Aug 14 2025

Flame Con Anticipation

This coming weekend, August 16 and 17th will be Flame Con in midtown Manhattan! I like my conventions small and progressive, and Flame Con is therefore generally one of my favorites each year. Created by the organization Geeks OUT, Flame Con is a celebration of queer aspects of various fandoms including books, comics, tv, film, movies, gaming and cosplay.

With Flame Con 2025 right around the corner, I’m both thinking back fondly on the fun I had there last year, and looking forward to specific things that are on the schedule for this year.

From left to right, ND Stevenson, Molly Knox Ostertag and moderator Sara Munson delighting the audience and each other at Flame Con 2024

From left to right, ND Stevenson, Molly Knox Ostertag and moderator Sara Munson delighting the audience and each other at Flame Con 2024

Last year, a major highlight for me was the panel “N.D. Stevenson and Molly Knox Ostertag in Conversation” moderated delightfully by Sara Munson. Before a fabulous session with the couple, Sara Munson asked the audience if anyone there liked Chappell Roan, and the raucus yeses kind of set the tone for the hour to come. Stevenson talked about how he got She-Ra and the Princesses of Power to be as successfully lesbian as it was, and Ostertag talked about her new graphic novel, The Deep Dark, among many other projects, and they each discussed their working styles.

I also really appreciated the panel “The Secret (and Queer) History of Libraries” with Glen J. Benedict and Emily Drabinski, which both discussed the history of LGBTQ+ professional organizations in US libraries as well as current censorship issues facing librarians today. This panel on progressive library history had a full and enthusiastic audience.

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Aug 13 2025

How To Spot A Magical Woodland Creature by Sarah Glenn Marsh & Lilla Bolecz

Wahey, I’m back to my regularly scheduled review programming! And what lovelier way to return than with a gorgeously illustrated children’s book that artfully blends science with fantasy, for a delightfully whimsical read.

This field guide to enchanted creatures starts with several very important caveats to young readers, in a way that absolutely aligns with its mission for people to see outside their usual boundaries and consider the magic contained in the everyday. Before plunging into descriptions of the fantastic, Sarah Glenn Marsh reminds readers of all ages of the importance of respecting the woods, and of the limitations of any field guide. The disappointed child of decades past in me deeply appreciated how she stated exactly what kind of terrain her book covers: the flora and fauna of temperate forests are quite different from what you can expect of other kinds, and the fact that she clearly delineates her area of coverage makes it clear that she’s thought of readers who don’t have physical access to that kind of wilderness. There’s no leading eager youngsters along in search of the familiar, only to disappoint them in the end because our differences and needs are never recognized. That might seem like a very small thing to people who’ve always been catered to by the mainstream, but it means a lot to a reader who rarely saw herself addressed in manuals like these growing up.

The caveats over, the contents themselves riff on established fact to create a world of whimsy for budding naturalists who love animals but who love magic as well. Ms Marsh compares the enchanted version of each creature with its mundane representation, building not only a solid scientific basis but also making it clear that magic is distinct and unusual and a springboard for the imagination. Throughout, she emphasises the importance of respecting wildlife while not being afraid of getting your hands a little dirty in the process of learning more.

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Aug 12 2025

Salvagia by Tim Chawaga (EXCERPT)

Hello, readers! Today we have an excerpt from a thrilling work of speculative fiction that falls under the cli(mate change)-fi heading, as a near-future scavenger finds herself embroiled in the murder of a powerful corporate figure.

Triss Mackey is flying just under the radar, exploiting a government loophole that lets her live quietly aboard her rented, sentient CabanaBoat, the Floating Ghost. To make ends meet, she dives for recycling recovered from the flooded areas of formerly-coastal cities known as the yoreshore. If she happens to find some salvagia — nostalgic salvage, valued artifacts from the past — well, that’s just between her and the highest bidder.

But when the federal government begins withdrawing from Florida entirely, Triss must buy the Ghost outright or lose her loophole. The corporate mafias, meanwhile, are poised to seize power. Triss needs a score big enough to keep her free from both the feds and corporations, before the Ghost is sent to a watery, insurance-scamming grave.

It’s while in pursuit of such a score that she stumbles upon the chained up, drowned corpse of Edgar Ortiz, the legendary owner of the Astro America luxury hotel and head of the corporate mafia known as Mourning in Miami. The last thing she wants is to get even more involved with anything to do with his death, but Ortiz’s hotshot spaceracing son Riley makes her an offer she can’t refuse. Partnering up with Riley to solve the mystery of his father’s murder could lead them to a valuable piece of salvagia – and with it, the hope of a sustainable, free way of Florida living.

Read on for the milieu-setting excerpt!

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Aug 11 2025

A year of Diana Wynne Jones: Wrap-up!

This post concludes my year of reading all of Diana Wynne Jones’s books! After her death in 2011, Earwig and the Witch was published the same year, and a collection of her nonfiction writing was published in 2012. Much more recently, Moondust Books has published collections of her plays and poems! In this post I’ll also be covering two outliers that I didn’t write about during the general readthrough: the very first published book by Diana Wynne Jones, Changeover (1970), which was her only non-speculative book for adults; and Yes, Dear (1992), her only picture book.

While I generally think of Diana Wynne Jones as a master of middle grades and YA fantasy novels, it’s lovely to get this wide perspective on the many other types of writing she did throughout her career.

the cover of Changeover by Diana Wynne Jones shows a stick figure looking at its shadowChangeover (1970)

Changeover was Diana Wynne Jones’s first published novel in 1970, and while it has no fantastical elements and is written for an adult readership, it already bears many of the hallmarks of her writing style that would come to characterize her books. When I think about Changeover in the context of Diana Wynne Jones’s work overall, it feels to me like a pilot for a show that underwent drastic changes before it got picked up.

Changeover is extremely out of print. I requested it through Interlibrary Loan and the loaning library stipulated that I could not take it home – I had to come read it on the library premises because physical copies of it are now so rare.

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Aug 10 2025

Two Short Takes

I’ve read that The Innkeeper’s Song is Peter S. Beagle’s favorite among his novels, and I think I can understand why. He writes the novel from no less than ten points of view — including a shapeshifting fox — allowing him to show events from numerous different perspectives, to show how the same actions have different meanings depending on who is telling what happened. The book is named for the innkeeper, but it doesn’t begin with him, and though it more or less ends with him (told from another point of view) the inn is only incidentally and intermittently a place for the novel’s action. The title, then, is just the first of many of Beagle’s acts of misdirection concerning this novel.

The Innkeeper's Song by Peter S. Beagle

I’ve shied away from calling The Innkeeper’s Song a story, because another important thing that Beagle does is keep the reader guessing about what kind of story the book is, or rather, keep the reader interested in all of the different kinds of stories that the characters are living through. One seeks his true love beyond death and back. She, for her part, wonders why she is returned, and who is this overly earnest boy anyway? The two other women traveling with her have their own quests though they, too, may be in the dark about what they are really up to.

At each turn, the story becomes something else. The desperate quest for a lost love becomes an attempt to find a new place, and to understand whether a connection that felt like it should last through eternity can continue even into the next year. A different quest for a lost friend and teacher brings the questers into the middle of a terrible, slow-motion feud. Did the old wizard want to be found? Did he know he would be regardless of his own desires, and did he use that as another gambit in his deadly game?

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Aug 08 2025

Tantalizing Tales — August 2025 — Part Two

Hello, readers! I am having a bit of a ghastly day health-wise but am super looking forward to climbing back into bed soon, preferably with a good book! Top of my list is Elaine U Cho’s Teo’s Durumi, the heart-pounding conclusion to the exciting Korean space opera duology she began with her debut novel Ocean’s Godori.

Ocean Yoon and her ragtag crew must escape lethal space outlaws and defy the all-powerful Korean Alliance that rules the solar system, in order to prove the innocence of Ocean’s best friend Teo Anand. Widely believed to have been responsible for the murder of his parents, the former playboy must confront his own complicity in his family legacy: one of incredible power and success at the helm of behemoth tech corporation Anand Corp, but also one of great atrocities and injustices.

Teo’s quest forces him into a tentative alliance with Phoenix, the famed space raider who is dripping in charm and secret empathy. And while Ocean remains unfailingly loyal to Teo, she finds herself growing closer to Haven, the brooding medic who dares to challenge Ocean’s hard exterior.

Meanwhile, the true perpetrator of the Anand murders lurks in the shadows, wreaking havoc on planet Earth and cooking up a plan for system-wide atrocities. When Ocean, Teo, and their friends and allies finally confront this shadowy villain, they must hold onto what truly matters and stand strong against an array of mind-warping weapons.

This latest offering from one of my favorite new publishing imprints, Lena Waithe’s Hillman Grad Books, is action-packed, with steamy romances, heartwarming friendships, and delicious depictions of food and planetary beauty, punctuated by epic fight sequences. The entire duology is perfect for modern readers looking for an update on the space opera genre!

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Aug 07 2025

My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, Vol. 2 by Emil Ferris

This graphic novel took Emil Ferris something like seven years to write and draw, and it was honestly worth every minute. My only quibble with it is the idea that it somehow serves as a conclusion. Sure, it solves the murder, presented in the first volume, of who killed Anka. But the emotions are still very open-ended, with the ending of the book itself feeling far more transitory than conclusive.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. The story follows a ten year-old named Karen, who views herself more as a monster (a la the Wolfman) than a little girl. She lives with her older brother Deeze in a Chicago townhouse divided into flats by floors, during the Civil Rights era of the 1960s. Her mother has recently died, and her father disappeared a long time ago. Deeze does what he feels he needs to do in order to support both himself and Karen.

Karen herself is a complicated, fascinating creation. As a young lesbian and a keen-eyed, sensitive artist, she struggles with what society tells her about how she should feel and behave. In addition to feeling more comfortable as a monster than a little girl, she fancies herself a detective, and has set about solving the mystery of who killed her upstairs neighbor Anka. Her investigations take her on a meandering but impactful tour of Chicago, as she learns far more about her family than she ever suspected or feared, all while clinging to her faith in monsters to help keep her and her loved ones safe.

This is a powerful coming-of-age novel that works well even if you haven’t read the first book, as I haven’t — tho I strongly recommend going back and looking it up! In addition to exploring the culture and counterculture of mid 20th-century Chicago, this book also addresses the horrors of World War II through the voice of Anka, a Jewish Holocaust survivor who had to do unspeakable things to make it out alive. Told from Karen’s immersive viewpoint, we slowly learn the truth about the world and people around her, even as we can’t escape the essential empathy of our kind-hearted protagonist.

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Aug 06 2025

Psychopomp by Maria Dong

I fell head over heels in love with Maria Dong’s genre-bending debut Liar, Dreamer, Thief, so when Ms Dong herself reached out asking if I’d like a copy of her follow-up novel, the more sci-fi Psychopomp, I was absolutely gasping to say yes.

Psychopomp has lots of the same themes that LDT did, tho set on a planet and moon far, far away in space and, presumably, time. There’s an unreliable narrator suffering from mental illness who feels as tho she’s been abandoned by her struggling parents. Employment is a precarious situation, and the threat of betrayal by others is harder to process when you can’t trust your own facilities. But whereas LDT stays firmly rooted in logic to present its gorgeously satisfying puzzle box of a story, Psychopomp leaves several important questions unanswered, and I’m not entirely sure why.

The story itself is narrated by Young, a prison laborer on the moon Hibiscus. She was caught stealing on the connected planet Ung-Nyeo, and sent to the lunar penal colony to work off her debt to society. The prison actually isn’t terrible as far as incarceration goes, tho it does have big company town energy. Everything is expensive, and everything is charged to the account that the prisoner eventually has to pay off, if they stand any chance of making it back planetside. It’s a very accurate portrayal of the trajectory of the prison-industrial complex under late-stage capitalism, as is the entire politico-economic setting.

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Aug 05 2025

Monstress Vol 9: The Possessed by Marjorie M Liu & Sana Takeda

Would I read this comic if it weren’t for the fact that it’s nominated for a Hugo almost every year? Absolutely not. Tho apparently it was not nominated last year (I’ve heard that Vol 8 was Not Great) and I skipped the Hugos the year before, so missed reading the last two books. Not that it mattered much, since this collection starts with Maika, Ren and Kippa waking from a year-long coma and readers getting the closest thing to a recap I’ve encountered in this series so far.

Anyway, Maika’s dad now has Zinn implanted in him after removing the monster from her body. Unsurprisingly, it’s not going well for him. The removal seemed to have killed Maika, but her body was taken away and she was subsequently resuscitated. Now that she’s awake and (mostly) healed again, she’s ready to make political allies and figure out a way to get Zinn back so that, together, they can save the world.

At least, I think that’s what it’s about.

I’m ngl, this is one of those comic books where I just grab the safety rail and try to enjoy the ride. As is customary in my review of each volume, I have to say that I don’t necessarily understand a lot of what’s going on, just because there’s So Much Happening to So Many People with So Little Explanation. At least this book was coherent in and of itself, not something I could say about several of the earlier books in the series. The time jump is thus very useful for giving readers a fairly fresh slate to work with. Even if you missed the last two books, like I did, it doesn’t super matter, as the underlying plot elements are still pretty much the same: Maika’s on her world-saving quest while grappling with her relationship with Zinn and her family and lovers; Kippa is the moral heart of the story, and Ren is adorable and mysterious and badass (so, a typical cat, lol.) If you enjoy these elements in your horror-fantasy then you will most likely enjoy this book, too.

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Aug 04 2025

Tantalizing Tales — August 2025 — Part One

Happy August, readers! My schedule has already been thrown into a tizzy, but I’m hoping that things smooth out a little bit before back to school and the start of the Arsenal season later this month. In the meantime, let’s look at some awesome shorter books coming out this week — I love a short book almost as much as I love a short king, lol — beginning with the inescapable topics addressed in screenwriter Jon Raymond’s latest novel God And Sex.

Set in a present day Pacific Northwest ravaged by global warming, this novel follows a writer of high-end spiritual texts named Arthur. He falls in love and begins an affair with Sarah, the wife of a newfound close friend. When an environmental disaster threatens Sarah’s life, Arthur frantically turns to prayer to save her. The mystifying event that ensues challenges his understanding of God and the divine.

As the audacious title suggests, Arthur must examine his relationships to carnality and spirituality and how the two intertwine. While this is a book about faith and religion, it’s also very much an examination of love, friendship, art, ecology and climate change. Plus, it comes in at under 300 pages, which I have to say is very much a draw for me recently.

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