#reading a power unbound

[nonbinarymikaela]

"dear PornHub.." kasjjskaja

[kiwim7]

alan ross watching the ocean from the lyric and such

heres the ref i used for the main pic

[goatsandgangsters]

Jack Alston, Lord Hawthorn, from A Power Unbound by Freya Marske @fahye

Alan looked at his hand engulfed in Jack’s. He said, coming to the realisation along the way, like a sentence that only revealed itself word by word as he wrote it down: “You’re still the kind of arse who’ll pick two fights before breakfast, but you’ve been desperate for someone else to look after, haven’t you?”

[cccloudsss]

i do not believe in a joy as real as it being a horrible hour to still be awake, getting into a new fresh fandom (as in you've just gotten into fandoms in general, i've known these books and shows for years) and mentally thrashing against the bars of your cage looking at the posts for it.

i feel like a school girl kicking her feet over some new person she's obsessed with. who needs love when u have snowbaz, or firstprince, or aziracrow, or the unofficial fandom ships for the last binding series, or dreamling??????

(and also grell) (currently watching book of circus and i'm gnawing on the bars of my enclosure)

(oh god there's so many tags)

remember guys... you are cringe and free. the cage is a figment of your imagination!!

[kazz-brekker]

the last binding trilogy by freya marske, or, when edwardian-era pornographic literature becomes steadily more and more relevant to the plot

[pridepages]

“Alan had never needed to lean on anyone. It was intolerable that he now kept turning out the pockets of his soul and finding caught in their seams the desire to let someone take his weight. The desire to be held, even kissed.” --A Power Unbound by Freya Marske

[aurorawest]

The Scottish Boy by Alex de Campi - 5/5 stars

This book managed to rip my heart out at least 3 times. I loved it. Medieval enemies-to-lovers slow burn; very romantic. Kinda read like fanfiction at times but in a good way. 10/10 would read a follow-up love story about Arundel and Captain Wekena. If you like Captive Prince, give this one a try.

Reforged by Seth Haddon - 4/5 stars

Pretty good bodyguard romantasy. Ironically CS Pacat blurbed this one (another am-I-in-the-matrix moment). The world was interesting and I enjoyed the politics, though they're definitely not as complicated as other SFF politics I've gone feral over (see: Captive Prince, Winter's Orbit, A Memory Called Empire). I ordered the sequel after I finished this.

The Doctor's Date by Heidi Cullinan - 4/5 stars

A Power Unbound by Freya Marske - 5/5 stars

Where do I start? I love, love, LOVE A Marvellous Light. It's one of my favorite books ever. None of the rest of the books in the trilogy could live up to it, really, because it's so good. You'll notice I rated this one 5 stars though, because quite honestly I fell prey to a bit of The Academy Paying The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Its Due syndrome. I did love this book and thought it was better than A Restless Truth (which I still loved!) but part of that is, quite frankly, just due to the fact that I prefer m/m romance to f/f romance.

Anyway. This was such a good finale to the trilogy. I loved that the romance was a giant middle finger to purity cultists. I loved that one of the mains was Italian. I loved finally getting the story of what happened to the Alston twins. One thing I thought was really cool was how, viewed from the outside, you totally get why Edwin is such a loner. I really admire from a writing perspective how Marske pulled that off.

I feel like there's a lot to be said about what Marske was trying to SAY with this book, but I definitely need to reread it first before I can articulate any of it. The purity culture stuff is obvious, but the magic system too. I feel like Jack when he's almost able to connect everything in his mind into a bigger idea, but he can't quite get there.

I've got a special edition from Illumicrate coming, so I'll be rereading it when I have that.

Oh also, this book was the embodiment of all that one tumblr post -

The Guncle by Steven Rowley - 5/5 stars

I saw this in bookstores for years before I finally gave in and bought it. The blurb makes it sound insufferable and twee. Ignore the blurb. This was such a good book about grief and learning how to live again after terrible loss.

I Like Me Better by Robby Weber - 4/5 stars

At last I can stop getting the Lauv song stuck in my head whenever I set eyes on this book (it's stuck in my head as I type this). Pretty standard-issue YA, but it was cute and had a good message.

The Stagsblood King by Gideon E Wood - 4/5 stars

Another book about moving on from grief! This is the second book in a trilogy. When I was trying to determine if I wanted to read on beyond book 1, I scoured the internet for information about what happens in books 2 and 3. Eventually I decided, hell, I enjoyed book 1 well enough, even if what I want to happen in the rest of the trilogy doesn't happen, they're worth reading. SO, to that end, I will tell anyone looking for info that Tel gets romantically involved with a new man in this one, which, eh. I still want him to somehow end up with Vared. It was still quite good though.

In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune - DNF at pg 82

So funnily, we were at the bookstore the day I was about to start reading this, and my wife pointed out Ravensong (also by Klune) to me and said, "Do you have this one?" I made a face and said, "That's an older one of his books and I'm wary of his early work after that horrible Verania series. I don't think I've ever read an author as hit or miss as TJ Klune."

I wrote the above when I was 60 pages in and now I have officially DNFed this. Listen. You know how in Thor: Love and Thunder, Taika Waititi was clearly given free rein to do whatever he wanted, so all of his worst impulses made it to the final cut unchecked? Yeah. That's what this book is like.

Here's my Storygraph review: I see Klune is officially Too Big To Edit now. This book has exactly the same problem that his awful Verania series had—a joke that's funny at first but quickly grows tiresome when it's repeated five times per page. The emphasis on Victor's asexuality was also weird and read like Klune was just super proud of himself for writing an ace character.

Lion's Legacy by LC Rosen - 4.25/5 stars

Queer, YA Indiana Jones, but less #problematic. This book had some eerie similarities to my own archaeology adventure novel(s), which made me wonder half-seriously if I somehow know Lev Rosen? Anyway, I feared this would be very heavy-handed and not nuanced on archaeology's ethical dilemmas, since it's YA and also the current culture is to view said dilemmas as completely black and white with no nuance, but I was pleasantly surprised. It manages to examine that, queerness, and daddy issues, plus has time to be a genuinely fun and exciting adventure story. Highly recommend.

Too White to be Coloured, Too Coloured to be Black by Ismail Lagardien - 4/5 stars

I picked up this memoir in a bookstore at OR Tambo airport in Johannesburg as research for Six Places to Fall in Love, since Percy is coloured. A pretty brutal read, but good, and definitely good research. The author was a photographer and journalist through the most violent years of apartheid.

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson - 5/5 stars

Two nonfiction books in a row?? This is the second book by Erik Larson I've read, the first being the excellent The Devil in the White City. I'm not, in general, all that interested in WWII when it comes to military history, but this book is about the day to day lives of Churchill and the people surrounding him (with brief stops to visit FDR and high-ranking Nazis sprinkled throughout). This is a very, very good book, and I recommend reading it if only as a reminder of the resilience and bravery of ordinary people under terrifying circumstances.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh - 5/5 stars

Holy shit. Holy shit is this book good. Imagine the love child of Lost, Person of Interest, and Battlestar Galactica, but queer and with multiverse shenanigans thrown in.

I need everyone to read this book. Now. Yesterday. Get to it.

[daveyfvckingjacobs]

big fan of the blurb progression of the last binding where the first two are introducing new characters and so are able to try to keep an air of mystery about the dynamics and relationships like “they’ll have to learn to work together and trust each other and…👀” without being explicit about it and then you get to a power unbound which is just “you know these bastards now we’re not beating around the bush anymore jack wants him carnally moving on”

[kitausu]

I am SWOONING

[inawickedlittletown]

I stole opportunity. If the world were different, I wouldn't have had to, but it's the way it is, and so I've been scared my whole life and angry for even longer. It's exhausting. You have no bloody idea how exhausting it is. Some people get exhausted out of the anger early, because they need all their energy simply to stay alive.

Freya Marske (A Power Unbound)

[le-trash-prince]

🥺🥺🥺

[nonbinarymikaela]

I am unwell

[practicefortheheart]

I'm not a huge fan of audiobooks (I'm so very picky about voices - I actually had to abandon Stephen Fry's Heroes audiobook because he did an accent I didn't like and I couldn't get over it - STEPHEN FRY, what is wrong with me ), but I do like to listen to stuff while commuting and cleaning, and since I'm picky about podcasts as well, I tried one again anyway - I'm listening to A Power Unbound, and I honestly need Josh Dylan to come and read all my books to me. Every single one, he is SO good. (the way he does Edwin's voice!!)

Also the book itself is really good, but I did have to get over Josh Dylan reading explicit sex scenes aloud to me. It's an experience.

(any other audiobooks you can recommend? with nice voices??)

[goatsandgangsters]

Today's art/literary history lesson is on: Aubrey Beardsley

Beardsley's illustration forms the background for A Power Unbound, which is a cool moment of historical connection and intertextuality

Aubrey Beardsley was a turn-of-the-century artist who was part of the Aesthetic/Decadent movements that challenged Victorian social norms in art and literature. Queerness and eroticism were significant components of these movements, which often incorporated sensation, transgression, and sexuality.

Beardsley's art was considered provocative for its use of the grotesque, the sexual, and the androgynous. (Notably, he drove his editors bonkers by always hiding dicks and other phallic silhouettes in his art.)

Beardsley was the art editor for The Yellow Book, a literary journal printed in the 1890s. It was so named because of its intentionally garish yellow cover, which was meant to mimic the style of lewd French texts.

However, Beardsley is probably best remembered today for his illustrations that accompanied Oscar Wilde's controversial play Salomé. Although Wilde himself was not involved with The Yellow Book, his association with Beardsley through Salomé was so well known that The Yellow Book forced Beardsley out of his position as art editor following Wilde's trial; The Yellow Book did not last much longer after that. Aestheticism overall suffered in the wake of Wilde's trial specifically because of its association with Wilde and queer, transgressive artists.

But, given Beardsley's artistic ethos and the inextricable queerness of those movements as a whole, Beardsley's Decadent art is a fitting choice for the cover of A Power Unbound—which is itself a celebration of unapologetically queer and sexual art (and features its own lewd publications with notably colored covers 😉).

--

If you're interested in Beardsley or Decadence/Aestheticism and want to read more, here's a reference list (I'm happy to share PDFs—just let me know!): 

Kaye, Richard. 2019. “Aestheticism and Decadence, Nineteenth-Century.” In Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History: A-F.

Glick, Elisa. 2014. “Turn-of-the-Century Decadence and Aestheticism.” In The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature, 325–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781139547376.023.

Brake, Laurel. 2013. “Aestheticism and Decadence: The Yellow Book (1894–7), The Chameleon (1894), and The Savoy (1896).” In The Oxford Critical and Cultural History of Modernist Magazines: Volume I: Britain and Ireland 1880-1955. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199654291.003.0006

Denisoff, Dennis. 2007. “Decadence and Aestheticism.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Fin de Siècle, 31–53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521850636.003

[bigdreamsandwildthings]

Wish I could spend my day here today 🐶

[stinastar]

What a beautiful fucking line