Illustrator and reader of queer sff books from Aotearoa. layaart is my art blog, layahimalaya is my 'main' (DM me there!). I co-run diversebookfanart
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2024 reads / storygraph
Compound Fracture
YA thriller set in rural West Virginia
follows an autistic trans boy who survives being almost killed by the Sheriff’s son after a party, and accidentally kills one of the boys who hurt him when he tries to get back at him
and is pulled head-first back into the 100 year old feud between his & the sheriff’s families, that began when his great-great grandfather was executed after inciting a miner’s rebellion, the grandfather whose ghost has started to haunt him
community & family & socialist revolution
aro-questioning MC
arc from netgalley, out september 3
#Compound Fracture#aroaessidhe 2024 reads#aromantic books#andrew joseph white did it again……#pretty fast paced and gripping! I barely put it down.#Definitely the primal scream of rage the author described it as. Pretty brutal in places. I enjoyed it a lot.#it’s definitely less sff than his other books - the ghostly element is almost subtle - but that worked for me.#I was especially excited for this one because I heard the MC is aromantic and I’m so happy about it I think that was done well#certainly with more nuance and depth than I’ve come to expect from a lot of books; despite the fact that it’s not a major focus#(and yknow takes place over a couple weeks and is still in the questioning stage other than maybe the epilogue)#It’s tackling some very large complex things politically and is very unsubtle and somewhat neat about it#- and I think some aspects could have used more nuance/elaboration? but also maybe that’s just not possible to fit in one little book#the handful of negative reviews I can find I guess I see where they're coming from lol#but yknow. lots of good regardless#and also. appreciation moment for evangeline gallagher's cover art
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I will not be "growing out" of being aroace.
dear wendy by ann zhao
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You could never truly finish reading such a book, for the contents changed at need at the original maker's whim, or to suit the phases of the moon or the patterns of the weather. Some of the books had contents you couldn't even remember till certain events might come to pass. Invariably, this was an act of kindness from the creator of the book, for such contents invariably dealt with things that would be a burden to recall with every waking day.
lirael cosplay / 📷 havecamerawillsnap
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Someone You Can Build A Nest In:
I have never once annotated a book before, but I was struck with the inspiration while reading this one. I planned to only annotate when something caught my attention, and well... it got out of control pretty fast.
It was a beautiful Sapphic ACE horrormantasy told from the POV of the monster Shesheshen. Parts of the story are cozy, but it also contains graphic body horror/gore throughout and massive family abuse with broken characters. If you are a fan of tentacle, shape-shifting inhuman monsters, check it out!
Edit: I forgot to include mentions of oviposition and vore. Which I love but I know is not everyone's cup of tea
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do I just have to accept that this is how much I'm gonna have to pay if I want to buy my favourite books these days
#I mean I hardly buy books these days other than secondhand#but levine querido books have like 0% chance of showing up in nz secondhand#to shape might at some point....idk
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so tragic to be confronted with the fact that people buy my bookmarks and then use them to read sjm books 😔
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Read in April
audio favourites
The Skin and Its Girl - 4.75
Lord of the Empty Isles (arc) - 3.75
Icarus - 4
Someone You Can Build A Nest In - 4.5
Song of the Huntress - 3.5
Compound Fracture (arc) - 4.5
A Botanical Daughter - 2.75
An Unkindness of Ghosts (reread) - 4.5
Dear Wendy - 4.5
Calling of Light (arc) - 4
Party of Fools - 4.25
Fifty Beasts To Break Your Heart - 4
Camp Zero - 3.75
graphic novels
I Want to be a Wall vol 1 & 2 - 3.75
Rain - 3.5
The Marble Queen - 3
nonfiction
How Dare The Sun Rise
Gathering Moss
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Doodles from This is how you lose the time war (read it for class and it was very good)
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bookmark collection 12/?
madame bovary bookmark by hollydunndesign with the tensorate series, the art of prophecy, & the bruising of qilwa
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something ironic about me and my aroace flatmate who I met at uni & have lived with for the 8 years since, both getting Dear Wendy (a book about two aroaces who meet at uni and decide to live together at the end of the year) out from the library at the same time
#we Don't have a petty internet rivalry though. as far as I'm aware#dear wendy#I already read it I just forgot I had it on hold at the library lol#laya talks#.....we also ran the uni queer club together. lmao
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The Feast Makers, H.A. Clarke
#the feast makers#crawling with girlfriends. like lice#h.a. clarke#i should also note all these screencaps im taking are from the arc it's possible there's changes I guess lol
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THE ONCE AND FUTURE WITCHES
By Alix E. Harrow
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2024 reads / storygraph
A Botanical Daughter
historical fantasy
a taxidermist and botanist who live in a greenhouse in a botanical garden, far away from the disapproval of Victorian London
when they receive a shipment of a strange sentient fungi, they cultivate it inside a corpse of a recently murdered girl - who was the best friend/lover of their new housekeeper
as she grows and expands her desires they have to deal with their feelings about the potential monster they’ve created
#A Botanical Daughter#aroaessidhe 2024 reads#man I really wanted to like this but I kinda had to force myself to finish it.#really not a fan of the writing style which is very emotionally distant and full of a lot of telling not showing#it could have gotten weird and atmospheric with the writing style! we could have gotten sentient fungi POV! but no.#The characters were flat. the conceptually weird/creepy/horror aspects were executed in the most boring way#the relationship between the men is something we’re told exists but…. I don’t feel it. I don’t like them as characters.#They’re not even interesting enough to hate - or like it could have gone in the direction of embracing the unhinged murder couple vibes#they flip flop between angry arguments and making up and I’m like what is the point of that?? Honestly I didn’t feel any emotional connecti#it kinda feels like it doesn’t know whether it’s whimsical quirky-cozy vibes or like properly gothic horror#it’s somewhere in between & fails at both. it maybe suffers from trying to play into the popularity of coziness#the closest to weird we get is plant lesbian sex scene but also I laughed out loud when I read the line ‘hungry for her loam’#like…..these men essentially create this person then cut her off from the world and her biological desires; control her autonomy/ability#to speak and the conclusion is <3 what a weird little family <3 and not she should#escape and kill them and/or make them grapple with the fact they are at fault for this potential ecological disaster let loose on the world#there’s also weird colonialist lines scattered throughout that don’t feel super interrogated…
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obsessed with this library card sticker I got from mallowdraws.png last weekend
#laya talks#for my library card........#also considering making my own (with permission from them for the idea lol)
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2024 reads / storygraph
Song of the Huntress
historical fantasy set in 8th century Britain
follows three characters:
a woman who has spent centuries leading the wild hunt & reaping souls after being tricked into it, who disguises herself as a human to enter the kingdom
the queen of Wessex who never lives up to the demands of the court, despite leading their people in battle - and after a battlefield defeat they turn against her
and her husband, the king, deals with magic and political upheaval as his brother tries to usurp him and conflict arises between new and old religions
bi woman MC, lesbian MC, ace man MC
#Song of the Huntress#aroaessidhe 2024 reads#This is - okay? some very interesting and complex characters#i liked the women of the wild hunt and I liked how aethelburg as a warrior queen is just sort of normal not some kind of girlboss thing#it’s very slow paced - I doubt I would have gotten through it if not for the audiobook#the historical setting and details and complexity of the plot is interesting#I did read it for the ace character so:#unsure how i feel about how his asexuality's the reason for the problem in their relationship. like the book tries to make it the issue tha#he didn't TELL her about it but.....but ultimately it is just his asexuality as the issue. idk. not that I don't think that this kind of#ace narrative shouldn’t be explored I guess. it was just a smidge too portrayed as him being the problem#I feel like if he were aroace at least it’d be like okay; she finds in someone else what he doesn’t want to give her#but he literally does love her romantically lol. which makes the subplot of the romance between the women like......ok she's cheating#bc her husband won't fuck her? not to minimise complex characters down to surface level ships but also….#the sapphic relationship is kinda undeveloped/insta attraction and not much else -the book is conscious of this &#I don't think it tries that much to convince us it's something more than that (other than how it affects the character's personal journeys)#but still. idk. I guess I do like that it doesn't conform to perfect-narrative-romances but evidently unsure about how it did so#this makes it sound like I hated the asexuality and the sapphic relationship - I didn't hate either I just didn't love them lol#also his sister is also aroace and becomes a nun and otherwise she's offscreen - lost opportunity imo!
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But when it came time to dress, she once again donned the working clothes of a Second Assistant Librarian. That was what she was, she told herself. She had earned the right to the red waistcoat. No one could take that away, even if she wasn’t a proper Clayr.
lirael cosplay / 📷 havecamerawillsnap
#lirael cosplay#lirael#the old kingdom#fun fact. this door is the front door to the old KFC in town. (everyone was looking at me when were taking these pics lmao)
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