thebakersbooks's reviews
281 reviews

Liked the fat MC whose fatness didn't go away as part of her character growth and proved to be a source of power. Disliked the author including the appropriated Indigenous mythos of the cannibal monster who steals voices, since my understanding is that one isn't even supposed to think the name of said creature, much less write it a bunch in a book.

Why, in the year 2022, an author would make an *already dead* character the token gay, I don't know.

Pretty enjoyable, but wish content warnings had been included at the beginning of the book. There's a pretty graphic, emotional death in the third act.

A nail-biting historical zombie-plague novel featuring a badass Black heroine!

Me, filing a zombie book under 'favorites'? Never would have expected it! But seriously, Dread Nation is award-winning for a reason—or maybe I should say reasons. It's historical speculative fiction set after what we know as the American Civil War, only the war got interrupted when dead soldiers started walking around and eating people at Gettysburg. With that premise plus a trio of badass heroes fighting shamblers and institutional racism at the same time, this book was sure to be a hit with fans of the zombie subgenre. However, I'm not usually a fan of zombies, so what pulled me in was the characters and the dry humor; my eventual enjoyment of the zombie-based aspects was a pleasant surprise.

One aspect of the way the narrative was set up that I especially enjoyed was how human evils (racism and intentional misuse of religion, particularly) ended up being scarier than the literal devouring dead. Marginalized people in the story are also put in positions where they're more likely to run afoul of shamblers, which was a nice bit of worldbuilding that parallels how a lot of real-world dangers (disease and injury, for instance) disproportionately affect marginalized people and are much harder to manage for marginalized folks than those with privilege.

The scariest part of the book has nothing at all to do with shamblers: it's when one character's attempt to pass as white is found out by the violently racist pastor and sheriff.

Relationships between characters were another highlight. Main character Jane has a complex family background

because of her white-passing mother

and is more invested in putting down shamblers and protecting those she cares about than in fitting into a white-dominated society that treats Black and Indigenous people as disposable tools despite the fact that slavery is now illegal. Jane has a lovers-to-friends dynamic with Jackson, who is a vaguely Robin-Hood-esque figure in their community. (Jane met Jackson when she saved him from shamblers, which is a nice inversion of the common 'male hero rescues female love interest' dynamic.) She also starts out as enemies with Katherine, a fellow student from her combat school—side note: there's definitely a degree of sexual tension between Jane and Katherine, at least on Jane's side, which is semi-confirmed when it turns out Jane is either bi or pan. (Katherine is asexual and aromantic.) I loved how Jane and Katherine became allies and eventually almost friends.

The MC's voice and the book's tone lend themselves to a surprising amount of humor given the genre and subject matter. This ranges from incisively wry observations ("There's nothing white folks hate more than realizing they accidentally treated a Negro like a person") to endearing snark ("I was already on academic probation on account of not caring enough about the importance of gravy boats"). The chapter titles further contribute to the humor, including gems like "In which all hell breaks loose," and "In which I embrace my recklessness." Those touches provide a welcome respite from all the people getting gnawed on by shamblers.

This book will appeal to fans of zombie horror, but also to horror babies like me—there's some gore and a few zombie-based scares, but those were fairly mild as the genre goes, in my opinion. I'd encourage even readers who are wary of zombies to give this a shot if the other aspects sound appealing. I don't think I've ever been in such a hurry to see if a sequel was available at my library after finishing a book, so hopefully that tells you how highly I recommend this!

Content notes: anti-Black racism; anti-Indigenous racism; many references to slavery; anti-Black slurs (historical); anti-Indigenous slurs (historical); mild to medium blood and gore; medical experimentation on Black people; phrenology; internalized colorism; societal colorism; mention of anti-Asian racism

I've had it up to here with this series being deliberately and self-congratulatorily difficult to parse.

Ah, Nona the Ninth, the surprise addition to what was originally supposed to be a trilogy. In my head, I apply the "this meeting could have been an email" thesis to Nona: it maybe could and probably should have been an epilogue to Harrow, because the first half—literally right up to the 50% mark in my audiobook—was slow, uninteresting, and ultimately irrelevant. From there, things start happening, but those things absolutely could've been flashbacks in the upcoming Alecto.

So, I think this author might have issues with pacing. A debut (Gideon) is generally likely to more tightly edited than subsequent books, and I suspect that's why book one has excellent pacing and books two and three have terrible pacing. For this one, the issue is what I mentioned above: the first half of the book serves little purpose. There's *some* character development, (view spoiler) and it was useful to get a snapshot of the impact of the House-BOE war on everyday people, particularly children. Otherwise, though, I would've greatly preferred either a) no Nona, however the two books around it would've needed to be restructured to make that work; or b) a first half more like the second half, in that the second half moved the plot along and developed characters who actually exist.

I did like how the author leaned into the gender-weirdness of Lyctoral body-sharing. This series has been solid on queer rep so far, so I wasn't expecting anything less, but I loved having people who knew Pyrrha refer to her by she/her pronouns with no slips or hesitation even though she's in Gideon the First's body. BIG SPOILER(view spoiler)

I recommend Nona the Ninth to readers who enjoyed/suffered through/cried over the first two books in the series. I'd say "with reservations" but we all know we're here 'til the end at this point. Fingers crossed Alecto is higher-quality, I guess.

Content notes: body horror, death, grief, war-typical violence 

"Every day is a good day to kill Nazis, I always say." Any story with that opening line is immediately among my favorite literary works, so it's unsurprising that I loved this brilliant sucker-punch of a novella.

Listen, I'm a huge fan of novellas, but I wanted this to be about ten times its actual length. It's very well executed in the short format—great establishment of emotional stakes, very tense, fantastic characterization—but I want a novel, damn it!

I liked everything about this book, but the historical contextualization is where it shines brightest. (This is unsurprising to anyone who knows author Francesca Tacchi from xir excellent Twitter threads on Italian and antifascist history.) The worldbuilding blends Italic folklore with a touch of eldritch horror, all set against the backdrop of the partisan struggle for Italy in 1944. I particularly appreciated how the narrative focused the partisans, groups of Italian antifascists who organized to expel Mussolini and then the Nazis, and who are often overlooked in discussions of WWII in favor of lionizing the Allied invasion of occupied Italy despite their significant contributions to freeing their homeland.

The fictional aspects of the novella are also excellent, of course. The four characters who feature most heavily all have well-defined voices and motives despite the short time they each get on page; main character Veleno gets the most development, and I liked how his backstory allowed for explanation of the magic/deities without it feeling forced. I appreciated the inclusion of a Jewish character (view spoiler).

This novella will likely appeal to readers who enjoyed Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark and T. Frohock's Los Nefilim series.

Content notes: mention of WWII atrocities; Nazis; war-typical violence; suicidal urges and ideation

The Thousand Eyes is the conclusion to the Serpent Gates duology, so this review will contain spoilers for the first book, The Unspoken Name.

I had a minor existential crisis trying to write this review because my review of the previous book was so good and so detailed, but although I enjoyed this book even more, I’m no longer capable of putting together reviews that thorough. So, as usual with my really positive reviews, this comes with the disclaimer that I’m not doing the writing justice. 

Some of the things I think this book did really well are: non-romantic relationships/chosen family; complicated and not always healthy romantic relationships; irreverent humor; worldbuilding, specifically the very involved, reachable deities and the gods’ mechanics for interacting with the mortal world; discussions of power, ethics, corruptibility, tradition vs. change (none super deep dives, but all interesting). 

I recommend this series to readers who’ve enjoyed the recent bleed of common fanfiction themes and devices into published media but who maybe wish those tropes were executed more skillfully. Also, to anyone who’s enjoying the Locked Tomb series but would’ve liked to see it take itself a bit more seriously: this is for you! 

In The Year of the Witching, author Alexis Henderson takes the ‘dark bad, light good,’ trope often seen in speculative fiction to its logical conclusion in order to dissect it. The story comes down heavily on themes of corruption and misogyny in (Christian) religious settings—I can’t say if it’s a discussion of a particular sect or denomination, since I’m not Christian. This was a tough, emotional read, but it was very skillfully written and the fantasy elements made the hard-hitting parts more bearable.

I’m going to let this book speak for itself on a few of the topics I thought it addressed really well.

- Misogyny in Christianity: “Bethel has placed its burdens on the shoulders of little girls for far too long.”

- Inaction in the face of injustice: “Good people don’t bow their heads and bite their tongues while other good people suffer. Good people are not complicit.”

- Anti-Blackness in western Christianity: “In all her sixteen years, Immanuelle had never seen any saints or effigies in her own likeness. None of the statues and paintings housed in the Prophet’s Cathedral bore any resemblance to her.”

- The church allowing men to take sexual advantage of children: “It was the sickness that placed the pride of men before the innocents they were sworn to protect. It was a structure that exploited the weakest among them for the benefit of those born to power.”

- White people not coming through for their mixed-race family: Main character Immanuelle’s white grandmother betrays her to the religious authority and Immanuelle later says, “She’s no kin to me.”

- Religious rhetoric being used to justify atrocities: “The Holy Scriptures had always made those conflicts seem like battle sands wars, but in actuality, it was just a massacre.”

This was an excellent book. I wouldn’t necessarily call it an enjoyable read at all times, but it contained lots of great social commentary built on a foundation of rich worldbuilding. I recommend The Year of the Witching to anyone who enjoys intense fantasy and won’t be disturbed by the religious commentary (or will be disturbed in a good way; western Christianity needs to be shaken up this way now and then, in my opinion.)

Content notes: mention of rape in a religious context; spousal abuse; religion-base misogyny; racism/colorism; blood/gore; ritual self-harm; ritual sacrifice of animals; religion-sanctioned child rape; on-page traumatic childbirth; death of birthing parent