Alana McCool

I really love a first person POV story, and journal entries works really well as a framing device in Piranesi. Because the narrator only knows what is at hand, and only shares what they think is right to put down in their journal. And what is at hand is memory, flashes written on my own heart, building the House of the Blessed Child.

I remember years ago I was on the north shore of O'ahu during the winter, when the waves can grow to 50 feet high, and they thunder down on the beach. And when I think about that I can feel the thunder again. The House is a soundscape, a feelscape, I can hear and smell and touch in my body the great ocean, that thunder, the spray and mists, see the quality of light on statues, feel the warmth and also the ice cold of winter shore, hear the calling of all sorts of birds, the quiet of the Drowned Halls. It is very Proustian the way it grows as the Blessed Child writes his journal, just a little taste and the whole space fills out.

It reminds me of the game Myst some, that kind of solitary atmosphere. But in Myst, you are alone and feel strange. The Blessed Child does not feel strange, he is home. And it is only when others come into the House and dredge memories that he feels anything is wrong. Why would he want to leave?

Why would I want to leave?

Thank you to @hardybooks for recommending this.

A queer dark fantasy novella. i read because I recently read Tesh's Some Desperate Glory and liked it. This is a very different and much shorter story, something I can read in an hour sit, but the same detailed prose and deep world. In Silver in the Woods I can feel the dirt and wet and smell the moss and good rot (and also bad rot). A cute May-December romance hides in the fairy tale. Recommend if you like T Kingfisher's fairy tale novellas, it is in that similar way with darker vibes.

My first T. Kingfisher book was Thornhedge and I loved it so much I thought I should read some more. This one, Nettle & Bone, plays with godmothers, magic gained from doing impossible tasks, and graveyard keepers who talk with the dead (and also keep chickens that sometimes have demons). Also the Goblin Market is mixed in there, and a really cute straight romance that didn't bother me at all! I don't know if Kingfisher has a type but both Toadling and Marra have a similar feel to them, young, inexperienced, stubborn but also not really sure about themselves except what they should be doing (and that they are doing something wrong). And it is a fun character to follow.

I like N&B starts in media res with Marra making a skeleton dog, singing from the folk song Twa Sisters; which reminds me of the impossible tasks from Scarborough Faire. Maybe there are more folk songs woven in the rest but I did not recognize them.

When I read the review that this book makes you cry ugly tears I did not believe. You know, reviewers exaggerate. And then I got to that scene in the middle of the novel. And I threw down the book and said, "I hate this book", and went to my bed and cried. So it is not false advertising. This book hurts you. And although I have a lot of empathy for Kyr at the beginning because of the situation she is in from birth, she really is the worst person ever. And then at the end you are cheering for her, because she has that kind of long character arc. Books don't make me feel this up and down every day. So, I didn't always like it, but at the end I liked it.

DNF'ed it, should start with that.

For some reason I like genre fiction, and for some reason when I go to the library to find new books to read, either on the new shelves or searching the stacks for authors I recognize, 90% of what I read, 9 out of 10 books, are queer-related. Maybe that is just how sci-fi/fantasy is being written these days, and always how horror has been. But it is not a problem for me because I like to read queer stories. I am a queer woman and I can relate to the experiences of people in these stories. Even if the stories are about messy people (because I am also a messy person).

I could not read more than half of I Keep My Exoskelletons to Myself. It hurt to read, and not in a way that feels cathartic. The world in this book is a tragedy that feels impossible to escape, and the protagonist just can't move herself out of her personal tragedy and the barriers in the world on marginalized people, who are criminalized, the shadows that she has to have on her. Like, yeah, life feels like that in our reality, sometimes. But I don't want to brood in it.

I think the author is writing her own story into this, and that is good. People should write their own stories. But the protagonist, she is just caught in that forever cycle of despair that the realized metaphor of the shadows lock her in, in that tragedy of her wife's death and her child already having an extra shadow from birth. She speaks all her snicking sarcasm to try to cope, making things worse for herself, not really being a good parent. I hated her a little. But maybe that is just some sh*tty respectability politics I am feeling. And if that is so, and I know it, it is shining a mirror on my own internalized marginal-phobia. Cringe is cringe at yourself.

I read halfway and then I skipped to the end to see if something shines through. There is maybe something at the end about young people breaking through intergenerational trauma by owning it. But I could not tie it all together and finish it, and I do not think it would have been good. So that is why it is two stars, because it did not reach me personally, because I read genre fiction for fun and this was not fun, not at all.