booksthatburn's reviews
1463 reviews

As the first book in the series, BLIND MAN'S WOLF has a self-contained story which revolves around the mystery of why Ellis’s guide dog is misbehaving. It turns out this issue and its resolution are more complicated than anticipated, but what's not (very) complicated is how much Randall and Ellis want to get into each other's pants. It establishes Ellis, Randall, Jay, and Han as characters, and gets Randall and Ellis together in short order. 

Ellis is a vampire who was in the process of going blind before he was turned, now he’s stuck with enough vision to be bothered by bright light but not enough to actually use most of the time without much effort and pain. I especially like the worldbuilding as it relates to his vision loss intersecting with vampiric healing powers. The idea that vampire regeneration keeps him in a homeostasis works for avoiding any kind of magical cure narrative. He's trapped in his general physical condition at the moment when he was turned, so he'll heal to reset to that point, but becoming a vampire didn't restore his vision to before RP started affecting him.

I’m very pleased with how Randall's Omega status is handled, since wolves don’t actually do that bullshit, but humans who turn into wolves and have heard that’s what wolves do absolutely would replicate it. Even though Randall doesn’t spend very much time with his pack in the story, the little that shown makes it very clear that some abusive and fucked up things are going on. The pack members justify their bullying by claiming their wolf instincts require it. But, either coincidentally or intentionally, ending up relentlessly bullying Randall, the only Pack member who is Black. Meeting with Pack members twice in such a short narrative made it seem like they were going to play more of a role in this particular book than they actually did. 

This is a good start and I'm interested in where it goes next, I like these characters and want to read more about them.

THE SAINT OF BRIGHT DOORS is a very cool and weird fantasy about strange circumstances, toxic family, and the strain of the world changing when you aren't looking. 

Fetter was trained by his mother to be an assassin, so that one day he would kill her and his father, as part of some grand plan that she doesn't quite explain to him. She tells him the individual steps and what his role will be, but it's not until much later that he learns the history behind her hatred for his father. Fetter grows up and leaves assassination behind with a move to the big city, but the city is gleefully bureaucratic, using classism and race science to tacitly (and forcefully, if necessary) enforce boundaries around its residents and make it easy to exist but difficult to thrive. 

The worldbuilding is precise without getting bogged down in specifics. We don't need to know exactly what race science Luriat uses to sort its residents, classify its citizens, and determine which persons will have no recourse if the cops assault them. What matters is the shape of it, as these intermittently visible rules tug at Fetter and direct the course of his adult life. The rules in his childhood were no less arcane, and in some respects were clearer, there, at least, he had a goal. Now, he finds himself in the company of others who were passed over by destiny, but are determined to eke some kind of purpose out of their existence. The Bright Doors have a chance at being that purpose for Fetter. They're at once mundane and strange, so ubiquitous and inevitable that the specter of them shapes the plans for every building, stopping any true privacy by requiring doors never fully be opaque, lest they turn into portals to somewhere else. 

I'm torn about the ending. There's a perspective shift which I found both innovative and jarring. Until that point I thought I knew where things were going, then I was ripped out of that certainty even as other things were resolved. This is definitely on purpose, as it viscerally recreates a small version of the way Fetter feels at various stages of the story. I like how it's done, but it creates feelings I wouldn't regularly seek out in fiction.

Basil and Jon meet under unexpected circumstances when they both show up to the same probably-haunted dwelling. Basil is trying to find out whether magic and ghosts are real, and Jon is trying to disperse ghosts in-between job hunting. 

I like this as an introduction and as a story in its own right. There's a nice balance between worldbuilding and characterization, especially in such a short tale. The audiobook is excellent, conveying Jon's very dry sense of humor with ease. 

I first encountered Jon and Basil as secondary characters midway through the Inheritance series, so I was already familiar with them. I like seeing how they started out, and this novella came out before any of the Inheritance series, so it can be read before even JACK OF THORNS if one were so inclined.

As tense and hectic as SPELLS OF SUMEMR is, it feels like it might be the calm before an even greater storm. Laurence has two teachers, both of whom withhold information and neither of whom really know about the other. Except, it turns out they first met a long time ago, as Laurence discovers in a vision. Laurence has known since before Rufus became his teacher that eventually they’ll have a disagreement so huge that they will have to part ways. I won't spoil whether this is that disagreement, but Laurence's knowledge of this impending event and the tension that that engenders in his interactions with Rufus are present throughout the book.

SPELLS OF SUMMER doesn't completely wrap up anything that was left hanging from previous books. The inciting incident is Laurence's attempt to finally do what he promised Rufus he would: look into the past and find out how Rufus's parents died. Laurence has been putting it off because he didn't want more images of death and destruction in his mind, but he can't put it off any longer and continue to learn from Rufus without paying for it.

The audiobook narrator continues to do an excellent job! I like the accent work and all the voices for the different characters. They're distinctive without anyone being annoying. 

What Laurence sees when he looks into the past spins out into something strange and dramatic, pulling in Freddy and Miriam alongside Laurence and Quentin as narrators. I’m not sure if there’s anything that is both introduced and resolved here, at least not in terms of a specific plot point. What this does very well is move several characters further on their emotional arcs. Laurence and Quentin now know how far Rufus is willing to go to get what he wants. Miriam and Freddy have to deal with the tension between them caused by Freddy's telepathic deception when he kidnapped Laurence several books ago. They haven’t been around each other since then, and while Laurence and Quentin have already had to process their reactions, Miriam has not yet had the opportunity for a confrontation. 

So much of SPELLS OF SUMMER is about dealing with the past, sorting through prior events, and figuring out what the next steps ought to be. While, in a simplistic sense, the plot is coherent and well told enough for it to make sense for someone who tried to start here without having read any of the previous books, it would be a very dissatisfying experience. For anyone who did want to start the series midway through rather than going back to the beginning, they should start at RITES OF WINTER, which begins the second season. 

The layers of worldbuilding have been slowly accumulating since the series began. Gradually increasing my understanding of a complex story world is one of my favorite parts of longruning series. The newest distinct layer here is confirmation of other gods, other pantheons, and other afterlives for different believers. It also reinforces the idea that there are many different ways to go about magic, and which one someone uses is shaped by them as much as they are shaped by it. 

SPELLS OF SUMMER is not the last book, and it establishes the probable identity of the warlock who has been pulling strings behind the scenes. He is definitely the person who has been teased in the epilogues of the last several books, but the main cast don't know any of those particulars yet. It establishes that future books will almost definitely require some more direct, confrontation, laying the groundwork for the finale this season in the series. It does make me wonder whether all the major villains will be warlocks, though two is hardly a large enough sample size for meaningful conjecture. However things end up, I'm eager for the next book!

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book. 

THESE FRAGILE GRACES, THIS FUGITIVE HEART is a queer thriller about a trans woman who returns to her former anarchist compound and ends up investigating her ex's murder. It intimacy, autonomy, and connection, as well as the timeless question of "if you fuck your own clone, is it incest or masturbation?"

THESE FRAGILE GRACES strange and vibrant, set in a dystopia with governmental and corporate neglect inversely proportional to the wealth of the residents, when any remain at all. The worldbuilding is drawn in broad strokes, only explaining as much as is relevant to Dora's thoughts at any one moment. What is explained is about the result, not the path to get there, as much of the collapse happened before her lifetime. 

Even as the mystery part of the story takes a bit of a backseat to Dora's identity crisis when confronted with her clones, it never loses the tense thread which began with her ex-girlfriend's murder and sudden return to a place she left under stressful circumstances. 

If you like queer dystopian thrillers, don't miss THESE FRAGILE GRACES, THIS FUGITIVE HEART.