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rimouskis · 2 years

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okay for me i found the gideon the ninth audiobook narration kind of off putting, the voice actress just wasn't my vibe, but once i physically read it and like developed my own like narrative voices for all the characters i really got into it. it's also one that's meant to be read and reread with a lot of foreshadowing and clues and worldbuilding that can be confusing on a first read but on rereads are super engaging and really click. the second book messes around with different pov structures and flashbacks that seemingly contradict the first book until various plot things are revealed

(also there was a post that said something along the lines of "all the narrators in the locked tomb series are people who are constantly three steps removed from having any clue what's going on" and while i really loved that aspect i know lots of people find it frustrating)

I liked the voice actress! I was amused by her accent, haha, but I'm easy in that way. I typically love books with lost of foreshadowing and delicate plot things going on, but I felt, like.. so disconnected from the actual plot in a bad way.

[spoilers below!]

like I think it started off in a very promising way... gideon wants to escape, the escape fails, she gets whisked off-world... but as soon as they got onto first house I always felt like I was waiting for some higher stakes to connect gideon to the goings-on.

in a way I think harrow might have been a better POV character for this first book? she, imo, had more of a personal stake in winning. I personally didn't really get why gideon would need to care much about "winning" and ascending to lyctorhood. harrow... sure, I get that: she wants to obtain power since she's destroyed her house and family by being curious and not following rules, but when it came to gideon I just kept thinking, "why do you care? why wouldn't you want to run away? what is keeping you here (emotionally)?"

I also think the "lesbians in space!" bit was oversold, which was a slight bummer for me 😅 I LOVE ROMANCE I would have probably been happier if gideon and harrow had done a little "oh shit feelings reveal" moment halfway through the novel. I get that it isn't a romance buuuuut with all the chatter about it I almost wish it was! I do respect the fact that almost all the main characters were women and there were a lot of conflicts between them that were, like, "okay cool this is a Lesbian Narrative" but alas I am a romance girlie at heart.

back to the plot: I think gideon lacked motivation and stakes. I think she needed a more personal connection that was more clearly revealed to the audience. I LOOOOVE Big Reveals in books, but I like when they're deftly done. personally I felt the end fight (that took up like a solid hour of narration, I'm not going to lie ahaha) was basically an excuse to tie gideon up and have characters monologue at each other to explain why they care at all about the plot.

when we finally get the reveal that gideon and harrow have a shared past of being the only surviving children of the ninth and that gideon was feared for surviving the nerve gas, I was like: cool. when we got the reveal that gideon felt guilty for killing harrow's parents, I was like: ahaha wait. because we should have found that out much, much sooner as readers.

if muir had spent more time doing character work with gideon and delving into her headspace during the trials, I might have been more engaged during them AND we wouldn't have needed an infodump at the end. it MAYBE could have worked if harrow hadn't known about gideon's involvement at all (so there would be more stakes: I Must Keep My Secret From Harrow), but harrow knew everything [except for the precise "I'm personally culpable for their deaths" emotion gideon had, but even that was like... immediately introduced and immediately resolved, so we didn't even get any tension between them about it!].

I'll compare it to one of my favorite books ever, the queen of attolia. if you haven't read it, stop reading this post NOW and go read it, because I'm about to spoil the big twist that had me yelling in my car when I got to its section in its audiobook:

when it was revealed that Eugenides was in love with Irene, and had been in love with her when she cut his hand off, and had STAYED in love with her, and had pursued her once again and taken her because he STILL LOVED HER AFTER WHAT SHE DID TO HIM, AND THAT WAS WHY HER ACTIONS WEIGHED HEAVILY ON HER, AND THAT WAS WHY HE CONTINUED FORTH IN THE WAR, I was GOBSMACKED and I was like OH EVERYTHING MAKES SENSE, but the only reason I felt satisfied about it was because leading up to that, Gen and Irene both had other motivating factors to be involved in the plot. the reveal of Gen's feelings radically deepened that investment, but there WAS investment there in the first place.

and back to gideon the ninth: I felt SO removed from the plot, and gideon felt uninvested in the plot, and we had this HUGE swath of characters when all I really wanted to focus on was gideon and harrow and what the fuck was going on between them!

I think confused and removed narrators can be done well, but gideon the ninth didn't quite hit for me. I think a big part of it is how HYPED this book has been on the corners of booklr and booktok I've seen. Like, I had high expectations, and that's always dangerous!

I liked the humor, and I found gideon fun, and I want more of gideon and harrow, but the book as a whole didn't quite give me what I was looking for. that's okay! not everything is for everyone, but I'm glad I read it and was able to get an idea of what everyone was buzzing about

#my feelings on this book aren't strong btw #like I don't regret having read it!#and if anyone's super into it I'd be curious to talk with you!

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yellowocaballero · 2 years

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sorry, not a star but I’ve been having so much fun reading the others. i am now extremely curious as to your thoughts about how Gideon the ninth approached its worldbuilding slash writing in general in the first book since I’ve seen wildly different opinions about it

Oh!! I have no idea everybody else's opinions or takes so I will simply provide my own, unfiltered.

I liked the book! Great mix of easy and fun with slightly weightier worldbuilding and plot. I am very weak for "everyone's trapped in a mansion and people are dying" whodunnits, and having the whodunnit be about space necromancers gives it a really fun adventure element.

The supporting cast was definitely its strongest element. So many of the people in the book were just charming, kind people. The Awful Teenz were such a delight. It's always just a pleasure to read good people trying to be good people, while preserving conflict and tension between the characters. I would read another book series about that nerd boy and his badass jock best friend.

Writing wise - something that stood out to me as a writer was the supporting cast, in a different way. Whodunnit locked room murder mysteries usually have a lot of characters, and this book had a lot a lot of characters. Tremendously difficult for the reader to remember, tremendously difficult for the writer to keep track of, tremendously difficult to give everybody a role in the story. Trust me - I accidentally stick myself with writing big casts all the time, and if your cast goes above six characters everything just gets INSANELY difficult. This goes double for mysteries, because the temporal/spatial elements of each character become very important.

But it felt very seamless. Every character was distinct and memorable. I barely had any problems remembering who was who and what their deals were, and there were, like, sixteen characters! The author kept track of everything, and to a precise enough degree that the mystery worked.

There was a similar approach to the worldbuilding, I think. I don't like reading harder scifi because too much worldbuilding tremendously bores me, but this scifi/fantasyish worldbuilding felt like puppy medication wrapped in cheese. I had no trouble following it, it was interesting and neat, and the world felt rich. It was revealed as you needed to know it, and I rarely felt like things were being explained to me. Each character was able to interestingly flaunt a little bit of the worldbuilding, and the characters & setting worked together to weave the world.

Gideon & Harrow's relationship, as the emotional centerpiece, also worked very well. It definitely changed and deepened, but the way we viewed it and the way the characters viewed it also changed a lot too. It was very dynamic and important. It also acknowledged the power imbalance and depicted it as part of the struggle in the relationship, which not enough people do. You discovered them, they discovered themselves, they discovered each other, they changed and grew.

Stuff I didn't like as much was more minor. Gideon's jokes were funny but sometimes they just absolutely killed the tension and were really misplaced. The ending was...really confusing and it introduced a ton of stuff that I didn't really get, although I'm certain they get more into it in the sequel. I don't remember it as well either, and that did feel much more infodumped. But I do understand the ending kind of...revealing that there was a reveal, and it set up a TON of stuff for the sequel. Maybe just a bit too much setup?

I think the author is good at all of these things because they're a Homestuck. I'm not joking. Big cast, memorable characters, complex relationships. Too many jokes. Eventually overconvoluted plot. Second person. I see you, Tasmyn Muir. I see your Promstuck.

Fact about me that's not obvious is that I am unbelievably picky, but I did have a nice time with the book. A fun read that still had meat to it. Like laffy taffy.

I think there's stuff to say about how it seemed...built for fandom, author is a Homestuck etc, and how I think that might be way it's one of the few non-YA books I've seen recently that really actually broke out into Tumblr. Murderbot is the other one, but while I enjoyed gt9 I LOVE Murderbot. THAT one was not written by a fandom person, that was written by someone who does compsci as her day job and I love it.

#my asks #met martha wells at a signing way back when before murderbot blew up #she is VERY cool. brought cookies.#I was so confused when everybody was talking about murderbot all of a sudden but I WAS like yas queen #i hope she's able to live on murderbot now! lady was still working her day job!

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unlikely-course · 3 years

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The tl;drs of this very long post, which is about Gideon’s arc and her relationship to Harrow:

-Gideon’s arc in gtn is a corruption arc because tlt is not just goth but Gothic

-Gideon “forgives” Harrow because of Trauma and that’s definitely not the endpoint of how she feels about Harrow or their past

-The narrative knows what it’s doing

When Gideon says “For the Ninth!” as she dies, and thinks “this is the loyalty they always said I lacked, this is me making good” that’s not growth, that’s part of the tragedy of the moment. Like, the Ninth does not deserve her allegiance! It is, as Gideon was the first to remind us, rotten to the core. When she dies, it’s for Harrow, and her saying it’s for the Ninth does represent on some level that she’s come to new understanding about who Harrow is and how Harrow views herself *as* the Ninth, but like this is, I mean. Bad. Harrow herself does not deserve Gideon’s loyalty! Gideon gives it to her because it is a relief. Gideon is very good, yes, but the forgiveness is a response to trauma. The second Harrow shows even the slightest vulnerability or regard for Gideon, Gideon is eager to make amends because she has been starved for any positive association to others for her entire life, and Harrow was literally the only peer she ever had to associate with. She correctly identified that resistance to Ninth society was vital to her survival and selfhood, but also that shit is exhausting. That resistance is also partially formed by that society conveying to her: we have no place for you, we have no use for you as you are, and that makes you hateful to us.

Her response to Harrow and the cavalier role then is pretty classic! It is a relief to have a place, to be able to stop fighting, to give herself over to a structure sold to her as one in which she can support and be supported, to resolve the central conflict and most complicated relationship of her life. I maintain that you the reader are also supposed to feel initially relieved and even cheered by Gideon and Harrow growing closer and then gradually unsettled when Gideon embraces cavalierhood and the increasingly invasive demands of the trials, and has her mindset adjusted in increments toward sacrifice. To feel her thoughts turn in this direction is alarming! This is purposeful, and it is purposefully mixed in with good feelings, the same good feelings that Gideon is getting, to distract from and inoculate you against what is happening just as Gideon is inoculated against it.

In addition, Canaan House is a very particular crucible. This is not only the first time that Gideon has ever been bombarded with new people and experiences, but also the first time she’s faced these unknown external threats, which pushes her to unite with the familiar (Harrow) against them. Her past and present environments have made it so that the compassion she comes to feel for Harrow gets bound up in the idea of being loyal to her house, the ‘contract’ of her new role, and the positive interaction it gives her until the idea of her offering her life to Harrow is not simply necessary in the moment but good and right. Redeeming, even, when we as readers know she has nothing she needs redemption for.

Gideon is so very angry when she comes to in htn, and it is not merely anger at those who have wronged Harrow or anger at Harrow for endangering herself. On the First, she made a simple deal: her life for relief from the emotional state she had to live it in. Forgiveness for some kind of peace. And when she wakes up that exchange is refuted. Gideon frames Harrow’s actions as a rejection of herself out of low self-esteem but also in an attempt to deal with unresolved anger she has towards Harrow, anger that cannot fit into the cavalier role she wants to embody, anger that she attempted to trade away but in actuality can’t. Because the role she was sold, the type of relationship the cavalier and necro is supposed to be, is ultimately false. It encompasses very real and deep relationships, as we have seen, but the framework uses these real elements to its own ends, the Empire’s ends, and despite its proclamations of mutual care the relationship is always at the cavalier’s expense.

This is what it means to say Gideon’s arc in gtn is a corruption arc. It’s not that she becomes “bad,” it’s that the corrupting forces of the narrative have reached out and altered her, worn her down, seduced her even. This is Gideon’s first contact with the wider Empire, in the seat and seed of its wretched power, and it has used her goodness, her capacity for connection (and yes for forgiveness as well!) against her to further ensnare her, to draw her in line with itself. And then she dies for it, as it demands! Wow. And the we have the other side of that, which is when Gideon says “For the Ninth!” she’s signaling to Harrow that she has come to value what Harrow values, just as Harrow herself, watching in horror, has come to realize her values are very fucked up.

And Harrow has indeed realized that by that time! Harrow really does travel such a distance in gtn, but this is largely obscured from us just the same as plot details are in the book, by the limits of Gideon’s perception. And let me be clear: this is a feature, not a bug. It is not a weakness. It is vital! Integral! To the above, and all it entails for Gideon as a character and the overall themes of the series, that Gideon forgive Harrow without Harrow having “earned” it or made real amends. The fact that she does conveys to us everything I’ve just been talking about!

Furthermore, this story is in conversation with a rather particular type of Christianity, but Gideon’s Jesus parallels are even more widely applicable. Forgiveness is kind of a whole theme with that guy, and the book is also plenty interested in what it costs for a human to forgive as divinely as scripture demands (to forgive as the bond demands, as the empire demands). In some ways there are good things that may come of it, sure, but it is not a purely redemptive force for the giver or receiver. It does not necessarily resolve.

I myself can’t say that I ship Gideon and Harrow in the way people traditionally think of shipping, nor as I have traditionally shipped other characters. Still, I reject the notion that that way of relating to each other is not a central part of the questions the book is asking. Like before, when I was talking about Gideon finding something to believe in in the way the adept/cavalier bond is sold to her—although we see that bond encompass many different types of relationships it is in Gideon and Harrow’s case speaking to how romantic love (much like that forgiveness!) is not immediately and entirely redemptive. I mean, Muir does say the series is about how love can be redemptive, but I think can be is the operative phrase here, in that it’s also first demonstrating the ways it’s not, or at least not always the way we think it will be--the limits and then the power. Trying to set that aspect of the relationship aside (like a “sisters” route or something similar) is a weak and queasy side-stepping of the issue.

Remember that interview where Muir says something along the lines of like, she didn’t write it as necessarily romantic but definitely homoerotic? Yeah.

Despite all that I do want to make it clear that I hope Gideon and Harrow work it out in the end. Just don’t assume the narrative does not understand what working it out might entail. And who knows? I might have the read all wrong. Maybe Muir doesn’t understand what she’s doing. But I feel pretty compelled by the textual evidence.

#gideon the ninth #gideon nav #the locked tomb #gideon the ninth spoilers #harrow the ninth spoilers

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a-rivederlestelle · 3 years

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my top ten books of 2020

so i read exactly 100 books in 2020 ~to cope~ and decided to share my top ten!!! (i'll add my descriptions/random thoughts under a readmore)

the priory of the orange tree by samantha shannon

gideon the ninth by tamsyn muir

this is how you lose the time war by amal el-mohtar and max gladstone

giovanni's room by james baldwin

a wizard of earthsea by ursula k. le guin

on a sunbeam by tillie walden

the sound of waves by yukio mishima

the bridge of san luis rey by thorton wilder

red, white, and royal blue by casey mcquiston

code name verity by elizabeth wein

A beautifully written feminist fantasy retelling of St. George and the Dragon. A diverse cast of characters, gorgeous and engaging worldbuilding, so many dragons, and maybe one of the most carefully, beautifully developed f/f relationships between main characters that I’ve ever read. I’ve reread it multiple times, including listening to the audio book just to feel more immersed. This is exactly what I mean when I say I love fantasy and want to find more fantasy books.

A lesbian necromancers space opera filled with honest-to-god in-text meme references crossed with a whodunnit murder mystery. The most unique narrative voice I’ve ever read with the most distinct character personalities. Balances horror and humor on a needle point with ease. I literally created a playlist for this that I then wrote a song-by-song explanation for, if that explains anything.

A delicately interwoven love story in gorgeous epistolary prose. Alternating points of view, constantly shifting settings, breathtaking metaphors and imagery. “I’ll be all the poets, I’ll kill them all and take each one’s place in turn, and every time love’s written in all the strands it will be to you.” is an actual quote that makes me lose my fucking mind. I can and will judge a book by its cover when it’s as beautiful inside and out as this novella.

Reading this book will now always be waking up early on a summer morning and sitting outside in the slowly warming sun, surrounded by green and birdsong and patio stones chilly under my feet. Reading the sentence “And here my baby came indeed, through all that sunlight, his face flushed and his hair flying, his eyes, unbelievably, like morning stars.” and sitting with it in all that sunlight, in all that early morning silence. It’s hard to put anything else about this novel into words.

The main conflict revolves not around a war, but a path to self-discovery. As Le Guin described it, “The discovery brings him victory, the kind of victory that isn't the end of a battle but the beginning of a life.” This was an important distinction for me: these worlds, these characters are not singularly contained within their pages. At the end of every story can be, should be, at its core, the beginning of a life.

Found family on a spaceship. Beautifully diverse female and nonbinary characters. What else could you want from a graphic novel? A love story, a coming of age story, a story about community and healing and support all shown through distinctly designed and colored panels. Beautiful. Just so beautiful and hopeful and loving.

A classic Japanese coming of age novel with prose as rolling, swelling, and captivating as the sea itself. Full of resonating emotion, a genuine young protagonist, delicate young love, and human connection. There’s this emotion I felt while reading it that I still can’t adequately explain, something fulfilling and melancholic all at once.

Thornton Wilder has the most distinct power of any writer I’ve read to show significance in the insignificant. There’s a beautiful simplicity in the way this book lays bare the humanity in all people. He narratively grapples with the question of fate versus will with a slow-building and detailed description of the lives lost when the titular bridge breaks, and his ability to consider existential meaning through the mundanity makes this a novel that sticks with me.

The modern enemies to lovers fairytale we always deserved. Alex’s struggle with his sexuality is deeply relatable and his relationship with Henry is developed so carefully and lovingly. It’s just such a fun, accessible, and comforting read, especially for a young adult queer reader.

I’ll randomly think of the line “Kiss me, Hardy, kiss me quick!” and cry. Intricately written and so deceiving in the best, most intentional ways, that I was actually breathless when I began to figure things out. Once again: I love epistolary novels. Also, Julie apparently being confirmed bisexual in the prequel is something that can actually be so personal.

#the priory of the orange tree #gideon the ninth #this is how you lose the time war #giovanni's room #a wizard of earthsea #on a sunbeam #the sound of waves #the bridge of san luis rey #red white and royal blue #code name verity #rwrb #tpotot #under the tag is a lot of writing im so sorry #i actually had to erase some stuff lmao #reading list #reading list 2020 #lit #edit: just noticing my description for bridge of san luis rey got cut off ill see if I can change that lol

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mistwraiths · 3 years

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Excuse the crappy picture but I couldn't seem to download a picture of the cover to use 🤷🏼‍♀️

4 stars

I'm not going to give you a synopsis because you need to go into this pretty blind for the whole experience and I don't want to ruin the ending of Gideon the Ninth for you.

It almost makes me mad that I'm rating Harrow this high because this book is an absolute clusterfuck of you the reader not knowing what the FUCK is going on. All you know is something is going on that's completely different than what originally happened and you don't know what for or why or even really how.

This book splits between second person and third person for like 4 acts and then has a first person in the 5th act. I don't think I read a book that had a second person view point that wasn't a children's choose your adventure book. It was jarring at first but you definitely get used to it.

When I say you'll be confused, I mean it. There are absolutely no hints. There are these odd notes but they make no sense to YOU until things get revealed and things are spiraling. There's no way you could have understood them. You don't understand pretty much what happened until almost 400 pages in.

And yet, I'm hella invested. I love Harrow, I love when she's internally a vicious little stubborn bitch and I love how good she is at her power. I don't know if we 100% got the full version of Harrow but I still love her. Ianthe you never know what she's doing or thinking. None of the character you mostly read about is a "good" character and some of them are very crazy.

Once everything makes sense and a certain character arrives, this book is fucking amazing. This one character is my FAVORITE and their commentary really is great. Of course, the ending is as wild and confusing as the book so I'm not 100% sure what happened or what this means. I suppose we'll see.

I think my main gripe about this series is that I still don't understand things that I love in books. The magic system? Not really, we're given some words that are supposed to mean something but you don't understand exactly what they MEAN. The world? No! I don't understand what happened to the worlds, what happened to get them where they are, etc. There's a thing called the River which is a liminal space but it also has water??? And beasts and ghosts??? And a door to hell maybe?? Someplace possibly beyond??? I don't know for sure.

Tamsyn loves to give us descriptions and details which is great, but I'd just like to understand things. On top of this, she loves using words either not popular in use or ancient words or just ones that you're constantly having to either blither on or Google it to understand. It's exhausting at times. While I did enjoy it there's also a lot of sprinkled memes mentioned in Act 5 that while funny feels a bit out of place?

Anyways, I still enjoyed this massively confusing book.

#harrow the ninth #tamsyn muir #steph reads #steph's book review #book review

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zenosanalytic · 4 years

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Harrow the Ninth: Insanity, the Body, and Gideon Redux

Spoilers, Obvsl

While writing My Other Three Reaction Posts while reading this book, one thing I kept WANTING to do but kept stopping myself from doing was praise Muir’s treatment&presentation of psychosis. I THOUGHT that was what she was aiming for, but It’s a touchy subject and I worried about imparting motive to an author on it or misrepresenting my own experience or knowledge of it in doing so, so I kept deciding to Not. But then, In the Acknowledgements at the back, Muir touches, very briefly, on her own experiences in this regard so I now feel comfortable giving her treatment of the topic all the kudos I can. Her portrayal is affectingly Honest. The terror and shame of Harrow’s condition -the vulnerability which makes trust both an inescapable necessary and horrifying to offer; Her desperate NEED for people to trust, and how easy that is to exploit and abuse- is fully conveyed. It’s rare enough to see a sympathetic portrayal of any mental illness in our society let alone psychosis, a condition which has been enthusiastically vilified and sensationalized in our popular culture for at least a century. But to see a psychotic PROTAGONIST, and to see her condition in all the sorrow, fear, and wretchedness it can bring, through the eyes of a sympathetic narrator, while said protagonist is trapped among callous self-serving ppl who see in it not suffering to be soothed but an excuse to discount, ignore, abuse, and exploit; and then to see her declared INNOCENT and VICTIM and RIGHT in clear, masterful prose; when the fuck does this happen?

It of course plays structural roles too; both by confusing what exactly is going on with Harrow and, through that confusion, allowing the reader to share a small piece of Harrow’s experience. Her visions, her memories, her FALSE memories, and her experiences all intertwine to muddle what exactly is going on. Is this “madness” a long-term shame hidden, or an intense response to trauma? Is she physically injured, or emotionally wrecked by Gideon’s death? Has she changed herself in some way, and if she has is it a result of that; or is this something longstanding we’ve merely never seen before? Is she sleepwalking, or is Gideon sleepwalking her, or is The Body, or is something/one else? Is Cytherea a hallucination, or a cruel prank, or a revenant, or is she Haunted? Does physical evidence truly contradict her memories or is this a hallucination too? Harrow can’t be sure of any of this and neither can the reader, and this taste of her experience helps the reader to sympathize with her plight.

And, by confusing the nature of The Body, Cytherea, and what happened to Gideon(all “Bodies” from Harrow’s past in one way or another; some excellent wordplay whether intentional or no), the plot is obscured so that it can develop in a naturally suspenseful way. All these other possibilities obscure the possibility of Wake’s haunting, even though she and revenant possession are mentioned repeatedly throughout the book, laying out the development hidden in plain-sight. And that, in turn, works mechanically to allow these related plotlines -What’s up with The Body; what’s going on with Gideon; who’s the Narrator- spool out in a smooth, naturalistic, engrossing way as well.

It’s obvs by the end, and spcl given the reveal about Alecto’s eyes and how she leaves just when the Resurrection Beast arrives(ie just when it would start making a spirit leaving difficult), that “The Body” -Alecto- is a real visitation; from the moment they become gold on at least. I’m still not sure if her presence going back to Harrow opening the tomb are real or fabricated; I feel like she’d have told this to Gideon with all the rest. But: they didn’t have much time together, and it wouldn’t make much sense to fabricate visions which began post-Lyctor back into her past when the transformation itself could be blamed for them, so there’s good reason to think this aspect of her remembered “madness” was real even if the rest seemed to be part of the backstory needed to “make her a different person”(e.g. in fact she disdained grave dirt on the trip to First House and perennially disdained comforts or reliance on others of any kind, but the her she remembered not only always took the dirt, but also told Ortus about her “madness” immediately when it became pertinent. Pre-Surgery Harrow would never do that).

As to the Body and her visitations by it, based on what was said about Alecto(that she wasn’t really “dead” just sort or “turned off”) and the mechanics of revenant-possession/spirit-visitation(running along thanergic links created through relevance and physical contact/called up by powerful necromancers), I think that Harrow, through her religious devotion to the Tomb-turned romantic ecstasy(and what a cool callback to medieval sexualization of faith THAT is!), and by physically TOUCHING Alecto(who maybe was still spiritually aware even if her body was “turned off”) probably created an avenue for Alecto to remain in contact with her through the River wherever she went(though I can’t remember her mentioning having Visions of The Body on Canaan House? I need to look through Harrow again to see), potentially further amplified by Harrow unknowingly summoning her through sheer emotional need. Gideon’s description of “surfacing” pretty definitely nixes the idea that any of those visions were overlays masking interventions by her.

Jumping off from there to the sleepwalking/body-sharing/possession... Gideon makes it clear her “surface” moments were incredibly short(she kept getting “clotheslined down”) and that she never manifested or had any control over Harrow’s body until the climax. The description of how Harrow’s Memory-Stage works states Harrow’s soul “emptied” from her body whenever she was on the Stage, which was everytime she slept or otherwise became unconscious(I really need to go back and see if the Break Chapters always followed “Whole” chapters ending in sleep/unconsciousness) but, as above, Gideon was too well partitioned to ever take over until the moment near the end. Wake was in Gideon’s sword(thinking back to GtN, Harrow DID have an odd antipathy for it even then), and at somepoint post-Lyctor(post-surgery? That makes sense given that’s when the Dream Stage was built and Harrow’s defenses would have been down) she jumped to possessing Harrow herself. It must have been Wake who sleepwalked her to impale Cytherea, perhaps so she could transfer her “anchor” from the sword to her corpse. Though maybe revenants can haunt multiple objects at once from their anchor; I find it Ominous that Pent kept mentioning the need to exorcise the anchor there at the end and that no exorcism took place. Could the sword STILL be haunted? But what role could she possibly have to still play in the story?

As to Gideon herself... I really cannot see Muir killing her off like that. Is it possible for a bound cavalier soul to break it’s link to the Lyctor’s body? It is possible that -given the empty Tomb in Harrow’s final chapter and what that place could potentially represent- Alecto is now in Harrow’s body, but Alecto has HER OWN Body(which apparently looks nearly IDENTICAL to Harrow with Gideon’s eyes, which adds a humorous line of narcissistic accusation to Harrow’s attraction to her; hope Gideon picks that up in AtN :p), and it’d be the easiest thing in the world to have the trauma of resurfacing, somehow given she lacks Necromancy, from The River give Gideon in Harrow’s body amnesia. That chapter DOES have the implication, with those bones, that she’s doing Necromancy though, so who knows. It’s possible what we’re seeing there is finally a true merger of the two, though I doubt that given how I read the ending; I think the possibilities are either Gideon with amnesia(and potentially Necromantic now due to Harrow choosing not to return and her powers “ceding” to her body’s current occupant. Still not sure where the line btw physical&metaphysical is with necromantic ability), or Alecto in Harrow’s body, with both Gideon and Harrow “dead”(in or over the River due to Harrow’s choice) atm. One Flesh, One End, afterall owo owo owo

#Harrow the Ninth #Harrow the Ninth Spoilers #HtN Analysis #HtN Theories #zA's Wildeyed Guessings #analytic posts

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spaceshipkat · 4 years

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If you're looking for thoughts on CCity, a booktuber I follow, beautifully bookish bethany, just did a reading vlog of the arc. She's very self aware of s/jm criticisms and addresses a lot of that in her thoughts on the book. Biggest surprise? No smut scene until page 590!

here’s the link, for anyone who wants it! thank you alerting me of it! so imma give some thoughts as i watch the vid, too, bc why not. (this’ll also help if you don’t actually want to watch the vid, which is ~20 minutes long, as i cover every point she makes or thing she shares) also, i am in no way taking this as hard and true facts about the book, am not interpreting what the reviewer says to fit an anti mindset, and am not attacking the reviewer. i’m simply listing what she says and giving commentary, as i do with any vid i watch and transcribe on here. just to get that out there.

color me shocked there’s a lot of world-building in the first pages

apparently there’s a complex political system

there are blank pages for maps and lists of important things to know in the world

there are humans, shifters, angels, demons, satyrs, fae

a blend of sci-fi and fantasy (science fantasy? why not just call it science fantasy, blooms, if that’s what it is? that’s what Gideon the Ninth is and Tor has literally said that’s their most successful SFF debut ever)

Dani, Bruce’s best friend, apparently calls to mind Kate Daniels (Dani is a “super-powerful werewolf shifter”)

Part 1 is 90 pages

powerful friend groups are something that sj///m writes but, imo, not with any skill, so imma take what this reviewer says with a grain of salt

okay so we evidently get more diversity than what we typically find in an sj///m book but…this could mean anything from two bisexual characters and two black characters or it could mean every single character has some diverse aspect to themselves and…i’m leaning toward the former

“one of [Bruce’s] best friends is a dancer who sounds like she’s supposed to be black, another one is an assassin who i think is probably Asian” sigh if it’s not clear, it’s not rep (fwiw, the reviewer doesn’t sound certain)

there’s drugs in this. cowabunga. reviewer says that’s why the book feels a little older than her other YA. i just. don’t know how to feel about this.

please insert every single gif of someone throwing themselves out a window here to understand how i’m feeling about 1) “vampyr” and 2) “purred”

“I don’t do possessive and aggressive” excuse me? since when does an sj///m main character not do possessive and aggressive? is this…is this growth??????

i’m…shoot me, please: Bruce smells like lilac and nutmeg. what. the. heck. kind. of. combo. is. that. JUST STOP ALREADY. so pro tip: when i’m writing and giving my characters a scent or something (that’s never a unique scent, but something that comes from their shampoo or actual perfume or some shit) i look up actual perfumes, colognes, and shampoos to find good combos. I DON’T GO TO MY FUCKING SPICE CUPBOARD AND THEN GLANCE AT MY WINDOW BOX FOR INSPIRATION.

i’m okay. i am. i just. Bruce sounds like she smells unappetizing.

Bruce hooks up with people but so far no heavy smut at page 183

there’s hints that there is something special about Bruce

it’s longer than it needs to be! no one is surprised! a big revelation at the end of Part 2

there’s a lot of scenes that make it clear she had fun writing them but aren’t necessary to the plot. where did all the good editors go? *insert fairy godmother falling backward onto a piano*

over the top banter, Bruce showing off her skills at the gun range with all the guys, she’s one of those “not like other girls” characters

another character has been introduced and is setting up for another side relationship (sigh)

there’s a scene where they’re summoning a demon, evidently

halfway through the book there’s a lot of sexual tension between Bruce and Hunt, and an almost kiss, but nothing more yet (i am shocked. genuinely. sj///m herself had said there’s more sex in this than her YAs, so…what gives?)

yeah page 590 is the first smut scene. not written for shock value, but the reviewer feels that it is a pretty important point for the characters. hmm.

end of Part 3 has more revelations and twists. at this point, i’m not really taking these twists or revelations as anything important or ground-breaking, simply bc the reviewer has mentioned there are twists and revelations at the end of every part and at several times between, so make of that what you will. i, personally, don’t put much credence to it.

there’s a long villain monologue

she gets really long-winded in her descriptions, the first 2/3 could’ve been cut way down

the reviewer wants more fleshing out of the characters of color, some of the side characters aren’t white, we have a couple of queer characters

okay so…we’ve been here before. sj///m has introduced series with diverse representation and never followed through on it, killed off those characters, or wrote them horrifyingly stereotypically. just because she includes diversity does not mean it’s 1) good rep or 2) at all meaningful. i could be wrong! i want to be wrong! but i’ve been burned before. when it comes to CCity, i’m going in with an open mind for quite a lot, but not when it comes to diversity. i’m just tired of her writing appalling diversity and ordering us to accept it.

the typical toxic masculinity thing apparently isn’t as bad, nor are the alpha male love interests

apparently there isn’t a full-on explicit sex scene in this book???? did…sj///m change her mind while editing? she said there’s more sex in this book?? i mean, she’s said that at pretty much every interview or panel she’s been on for CCity??? what happened????

(did she listen to me when i said that Adult =/= erotica???)

i’m not being serious there

unless…?

there are steamier scenes later in the book, though. why does this come across as a contradiction of what the reviewer just said, though?

the reviewer feels this is set in the same universe as sj///m’s other books. apparently t0d and k0a are where the similarities between the universes (t0g and CCity) stem from.

“it feels rooted in things she has done before” okay so there’s two ways this could go: it’s actually set in the same universe or sj///m was just too lazy to make up new worlds that actually feel like new worlds, the way she did bw t0g and ac0tar (since those are basically copy/pasted). imo this will be up to interpretation from reader to reader. laziness or a nod? who knows!

there are a lot of romantic connections between characters. yippee.

this apparently has more of the epic scope of t0g than ac0tar, but i already predicted that (genuinely!)

a lot of drugs and alcohol, the reviewer feels it’s handled in a responsible way, lots of f-bombs (and “other things”???)

through most of the book, Bruce is 25 (can’t wait to see how sj///m butchers people my fucking age) and there are other characters older than that (presumably the angels)

in conclusion, i will be making this sound from now until i read it (and maybe i won’t even stop then, who knows?)

#ask #anonymous #anti sjm #anti ccity #receipts #long post

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aion-rsa · 5 years

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Autumnal Book Guide: 15 Best Fall 2019 Reads

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Our book section contributors list up the books we're most looking forward to this fall season — from the spooky to the cozy.

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There's never a bad season of the year for reading. Whether it's winter, summer, spring, or fall, there's a reading habit that goes oh-so-well with the season. But there's something about fall—when the leaves are changing (at least in some parts of the world) and the nights are getting longer—that makes me want to curl up with the coziest of books or the most deliciously creepy short story we can find (for the latter, might we recommend "Cavity" by Theresa DeLucci?).

Join the Den of Geek Book Club!

Den of Geek's book contributors are no different! I've reached out to all of them to find out which most autumnal of books they're looking forward to reading this fall season. Here are all of our selections...

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

July 23rd, Del Rey

What happens when you release the god of the underworld? Since Casiopea Tun didn't know that's what would happen when she opened her domineering grandfather's mysterious Mayan chest, she's not prepared for a skeleton to put itself back together, become a man, and demand that she accompany him to retrieve the parts of his body stolen by his no-good brother. But Casiopea is used to dealing with bossy, entitled men, which means that Hun-Kame, ruler of Xibalba, may not realize what he's gotten himself into.

read more: How Red, White, and Royal Blue Hopes For a Kinder America

I've been waiting for a chance to get this one off my TBR pile since it came out this summer, and with Halloween (and Dia de los Muertos) on the horizon, stories about finding chests full of bones and navigating the land of the dead are the perfect type of creepy to get the season off to a good start. Even better, it's set in Jazz-Age Mexico before it descends into the Mayan underworld, and I'm enjoying every minute of delving into this unfamiliar and darkly magical world from a well-known #OwnVoices SFF writer. I think you might, too...

- Alana Joli Abbott

Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories

August 20th, Saga Press

I mentioned short fiction in the opening—short stories can be the perfect, low-commitment way to wind down the day or spruce up any seasonal party. (Reading aloud isn't just for kids in English class.) This anthology of 30 moder ghost stories from Saga Press was just published in August, and it includes contributions from some of the most interesting writers in speculative fiction right now, including Seanan McGuire and Paul Tremblay. Paired with more traditionally literary authors like Joyce Carol Oates and Alice Hoffman, there is something in this anthology for everyone who loves a spooky story.

The collection was edited by the always-great Ellen Datlow, who is known for her work in the genres of supernatural suspense and fantasy. It's the broad genre reach of this anthology that most intrigued me, as horror has rarely been my go-to genre. However, in addition to contributors like Tremblay, who gets the collection going with "Ice Cold Lemonade 25ȼ Haunted House Tour: 1 Per Person," The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories features authors who are better known for their fantasy work, such as Garth Nix (who contributes "Mee-Ow," to the collection). The result means that no two stories are alike, and that there is something in here for everyone. Don't sleep on this anthology—it's perfect for the fall season.

- Kayti Burt

Pumpkinheads by Rainbow Rowell & Faith Erin Hicks

August 27th, First Second

#FallReads can be creepy, but they can be cozy, too. (Extra autumnal credit, authors, if you manage to achieve both at once!) It's definitely the cozy category that this graphic novel, from beloved YA novelist Rainbow Rowell and artist Faith Erin Hicks falls into.

Pumpkinheads is the coming-of-age story of best friends Deja and Josie, high school seniors who are finishing up their last ever night working at DeKnock's World Famous Pumpkin Patch and Autumn Jamboree, aka the best pumpkin patch in the world.

"I wanted this book to feel like one of those classic Disney live-action movies – like The Parent Trap or Freaky Friday," Rowell told us about writing Pumpkinheads. "Emotional and earnest, but also a rollicking good time." Um, mission accomplished.

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This is one of the most stereotypically fall book you could read this autumn. Set in a Nebraskan pumpkin patch, more specific settings in this fall adventure include The Succotash Hut, The Pie Palace, The Pumpkin Bomb Stand, and The S'mores Pit—and that's without mentioning the corn maze.

"Nebraska has a very Classic Fall Vibe – changing leaves, cool weather, bonfires," said Rowell. "And we really leaned into that in the book. Sarah Stern, our colorist, did such a good job bringing that to life."

"The look that Rainbow wanted for Pumpkinheads was very specific," added Hicks, "and it was based on a pumpkin patch in the state where she lives in. I visited her before I started drawing the book and took lots of reference pictures, and ate lots of snacks. That visit helped a lot when I sat down to draw Pumpkinheads; being at that particular pumpkin patch and getting to experience its whimsy was important, especially as it’s something very different from fall festivals where I live in Vancouver, Canada."

You too can experience the Classic Fall Vibe of Pumpkinheads by picking up this coziest of graphic novels at your local book or comic book store.

- Kayti Burt

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

September 10th, Tor Books

“Lesbian necromancers explore a haunted gothic palace in space!” is probably the year’s best elevator pitch in fiction, or at the very least in sci-fi/fantasy. And maybe you have been hearing about it all year (I got the chance to read this book back in icy February), but of course it could not be released in any season other than fall.

The turning point of the year is the perfect time to meet Gideon Nav, indentured-servant-turned-swordswoman of the Emperor’s Ninth House, and her sworn enemy/reluctant charge, aforementioned necromancer and heri Harrowhark Nonagesimus. When these unlikely representatives of the Ninth journey to the dessicated First House to prove their mettle for immortality against seven other houses’ necromancers and cavaliers, they engage in skeleton battles and spooky riddles and some fascinating scientific experiments that make for bloody good fun.

read more: Best New Fantasy Books in September 2019

A book this delightfully gothy shouldn’t appeal to all audiences, yet is such an utter mood that it does: publishing-industry and not, SFF and not, goths and very much not. When I first heard of its existence, I was ready to write it off as simply not for me—someone who loves fall more for the hygge than the heebie-jeebies, who could not come up with another necromancer story for the life of me.

But I was drawn in by Gideon and her dirty magazines and her desperation to escape the grasp of the Ninth; then her bloody contract with Harrow; then the Clue/And Then There Were None vibe of picking off their sundry competitors. This book is a haunted castle story for people who would rather watch slideshows of people being scared at haunted houses than set foot inside themselves… but it’s also got enough heart and guts to join the canon for those discerning necromancer afficionados.

- Natalie Zutter

The Testaments by Margaret Atwood

September 10th, Nan A. Talese

Margaret Atwood’s highly anticipated sequel to dystopian speculative fiction novel The Handmaid’s Tale is finally here! The original, written in 1984’s West Berlin, has always had a spooky fall feel to me, from the New England setting (Cambridge and environs) and the modern tendency to mine the book for Halloween costumes, to the dedication to Mary Webster, Atwood’s ancestor, AKA “Half-Hanged Mary,” an actual 17th century woman who was hanged for witchcraft and lived to tell the tale.

read more: Best New Science Fiction Books

The sequel, set more than 15 years later, follows the lives of three women. One of the strengths of The Handmaid’s Tale is Offred’s claustrophobic narration – the terror of Gilead hangs over her every thought, and we feel it far more acutely as fear than the existential dread or stomach-churning disgust that Hulu’s series creates. For The Testaments, Atwood has expanded to three perspectives, the identities of which should excite book readers and show fans alike. One is a woman in power, and two are younger women who come of age in the time of Gilead.

I can’t think of many things more terrifying than Margaret Atwood’s writing at her best. Let’s just say if you’re hoping to learn more about the origins of Gilead and what happened after that mysterious ending while finding your next Halloween costume, this is the book for you.

- Delia Harrington

Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell

September 24th, Wednesday Books

Road-trip stories, at least to American readers, feel quintessentially summery: setting out on the open road during the most unstructured time of the year, determined to find yourself in time for whatever life change awaits in the fall. But for Simon Snow, crossing the pond to the States, it feels more like a gap year.

Having dropped out from the Watford School of Magicks and found the loophole in what should have been a fatal Chosen One destiny, Simon is at a loss for what to do now. So of course his best friends drag him off the couch and throw him into a car to go adventuring through the American West. The Supernatural vibes are strong, and that’s before I’ve even gotten into the vampires and shotgun-toting skunk-like creatures that will make for some very amusing detours.

read more: Best New Young Adult Books

Instead of attending magic college or following in Harry Potter’s footsteps and jumping into wizardly gainful employment, Simon is taking a breather. What makes Wayward Son feel especially fall-like is that we have no idea for how long, or who Simon will be at the end of this break—just that he’s making a change, not just turning over a new leaf but witnessing how the leaves themselves change and how the wind picks up across America.

- Natalie Zutter

The Tenth Girl by Sara Faring

September 24th, Tor Teen

It's the 1970s, and Mavi is an Argentine teen who flees Buenos Aires and the military regime that took her mother for a remote girls boarding school located on a remote cliff in Patagonia. The catch in an already complicated existence? The school is haunted. Told from the dual perspectives of Mavi and Angel, one of the "Others" who lives in the house, The Tenth Girl is a novel that will constantly keep you guessing until the very end.

read more: Giveaway! The Future of Another Timeline

This book reminded me of both Jane Eyre and The Haunting of Hill House while also feeling entirely original. It's a debut from Faring, who drew on her own Argentine heritage and her family history in the country when writing the story, and I am eager to see what else this author comes up with. At 464 pages, this is a long one, and a narrative that sometimes prioritizes prose over plot, which could be frustrating for some readers, but the descriptions of this haunted house were luscious enough to keep me interested throughout.

"I just love building Gothic atmosphere," Faring told Den of Geek in an interview. "It's one of my favorite things in anything I write: the gloomy, the spooky, the grand, the forgotten, the abandoned. I love that. So that was always sort of simmering in my brain and my imagination for years." If you like your fall reads with an extra heaping of Gothic atmosphere, then this is the book for you.

- Kayti Burt

The Dutch House by Ann Patchett

September 24th, Harper

Ann Patchett (author of the highly decorated Bel Canto, among other beloved books) is the kind of writer whose words curl underneath your skin and make a home there. The plot rarely goes where you expect, but not in a gimmicky way. Even when the action is bombastic, the prose feels quiet, powerful, and mysterious. So when I read that her next book, The Dutch House, is going to be “a dark fairy tale” taking place over five decades, I added it to my mental “to read” list.

read more: The City in the Middle of the Night Review

Starting in the late 1940s in Philadelphia when Cyril Conroy buys the mansion for his family, Cyril’s son Danny narrates the book through comings and goings. While it sounds like the book has much of the fairytale trappings we’re used to – a missing parent, children fending for themselves, and of course, an evil stepmother – Patchett is a subtle writer who relishes character, so I’m sure it will feel more magical and strange than Disney-ified and pat.

I’m not a huge fan of typical slasher-horror style books; I like my chills to be more deep-seated and existential than jumpy or gore-y. Grounded in the quotidian familiarity of family and the ways we hurt one another, I’m looking forward to Ann Patchett guiding me on the next journey into the unknown with The Dutch House.

- Delia Harrington

The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher

October 1st, Saga Press

T. Kingfisher—real name Ursula Vernon—has written cute books for children and even won a Hugo Award for her graphic novel Diggers. Because she writes such a variety of fiction for vastly different audiences, it became all too necessary for the author to wield the pen name T. Kingfisher when she delved into more mature works for older readers.

In The Twisted Ones, Kingfisher teases the kind of Southern-based horror that threatens to drag you down with it. When the main character Mouse has to clean out her deceased grandmother’s house, she finds her grandfather’s journal that appears to be full of nonsense... until she meets one of the horrible he described. One of the things her grandfather’s journal warned against was a secret colony in the woods. She’s also going to be adventuring in those woods, discovering and confronting these mysterious beings alongside her trusty dog.

read more: Best New Science Fiction Books in September 2019

Add on top of the supernatural scares the ordinary horrors of uncleanliness—grandma was a hoarder, and I know the book’s description doesn’t mention that because she was a little bad at picking up after herself. Anyone who’s seen an episode or two of Hoarders should know that there’s a lot of terror involved with accumulated stuff: the germs, the forgotten memories, the unwillingness to let go of possessions, the potential hazards of piles of things toppling on unwary passersby.

Coupling the supernatural with a mean-spirited hoarder shaking off her mortal coil to leave her family dealing with her mistakes fascinates the Hell out of me, and I can’t wait to dive in (maybe with a gas mask?). The Twisted Ones holds the kind of intrigue and folksy-dread that promises to enrapture the reader. It’s a “girl and her dog” adventure hinting at a forward-thinking protagonist and I’m all about that.

- Bridget LaMonica

Frankissstein by Jeanette Winterson

October 1st, Grove Press

Mary Shelley first dreamed up Frankenstein on an especially dreary middle-of-the-night in June 1816, during the Year Without a Summer thanks to oppressive levels of volcanic ash in the atmosphere following an eruption. To wit: despite it technically being summer when she, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and other vacationing houseguests stayed inside during their Lake Geneva trip, the vibe was eerie enough that it made perfect sense to compete for who could tell the spookiest story. Which is why Frankenstein will always feel like an autumnal tale.

read more: Frankenstein Adaptations Are Almost Never Frankenstein Adaptations

What makes Winterson’s contemporary take feel especially spooky is how it transplants so many of Shelley’s ideas from 200 years ago—the miracle of reanimation, the devastation of rejection, questions of when a creation stops owing its existence to its creator and instead owns its destiny—in modern contexts that make them as relevant as ever.

I don’t know which lens I’m more excited about: the ethics of artificial intelligence superseding puny human brains; the cryogenics facility filled with dozens of bodies almost guaranteed to be reanimated for some nefarious use; the subplot about a humble sex-doll operation that posits new questions about autonomy and consent; or the fact that our modern protagonist is trans. Actually, what I think I’m most excited for will be the portions of the book that retell Shelley’s story—because judging from the angles at which Winterson reexamines this classic, she’ll know just how to get into Shelley’s head on that fateful night.

- Natalie Zutter

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo

October 8th, Flatiron Books

Dropout Alex Stern doesn’t consider herself Yale University material, which is why it’s extra strange when she’’s offered an easy in to the elite college. Of course, there’s a catch: she’s tasked with monitoring the spooky goings-on of the school’s secret societies. It’s a fantasy novel that dovetails with the real world, digging in to what might be happening when the rich and well-connected of Yale summon up something occult.

Leigh Bardugo’s name has been on my radar because of her very popular Young Adult fiction. Her first adult offering was also her first work to really catch my eye. The appeal of every supernatural school story is to see the uncanny in a very familiar situation, and while I can’t say I’d get into Yale either, the idea of returning to college to hunt down a cult sounds like it sits right in that wheelhouse.

read more: The Ruin of Kings is Must-Read Epic Fantasy

So why is this a good book for this fall? This seems to land on the darker side of dark fantasy: Alex survived an attempted, unsolved homicide before the investigation of the occult even starts. Yale’s secret societies meet in eight windowless buildings called “tombs,” and the ninth house in the title may be a supernatural ninth tomb. Readers looking for fantastical horror around Halloween may very well find it here. It’s a back-to-school story too, so while the audience is primarily adults, the autumn is the perfect season to start walking in Alex’s shoes.

A content note: the author has stated that this book may be difficult for some people, and readers disinclined to encounter sexual trauma in their fiction may want to avoid it.)

I said this at Bookcon, but I'm going to say this here too: I take care with the way I write trauma and I am not interested in misery tourism. Alex's experiences in Ninth House draw directly from my own and this book was in many ways a work of catharsis. HOWEVER.

— Leigh Bardugo (@LBardugo) June 3, 2019

- Megan Crouse

A Lush and Seething Hell by John Horner Jacobs

October 29th, Harper Voyager

After having recently, finally read The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft my appetite for that quiet, brooding horror has only been stoked. When I stumbled upon this soon-to-be-published piece, I figured I hit jackpot. John Hornor Jacobs is an award-winning author who collects two novellas in this volume: “The Sea Dreams It Is the Sky” and “My Heart Struck Sorrow.” This new release is promising a mix of supernatural and psychological terror, a pairing that does well to get inside one’s mind this time of the year.

read more: 5 Lesser Known Series From Popular Authors

“My Heart Struck Sorrow” follows a librarian who has discovered a music recording from the Deep South that might be from the Devil himself (anyone getting any “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” vibes?). Jacobs has written Southern horror that echoed that famous song’s premise before, notably his book Southern Gods, in which a blues man’s music makes some people go insane while also raising the dead.

“The Sea Drams It Is The Sky” has a little less straightforward description, though no less intriguing: This story features an exiled poet trying to decipher a difficult text, a South American dictatorship and “a young woman trying to come to grips with a country that nearly devoured itself.” Points go to the one who can guess if that devouring is literal or figurative, seeing as this author’s work could go either way.

- Bridget LaMonica

I'm a Gay Wizard by V.S. Santoni

October 29th, Wattpad Books

If I Know What You Did Last Summer decided to hang out with Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and Lev Grossman's The Magicians, but added to the mix LGBTQ coming of age and romance, it might turn out something like Santoni's debut YA novel, I'm a Gay Wizard.

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Originally released as a Wattpad serial, the novel hits shelves October 29, 2019. Main characters Johnny and Alison spend their summer playing at magical spells—Alison is obsessed with magic, and Johnny goes along for the ride. But when a vengeance spell against bullies tormenting them causes an earthquake, the pair are whisked away to the Marduke Institute, a clandestine school for wizards, and told they must leave their old lives behind... forever.

The Institute is more prison than school, but it's also where Johnny and Alison meet cute boys Hunter and Blake, who know a lot more about the world than the two newcomer wizards. While this isn't a creepy, Halloween-y story, it's a perfect back-to-school tale featuring underrepresented main characters (Johnny is Latinx and gay, Alison is trans) from an #OwnVoices author.

- Alana Joli Abbott

The Witches are Coming by Lindy West

November 5th, Hachette

Back in October of 2017, writer Lindy West wrote a column in The New York Times about bad men’s bad faith responses to the #MeToo movement. It was called “Yes, This Is a Witch Hunt. I’m a Witch and I’m Hunting You.” Please read it immediately if you haven’t already, and then you’ll know why I’m so excited for this book, which promises to be an expansion of the themes in her original Times piece.

Witches have been having something of a moment right now, and Lindy West’s choice to invoke imagery used to scare women into silence long before it was used to scare children while reclaiming the “witch hunt” phrase shows a glimpse of her power as a writer and thinker. I picture a powerful witch stalking steadily toward perpetrators and their defenders like the woman in "The Yellow Wallpaper" circles the room at the end of the story: purposeful, terrifying, and a bit mad.

read more: Vengeful by V.E. Schwab Review

You might know Lindy West from her time writing classics at Jezebel like her takedown of Love, Actually or from the Hulu show Shrill, which is based on her memoir/scathing cultural critique of the same name. Or perhaps you saw or participated in #ShoutYourAbortion, where folks shared their stories in an effort to destigmatize healthcare, or even from her debate with a comedian about rape jokes on W. Kamau Bell’s television show. The point is, West has been leading and shaping the cultural conversation with wit and intelligence for a long time, especially when it comes to gender, violence, and discrimination.

While it may feel like all we do is talk about gender and violence these days, we still haven’t stepped back and parsed what this means for us in the longer term, beyond each individual case, and on the list of writers I’m eager to hear from on the topic, West is damn near the top.

- Delia Harrington

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

November 5th, Graywolf Press

"Y’all, this book almost killed me dead, but I did it," Machado tweeted last November when announcing her forthcoming memoir. And if that isn’t gothic AF, then I don’t know what is. After tapping into deep-seated terrors—cruel Girl Scouts and awkward writing residencies, a gut-punch retelling of “The Green Ribbon”—in 2017’s collection Her Body and Other Parties, Machado turns that same excavating eye on her own traumas in In the Dream House. With an eerie cover that evokes a V.C. Andrews novel, Machado traces her own escape from an abusive relationship with a charismatic woman in a genre-bending account that clearly took its toll on her (another hallmark of old-school literary horror).

read more: Autonomous by Annalee Newitz Review

What’s more, the story is told in disparate pieces, with each chapter built around a narrative trope: the haunted house, the bildungsroman, erotica. It’s a keen way to compartmentalize and analyze what have to be harrowing memories, and thematically links back to Her Body and Other Parties. Yet there are moments of levity, too, as Machado’s memoir explores hidden passageways of Star Trek, Disney, and fairy tales. The most effective horror (Get Out, Signs, Hereditary) contrasts jarring moments of absurd or even laugh-out-loud comedy alongside the disturbing; I can’t wait to see how Machado holds space for both the light and the dark.

- Natalie Zutter

Kayti Burt is a staff editor covering books, TV, movies, and fan culture at Den of Geek. Read more of her work here or follow her on Twitter @kaytiburt.

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The Lists Kayti Burt Alana Joli Abbott Megan Crouse Delia Harrington Bridget LaMonica Natalie Zutter

Sep 23, 2019

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