REVIEW: Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

This is the first book in a Hugo-nominated series and a genuinely fun book to read. Fawcett has created a premise with real charm—the faerie economics, the slow-burn romance between Emily and Wendell with its constant crackling tension, the humor that runs through the scholarly voice. The adventure works; the magic feels tactile and interesting. There's genuine pleasure in following Emily through the woods to find an enchanted tree, in watching Wendell charm his way through social situations that would paralyze her, in the domestic sparring between them where he understands something she keeps missing. The anachronistic elements—the wood-splitting lesbians, the bohemian freedom of the village community—read as charming rather than jarring. Fawcett isn't trying to write a museum piece of 1909 England; she's creating a world where faeries are real and certain social rules bend differently. That's actually enjoyable. And yet, as I read, I kept bumping up against choices the book makes about what it wants to be, choices that create real tensions between the story it's telling and the framework it's supposedly working within.

The author presents us with an alt universe where faeries exist and can be studied—but are elusive enough that few people really have deep knowledge of them. Our chief protagonist, Emily, is a relentless researcher driven by a deep desire to learn new facts and collect data. She's an intellectual and an adventurer who strives to be "first." She's balanced by her friend Wendell, a handsome bon vivant capable of charming just about everyone around him.

The book operates across three distinct layers:

Layer 1 -- Faerie Economics: The premise works beautifully: fieldwork to go find faeries, ask them questions, learn about how they operate. They don't like money or metal, but value trades of goods for information, for example. The trade of the brownie Poe of bread for shoveling snow is a great example and maybe that's "cozy." These are the faerie economics and the delightful surface-level details—descriptions of household furnishings and nesting that create a genuinely charming tone.

Layer 2 -- Romance and Reciprocity: The adventure parts are genuinely interesting and fun. Hiking through the woods to find an enchanted tree or a faerie winter fair, the magical artifacts and words are all engaging as are the "fight" scenes and magical conversion. The "will they/won't they" tension between Emily and Wendell is well-maintained. The role reversal in the domestic sphere is particularly effective—where she questions the value of decorating the rental cottage because they'll only be there a short time, and he basically says "if you don't understand, you may never get it" but she lets him do it anyway.

Interestingly, I'm reading "A Little Bit More Social" by Nicholas Epley in parallel, and there's a fascinating dynamic between Emily and Wendell. She wants to be "by the book" and pay for all her meals while doing fieldwork to avoid bias, but creates bias by doing so. Wendell has to teach her about developing trust through genuine connection and allowing others agency. Creating space for reciprocal interaction is what allows relationships to develop. By the end of the story, Emily demonstrates through her advice to Aud about gifts for Wendell that she's picking up on this—she now thinks of him and what would make him happy, translating the villagers' gratitude into something meaningful to him specifically.

Layer 3 -- Horror: But then there's the third layer: kidnapping and child trafficking, homicidal rage and torture. Emily being enchanted to control her and cutting off her own finger with the axe to maintain some control is sheer body horror. The horror of being enchanted and the clinical way she processes that entire traumatic experience—journalling it, trying to track days—suggests something important about her character.

In some ways, Emily is neurodivergent coded. Her inability to read danger and heed warning signs (even with Wendell standing on the other side of a river bank warning her and trying to get her to step back); her incomprehension of Wendell's care for her and her repeated mentions that she can't "read" the emotions on his face (and the faces of others), constantly creating misunderstanding by not reading others or social norms; the horror of being enchanted, cutting off her own finger and processing that entire traumatic experience clinically—these all suggest neurodivergent coding. Interestingly, this context helps explain what might otherwise be historical implausibility.

The book is set in 1909-10, yet the social environment doesn't really communicate that era. Emily Wilde is a professor at Cambridge, an institution that didn't grant women academic status until 1948. Women could not get a Cambridge degree until after WWII, let alone be a tenure track professor. Forget about holding an academic position. And while Wendell reaches out to Emily's host in fake Iceland to arrange to show up—suddenly her squalid cottage is a 3-bedroom house with space for Wendell and his two student assistants to join Emily. In the early 20th century, an unmarried woman and unmarried man sharing lodgings would have been highly irregular and would have had serious consequences for both of them professionally.

More problematically, Wendell is casually sleeping with village women in the house he's sharing with Emily and the students, and no mention is made of why casual sex is laughed off in an era when reliable birth control and social norms were opposed to this sort of behavior. He is potentially leaving women pregnant or infected with STDs, and the book glosses over that predatory behavior as part of his "charm." The women are grateful for the opportunity to have slept with him and think of him as a sex doll? There are no shotgun weddings, and it's all much more bohemian than I would imagine for an isolated rural village in fake Iceland.

This might be less concerning if Emily's neurodivergent coding explained her obliviousness to these dynamics. But the book itself doesn't address the consequences; it simply ignores them.

Sometimes, I think that authors choose to set books in the pre-technology past just to avoid the complications of computers, internet and cell phones. The stories read like they are set in contemporary times except for descriptions of long skirts and horse-drawn conveyances.

It's telling that Fawcett renames Iceland but keeps Cambridge. If she were truly committed to building an alternate world free from historical constraints, renaming the university would have been trivial—call it Ashford College or Thornton University. But she keeps "Cambridge," and that choice reveals the problem. Cambridge carries centuries of institutional authority and prestige; it lends credibility to Emily's position in a way an invented university wouldn't. But that same real name also carries the historical baggage that women couldn't actually be there as degree-granting students in 1909, let alone as professors. By keeping the real institution's name while ignoring the real constraints, Fawcett gets to have it both ways: the atmospheric weight and authority of a real place, without having to reckon with what that place actually was. It's selective use of historical detail taken to its logical endpoint—keeping what feels grounded and authoritative, discarding what complicates the narrative.

Once you suspend disbelief entirely for this alt world—there's a Department of Dryadology at Cambridge that has female professors and students in 1909—then we can move on to some of the other challenges, such as a young villager having a same-sex love interest in another village that is accepted by her neighbors as normal and sweet. Okay, Boston marriages were not unheard of at that time, but the later conversation about dating history and a spurned lesbian lover attempting to burn down a barn was emblematic of how alternative we're talking here.

Finally, my other objection is the description of "cozy." There's not much cozy in kidnapping and torture, so I can only imagine that the "cozy" part refers to the emphasis on clothing and household furnishings. It's more like a fantasy mystery/thriller with romantic elements and a scholarly framing. The academic tone and the relationship growth don't erase the fact that there are serious crimes and real harm happening. The contrast between Emily's intellectual, almost humorous observations and the actual darkness of what's going on might feel tonal, but that doesn't make it cozy.

One last note: Emily overly depends on the word "habit" to a noticeable degree.

Opting Out of Churches: I Wanted to Get Excommunicated, But Here's What Actually Works

As a child, I felt I had no choice in the matter of religion:  baptism, first communion, confirmation, going to church on weekends or catechism on Tuesday nights when I would rather be doing anything else. 

I have often wondered: why I couldn't just request excommunication from the Catholic Church? There should be a certificate, right?  It seemed simple: I don't believe in it, I haven't participated in it for decades, and I don't want to be counted among its members. Surely there was a form. A process. Something.

With all the recent headlines about the schism created by the Vatican excommunicating six bishops and 750 priests and any lay followers of Society of Saint Pious X (SSPX) -- I decided to dig into this a bit more.  What I learned is that excommunication is something the church does to you and it is a punishment for heresy or transgression. You can't request it. You can't opt in. It's an action the institution takes when it decides you've crossed a line. If you just want to leave quietly, you're still in their files.

But there is a way out. Not excommunication. Something better: formal defection. Annotation. A paper trail that says, explicitly and on record, "I was here, and then I chose to leave, and this is not my belief system."

That's what I'm doing this week. That's what I'm asking you to consider too, if you've ever felt the same frustration I did.

I was baptized at a Lutheran church when I was a few months old. I didn't have a choice in the matter - my parents made that decision for me, without my input, without my understanding, without my consent. It was just what people did and it was considered "normal."

By the time I was in elementary school, we switched to catholicism, adding more sacraments to the list:  holy communion and reconciliation.  I was a kid in third, fourth, fifth grade - still not choosing, still just doing what my family told me to do because that's what you did. Then confirmation, as a minor making a "choice" that wasn't actually a choice. My mother says I could have said "no" but she made it really clear that there would be hell to pay and I actually thought that there would be an earthquake and the roof of the church would crack open if I did that. 

I haven't stepped foot in a church for worship or services in nearly forty years. I don't identify as Christian or with any other religious tradition. These childhood commitments that were made for me but don't represent me. They never did after I was old enough to think for myself.

And yet, somewhere in those institutional files, I'm still being counted. In their membership numbers. In their statistics. In their records of who belongs to them.

Any genealogist knows: Churches keep detailed records. Baptisms. Sacraments. Confirmations. Communions. These are logged, filed, and retained indefinitely. They use these records to calculate membership numbers, which they report to their denominations, which get used in funding decisions and institutional statistics. You're in their database. If you were baptized anywhere, you're counted. Even if you've never set foot in that building again.

Here's what really bothered me: fifty years from now, when someone in my family is doing genealogy research, they're going to find those records and they'll think, "Oh, she was Catholic/Lutheran."

They won't know that I never chose this. That these were things done to me as a child by my parents. That I spent the last forty years not believing any of it.

The record will misrepresent me, not maliciously, but completely. It'll tell the future a story about who I am that isn't true.

This is a data problem. It's a consent problem. It's an institutional power problem.

We spend a lot of time talking about data privacy. About opting out of data brokers. About getting your information removed from credit reporting agencies. About controlling your own digital footprint. But for some reason, when it comes to religious institutions, we just... accept that they keep records on us in perpetuity, count us in their membership numbers, and there's nothing we can do about it.

That's not right.

Formal Defection: The Thing That Actually Exists

Turns out both the Lutheran and Catholic churches have processes for this.

The Catholic Church has a thing called "formal defection" in their canon law. It's not heavily publicized. Most priests probably won't bring it up. But it exists. If you were baptized Catholic and you want to formally withdraw, you can request it.

Lutheran churches handle it differently, but they do honor formal withdrawal requests and will annotate your baptismal records.

The key thing -- and this is important -- is annotation, not erasure. We're not trying to pretend the baptism never happened. It did happen. It's part of the historical record. What we're doing is adding a notation that says, "This person was baptized/confirmed/received communion, and they have formally and voluntarily withdrawn from this institution and should not be counted as a member."

That notation matters. It preserves the truth of what happened while also making it absolutely clear what the person's actual position is. Future genealogists won't be confused. The record won't lie about who I am.

How to Actually Do This

It's straightforward, and you don't need a lawyer or a priest to hold your hand through it.

Step one: Identify which churches you have sacramental records with. If you were baptized, you know that one. If you did first communion or confirmation, you know those churches too.

Step two: Write a letter to each church. Keep it simple. Include:

• Your current name
• Your name at the time of the sacrament (maiden name if applicable)
• The approximate date you were baptized/communed/confirmed
• A clear statement that you are permanently withdrawing from the church and do not consider yourself a member

Step three: Make your requests explicit:

• Remove your name from all active membership rosters
• Place a formal, permanent notation in their historical records (baptismal register, sacramental records, whatever they call it) stating that you have formally withdrawn
• Send you written confirmation that this has been done

Step four: Set a boundary. I put this in mine: "Please process this request administratively without sending clergy, elders, or parish representatives to contact me for exit interviews or outreach. I expect my privacy and decision to be respected."

They might not honor that boundary. But it's worth stating.

Step five: Send it certified mail, return receipt requested. You want a paper trail.

What to Say: The Template

I'm sharing the language from my own letters because it works. Here's what I used:

---

[Your mailing address]

[Date]

[Church name and address]

Dear [Pastor/Father name],

Please accept this letter as formal notification that I am permanently severing all ties and withdrawing my membership from [denomination], effective immediately.

[Brief context about when you received sacraments, under what name, and that it was decided by your parents/family, not by you]

These childhood actions did not reflect my personal beliefs then, nor do they now. I do not consider myself a member of [the church/this religious institution].

I request that you immediately take the following actions:

- Completely remove my name, contact information, and records from your active parish membership and administrative rosters.

- Place a permanent, formal written notation next to my entry in your [baptismal/sacramental/confirmation] register explicitly stating that I have formally and voluntarily withdrawn from church membership.

- Reply with a brief written confirmation to my mailing address verifying that my record has been updated and annotated.

Please process this request administratively without sending clergy or parish representatives to contact me for exit interviews or outreach. I expect my privacy and decision to be respected.

Sincerely,

[Your current name]

---

That's it. Clean. Direct. No emotion, no explanation, no room for debate. You're not asking permission. You're informing them of an action you're taking.

Why This Matters

If you've ever wondered, "Why can't I just opt out? Why am I still counted? Why do they get to keep my information?" this is your answer. You can opt out. There is a process. It's just not advertised, and most people don't know it exists.

This matters if:

• You were raised in a religious tradition you no longer identify with
• You're atheist or agnostic and tired of being counted as a member of something you don't believe in
• You converted to a different faith and want your records to reflect that
• You're just deeply uncomfortable with institutions keeping records on you without your ongoing consent
• You want your genealogical record to be accurate about who you actually were

It matters because your institutional identity shouldn't be determined by what your parents chose for you when you were an infant. It shouldn't persist just because you never formally objected. And it shouldn't be used in statistics that misrepresent your actual beliefs and affiliations.

The Bigger Picture

This is a workaround. It shouldn't have to be. Ideally, churches would make this easy. They'd have a form. A process. A way to formally withdraw that didn't require you to figure it out yourself and send certified letters.

But until they do, this is how you take back control of your own institutional record.

I'm sending my letters this week. I'll update this post once I get responses—which churches honor the requests, how quickly they process them, what they actually do with the annotations. Because real data matters. This isn't just theory; it's something people can actually do.

If you've been sitting with the same frustration I had—wanting out, not knowing how—now you know. You have more agency than you think. Your records belong to you. And you can demand they reflect the truth about who you actually are.

Go reclaim your institutional autonomy. The churches can survive without counting you.

REVIEW: "Talk to Me Nice" by Minda Harts (3-stars)

 Talk to Me Nice reads like a warm pep talk — as an audiobook, it feels like a supportive voice in your ear reminding you of things you already know but sometimes forget to practice. Minda Harts brings her trademark encouragement and identity‑centered perspective, offering relatable scenarios and steady affirmations aimed at helping readers find their voice and navigate early workplace dynamics.

For seasoned leaders or anyone who has read widely in communication, influence, or organizational behavior, this won’t break new ground. The concepts are familiar, and the framing is intentionally simple. But that’s also the point: this is a book designed for people at the beginning of their professional journey. The journal prompts at the end of each chapter are especially useful, giving newer professionals a structured way to reflect and build confidence.

I’d recommend this most strongly for early‑career readers — even older teens — who are just starting to think about communication, self‑advocacy, and leadership in a methodical way. As an audiobook, it’s an easy, encouraging listen. For more experienced readers, it’s pleasant reinforcement rather than revelation.

A Few Notes From This Year's Hugo Reading List: Do Not Sleep on the Novellas!

I loved every novella nominee I read this year. Most of them would work just as well, maybe better, for a young reader as any of the 650-page books currently marketed as YA or YA-adjacent. That's really the whole observation here. I'm not trying to relitigate the "why is YA bad" discourse that's apparently already all over TikTok -- I haven't watched any of it, and I don't need it to have an opinion based on what I actually read this season. I just want good books. Age category is beside the point.

The novellas earned their length. I went into this year's Hugo process already planning to rank Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz #1. I'd read it as an ARC last year and loved it. It's doing something genuinely distinct within the same broad territory as the rest of the category: identity, chosen family, and fulfillment, but through non-human, non-binary characters — robots and synthetic humans figuring out their own gender identities on their own terms (robot sex included, and it's funny). But the competition this year is genuinely stiff; every novella I picked up held its own. The Summer War by Naomi Novik, Cinder House, and The River Has Roots are all doing versions of the same thing from a different angle: twisting traditional fairy tale and mythological structures toward something that actually values female agency, love, and family — without tipping into sappiness or self-importance about it. (Cinder House in particular is spicy and genuinely weird, in the best way.) None of these books pad. Every worldbuilding choice and character beat is there because the story needs it, not because there's 500 pages to fill.

The doorstoppers didn't earn their length. I read Antonia Hodgson's The Raven Scholar earlier this summer: 650 pages, nine Guardian Animals, a map promising nine palaces the story barely visits. There are real ideas in there (a genuinely compelling possession theme, a court intrigue plot that could've carried the whole book alone), but they're smothered under too many subplots and minor characters, all competing for space and none getting quite enough to develop properly. Bloated and thin at the same time -- that's what happens when length substitutes for structure instead of following from it.

I saw the same failure mode, from a different angle, across Tracy Deonn's Legendborn trilogy. Book one set up something specific — a grieving, academically advanced 16-year-old navigating exceptional circumstances, grounded by her father and her own competence. By book three, that infrastructure is just gone: her father barely appears, the protagonist's sidekick goes from the most competent person in the room to a coma-bound plot device for someone else's arc, and thematically loaded material — root magic as gendered power, a trafficking plot involving children — gets raised and never examined. Where Hodgson's problem is too many ideas with no room to breathe, Deonn's is real ideas set up carefully and then abandoned as the series goes on. Different mechanism, same result: a book that's long but not full.

Age classification isn't the variable that matters. Some of my favorite reading this Hugo season was the graphic novel category — The Space Cat, written by Nnedi Okorafor with art by Tana Ford, aimed at a much younger readership than any of the above, and doing more with confident, uncluttered storytelling than a lot of the "adult" nominees managed at ten times the length. A good book knows what it's doing with the space it has. That's it. That's the whole thesis.

Tomato Sauce - Equipment Essentials

If you are new to canning and curious about what kind of equipment you may need - here's an overview of what I use.  Typically, I can 100-150lbs of tomatoes in the fall and end up with 30-50 quarts of marinara.  I do not put in any spices, garlic or salt -- I halve the tomatoes (usually a roma variety like San Marzano, or Early Girl), squeeze the seeds and juice gently into a stainless steel mesh colander that is sitting in a bowl, and then process the tomatoes through the manual food mill.   I save the juice from the seeds to freeze and add to soups later (it also reduces the cooking time a bit - you'd be surprised how much water is in the center with the seeds). 

• Food mill - I have a Vittorio Food Mill which jams up but it's a good option
• Cooking/Stockpots: At least two large pots for sauce:
  
• Cuisinart 4-Piece Cookware Set, 12 Quarts, Chef's Classic Stainless Steel Pasta/Steamer, 77-412P1 (purchased for $75 in 2010, now $120 on Amazon)
• Prime Pacific 18/10 Stainless Steel 20 Quart Stock Pot With Glass Lid (paid $50 in 2010, now $68 on Amazon)
• I really like the 20 Qt pot and use it more thanI thought; this particular one has a very nice heavy bottom that helps minimize scorching/sticking. I also use cast iron heat diffusers on my stove burners.
• Bowls & Colanders: Very large colanders and stainless steel bowls - I got my massive colanders from family/garage sales
• Canning Equipment:
• Hot water bath canner (can be had cheap/free if you ask on Buy Nothing groups or check thrift stores)
• Pressure canner: In 2011, I upgraded my hot water bath canner to a Presto 01781 23-Quart Pressure Canner and Cooker which cost me $85 on Amazon (it's now a whopping $185).  Totally worth it and a real upgrade from hot water bath canning for quarts of tomato sauce as well as low acid canning in bulk.
• Jars, lids and bands! Ask on your local "Buy Nothing" group and look for these in thrift stores - a dozen jars costs around $12-15, so a used mason jar shouldn't cost more than 25-50 cents in a thrift store (they are smoking crack if they charge more for these mass produced items). 
• Always check your jars for cracks and feel the top edge of the jar for nicks or "flea bites" that convert them to dry storage or hobby use but no longer safe for canning.
• Lid rack is optional and nice to have
• Jar funnels - I have three of these. They are incredibly helpful for reducing spills when pouring into your jars.  Look for aluminum versions at thrift stores and online - much better than buying the plastic versions.
• Pyrex Measuring cups:
• I got an 8-cup Pyrex measuring cup as part of a set of 3 from Amazon for $17 in 2015 (now $26) and it is one of my favorite kitchen items:  I can dip the clean Pyrex container into the sauce, use a silicone spatula to wipe the bottom and pour cleanly into the sterilized jars next to the stove.  The L-shaped handles hook onto the edge of the pot while I am cleaning jars and preparing the next batch.
• Wooden spoons, silicone spatulas, knives, and lots of towels for cleaning and wiping your area (I just throw wet towels right into the washer and run a load after).

TIME: this is the most important part.  You can do this in one day but pay close attention to your stove and the flame height.  You don't want to reduce your sauce too quickly -- it will bubble and spatter and you risk scorching on the bottom of the pot.  If you do start to scorch - don't panic - pull it off the heat, pour the sauce into big stainless steel bowls you have on hand and THEN scrape and clean the pot. This way you don't have as much burned flavor in your sauce.  If you have time to leave it on super low overnight - this will result in much thicker sauce, fewer jars, and less canning time. 

If this is a lot for you - there may be options - some states have canneries that are available to the public.  My friend goes to Castlewood Cannery (https://www.russellcountyva.us/237/Canneries) which has a gorgeous operation for canning whatever you bring.  These places don't all have websites - you have to call and have a conversation to find out what they offer.  The Pick Your Own website suggests contacting your local ag extension office and they have a list of canneries and community kitchens here: https://pickyourown.org/canneries.htm

REVIEW: "The Ana and Din" mysteries, Books 1 & 2 by Robert Jackson Bennett

I have to confess, it took me a minute to really get into Tainted Cup—I picked it up and put it down (or let it expire off Libby) a few times well before the Hugos. One of my "Scent Head" friends who loves a good Diptyque candle came to visit me in July (and brought me a Diptyque candle) and told me how much he had really enjoyed the Ana and Din mysteries. I threw myself back into both books and I'm really glad I did.

It's a strange "bio-punk" kind of world—they have advanced gene editing and can (apparently) resurrect extinct races of intellectually superior but possibly less stable beings, but they don't have cell phones and use mycological solutions for HVAC and lighting (do they even have electricity?). One thing I'm not sure they do in this world is have FUN. Everything seems to be quite a lot of work to be part of this empire. Din has undergone some serious genetic changes in order to become an "engraver"—and he triggers his eidetic memory skills with scents. Ana, well, she's a different animal. Literally. One tic in this book is that her smile is repeatedly described as "predatory," which makes me think she must be smiling like an absolute lunatic (thinking Jack Nicholson in The Shining).

These are more detective novels than murder mysteries and the world-building is sometimes opaque and challenging to track, but that's why we have ebooks to search for words and recall context, I suppose. I also listened to the audiobooks for both of these books, and found them to be very enjoyable. 

Din is a dyslexic, tall, dark and handsome young man who isn't averse to surreptitiously picking up a few "skills" here and there to help with his investigations. He seems to be pansexual but has a same-sex romantic attachment from the first book, Tainted Cup. He also blows off steam by picking up one night stands.

Ana appears to be late middle-aged with wild white hair—a genius with yellow eyes like a wolf or a cat when she's not blindfolded to reduce stimulus. She fuels her genius for identifying patterns from Din's reports and the mountains of books she reads with a paleo diet of raw animal flesh in breathtaking quantities. While Din comes from a commoner background, Ana's background is a bit more mysterious—and it's a mystery she maintains on purpose, surprising Din with her ability to roleplay in the moment to manipulate social elites, and with the breadth and depth of her knowledge.

Ana is a savant operating on a totally different level from everyone around her. For example, when she tasks Din to visit the island where all the Leviathan extractions are processed and learns he will be wearing a full PPE suit with helmet, he worries about how he will be able to provide a proper report. Din can't easily supplement his memory with written notes the way other investigators might.  Ana has already solved the problem in a way Din never could have anticipated. It's the kind of moment that reminds you why she's indispensable: she thinks several moves ahead, in directions nobody else is even looking. And Din seems to be learning.

The map of the empire raises questions. In our world, we know where seals, sea lions and turtles come ashore to reproduce, or where salmon spawn and die. We work around those patterns to help avoid interspecies conflict. The people of this world build right in the path of these incredibly dangerous creatures (no two of them look the same) and put people in real jeopardy despite erecting massive walls and staffing them with trained military personnel.

There are defenses in concentric circles, with the most elite, protected areas in the first ring, farthest from the sea. Yet farther north at the top right of the map, we see no wall because the Leviathans don't come ashore there. There's also heaps of court intrigue and empire negotiations with a holdout kingdom—which holds the processing area for the Leviathans. It seems like everything this empire does is to create as much discomfort for the people as possible. It's always hot and wet, but people wear heavy wool uniforms that are incredibly uncomfortable. If it's practically a coastal jungle, why do they all have to wear heavy capes as part of their uniforms? The empire does not have the best interests of the people at heart. Obviously.

We are somewhat limited in our view of this world, from Din's perspective, which means we don't know what lies beyond the sea, or even to the west of the landmass we see on the map. Does anyone go there? What else is on this planet? Is it just one big landmass with a few islands off the coast? We aren't getting massive info dumps about "the whole world," which I appreciate a lot. This world is developed in a way that builds intrigue and lets me follow where Din is leading me.

While the main "mystery" is mostly solved early in A Drop of Corruption, the pair spend the rest of the story chasing the elusive killer and trying to pin down the connection to a massive bio-pharma plant that processes (and perhaps cultivates) the critical ingredients for the mysterious Leviathans that live in the adjacent sea—which form the basis of all the genetic modifications that people utilize in this world.

What I really liked is that both books wrapped up the primary problem and challenges by the end and along the way - the author built a foundation of details for the characters, their interiority and personalities that intrigued me and was able to keep that momentum going through the second book. I'm very much looking forward to the third book.

REVIEW: A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett (4.5-stars)

 "A Drop of Corruption" is a detective novel masquerading as a mystery—which is to say, Bennett solves the central puzzle early and then uses the remaining 300 pages to chase a serial killer and a massive bio-pharma conspiracy. It works because the characters are this good.

Din is a dyslexic engraver whose eidetic memory triggers on scent. Ana is a wild-haired genius in her late middle years who reads obsessively and fuels her pattern-recognition with raw meat in staggering quantities. Their partnership is the book. When Din must enter a sterile bio-pharma clean room where his usual scent vials are forbidden, Ana creates a solution: a scent made from his sweat and the plants and leather of his PPE. It's the kind of detail that reveals everything about how completely she understands him.

The world-building is opaque and sometimes infuriating—how do they have gene-edited extinct races but no electricity? Why heavy wool uniforms in a coastal jungle? Why build walls in animal migration paths?—but that's intentional. We see only what Din sees. The empire is hostile and nonsensical because that's what empire does. It extracts maximum discomfort while calling it order. It doesn't have your best interests at heart. It never does.

Both the audiobook performances are excellent. The mystery doesn't break new ground, but the character work, the worldbuilding contradictions, and the relationship between Din and Ana are enough to carry you through and leave you wanting book three immediately.

REVIEW: A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

RATING: 4.5-stars

REVIEW: What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher (5-stars)

 Yes, it's a retelling of Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher." Yes, the premise is fairly well telegraphed the moment we meet Eugenia Potter, amateur mycologist (and — naturally — a relation of Beatrix). None of that stopped me from finishing this 150-page novella completely won over. I'll be damned if I can find a reason not to give it five stars.

The real triumph here is Alex Easton's first-person narration. Instead of leaning on atmosphere alone to do the work — the easy move for a haunted-house retelling — Kingfisher gives us a narrator with a distinct interior life: what Easton values, how they think, how they feel. It never tips into info-dumping, the prose is complex and nuanced without slowing the story down, and there are genuinely funny bits woven through the dread, which keeps the book from ever feeling like a pure mood exercise.

Easton's invented home country of Gallacia is a great example of worldbuilding done right — it's stitched skillfully into real European geography and history rather than floating free as a vague fantasy backdrop. One of my favorite small touches is the distinction Angus and the villagers draw between "canny" and "not canny." It's a tiny bit of invented cultural vocabulary that does a lot of heavy lifting, letting the book talk around the horror before it's ready to name it directly.

Compared to books it clearly sits alongside — Mexican Gothic, Invasion of the Body Snatchers — what sets this apart is how much empathy Kingfisher builds for her core cast: Easton, Denton, Potter, and Angus. I found myself genuinely invested in their outcomes, which isn't a given in this kind of "creeping wrongness" story, where the reader often figures things out well before the characters do. (Roderick and Madeline, unsurprisingly, get considerably less of that sympathy — as Poe fans would expect.)

I also can't stop thinking about how efficiently this book does everything it sets out to do. It's maybe 150 pages, and in that space it builds a fully realized main character, a functioning invented culture, a mystery, real dread, and real humor — with nothing that feels like padding. Which raises a question I keep coming back to: why can't YA do this? So much YA now comes in these 600-plus-page doorstoppers full of repetition and recontextualization, like the book doesn't trust the reader to have retained anything from fifty pages ago. There's nothing in What Moves the Dead that's explicitly "adult" — no content a teen reader couldn't handle — and I think it would genuinely appeal to kids who like goth and horror. The queerness in it works in a way that feels completely natural, not like an Issue being addressed, just part of who Easton is. It's a good reminder that "for teens" doesn't have to mean bloated, over-explained, or afraid to trust its reader.

The audiobook version was also quite engaging. I listened at 2x — it's a bit slow at normal speed — and kudos to the narrator for still sounding good at the faster pace.

A short book that does an enormous amount with its page count. Highly recommended, especially if you're a Poe fan or you liked Mexican Gothic. Looking forward to the next two books in the series, and then on to the Ana and Din duology.

REVIEW: What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher 

RATING: 5-stars

POSTSCRIPT: This is the second “retelling” of a well known story that I have completed this summer in my Hugos quest. I also read Cinder House by Freya Marske, another Hugo nominee, this one a retelling of Cinderella — also short, and also a genuinely fun, relatable, enjoyable spin on a story everyone already thinks they know. Between the two of them, I'm impressed by how much these authors have managed to take classic stories and folk material and turn them into something that feels different, but is still just as engaging and fun as the source material. It's a nice reminder that a retelling doesn't need extra length to earn its place — it needs a clear point of view on the original.

REVIEW: Oathbound by Tracey Deonn (2-stars)

I read Legendborn and Bloodmarked specifically because Oathbound is a Hugo nominee. Without that context, I wouldn't understand the extent of what's gone wrong.

The most obvious sign is textual. Across the trilogy, Deonn relies on a single formulaic construction to describe facial expressions: [facial feature] + quirk/quirked. In Legendborn, this appears 8 times. In Bloodmarked, 7 times. In Oathbound, it escalates to 15 instances (14 "mouth quirks," 1 "eyebrow quirking"). A human writer naturally varies: smirk, grin, curve, twist, tighten, narrow. Instead, this book locks into a template structure applied across different body parts, which could be a tell that the author is reading a lot of romantasy (I read somewhere it's a trendy term) or just has an editing blind spot. This pattern escalation across a 656-page book is not stylistic choice; it's mechanical repetition. But the textual issues point to larger structural collapse.

The book abandons every piece of emotional infrastructure established in the previous books. Bree's father doesn't appear at all. There's no acknowledgment of where he's been while his daughter has been missing for 8-12 months. Alice, who was observant and strategic in the previous book, is injured and falls into a coma where she is reliving her own death in some kind of purgatory-equivalent. Alice appears to exist only as motivation for Mariah's quest and involvement in the plot tangles. Edwin, Bree's father, gets brought back extremely late in the book through an enchanted ring that connects him with his dead wife. He goes willingly because of that spiritual connection. But then he just disappears from the narrative. He's acknowledged just enough to close a plot loop, then discarded.

This third book doesn't resolve the actual story. Bree entered a mentor-protégé relationship with the Shadow King. She chose to stay with him, to self-erase her memories of her other life to become "untouchable." That's psychologically complex territory: what happens when a traumatized girl decides the only way to survive is to disappear into power. But the book doesn't interrogate that. Instead it piles on seventeen other threads: the Crown, the collectors' auction, the gene therapy conspiracy, the trafficking of underage magical girls, the Whodunnit hotel lockdown. The actual story, the psychological fallout of Bree's choice to erase herself, gets buried under plot noise.

Descriptions of clothing and hair that aren't thematic anymore.  There are multiple paragraphs just describing outfits. There’s repeated backstory repeating from previous books, and internally (at least three sections describing a Medium’s capabilities).  In this book – the first person narration rotates across a pile of secondary characters including Natasia, William, Mariah, & Nick – a choice that dilutes rather than deepens Bree’s story. Natasia's chapters don't advance understanding; they just add pages. Emil is introduced, solves a plot problem by tunneling underground, and disappears with Bree's relief. He's a plot device, not a character.

The gender breakdown bothers me: all the root craft practitioners -- save Emil, who exists only to move earth -- are women. If that's intentional, it's saying something about gendered access to certain magic. Root magic as women's magic. That could be sophisticated thematic work. Instead, it's just there, unexamined.

The trafficking element also bothers me. Why underage magical girls? Why not adults with suppressed or latent powers? An adult woman on antidepressants who doesn't know she has access to root craft—that's a story about how medical systems suppress female power. Or even menopausal women who can’t figure out why they feel the way they do (it is the opposite end of teenage development afterall, leaving fertility vs moving into fertility). Instead, Deonn targets children who can be "shaped" into tools. One is a story about reclamation. The other is a story about containment. She chose containment.

The heteronormativity is frustrating. Bree's caught in a love triangle between Nick and Selwyn, and the book treats it as inevitable that she must choose one or the other. Why can't she be in love with both of them? Why can't they agree to share? The book forces a binary choice for no reason except to enforce cultural norms of jealousy.

The conclusion doesn't resolve anything. The Whodunnit hotel lockdown where the host tortures and kills people on stage while guests stand around under mesmerizing forces? The logic falls apart. Why would anyone stay? The Crown turns out to be a Maguffin. The Shadow King bargain has vague consequences. The whole thing feels like it was written under severe time pressure—plot beats checked off, character arcs abandoned, thematic work buried under filler.

I'm rating this 2 stars because a Hugo nominee should demand better editing, better structural decision-making, and a clearer understanding of what story it's actually telling. This book does none of those things. It's 656 pages of potential buried under padding and pattern repetition. The fact that no one seems to be asking whether this was AI-assisted—or at minimum heavily revised under deadline—is its own problem.

REVIEW: Oathbound by Tracey Deonn 

RATING: 2-stars

REVIEW: Bloodmarked by Tracey Deonn (2.5 stars)

 Legendborn set up something genuinely specific: a 16-year-old who's grieving, intellectually advanced enough to do early college, suddenly pulled into a hidden magical world. She's fitting in with older students, proving herself academically, dealing with her mother's death, and managing phone calls from her dad who grounds her in reality. That friction between normal teen life and exceptional circumstances is what made the first book work.

Bloodmarked expands the world, but it loses the girl at the center of it. Halfway through this book, college has become scenery. Her father is barely present. The smart teen navigating exceptional circumstances—which is actually rich territory—gets flattened into magical plot escalation. The grief becomes motivation rather than something Bree is actually processing.

The ancestral magic system is genuinely interesting and represents the book's strongest footing. Vera was the enslaved first ancestor who made the original deal—a prayer for safety and protection while pregnant and escaping. The Hunter heard that prayer, hijacked it, and agreed to a pact that binds every daughter in her lineage, including Bree, to him forever (aside:  seems like a major disincentive to pray if it's a party line with eavesdropping demons). The women in Bree's bloodline have all died relatively young—some in childbirth—and they were warned to avoid tapping into the ancestral power altogether, trying to shield their daughters from the death sentence they inherited. But Bree, as the King, can't avoid it. She has to use the very power that's killing her bloodline. Arthur himself possesses Bree at times, another layer of violation and control over her body. She has to fight her way out of his dream world with Nick and Selwyn to reclaim her own agency. 

That's sophisticated territory: how a Black woman inherits not just power but the violence embedded in that power—slavery, rape, a demonic pact, and a curse of early death. The book also explores how demons exploit language in negotiations, preferring to leave things open-ended while those with less power have to be meticulous with every word. Accessing the magic costs your life. It's sharp work about how power structures exploit vulnerability. Bree's hair as an expression of her power is thematically sharp too. When she channels energy, her carefully styled hair erupts wild and loose. That's not just description; that's her interiority made visible. The gene therapy element adds something sinister.

But then Bree burns it all down at the climax. She destroys her ancestral streams. It's devastating and desperate and born from real rage. And then the book doesn't actually explore that. Instead of sitting with the psychological and magical fallout of severing all connection to her ancestors—which is genuinely complex territory—Book 2 just piles on more plot. More magic system exposition. More descriptions of clothing and hair that aren't doing any thematic work. More repeated explanations of what a "Medium" is, as if readers forgot. 

The structural problems run deeper. Two 16-year-olds in an early college program, away from home, in a dorm with minimal adult oversight, participate in hazing rituals that cause serious physical injury. The only adults present are either distant and ineffective or openly hostile to Bree's authority. The Order itself—the secret society that's supposed to accept her based on their own rules and traditions —doesn't accept a Black girl as their King. That institutional racism and sexism is a wall the teenagers have to battle from within their own organization. Bree's grandmother living in her head is not parental protection; it's neglect with a magical gloss. Her father was her emotional anchor in book 1. In book 2, he's gone. 

When the malicious adults on campus become a direct threat, they flee and end up as a “last resort” at The Crossroads, a supernatural bar where they encounter a Cambion proprietor in their search for the story’s equivalent of a powerful sorceresss in the rootcraft world. Alice does heavy lifting here - she's observant, strategic, worried about real-world consequences. She sees fraud being committed by an employee and uses that information to negotiate their way out with the proprietor. She saves them. And then at the final battle at the climax - Alice gets injured and falls into a coma. Her competence is demonstrated and then she's neutralized and completely sidelined for the next book. She ends up as a plot device or motivation for other people's quests (like Mariah). That's not character development. That's abandonment of the infrastructure that made book 1 matter. 

The romantic intensity described here reads like an adult's fantasy of what teen attraction should feel like, not what it actually is. The book expects this restrained physicality to carry emotional weight it hasn't earned through interiority.

And there's the Morgaine/Morgana problem: Deonn perpetuates the patriarchal Arthurian trope where Morgana has to be the villain. Marion Zimmer Bradley showed decades ago that you can retell this legend by centering Morgaine's agency and politics. Instead, the Morgaines here are just malicious adults extracting value from the young. They're not complex. They're functional antagonists. That was a choice.

Ultimately, Bloodmarked had the bones of a stronger book. The ancestral magic system was compelling. The college setting grounded the magical stakes. The grief was real. The smart teen navigating both normal and exceptional pressures was genuinely worth exploring. But instead of deepening those threads, the book widened the magical plot and lost the girl. It set up a devastating choice about ancestral connection and then buried the fallout under 400 pages of unnecessary description and repeated exposition. 

I'm rating this 2.5 because the potential is there. But the execution abandoned the original premise that mattered.