#i hope the books aren't terfy

[jovianjournal]

March 2024

Should i just do one big post for novels and comics at the same time? Anyway, here's the novels i read in march, mostly SFF plus one romcom

Uprooted -- Naomi Novik, French translation by Benjamin Kuntzer

A young woman is sent to the local wizard's tower as a yearly tribute (or something like that) where she learns magic and try to discover why the forest is being weird. Very long and frankly a little boring, i had pretty high expectations and i was a bit disappointed. At first it seemed right up my alley, there were some blue beard, dark fantasy vibes... that kind of went nowhere tbh. most of the characters are extremely annoying (although i did like Agniezka as a protagonist! and her friend Kasia. it could have been gay... it should have been gay!!) and the plot felt stretched out for no reason. But i did enjoy the old folk tale aesthetic, the magic system based around rhymes was beautiful.

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A Study in Drowning -- Ava Reid

A college student is sent to a crumbling mansion by the sea for an architecture project, alongside her academic rival, mystery ensues. The vibes were perfect, the rising sea, the damp air, the raging storm, water everywhere. I have one complain tho: I spent the Whole Goddamn Book SCREAMING at the characters "why aren't you checking this One Thing???" and as soon as they did check this one thing the mystery was resolved. so that was a little annoying.

Overall I really liked this book, i'd recommend it if you're into Dark Academia, A House as A Character, and metaphors about sexist and sexual violence. Also the writing is really pretty! i want to read other books by this author.

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The Mars House -- Natasha Pulley

disclaimer: i love Natasha Pulley So. Much. she is probably my fav author currently, and i am very aware that she tends to always write the same book, but listen : i am autistic and i like knowing what im getting into and knowing that im going to like a story before investing the time in it.

That Being Said, i have two and a half pages of notes in my journal that boil down to "i didn't like this book as much as i hoped :/". This is a sci-fi story about immigration and xenophobia where one of the main character is a martian right-wing politician and also there's some Gender Stuff in martian society that felt a little terfy? (which is weird bc basically in this book Martian society has Abolished Gender). I still adored this book! i'd wholeheartedly recommend it! the writing is spectacular, i loved the characters, the worldbuilding is super interesting, there's fun tragic irony where you know what's going on while the characters don't, there's fricking Mammoths. Read it, and then read The Watchmaker of FIligree Street, and then read the Kingdoms, and then read all of her other books.

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Ariah -- B. R. Sanders

I don't know how to describe this book. A 400-page character study about a Pretty Annoying Guy? I think i picked it up bc i was looking for books with polyam relationships and that's why i powered all the way through it. I actually don't remember much about the plot. It's a high fantasy story, the main character has mind powers he has trouble controlling, he's kind of a dick to his lovers, every time something important happens the narration completely glosses over it. Reading over my notes, i did like the last part of the story, and the happy end felt deserved. don't have much more to say.

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Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake -- Alexis Hall

Alexis Hall is another one of my comfort authors, im slowly getting through their bibliography. this one was okay! it's a great british bake off fan fiction, it was fun (but not as good as the Stucky fanfic). good banter, tropey plot. averages to and okay book.

[larkral]

I feel like I should add to this -- don't be so afraid that someone is transphobic to tell them that joanne is transphobic! Lots of people don't already know! At least some of those people aren't transphobic and would change their behavior if they knew, and if you're too afraid they're transphobic to bring it up, you're losing out on an opportunity to help them make more informed decisions.

I was at a work dinner recently discussing childrens books and said something offhand about how I can't enjoy Harry Potter anymore because JKR is a transphobe and one of the people I was talking with was like "yeah, same, bummer" and the other one was like "what!?!" and it took about ten minutes of conversation for me to realize that it was not that she was willingly overlooking joanne's TERFy ways, but that she literally hadn't heard it before. She asked me what I would hope someone would do if they got this information for the first time, and I told her, and she said she'd do those things!! Not everyone will be my coworker, but some of them will be!

the thing that sucks most about Joanne Rowling being a terf is that she is actively hurting real life trans people every day.

the second worst thing about joanne being a terf is that the Harry Potter intellectual property is So Much Larger than her. look at the credits for just one of the harry potter movies. every single one of those people put YEARS of time and effort and dare i say love into those films. think of all the people involved in theme park design and operation who put together the wizarding world park lands and detailed them so lovingly and fully

and yet even though the intellectual property of harry potter is so much larger than joanne, she's poisoned the whole well

i feel so. so immensely sorry for every person involved in the harry potter ip who isn't jkr. doubly sorry for every trans person involved. it's fucking sad

[empath-demon]

i’m getting books about bisexuality in the mail today and i’m so excited that i’m literally shaking

[meowmageddon]

December 2022 TBR

First full TBR post since returning! Current reads aren't super different from my mid-November post: • Project: In the reread/read through of Ken Liu's Dandelion Dynasty series, I'm still on The Veiled Throne. I've read over 100 pages and barely made a dent in this chonker lmao. It'll be the Project Read for a while.

• eBook: Still working through The Monsters We Defy, I'm still trying to figure out a system for reading my eBooks, I'm sorry!! 💀

• Physical TBR: Over halfway through The World We Make by N.K. Jemisin. Stakes are getting higher as extradimensional forces still try to destroy NYC and the universe as we know it.

• Library Read: Just started A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt, which is very short and artful. I have placed a hold on Inferior: How Science Got Women Wrong—and the New Research That's Rewriting the Story by Angela Saini, which is the current read for the Book CommuniREAD book club (hosted by Jess Owens, one of my favorite BookTubers). It looks at biology, psychology & anthropology to reveal how bias in science did more to uplift patriarchy than represent women accurately. It shouldn't be TERFy, but it may not necessary be as inclusive as it could be. We'll see how it goes.

Weather is gonna be iffy here for a bit, so I'm not sure how long the hold will take to arrive. Chances are I'll have finished A Minor Chorus beforehand, so I may fudge the system a lil bit and start my preordered copy of The Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard. As I've said here before, it's SF with Sapphic romance, space pirates, sentient spaceships, and more!

There are two more books on my radar, incoming from my Book of the Month sub:

• Babel by R.F. Kuang, the darling of BookTube and probably beyond. It is fantasy set in an alternate 19th century Oxford, that examines things like translation, imperialism, and whether revolution requires violence.

• Black Cake by Charmaine Wilkerson, a BotM Book of the Year finalist, sent as a freebie since I'm now a BFF with BotM lol. It's about two estranged siblings piecing together the puzzle of their strange inheritance and the secrets of their mother's past.

November set into motion what may be an indefinite stretch of busy times ahead for me (we may possibly be moving within the next year), so I'm sure I won't finish everything listed here by the end of this year. Either way, I think I'll be prioritizing Babel and White Horse (by Erika T. Wurth) in January, but I'll get back to you in a month when I've decided for sure 😹

Should be a great end to my reading year, regardless. I hope everyone has some good reads to round out their year with!