Tag: New book!

Monday, February 21, 2022

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune

TJ Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea was the second book I read in 2021, and honestly everything else after it kind of paled in comparison. So you may be wondering why I decided that two months into 2022 was the perfect time to read his latest adult novel Under the Whispering Door? I could tell you it was because I’m a bit of a masochist and knew that Klunes’ book would more than likely leave me in tears, or that I was sick of avoiding book spoilers on the internet. But the truth is much simpler-I’ve been in a bit of bookish turmoil! I’ve been plowing through books, many of which are HIGHLY regarded in the literary community and they are just not landing for me. So I turned to an author that never lets me down and set out on the journey that is reading Under the Whispering Door.

In the book, Wallace Price is not what we would call a “good person”. In life, he was a lawyer whose only goal was to win cases and maintain order in his life. When he suddenly wakes up attending his own funeral, everything he thought he knew about himself, his existence, and the world gets completely shaken up. Mei is Wallace’s Reaper, meaning she is charged with getting Wallace from his funeral to Charon’s Crossing, a tea shop in the woods owned my the enigmatic and oh-so-charming Ferryman, Hugo. By day, Hugo runs Charon’s Crossing with Mei, providing tea and treats to travelers and regulars alike. But his real job as a Ferryman means he helps people cross over from this life into the next. And Wallace may just be his hardest case yet.

I adored this book, much like I’ve adored everything else by TJ Klune I’ve read. He has a way of speaking directly to my soul and telling it that everything is going to be okay! Also, it doesn’t hurt that all of his books are brimming with Queer identities and situations. Gotta love it!

This book is beautiful. From the cover design, to the delicately crafted sentences, to the equally parts heart-warming and heart-wrenching final pages. Packed with wonderfully real and emotionally complex characters as well as supernatural musings and mystical elements, this is not a book that you will soon forget about. Find Under the Whispering Door on Uni High’s shelves today! You won’t regret it!

CW: This book contains depictions and discussions of death, including death by suicide.

Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders

Victories Greater than Death by Charlie Jane Anders

 

I loved ‘All the Birds in the Sky’ and ‘The City in the Middle of the Night’, and was overjoyed to see that Charlie Jane Anders was taking her first stab at YA. I was even more excited to be able to get it as an ARC (Advance Reader’s Copy)! I read this book back in October, but scheduled it to publish today, April 13, when the book is coming out.

A quick plot synopsis: Tina has known since she was thirteen that she had a higher calling– literally. Some day, someone would be coming from the stars to whisk her away to resume her post as one of the most celebrated heroes of the Royal Fleet. See, Tina is a clone of the fallen Captain Argentian, who gave her life to save her crew. When the Fleet comes calling, Tina/Argentian is their greatest hope in their fight against the insidious Compassion, but Tina struggles with this expectation. With Tina and a ragtag band of other Earthlings along for the ride, the crew of HMSS Indomitable strike out across the stars to find the means to stop the Compassion’s scourge.

This is a fast-moving sci-fi adventure with a fun cast of teen protagonists from all over the world. Although the book is a little bit jumpy, hopping from incident to incident, there’s very little downtime, and the whole last hundred pages is one long hype-train roller coaster. I love some good space combat scenes! I also loved a lot of the questions the book posed about things like humanoid bias and the interactions of cultures. It’s definitely not hard sci-fi, but encompasses enough plausible specifics to explore interesting questions. Oh, and if you’ve played Mass Effect I think you’ll see some inspiration in this book.

From a queer/social justice perspective, this book has a lot to offer. First, the normalization of pronouns other than he/she was great, especially the default inclusion of pronouns in introductions. One great moment was someone says what her pronouns are before declaring the protagonists are her prisoners. Amazing. Homophobia doesn’t exist in the Royal Fleet, and why should it?  I love when authors are willing to leave behind problems that exist in our society and envision a better one– while homophobia can be a source of realistic conflict, there are enough other problems in space!

While there are some minor bumpy parts in the book, largely caused by the amount of exposition that gets packed in, it was a still an awesome read that I devoured in a single day– and I’m even more excited for the rest of the series, whenever it might be coming out! Also, if you read this and like it, the author’s other books are amazing, especially All The Birds in the Sky.