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Bury Your Gays: A Review

In which Chuck Tingle goes to Hollywood.

Misha Byrne is a screenwriter, and he’s just locked in his first Oscar nomination. He’s also gay, and executive meddling is on the cusp of forcing him to kill off the two queer leads of his latest TV series. Nearly four seasons of wildly successful X-Files-esque television, and he’s finding his work being subject to one of the oldest tropes in fiction: bury your gays. For Misha, this is particularly egregious, as his favorite childhood show fell victim to the same treatment years before. However, if he doesn’t go along with the studio’s plans, he’ll be in breach of contract and lose his job, and potentially any chance of working in Hollywood again.

Then, things start to get weird at the studio lot. Raymond Nelson, one of the oldest working animators at the studio, is crushed by a piano in an ironic echo of a cartoon death. Not long after, Misha spots a character from one of his horror films while walking out of a bar. This omen warns him that he has only five day to live, a timeline that coincides with the night of the Academy Awards ceremony. Soon, more of his horror characters begin intruding into his life, and he’s forced to face the very real traumas that shaped his career (and are threatening his boyfriend). Will Misha succumb to studio pressure by Oscar night, or will he fall to a twisted version of one of his own creations?

Chuck Tingle is absolutely killing it in the horror genre, y’all. Bury Your Gays is littered with little nods to actual Hollywood staples, all while carefully avoiding name-dropping any specific real world studio. Tingle builds phenomenal tension and intersperses some clever screenwriting aspects between segments of the story. This is a brilliant follow-up to last year’s Camp Damascus, and further solidifies Chuck as a horror writer of note. My utmost thanks to Tor Publishing Group and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Bury Your Gays is out as of yesterday, 7/9/24. Go get it.

Unexploded Remnants: A Review

Alice is the last surviving human in the universe, and she’s on the run. When she was exploring the Alta Sidoie market, she found something in a scrap collector’s booth that was far more than met the eye. Unfortunately for her, she wasn’t the only one who recognized it. Now she’s being chased throughout an intergalactic portal network by a warmongering alien race that wants to use the weapon-controlling AI she found to attack anyone who has ever wronged them.

Alice fell into the portal network by chance, an accidental bit of access from a world that wasn’t supposed to be able to connect. She was observed by the Archive, one of the unifying forces for good in the universe, and sent back to report on humanity as a whole. Eventually Earth’s conflicts grew to the point where the Archive opted to quarantine the world instead of attempting to keep helping, leaving humans to their own slow self-destruction. Alice, however, was allowed to keep performing work for them. Now alongside her virtual assistant, Bugs, she’s employed as a blend of archaeologist and grave robber for the Archive, trading in favors and information as well as artifacts.

Alice has her hands on the key to one of the most powerful remaining weapons in the galaxy, and the enemy is closing in. The AI is a threat to everyone, but Alice is determined to save Gunn, the being trapped in the heart of the artifact. She doesn’t know who she can fully trust, but she’s going to do whatever it takes to free him.

Elaine Gallagher has packed a tremendous amount of detail into a very small package with Unexploded Remnants. This novella is fast-paced and a hell of a lot of fun. World hopping action and clever characters reminiscent of Indiana Jones, Lara Croft, and Evelyn O’Connor make for a quick, entertaining read that still manages to provide commentary on weapons of war and how we treat soldiers.

My utmost thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Unexploded Remnants is out today, 6/25/24. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Cuckoo: A Review

Gretchen Felker-Martin is back! It’s been two years since Manhunt dropped, and the world is still reeling from her spectacularly violent, grimy apocalypse novel. Now she’s written an arguably darker tale of queer fear in Cuckoo.

Like its predecessor, Cuckoo is undeniably a queer horror story. The novel introduces us to a group of teens, each of whom has been violently removed from their home and forcefully transported across the country. Their only crime? Being a queer teen in the 90s, for which their parents shipped them off to be changed. When they arrive at Camp Resolution, a desert-based conversion camp, they have nothing but each other, and no idea what they’re about to face. They don’t even know what state they’re in. Far from home and cut off from the outside world, they’ll have to band together to make it out unchanged.

Camp Resolution is, in a word, weird. The educational curriculum is pseudoscience, the physical activities consist of backbreaking labor or myriad household chores (depending on assigned sex), and the counselors are not just prone to violence but actively encourage it. The campers who have been there longer are brutal to the newcomers, and even Pastor Eddie, the leader of the camp, won’t hesitate to beat any of the teens who don’t bow to his whims.

Something darker still lurks in the shadows of Camp Resolution, though. The campers who have graduated from the program are… different. Not themselves anymore (and while some would argue that yes, that’s the point of a conversion camp, Resolution’s strategy relies a lot less on prayer and the Bible). Then, the dreams begin. The same dream. Each camper is digging a hole, and they find their own body buried deep in the earth. Something is reaching out to them, speaking to them… preparing them. Our ragged misfits know that they have to escape the camp, before they too are irrevocably changed.

Gretchen Felker-Martin absolutely nailed the building dread in Cuckoo. This book is just as filthy as Manhunt, and I mean that in the best way of describing her aesthetics and worldbuilding. I was thrilled to find out that her sophomore effort was an incredibly solid piece of horror. Cuckoo is out in the world today. Go get it. Read it. Get scared. Repeat.

My utmost thanks to Tor and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Service Model: A Review

I am a relative newcomer to the work of Adrian Tchaikovsky. I first picked up Walking to Aldebaran a few months ago after a recommendation on Bluesky and I loved it, so I leapt at the opportunity to get an early copy of his latest novel, Service Model.

Service Model introduces readers to Charles, a robot valet working in a manor up until the untimely death of his master. Charles is an incredibly skilled robot, programmed to handle all aspects of coordinating with House, the majordomo system of the manor. This facilitates any and all of the Master’s needs. Clothing selection? Check. Travel plans? Check. Shave? Check. One day, however, Charles goes a bit far. Master is unable to give new orders to Charles or House or any of the other servants, and Charles finds that an odd bit of staining is appearing on everything he’s touched in the time since he last shaved Master.

Soon, an investigation is underway, and Charles is ejected from the Manor into the wider world. Unfortunately for him, the outer world is a largely uninhabited wasteland. Fortunately, he has one more thing in his task queue. He sets off to have his malfunctions examined by a diagnostician. So begins his trek across the post-apocalyptic landscape in search of answers and a new Master to serve.

Service Model almost immediately made me think of Douglas Adams, and I can only attempt to describe the protagonist as a mashup of Marvin the Paranoid Android with Wadsworth, the butler from Clue. Our deteriorating valet needs to find out why he acted the way he did as well as what happened to all of the humans. Along the way, he gets into increasingly philosophical discussions about humanity or the lack thereof, with a growing self-awareness. The journey is more important than the destination, after all, and an unexpected companion quickly adds complications to both Charles’ sense of self and his quest.

I absolutely loved reading this book. It’s a phenomenal wandering hero narrative, with elements of allegory reminiscent of The Pilgrim’s Progress. I’m very grateful to Tor Publishing and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. Service Model is out today.

How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying: A Review

Django Wexler’s latest novel has a mouthful of a title, but it’s an absolute blast.

Davi is tired. She’s been living in a time loop for hundreds of years since she first found herself in The Kingdom, restarting in the same place, the same state of existence, every time she dies. Sometimes, that’s only a few hours (or minutes) into a loop. Sometimes it’s been years. Every time she wakes up in a new loop, she’s greeted by the same old wizard who tells her that it’s her destiny to save The Kingdom. She has tried hundreds of times, and so far, has always ended up the same way: failing to defeat the newly arisen Dark Lord and their horde of villains. What’s the phrase? If you can’t beat them, join them.

This time around, Davi decides, things are going to be different. She’s done fighting the Dark Lord, and is going to use her ability (curse?) of respawning to take the title for herself. It’s going to be hard, though. Subverting your destiny isn’t easy, even when you can take a few hundred tries to get it right. Step one. Kill the old wizard for starters. Step two. Find the nearest band of orcs and gain their trust. Step three. Use that orc band and her own knowledge of the local Guild patrols and fighting tactics to take out a crew and get their gear. Step four. Turn that little orc gang to start building up a proper army, and fast.

Oh, did she mention that she’s only got two months or so to get to the Convocation where the new Dark Lord will be selected? Davi needs to get moving if she’s going to get her tenure as Dark Lord on track, but she has no guarantees that things will end any differently than every time she tried to be a hero. After all, the Convocation is held beyond the edge of the map, as far as the Guild is concerned. She has no experience breaking the standard loop of time, and each day she moves beyond her previous routine is one day further that she’ll have to go if she screws up. She’s headed into unknown territory now, and the fate of her adopted world is at stake.

Wexler’s newest novel is perfect for fans of roguelike games like Hades. It’s an absolutely hilarious and unrepentantly horny book, and I enjoyed the hell out of it. Wexler’s writing traces a line between homage and irreverent humor, particularly where Davi’s footnotes are concerned (after a few hundred lives, she’s lost track of some of the details of her own background, and her memories from Earth are slightly scrambled). Even better? This is book one of a series. How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying is available next Tuesday, May 21st.

My utmost thanks to Orbit Books and NetGalley for an eARC in exchange for a fair review.

Necrobane: A Review

Daniel M. Ford blew me away last year when I got to read The Warden. At the time, I had said that I was hoping that I would get to spend more time in Aelis’s world soon, and guess what? Necrobane is here.

This book picks up immediately where The Warden left off, so heads up. Here there be spoilers.

Aelis is a necromancer and a noble scion. She’s a child raised in wealth in a large city, trained in magic and combat. In short, she is the antithesis of most of the people that she is, as a Warden, charged to protect. In her efforts to defend the village of Lone Pine, she accidentally activated an unknown number of animated dead of Mahlgren, necromancy-fueled remnants of the last war. While she was able to defeat the handful of skeletons that arose within the chamber she was exploring, she learned that there are far more similar crypts scattered throughout the realm. Now that they’re active, they’re likely to be heading in the direction of her new home. Just as the villagers were beginning to trust the outsider, now she’s got to warn them about an impending invasion of restless dead that are technically only emerging because of her actions.

Rather than leave the people of Lone Pine to fend for themselves, Aelis quickly hatches a plan to seek out a control mechanism that could potentially deactivate the entire enemy force. She narrows down the likely location to a stronghold of a fallen empire and gathers her allies. She may be a skilled and talented Necrobane, able to defeat animated dead with her own magic, but this struggle isn’t a solo venture. Up first, of course, is Maurenia. The half-elf is a skilled soldier and engineer, and her status as Aelis’s lover doesn’t hurt her chances to be invited along. Next is Timmuk, a dwarf merchant and a coworker of Maurenia’s on their last excursion across the frontier of Ystain. Last but not least is Tun, a half-orc woodsman who assisted Aelis on her previous adventure. Tun’s skill as a tracker is invaluable in their journey through the wilderness. Together, they hope to cut off any animated dead before they’re able to even approach Lone Pine. Ideally, they’ll put them down before any tensions between the humans and orcs along the frontier can be strained and reignite a war. Plus, maybe they’ll find some treasure along the way! As long, that is, as the control mechanism actually exists…

Ford’s writing and world-building remain top-notch throughout Necrobane, and it makes a spectacular continuation to the story established in The Warden. The stakes are higher now, and Aelis’s skills are going to be pushed to their limit if the party has any chance of succeeding. I am still wildly in love with this series, and will continue to recommend it for any fantasy fan who enjoys D&D and books like Gideon the Ninth and Legends & Lattes. I know at this point that we’re expecting a 3rd book in Aelis’s adventures in the near future, and I am ready for it.

My utmost thanks (once again) to Netgalley and Tor Publishing for access to an eARC of this book in exchange for a fair review. Today is publication day, so go grab yourself a copy.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In: A Review

Shesheshen woke up early, and is understandably upset. Her hibernation in her lair was interrupted by a trio of would-be monster hunters, and she was only able to kill and eat one of them before the others escaped. Using some of the dead hunter’s remains (and other bits of the ruins where she lives), the shape-shifter is able to build herself a bit of human-like body framework so that she can sneak down into the nearby town to see what’s changed since she was last awake. Borrowed bits of flesh and bone give her body more of the appropriate shape, allowing her to fake her way through some interactions. When her disguise fails in the middle of a festival celebrating her imminent death, she’s chased back out of town. The crowd, including the two survivors of the raid on her lair, pursue her until she falls off of a cliff.

Upon her next awakening, she’s startled by the presence of a human woman who has treated her wounds, wrapped her in blankets, and stoked a fire. The woman, an outsider not from the village, introduces herself as Homily. Before the monster can really focus on what’s happened, she’s being fed soup and entreated to rest by a woman who is clearly oblivious to Shesheshen’s monstrous nature, taking any oddities about her as symptoms of having just fallen over a cliff. Homily loads her into a cart and strikes off back to town. Soon, she’s in Homily’s room at a local inn until she can finish convalescing. A couple of things strike Shesheshen, then. First, the people of the village seem terrified of Homily. Second, she is beginning to feel… feelings. An odd sort of mutual attraction seems to be blooming between Homily and the woman she knows as Siobhan. Homily feels a genuine attraction to the monster she’s rescued, but she has no idea what Siobhan actually is.

As the two are getting to know each other and growing closer, though, the reason for Homily’s presence in Underlook comes to light. She’s the daughter of the Baroness Wulfyre, one of the family that rules the isthmus where Shesheshen lives. She’s also a master monster hunter in her own right, and had come to the village to assist her brother in hunting down the Wyrm of Underlook. Unfortunately for her, her brother Catharsis was the monster hunter that Shesheshen devoured before she and Homily met, and all of her remaining relatives believe that Shesheshen has cursed their line. Now Shesheshen is torn. Does she continue her charade or reveal her monstrous nature to Homily and hope that she can be forgiven for who she is? She’s finally met someone who might be a suitable host for her eggs, but if Homily figures out her identity, siding with her admittedly toxic family means Shesheshen’s death.

John Wiswell has released a brilliant debut novel with Someone You Can Build a Nest In. It’s a delightfully bizarre fantasy romance told from the perspective of a monster, and I’m utterly entranced by it. His descriptions of Shesheshen’s odd morphology and attempts to human are charming and disturbing simultaneously, and the Wulfyre clan (barring Homily) are suitably horrible. All in all, it’s an unconventional love story that will leave you questioning what relationships can be, and whether we can grow to become more than what our parents expect us to become.

My utmost thanks to NetGalley and DAW for an eARC of this title in exchange for a fair review. Someone You Can Build a Nest In is out in stores today, 4/2/24. Check it out.

The Butcher of the Forest: A Review

I read Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest yesterday, and I’m pretty sure I’m not okay. It’s a fantastic novella, and that’s the problem. It’s too good, and now it’s done.

Veris lives in the valley that is ruled over by the Tyrant. She spends her days raising rabbits and helping her aunt and her grandfather with gardening and other tasks around the house. Most days, that would be more than enough, but today is not like most days.

Today, Veris was shaken out of bed by the Tyrant’s soldiers attempting to tear down her front door. Today, she was put into a carriage and taken to the Tyrant’s castle. Today might be the last day of her life. Last night, the Tyrant’s two children, Eleonor and Aram, vanished into the woods that lie north of the castle. Where the southern woods are often traveled by foragers and hunters, the northern woods are understood by the locals to be dangerous. No one who goes into the northern woods comes out again. Except, that is, for Veris.

Years ago, Veris ventured into those woods to rescue a child, and they both returned. Somehow, that information made its way to the ears of the Tyrant, and now he has had his soldiers drag her to the castle. Today, he has ordered her to find his children and bring them back home, or her life and those of her aunt and grandfather are forfeit. So it is with rapidly dwindling hope that Veris returns to her house to prepare. The northern woods are more dangerous than anyone other than her knows, and all she can do is try. Today, she will gather up her totems and supplies, and she will go to the woods. Today, she will risk everything she has in order to save it from the Tyrant’s whims. Today, she will try to save the children of a monster.

The Butcher of the Forest is quick and beautiful and painful as a knife through the ribs. Premee Mohamed has created a fairy tale to rival legends, with fae creatures and monsters and all the rules one must follow in order to survive. My utmost thanks to Netgalley and Tor Publishing Group for an eARC in exchange for a fair review. It’s available for purchase on February 27th, but if you can, preorder it through your favorite bookstore today. You’ll thank yourself.

The Trials of Empire: A Review

Richard Swan’s Empire of the Wolf series caught my attention almost immediately when I first saw the cover of The Justice of Kings. It’s hard to miss a cover like that when you’re 1.) a fantasy fan and 2.) a library employee. I picked up the audio books via Libby last summer, when I realized that a second book was out, and now I’ve had the immense privilege of returning once again to the Sovan Empire with book #3.

The Empire of the Wolf is told from the perspective of Helena Sedanka, an orphan who was been taken in and trained by Sir Konrad Vonvalt, an Emperor’s Justice. In that position, he serves as travelling judge, jury, and when needed, executioner, carrying out the will of the courts wherever he may be. Helena acts as his legal clerk and apprentice, producing documentation of their efforts and learning the intricacies of the Sovan legal system along the way. For some time, they were both content to travel the northern reaches of the empire, but an encounter with a zealous church official, Patria Bartholomew Claver, changed everything.

Claver sought a return to the days when the Church of Nema controlled the powers now held by the Order of Justices: ancient magics that could be used to compel action, the ability to confer with the dead, command over wildlife. All of these and more had once officially been the exclusive realm of the church, but they had been taught to the Justices to aid their work. Frustrated by the lack of action from the majority of the Church, Claver found his way to darker places, making bargains with powers that he didn’t truly understand in order to bring about the change he desired. Now, he seems to have set his sights on control of the Empire itself, no matter what demon or deity he has to bargain with to make it happen. He sits at the head of an army of Templars poised to strike down the Emperor, ostensibly in Nema’s name.

Now, Vonvalt’s own unshakable faith in the Common Law is beginning to break. In his attempts to thwart Claver, he has become persona non grata, believed to be responsible for the death of the Emperor’s grandson. A rebellion against the Magistratum has reached its zenith, and the justices are by and large disbanded or dead. Vonvalt will find no safe haven in the capital. What he and Helena need most are more allies who can withstand Claver’s burgeoning Templar army. A journey far beyond the borders of Sova might be able to accomplish just that, but acquiring the aid they need may prove deadly. Such travels will need to be made not only on the material plane but in the various realms accessible only through the ancient magics. Helena and Vonvalt will place their lives and their souls on the line in order to defeat Claver, but it might not be enough to save the empire. Loyalties will be questioned, near-death experiences will be had, and trickster gods will play their hands at last. It’s going to be messy.

Richard Swan brings his fantasy trilogy to a powerful conclusion in The Trials of Empire. His strength in blending traditional elements of western fantasy with jurisprudence makes for compelling reading, especially for someone raised on Lord of the Rings and John Grisham like me. The Empire of the Wolf hews far closer to A Song of Ice and Fire than to LOTR, but the comparison stands. I have enjoyed this series more with each book, and I’m thrilled to say that The Trials of Empire is out on shelves today. You should check it out.

My utmost thanks to Orbit Books and NetGalley for an eARC of The Trials of Empire in exchange for a fair review.

Mislaid in Parts Half-Known: A Review

It’s January, and that means that it’s time for one of my favorite parts of the year. Yup! There’s a new Wayward Children novella out this week! I’ve been a fan of this series since Every Heart a Doorway came out in 2016, and the subsequent titles in the series have continued to break my heart and make me fall in love with Seanan McGuire’s writing over and over again. Mislaid in Parts Half-Known is the ninth full novella set in this collection of worlds (McGuire has written several short stories that flesh out some background details of characters as well).

It’s somehow been three years since the last time I reviewed one of these novellas for my blog, which I daresay is a disservice to my readers and friends (and those of you who overlap). I will include a caveat for this title for anyone who isn’t familiar with the series. This is book number 9. This is not a starting point. This book heavily references characters and events from the previous eight books.

Eleanor West’s Home For Wayward Children is a special kind of school, serving as a place for people who have found their ways into other worlds through magical Doors and then made their way back to Earth. The students are given three simple rules at the school, where they learn to adapt to a mundane life (and many wait for their Doors to appear again). “No solicitations. No visitors. No quests.” Rule number three gets broken a lot. In Mislaid, we again find Antoinette, or “Antsy,” our protagonist from book #8, Lost in the Moment and Found. Antsy has found her way to Eleanor’s school and is struggling to fit in (difficult to do when you’re 9 years old, but the magic of the Doors has aged your body to almost twice that) when several of her classmates discover her unique talent. After spending time in a shop of things that are lost from around hundreds of worlds, Antsy can find things again. Most notably for the students at the school, Antsy can find Doors. With sufficient concentration and certainty, she can locate a door to a world once inhabited by the other students. However, as she learned in Lost, the Doors take three days of your life for each one that you open (hence her appearance). She’s understandably hesitant to risk more time to open Doors for the other students.

Eventually, when one of her classmates threatens to force Antsy to find her Door for her, Antsy flees the school, in the company of some of the more adventurous (and friendly) students, Kade, Cora, Christopher, Sumi, and Emily. What follows is a whirlwind tour of worlds we’ve known existed but never visited (including Kade’s Door to Prism) and a lot of references to characters that we know from other earlier books in the series. These continuity nods are almost overwhelming, but serve to tightly pull many threads together in what may be one of the final novellas in the series, as Seanan has said that Kade’s book will likely be the end. While on the run, Antsy and her cohorts make their way back to the store where Antsy used to work, bringing her back into conflict with the shopkeeper who refused to tell her about the cost of opening the Doors.

Not everyone who comes to Eleanor West’s School for Wayward Children stays for long, and not everyone who leaves on a forbidden quest gets to come back again. Antsy leads her classmates through the Doors with the best of intentions, but some things (and some people) just have a way of getting lost.

Seanan McGuire remains one of my absolute favorite authors, and Mislaid in Parts Half-Known is a brilliant reminder of why that is. It’s out on store shelves today, so do yourself a favor and grab a copy. My utmost thanks to Tor Publishing Group and Netgalley for the eARC in exchange for a fair review.