I appreciated it more, and didn’t get bogged down with the language and style.

The thing that stuck out the most to me, no surprise, is the depth of the world. The extensive and integrated history! The languages! It is extremely impressive and rich, and is certainly what most people come away from the series talking about. Somewhat ironically, that was both what I wanted to experience and what I had the hardest time with when I was younger.

Random observations:
- I did not remember how long a time the beginning spans, how long it is between Bilbo leaving The Shire and Frodo taking on the quest. (Seventeen years!?)
- I get why so many adaptations skip the whole Tom Bombadil section, and I recall being baffled by it on my high school attempt, but I actually liked that bit this time. It’s definitely weird, but I like having that weird detail to the world. Just a random somewhat unexplained freak that might be a deity or some nonsense. Like you do.
- Same with the barrow wights, which were creepy, and I liked having a creepy evil thing that’s not completely directly related to the current Evil. (I do realize that It’s All Connected in the broader lore and history, but this was less so than a lot of things.)
- The escalation of stakes and threat is pretty good, I think. Obviously, I’m not going into this series blind, so I do know exactly how bad it’s going to get for our hero and his companions… so I know that the threats early on are relatively mild compared to what they will encounter. Those threats are still very real—it’s still ringwraiths!—but all the dangers, even at the beginning while still in The Shire, feel believably terrifying.
- The emphasis on periods of rest is interesting to me. (I know that this, and the “homely houses” and all are common points of discussion and whatnot.) But the periods of rest that the characters take, regaining their strength and their will to continue onward stands out to me as one of the things I’d say I see least in more modern fantasy. Sometimes there might be a period of physical recovery that the characters have to go through, but even that is often grudging and hurried, with the sense that every minute spent idle is a wasted one. Instead, even when faced with pressing quests, the characters do take the time when calm is offered: with Tom Bombadil, in Rivendell, in Lorien.
- The settings did really give me the “I want to be there” feeling this time around.
- Again, not a unique observation, but another thing that makes this feel different from a lot of the imitating high fantasy that I’ve read, and that I often also forget, is how… almost post-apocalyptic aspects of the world feel. Not in the “zombie wasteland” sense, but in the sense of everything being surrounded by the ruins of that impressively deep history. There’s a preoccupation with previous glory days, of times of heroes and great power in the First and Second Ages… Rather than this epic conflict being the time of heroes and great power (despite what it may later be viewed as.) Obviously this conflict includes heroes and magic and good vs evil and impossible creatures… but with the context around it being this sort of internal mythologizing of a past that was even more all of the above. Artifacts that are still sought after and utilized, but that no one knows how to make any longer. Heroes that some of the long-lived beings of the current time knew or are descended from, yet no longer feel a hope to emulate. Ruins of cities and towers and roads and tombs of long-forgotten empires.

I really enjoyed getting to read this and appreciate it this time around.

(Utterly irrelevant: my copy of the book is utterly trashed, haha. It lived in the bottom of my high school backpack while I was trying to get through it, and is missing part of the cover, with other bits of the cover taped on, the corners of pages sometimes missing, and almost all curled. I managed to uncurl most of the pages as I read, but damn.)

A good cyberpunk-y cover.
These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart by Izzy Wasserstein
2024
Science fiction (subgenres: cyberpunk, noir, post-apocalyptic, queer) - f/f, f/nb - ebook novella
4.5/5

Dora gets a visit that she’d never wanted: one of her friends from the commune she used to be a member of, showing up to tell her that her ex-girlfriend, Kay, is dead. Dora, a sometimes private investigator, goes to see Kay’s body… and discovers that the “accidental overdose” may have been a murder. This is even more of a betrayal to Dora, because she turned her back on the commune—and on her relationship with Kay—because the commune refused to compromise their ideals in order to improve their security and safety for their members. As Dora investigates the commune and the surrounding parts of the city, she discovers potential corruption and conspiracy far deeper than she had guessed. Someone is very interested in preventing her from finding the answers, even sending clones of her pre-transition self to assassinate her.

My thoughts:

I really enjoyed this one! I liked the overall vibe. Its very classic cyberpunk noir detective, just make it queer(er).

The good things:
The core idea of a trans person interacting with pre-transition clones adds, I think, an interesting additional dimension to the “usual” sci-fi exploration of clones and what that can mean for identity/nature vs nurture/individuality/self-determination/etc.
This felt like a very believable apocalypse. It’s fairly near-future, in a setting where everything has slowly devolved into further political and economic fragmentation. It isn’t an apocalyptic wasteland so much as the kind of “new normal” that usually comes with and after disaster. Parts of it seem pretty awful, but also very plausible for a setting where national government has lost functional control, where almost all services have been privatized, where corporations control whole areas and can move on and leave everyone in the lurch. It feels like a place it would be easy and (mostly) plausible to reach. (At least socially, if not necessarily the tech side.)
I appreciated the… fairness, I suppose, toward the commune. It’s certainly not a utopia, and while their idealism can be frustrating and naive, there are good qualities to the group as well. Weighing community ideals vs safety, and different characters coming down on different sides of that debate, makes sense and is the sort of conflict that’s inevitable. On the whole I think the story does a decent job with ambiguity and complexity: being nostalgic for something while recognizing its flaws; reflecting on how terrible something was while wishing it had been different; figuring out what compromises to make in order to achieve a necessary end. The characters themselves also fall into this category in a lot of ways.

The neutral:
While I liked how quick a read this was—read it in two days!—and I think that the novella length kept it moving on at a very fast pace, I wouldn’t have minded it being a little longer. I think a few things could have been fleshed out a little more in a longer work, and it would have been beneficial. But… “wish there was more” isn’t really much of a criticism, because I don’t think the shorter length was a bad thing.

The less good:
Fucking typos! While they weren’t the worst, there were at least two that stuck out to me, because they were incorrect real words that mean something very different than the intended thing. Talking about a corporation wanting a “complaint” workforce. A comment toward the very end about no “stream” coming up from the vents on the street. Obviously not stuff that would get caught by spellcheck, but man I wish I could be a beta reader just to try and catch these sorts of things.

Legolas' luscious blond hair! The romance novel vibes!
The Two Towers by J. R. R. Tolkien
Book 2 of The Lord of the Rings
1954
Fantasy - physical novel
5/5

The Fellowship—the alliance of Men, Hobbits, an Elf, and a Dwarf, accompanying The Ring Bearer on his quest—has been sundered. Boromir has fallen, after temptation by The One Ring; Frodo and Sam have struck off on their own, Frodo no longer wishing to bring the others on what feels like a hopeless quest; Merry and Pippin have been captured by Saruman’s force of orcs and uruk-hai; leaving Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli to determine which path to follow.
The three choose to pursue Merry and Pippin, hoping to rescue them. They get drawn into further conflict in the country of Rohan, where Saruman has focused much of his attention and immediate plans for conquest.
Frodo and Sam, somewhat reluctantly, join with Gollum (now calling himself Sméagol), as he promises he can get them into Mordor by a secret route.

My thoughts, one extra picture:

As before, I feel like there’s very little that I can offer in way of a review!


But please do appreciate the cover contrasted with my totally rad movie bookmark!

One thing that surprised me, or at least that remained consistently noticeable throughout, even having seen this very thing remarked upon, was how much emphasis there is on hope vs despair. Those feelings, and which one is dominant for the characters at any time, often has so much more impact on them and the experience of success vs failure than the actual circumstances they’re facing. This is even directly mentioned in reference to Hobbits, after Merry and Pippin escape, about how despite everything they’re able to immediately switch to fairly lighthearted conversation with each other, which would potentially be strange or off putting for others. Keeping a sense of hope is important and matters every time it comes up, and despair (especially for Frodo, but also the other characters) is such a constant danger in and of itself. (It also ties in a bit to what I said about Fellowship, and the importance of rest; often times, resting and finding solace with others is something that renews hope.)

Okay. So. I sort of wondered if I was going to see the romantic overtones to some of the character interactions that many, many people do in these books. If I had been able to get into the books as a teen I’m sure that I would have, but I wasn’t completely sure whether I would now. The shipping goggles are a little less firmly attached than they once were.
I Do See It, lol.
Legolas and Gimli’s matching “you comfort me, (you weirdo) (affectionate)” speeches? Their promises to come back to the area for some shared sightseeing (to show off to each other the specific places that they themselves were most charmed and awed by, even though the other found those places off putting.) Just get married.
Sam talking about his love for Frodo being responsible for the sort of etherial way he sees him at times. Sam then protecting Frodo from Shelob and it literally being textually compared to an animal protecting its mate? Come on.
Sorry not sorry I’m apparently too queer to read it as all platonic.

I won’t say it was “surprising,” but it felt different than a lot of more modern stories to have the book so split between different characters’ paths, despite the sections covering the same spans of time. Getting Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli’s part mostly separate from Merry and Pippin’s up until they rejoin each other, and those parts completely split off from Frodo, Sam, and Gollum’s part was interesting. Now I think it would be almost guaranteed to alternate chapters between each group, whether to keep the different paths “fresh,” or just to keep them anchored at similar points along the timeline. Having grown so used to genre fiction alternating between different characters/perspectives, it felt almost novel (which is an obviously silly thing to feel about such a classic work) to know that multiple groups were off doing things, but to follow one at a time. I think it was certainly a good choice; it does a lot to emphasize Frodo’s comparative isolation, how truly separate the rest of the conflict now is from his quest. If we’d been bouncing back and forth, it wouldn’t have had the same impact.

I still deeply want to know why anyone decided that they should definitely trust a dude named fucking Wormtongue as a royal advisor. What the hell, guys.

I really like Faramir. Also love the vague hints that he’s got Some Magical Shit going on with him, which I had not really remembered. It’s not a surprise, per se; it’s been talked about that the Stewards of Gondor have some distant blood from those long-forgotten heroes/greater men and such. Still, hadn’t remembered it, and liked it.

Looking forward to Return of the King!

I really love the design and the colors of the cover.
Be the Sea by Clara Ward
2024
Science fiction (subgenre: climate) - demisexual protagonist, background f/f and m/m/f/f/nb/nb - ebook novel
3/5

67 year old marine biologist Wend has always been different. Between growing up a child of a single parent, being nonbinary, neurodivergent, and somewhere on the demisexual spectrum, they’ve often struggled to be fully understood. Despite, or maybe because of this, they’ve always strived to live their life as authentically as possible. When they come aboard the boat of photographer Viola Yang, it’s in part a chance to get to Hawai’i while studying the ocean on the journey there, but more important to Wend is a bid for connection. They are hoping this will be an opportunity to be understood by someone who may be uniquely positioned to do so.
After arriving in Hawai’i, Wend is unexpectedly given the chance to reconnect with multiple people from their past. This presents the potential for a promising new future, both personally and professionally. When Wend starts studying a plastic-eating bacteria they observed at several points on their journey, it becomes clear that someone is trying to suppress the research… going so far as to threaten everything Wend could hope to build.

My thoughts, some spoilers:

This is one that I came away with mixed feelings about.

Good things:
The bits talking about marine biology were cool. I’m not an expert, but it felt like it was well-researched and interesting.
Also in terms of the science, this felt like a believable place for things to be in a few decades; it’s realistic in that there are both good and bad things in terms of conservation. In some ways it’s being taken more seriously on a global scale, but some global goals have failed to be met, and the failures that are currently happening in the real world have not been reversed.
The general conceit of characters being able to astral project to see things, but also inhabit the bodies and behaviors of creatures in dreams is interesting! Along with the marine biology bits, those bits of Wend “being” different creatures were cool, and the way it blended their human observations and the instincts of the animals was neat.
Once the sort of espionage plot started up, it held my attention and made me want to know what would happen next.
I really do like super diverse works and worlds, so I appreciate queerness and neurodiversity being treated as perfectly normal and standard things! I also appreciate those things still be acknowledged even when presented as normal, and the ways in which those things can be alienating or difficult to navigate. (Too often I feel like works that treat those things as “normal” also skew in favor of making them therefore “irrelevant” in a way that I don’t like.)
A few of the descriptions of implemented green architecture sound lovely and like things I hope will someday be real and commonplace.

The less good:
Okay. So, as much as I love the many, many different types of queerness and neurodivergence in this story, it felt extremely “instructive” in a way I really do not mesh with. It felt like 101 post after 101 post in some cases. Perhaps I would have felt differently if I was less familiar with some of what was being talked about, but instead it felt like I was being talked at rather than reading a story. Breaking the flow of everything to describe what a particular identity means, or multiple times to go into explanations of when and why someone might be interested in non-sexual petplay as a kink just didn’t work for me.
There were similarly explanatory passages about other things, where it feels like characters are spitting out quick search result definitions for something. One of the characters cooks something using jackfruit and then says “jackfruit is high in fiber, vitamins C and A, several minerals, and antioxidants. Besides, it’s a great substitute for meat in old recipes, because of the texture.” Not untrue, but felt really awkward.
A lot of the ways queerness was talked about also broke my immersion in the near-future setting, because so much of the language was extremely current-modern. The language used, and the way that queerness is discussed is extremely different now in 2026 than it was even just a few years ago. That was different than in the mid 2000s-early 2010s when I was in high school and college. At that point, things were different than the 90s, which were different from the 70s and 80s, etc. Lampshading it by talking about “all the words the millennials added to public discussion” and “now you sound like a millennial” and repeatedly calling things “millennial terminology” really doesn’t keep it from breaking immersion for me. (And sure… there’s an argument that Wend is in their 60s, but would stick to the vocabulary and language that they first utilized as a younger adult, when they were first learning to describe their identity… but that’s not how it felt in-context. They’re 67 in 2039 when the book is set, so not a millennial, and this didn’t feel like the character’s preferred terminology so much as the author’s, especially because every character uses these same terms and definitions. It also contributed to making Wend feel much more like a person in their 30s than approaching 70, and I found myself having to repeatedly remind myself of their age, though perhaps that was a me problem.) I do recognize that this is a tricky thing, because trying to invent new “future” terms often feels extremely silly at best, and isn’t really a good option. I think it might have just felt less obvious if it wasn’t being pointed out so often. (“Millennial” shows up nine times in the book, almost always as part of the phrase “millennial terminology” or “millennial vocabulary.”)
Communication and the desire for it (particularly Wend’s desire to be understood) is a constant theme in the story. I recognize that in some ways, Wend’s experiences with Matt’s polycule, and their very literal and explanatory communication with each other is a fantasy, the same way the green architecture mall full of vegan restaurants and sensory-friendly clothing companies is. Even recognizing that, and even as someone who thinks that people in real life would benefit by being very upfront about what they mean and what they want… characters constantly stating for themselves or for others exactly, literally how they feel and why does not work well for me as a reader. It comes across as awkwardly clinical, and honestly sort of condescending.
A character saying that he would hug Wend if he could (because they have already said they don’t wish to be hugged, which he understands), prompts another character to then say “He’s telling you because it’s a primary emotional response for him, wanting to express care that way, not because he wants to pressure anyone for physical contact.” I’d rather have that go unspoken than be treated like a therapy checklist.
The book is a bit excessively vegan. Mostly with food, but with other things too. (I’m curious about all the “vegan” fabrics that were mentioned, because in the real world, that almost always means plastic, but the book is even more aggressively (and understandably) anti-plastic.) It does make sure to state that in a blackmail photo of a character in kink gear, that he is wearing a “leather-like” collar, ha.
But my problem is not actually with the veganism itself! My issue is pettier. Almost all the characters are vegan, several of them like cooking, and there’s a lot of description of all the food that they’re making vegan versions of. (And honestly, a lot sounds tasty! I love when stories describe amazing food!) But… when inclusivity and providing accommodations for every possible sensory preference that someone may have is so heavily emphasized, to the point of almost feeling off-putting at times, it’s ironic that every scene with food was a reminder that “ah, yes… my partner would quite possibly be immediately sent into anaphylaxis just walking into the room, and I’d frankly be concerned about how much cross-contamination was present on myself if I spent any time there.” (It’s tree nuts. Tree nuts are a life-threatening allergy for him, and almost everything is made with tree nuts as the substitution for non-vegan ingredients.) It’s FINE. The book is not attacking me or my partner, and is in fact a work of fiction, and these things are not problems for the characters. It just felt like a very ironic reminder that the loving inclusivity of this queer and neurodiverse utopia would Not Be For Us, even as queer neurodivergents ourselves.
Also, I said before that once the espionage plot kicks in, with Wend discovering that their research is being prevented and sabotaged, that I was a lot more engaged. Unfortunately, that’s more than halfway through the book, and I found that first half a struggle to get through. And it’s a long book —600-some pages—so that first half wasn’t short. The first half (and much of the second) is very much about character interaction, and character introspection, and eventually some character conflict… but it hadn’t grabbed me enough to really care about any of that until there was something external impacting them.
I also feel like I never fully understood why the espionage bit was happening. There was a bit of a motive given (that this other group of people is fully opposed to human intervention in environmental matters), but… it just never really seemed to fully make sense, because it turned out that the culprits didn’t even really morally/financially/politically oppose what they were doing, but were trying to prevent anyone finding out about this plastic-eating bacteria (something that already existed, not something that could be prevented from existing) for… reasons?

This does feel like it’s probably a book that is much more for someone else, but was unfortunately not for me to the degree that I’d hoped. The good aspects were very good, but I didn’t fully mesh with the style, and by the time I felt a bit more engaged, it was just a little too late. I will say that it didn’t quite feel like anything else I’ve read, and that was in and of itself a cool thing.

This is so very Current Contemporary Romance, haha. But perfectly respectable.
Game Changer by Rachel Reid
Book 1 of Game Changers
2018
M/M Romance (hockey romance) - ebook novel
3.5/5

It’s a complete surprise to Kip Grady when hockey star Scott Hunter comes into the smoothie shop where he works. It’s even more of a surprise when Scott keeps coming back. It’s something out of his wildest dreams when Scott turns out to be just as interested in Kip as he is in the smoothies he’s been buying.
Scott Hunter has had the sort of rags-to-riches story and professional success that makes him a beloved captain of the New York Admirals hockey team. He’s also deeply closeted. He knows that coming out—becoming the very first out gay NHL player—could jeopardize his career, so he’s resigned himself to a life spent mostly alone… until Kip.
Kip understands why Scott doesn’t want to come out, and initially he’s fine with it. As their relationship deepens into something that feels like a lot more than just a fun fling, it becomes a lot harder to deal with. How long can he stand keeping a relationship with the man he loves a secret? And for Scott, is it worth risking everything else for a chance at happiness with Kip?

My thoughts, minor spoilers that shouldn’t be a major surprise:

This book was… Fine. Which seems to be the usual reaction to it. I’m told the series experiences a pretty drastic increase in writing quality (which I would say is borne out by the 20% 60% or so I’ve read of the second book so far. Never mind, I’ve finished it, lol. Definitely a vast difference in quality!)

The good:
The relationship between Scott and Kip is sweet. They’re cute, and of course I wanted things to work out for them. They have some fun banter. The sex did not make me cringe.
The conflict (Scott being closeted and not wanting to risk his career vs Kip’s desire to live his life openly) wasn’t astoundingly deep, but it was a believable conflict, even if it felt like a very foregone conclusion that of course Scott is going to risk it to be with Kip.
While I felt like it moved a bit too quick in terms of the timeframe, I did like Kips move from “I can be fine with this! I totally understand, and I’m just happy to get what’s on offer while the relationship lasts!” to “Well… hopefully it won’t be quite like this forever. But I can be patient, it’s fine if this is how it has to be…” to “I can’t actually handle being a secret hidden from the world, and having to hide aspects of my own life at all times with no end in sight.” I feel like it’s relatable to go through that arc of being willing to deal with something at the exciting start of a relationship, only to realize after a while that you actually can’t handle it forever once the more day-to-day reality starts to wear on you. (And it’s certainly a common feeling in the case of one member of a relationship being closeted, and the other not being able to openly be with them!)
As kind of a burnout who squandered my potential and “most likely to do something great in our field” undergrad award, Kip’s anxiety about feeling like a failure next to his more successful friends and partner was a little too relatable… sadly I don’t think I’m destined for quite the easy “as soon as I apply myself I can enter my own success arc” that he got, but it’s nice wish fulfillment, haha.

The neutral:
I know that there was some “controversy” over this book, in that it was allegedly posted as an AU fic to AO3, where the author got feedback, and then eventually pulled it to officially publish it. Rather than an example of “serial numbers filed off,” it allegedly started as an original work and then had Steve/Bucky serial numbers pasted on to solicit feedback in a big fandom, and then peeled ‘em back off for publishing. Also allegedly the author has expressed some regret for doing so.
I don’t know the definite details of the situation, and certainly haven’t read or personally seen definite proof of the fanfic version, but it absolutely felt like an AU fic for a popular ship in a big fandom. (And it felt specifically like AUs of the characters allegedly in question… which makes me vaguely skeptical that it truly started as NOT fic. Even if I’d never heard about the fic thing, I think I would have had suspicions, despite MCU being emphatically NOT my fandom!) Regardless, it did feel like reading fanfic. To me that’s a neutral observation: I love AU fics, and this is absolutely the sort I would stay up scrolling through late into the night. It’s competently structured, if not revolutionary, and it does make for a breezy read if not a terribly unique or deep one.
The whole love at first sight thing is cute enough, but isn’t really something I connect with. That’s a me problem and an understood standard of the genre, so it doesn’t bother me. It’s just not something that does much for me.

The bad:
The fanfic vibes aren’t bad, but they do make the story feel slightly generic. Even a fairly generic fic can borrow some depth from the canon, or just the reader’s knowledge of the characters and how the fic’s presentation conforms or differs. In this case, it feels like it’s built a bit on that framework… but without actually having a canon for the reader to use as a base. A little bit with the mains, but especially with some of the secondary characters, it feels like I’m supposed to recognize them and already have some built-in characterization that just isn’t there.
I also felt like I kept waiting for something to happen, a sort of “other shoe to drop” moment that was external to the relationship, but would impact them. Particularly with the player who was kicked off the team and had been an asshole prior… I really expected he was going to try to blackmail someone or out Scott or something… but no.
I mentioned it above, but while I liked Kip’s emotional progression, the story happened over such a short period of time that it felt a little difficult to take as seriously as I wanted to. I like the arc… but experiencing it over the course of a few weeks or even a couple months feels too fast/makes Kip’s legitimate feelings come across as a little bit impatient.

I am glad to have gotten the heads up that the series apparently improves (and I really liked book two!), because while I liked this book well enough, the rest of the series would likely have languished on the TBR. This certainly wouldn’t have turned me off from reading more, but wouldn’t have pushed the rest up to priority status either.

A nicely ominous and threatening cover.
The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling
2019
Sci-fi/Horror - f/f - physical novel - read with Alex
5/5

Gyre has been hired for an extended caving mission, mapping out a large cave system on her colony planet, presumably for mining interests. She may have falsified most of her qualifications and work history, but considering both the pay and the quality of the gear she was being provided with, Gyre was confident that it meant the mission would come with a strong support team to help. She was sure she'd be able to make it successfully through the mission... and to the high payout waiting on the other side.
Instead, there is no team at all. Her only support in the cave is Em, monitoring her from aboveground... the woman in charge of the mission entirely. Em has complete control over Gyre, including taking control over her caving suit, administering drugs, and even manipulating her displays to control what she sees. As Gyre continues the mission, more and more details start to seem strange: supply caches gone missing, unexpected changes to the cave system, and discovering just how many attempts have been made prior to Gyre’s. Soon it starts to feel like she's not alone. It’s become clear that she can’t truly trust Em… but the longer she’s in the cave, the less sure she is that she can even trust herself.

My thoughts, vague spoilers, plus mention of a fake spoiler:

I still really enjoyed this one!
A lot of my feelings are the same as they were when I read this one last year.
I love the sense of Gyre’s increasing paranoia as the isolation gets to her, and as she discovers more about Em’s motives. Parts of it are so extremely justified, while others are clearly extremely irrational. I enjoy seeing the ways it makes Gyre act, even when she’s making terrible, self-sabotaging decisions.
This is also still, I think, one of the best examples of escalating problems that I’ve read. Every new issue that Gyre encounters feels horrible and often near-insurmountable. Once each thing is resolved, a new problem arises, that feels equally horrible and insurmountable. Even on a reread, knowing what’s ultimately going to happen, the early challenges didn’t feel small. There’s a bit of an “if you only knew what was to come!” sense, but the danger still always feels and is quite real. Those early-cave problems could still have killed Gyre just as dead as the worse ones she has to face later on.
(There’s frequent advice I see about writing, that says “imagine the worst thing that could happen to your character, and then do it to them. And keep doing it the whole story.” I mostly hate that advice, maybe because I’m just too literal, because for me the worst thing is that a meteor comes down and kills my protagonist and everyone they love and the story is over in a way that satisfied nothing. But this! This feels like an example of taking that advice and actually managing it. And it’s also satisfying to read, rather than just feeling like unrelenting misery.)
I still love Gyre and Em and the way they play off of each other. They are clear foils for each other, in what their various (similar) obsessions have led them to do. I like the progression of their relationship, including the times that it regresses, and they lose the ground they’ve gained. I guess these are the “toxic lesbians” that people either love or hate. They’re messy and fucked up and both terrible and wonderful for each other. I want them to work everything out and live happily ever after, but know that it’s still going to be fucked, and I love that.

I will say that I kind of liked that this time I was not anticipating a twist that wasn’t going to happen. For some reason (probably my own fault for misunderstanding something, but my memory is that someone outright stated this in a rec, and I was at the time annoyed that it was an unmarked spoiler,) I had been “spoiled” for the “twist” that Em was an AI controlling Gyre’s suit. THIS IS NOT THE CASE. I can see ways that the start feels like that could be what it’s setting up, but it’s not! I was glad that I didn’t spend the first half of the book anticipating a non-existent twist.

The first time I read it, one of the things I said I liked was the ambiguity of the source of the things happening in the cave. Many are given physical, literal explanations: hallucinogenic fungus, psychological distress, [redacted spoiler], impacts from the alien Tunnelers. However, it felt to me like there was some ambiguity regarding whether there was something paranormal at work. This time… it felt less ambiguous. I think the book does come down on the “everything had an explanation” side, but… I kind of like the idea of there being something paranormal to the cave as well. It’s still an arguable point, I think, but I think on the reread I have to say there’s less support for that reading.

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Bonus short story that I read:


The image accompanying the short story. I love me some intricate, fractal-esque organic images.
“Constellations” by Jeff VanderMeer
2026
Science fiction/horror - online short story
Published by MIT Technology Review: here (This is theoretically a non-paywalled link.)
4.5/5

When their ship crash lands on a remote planet, only the narrator, their ship’s badly-wounded captain, the astrogator, and the ship’s AI survive. The group sets off for distant domes they can see, feeling confident that reaching them will provide some sort of salvation. On their journey, they encounter more and more remains of other astronauts, of many, many species, who seem to have undertaken the same post-disaster journey.

My brief thoughts, slight spoilers:

This was a fun, short read. Very aesthetically similar to Scavengers Reign in a lot of ways. (The proliferation of strange life within the suit of a dead astronaut?* Amazing. Perfect Scavengers Reign vibes.)
I love me an unreliable narrator, and I really love the variation of “narrator that slowly begins to realize that something may be forcing unreliability and he is concerned.”
Definitely a “wouldn’t it be fucked up if…” story. I am left wanting to understand the mystery, and yet glad not to.

*I am now wondering if this short story has anything to do with the author’s novel Dead Astronauts, which is on the TBR. I don’t think so, and when he shared it he didn’t say anything to that effect.

Bonus bonus short stories:
These were written by my younger sibling, so I am clearly not unbiased, but I loved them both!

“America’s Darling” by Terramythos/Kezona
2025
Dystopian horror - online short story
On Taylor’s substack

Musings on the perfection of America, as exemplified by Darling, America’s Dog. Things are so much better now than they ever used to be!

(Fairly sure this was inspired at least in part by mentioning that Bella has to be called an “All-American Dog” when she competes, because the AKC doesn’t recognize her breed, haha.)

I love this one, and think it has a very classic skin-crawling creepiness of good classic spec-fic/horror.


“Just a Deer” by Terramythos/Kezona
2026
Horror - online short story
On Taylor’s substack

A man in a bar recounts a close call on the road. It was just a deer.

Just a deer. :) This one isn’t super overt horror, just that sort of slow creepiness of something not as it should be.

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Reading goals for 2026:
- Read 50 books (21/50)
- Read more genre classics (Tolkien, Le Guin, Pratchett) (3/x)
- Reread the Murderbot Diaries (0/8)
- Read the 2025 Pride ebook bundle (5/14)
- Read some short story collections (1/x)

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So far, I have finished two additional books in May:
- Return of the King
- Heated Rivalry

I am currently reading four books:
- The Ballad of Black Tom by Victor LaValle, which is my main read, and was my “TBR Book of choice” that I picked, having finished Lord of the Rings
- The Forward collection of short stories as my ebook side-read
- Camp Damascus by Chuck Tingle, my co-read with Alex
- What Stalks the Deep by T. Kingfisher, my co-read with Taylor

My plans for what to read next:
- Fallen, from the Pride bundle
- A Wizard of Earthsea , starting on some Le Guin with the Earthsea books
- All Systems Red, starting the Murderbot Diaries reread
- A Necessary Chaos, from the Pride bundle
- Artificial Condition, continuing Murderbot
- A House With Good Bones
- For ebook side-reads, I might continue with the Game Changer books, or I might switch between those and something else. We’ll see where the vibes are at.

My TBR list is up to a distressing 758 books, driven at least partially by yet another Humble Bundle. This one was for a set of anthologies edited by Ellen Datlow.

I keep gazing at my TBR list (either the shorter one I have up on LibraryThing or the full one in a document on my laptop) like my own “do it for her” sort of board, lol.