My
Goodreads review of this book just says, “Yes yes yes yes yes this is the good
stuff,” if you want a sign of my emotional reaction to Our Wives Under the
Sea.
This
is a gorgeous, compact, spooky, haunting novel about a marriage falling apart,
and it came into my life at exactly the right time. Miri’s wife, Leah, is an
undersea explorer who vanishes for months under the water without a trace.
Finally, she returns—but has all of Leah come back?
I
would call this half dark fantasy horror, half contemporary queer literary
fiction. Or Mitski meets The Haunting of Hill House. It checked all my
boxes, and I whipped through it in two sittings. In other words, “the good
stuff.”
Named as book to look out for in 2022 by Guardian, i-D, Autostraddle, Bustle, Good Housekeeping, Stylist and DAZED.
Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home.
To have the woman she loves back should mean a return…
Sometimes, I’m hesitant to start a new series because I’m worried the author won’t stick
the landing. If you’ve been considering The Radiant Emperor duology but had the
same hesitation, let me reassure you: this ending delivers.
He
Who Drowned the World finishes the magic-laced, queer-driven retelling of the
founding of the Ming Dynasty that started in She Who Became the Sun. The
book’s three central characters—Zhu Yuanzhang, General Ouyang, and Wang
Baoxiang—are all ruthless and damaged and monomaniacal in their own ways, and
while I wouldn’t like to meet any of them in real life, I could have read about
them for another 800 pages.
The
scope is epic, the plot is tight, the tension is 11 out of 10, and I changed
who my favorite character was in virtually every chapter. Please read this book. It’s
unfairly good.
The sequel and series conclusion to She Who Became the Sun, the accomplished, poetic debut of war and destiny, sweeping across an epic alternate China. Mulan meets The Song of Achilles.
How much would you give to win the world?
Zhu Yuanzhang, the Radiant King, is riding high after her victory that tore southern China from its Mongol masters. Now she burns with a new desire: to seize the throne and crown herself emperor.
But Zhu isn’t the only one with imperial ambitions. Her neighbor in the south, the courtesan Madam Zhang, wants the throne for her husband―and she’s strong…
I’ve been yelling about this book once a week since
I finished it, and I may as well use this opportunity to yell one more time!
In a nutshell, When the Angels Left the Old
Country is Good Omens meets An American Tail. An angel and a
small-time demon set out to rescue one of the missing young people from their
village of Shtetl, which quickly transforms into an immigrant adventure that
winds through the streets of Warsaw, the gates of Ellis Island, and the
tenements and factories of New York.
Supernatural elements aside, the most magical part
for me was how joyously Jewish this book is. Stories of Jewish tragedy are
important, of course, but the characters in this book drew strength from their
Judaism, and to me, it felt like a celebration. I smiled the whole way through.
In publishing-speak, here's what we at the LQ office sometimes describe as the Queer lovechild of Sholem Aleichem and Philip Roth:
Uriel the angel and Little Ash (short for Ashmedai) are the only two supernatural creatures in their shtetl (which is so tiny, it doesn't have a name other than Shtetl). The angel and the demon have been studying Talmud together for centuries, but pogroms and the search for a new life have drawn the young people from their village to America. And suddenly a murder forces the study partners to follow them.
Let the Dead Bury the Dead is an alternate history about a popular uprising in 1812 Saint
Petersburg—one that may have magic at its roots.
Sasha, a captain in the
imperial army, and Felix, the second son of the tsar, fall into the company of
a mysterious woman who bears an eerie resemblance to a powerful spirit from
legend.
On her advice, Felix allies himself with a vocal group of dissidents
among the common people, making himself the enemy of both Sasha and his father.
Meanwhile, Marya, the trusted lieutenant of the uprising, also falls under
Sofia's spell. Allied with Felix and her fellow revolutionaries, she finds
herself in the middle of a battle she could never have predicted.
