Women in SF&F Month Banner

It’s now April, and for the tenth year in a row, this month is dedicated to highlighting some of the many women doing wonderful work in speculative fiction! Starting tomorrow, this blog will be featuring guest posts by women doing work in science fiction and fantasy on weekdays throughout the month.

They will be discussing a variety of topics—their inspirations and those works that influenced their paths; creating their stories and characters; the reception of female characters with certain traits, like intelligence and power; dark fantasy and horror; dreams and fantasy; food and fantasy; obstacles encountered when writing, and when trying to write during a global pandemic; and far more than I can adequately sum up here. I’m incredibly excited to share all of their essays with you throughout this month!

The Women in SF&F Month Origin Story

In case you are unfamiliar with how April came to be Women in SF&F Month here: It started way back in 2012, following some discussions about review coverage of books by women and the lack of women blogging about books being suggested for Hugo Awards in fan categories in March. Some of the responses to these—especially the claim that that women weren’t being reviewed and mentioned because there just weren’t that many women reading and writing SFF—made me want to spend a month highlighting women doing work in the genre to show that there are a lot of us, actually.

So I decided to see if I could pull together an April event focusing on women in science fiction and fantasy, and thanks to a great many authors and reviewers who wrote pieces for the event, it happened! I was—and continue to be—astounded by the fantastic guest posts that have been written for this series. And I am so, so grateful to everyone who has contributed to it over the last decade.

The Favorite SF&F Books by Women Project

During the second Women in SF&F Month in 2013, Renay from Lady Business began the Favorite SF&F Books by Women Project (linked in the sidebar). She not only wrote about her personal experience with finding it difficult to find books by women when she was starting out as a young genre fan but also asked readers to submit up to 10 SFF books by women that they loved. Those individual recommendations were made into a list containing the number of times a work was submitted, and we’ve collected new book recommendations and added to the list over the last few years.

The latest entries were recently combined with the submissions from previous years, resulting in a list of 2,743 titles, several of which have been recommended more than once. (Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice has been recommended 58 times, and N. K. Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms has been recommended 45 times!)

The latest version of the list will be the last we work on as part of this event. Unexpected changes to Goodreads API took it offline for part of last year’s poll and, in any case, the point has been made—and if you’re looking to read more speculative fiction by women, or for speculative fiction books that SFF readers recommend, there are 2,700+ titles to start with! Thank you to everyone who has contributed favorite books over the years, and a big THANK YOU to Renay for its creation and her work on this project. As she said in her 2019 essay:

“This is one way of remembering the past and writing the story for the future to look back on. It’s small, but history is a collection of small stories of human endeavors.”

A big thank you also to my husband, John, who developed the list website and merged the data from year to year.

This Week’s Schedule

I’m very excited about this month’s guest posts, which start tomorrow! This week’s schedule is as follows:

Women in SF&F Month Week 1 Book Cover Graphic

April 7: R.S.A. Garcia (Lex Talionis, “The Sun from Both Sides,” “The Bois”)
April 8: E. J. Beaton (The Councillor)
April 9: S.B. Divya (Machinehood, Runtime, Escape Pod)

The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature in which I highlight books I got over the last week that sound like they may be interesting—old or new, bought or received in the mail for review consideration (the latter of which are mainly unsolicited books from publishers). Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on the book are included, along with series information and the publisher’s book description. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Last week was an excellent week for new books, partly because Friday was my birthday but also because a book I had pre-ordered and a couple of ARCs showed up. This weekend’s post is focusing on the birthday gifts because I covered the other three books in 30 Anticipated 2021 Speculative Fiction Book Releases a few weeks ago:

  • Midnight Doorways: Fables from Pakistan by Usman T. Malik
  • The Tangleroot Palace by Marjorie Liu
  • She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

This will be the only Leaning Pile of Books post this month since the tenth annual Women in SF&F Month guest posts start on Wednesday. I’m very excited about this year’s event, and I’ll be posting more about it on Tuesday!

The Bards of Bone Plain by Patricia A. McKillip - Book Cover

The Bards of Bone Plain by Patricia A. McKillip

Since picking up her collection Wonders of the Invisible World in 2012, I have wanted to read everything World Fantasy Award–winning author Patricia A. McKillip has written. (And I am still thrilled that she wrote a Women in SF&F Month guest post in 2013!)

Though I have now read more of McKillip’s work—and discovered a couple of new favorite books in the process, The Forgotten Beasts of Eld and The Changeling Sea—there is still a lot of her oeuvre left for me to read. But I’ve been regularly adding her books to my TBR, and now The Bards of Bone Plain is among those I’m looking forward to reading for the very first time.

The publisher’s website has an excerpt from The Bards of Bone Plain. (This is no longer McKillip’s latest fantasy book, although that’s what the description below says.)

 

The latest “rich, resonant” (Publishers Weekly) fantasy from the World Fantasy Award-winning author of The Bell at Sealey Head.

Eager to graduate from the school on the hill, Phelan Cle chose Bone Plain for his final paper because he thought it would be an easy topic. Immortalized by poets and debated by scholars, it was commonly accepted-even at a school steeped in bardic tradition-that Bone Plain, with its three trials, three terrors, and three treasures, was nothing more than a legend, a metaphor. But as his research leads him to the life of Nairn, the Wandering Bard, the Unforgiven, Phelan starts to wonder if there are any easy answers…

The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson - Book Cover

The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson

The Bird King is Ms. Marvel co-creator and writer G. Willow Wilson’s second novel, a standalone historical fantasy book set on the Iberian Peninsula in 1491. Her first novel, Alif the Unseen, won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel.

Buzzfeed News has an excerpt from The Bird King. (This is a book I wanted to read even more after looking at a sample, although I don’t think this is the same one I read.)

 

From award-winning author G. Willow Wilson, The Bird King is an epic journey set during the reign of the last sultan in the Iberian peninsula at the height of the Spanish Inquisition.

G. Willow Wilson’s debut novel Alif the Unseen was an NPR and Washington Post Best Book of the Year, and it established her as a vital American Muslim literary voice. Now she delivers The Bird King, a stunning new novel that tells the story of Fatima, a concubine in the royal court of Granada, the last emirate of Muslim Spain, and her dearest friend Hassan, the palace mapmaker. Hassan has a secret—he can draw maps of places he’s never seen and bend the shape of reality. When representatives of the newly formed Spanish monarchy arrive to negotiate the sultan’s surrender, Fatima befriends one of the women, not realizing that she will see Hassan’s gift as sorcery and a threat to Christian Spanish rule. With their freedoms at stake, what will Fatima risk to save Hassan and escape the palace walls? As Fatima and Hassan traverse Spain with the help of a clever jinn to find safety, The Bird King asks us to consider what love is and the price of freedom at a time when the West and the Muslim world were not yet separate.

Hollow Empire by Sam Hawke - Book Cover

Hollow Empire (Poison Wars #2) by Sam Hawke

Hollow Empire is the sequel to Sam Hawke’s Aurealis, Ditmar, and Norma K Hemming Award–winning debut novel, City of Lies. The Tor-Forge blog has an excerpt from City of Lies and one from Hollow Empire.

City of Lies was one of my favorite books of 2018, an epic fantasy story following two siblings whose city is suddenly under siege for unknown reasons. The two narrators, a poisons expert/food taster and a spy, are both wonderful characters doing their best to pursue truth and justice in the midst of a bad situation. I found Kalina’s characterization particularly compelling, and you can read more why Sam Hawke wrote this woman “with a chronic illness who couldn’t fight to save her life” in her 2019 Women in SF&F Month guest post, “The Sewing Test.”

 

Moving from poison and treachery to war and witchcraft, Sam Hawke’s Poison Wars continue with Hollow Empire, a fabulous epic fantasy adventure perfect for fans of Robin Hobb, Naomi Novik, and Scott Lynch.

Poison was only the beginning…. The deadly siege of Silasta woke the ancient spirits, and now the city-state must find its place in this new world of magic. But people and politics are always treacherous, and it will take all of Jovan and Kalina’s skills as proofer and spy to save their country when witches and assassins turn their sights to domination.

The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature in which I highlight books I got over the last week that sound like they may be interesting—old or new, bought or received in the mail for review consideration (the latter of which are mainly unsolicited books from publishers). Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on the book are included, along with series information and the publisher’s book description. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

It’s been a while since I did one of these features! Here are the blog posts that have gone up since the last one of these in case you missed any of them:

Since the pandemic started, there have not been as many books in the mail, and most of the ones that have arrived lately are covered in the 30 Anticipated Speculative Fiction Book Releases post mentioned above. There have been a few weekends that I thought about covering e-ARCs that I’d downloaded, but I ended up running out of time for various reasons. Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of my weekend time on work projects and preparing for the tenth annual Women in SF&F Month in April—which I am very excited about! (Here is more about last year’s event if you missed it.)

Since I have missed some books I’d like to mention, I am covering an e-ARC that I just downloaded as well as a couple of others somewhat recently added to my Kindle in this week’s Leaning Pile of Books.

In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu - Book Cover

In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu

Writer, editor, and translator S. Qiouyi Lu’s debut novella will be released on August 31 (trade paperback, ebook).

Tor.com has more information on In the Watchful City, including quotes from both the author and editor. Here’s some of what the author said that made me especially curious about this upcoming novella:

The city in which the frame narrative is set, Ora, arose out of a fusion of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and a bio-cyberpunk take on surveillance, one extrapolated from current technology that I got to see in Hangzhou, China. The city is not one cohesive place, but layers and layers, facets upon facets; this novella sees Ora from multiple perspectives while also looking out into the world.

In the Watchful City is more than just an illustration of a city, too. It is also a collection of stories about diaspora, about power, about longing, about growth and transformation.

This sounds fantastic, and I must admit, I was also intrigued by the gorgeous cover illustration by Kuri Huang!

 

S. Qiouyi Lu’s In the Watchful City explores borders, power, diaspora, and transformation in an Asian-inspired mosaic novella that melds the futurism of Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station with the magical wonder of Catherynne M. Valente’s Palimpsest.

The city of Ora uses a complex living network called the Gleaming to surveil its inhabitants and maintain harmony. Anima is one of the cloistered extrasensory humans tasked with watching over Ora’s citizens. Although ær world is restricted to what æ can see and experience through the Gleaming, Anima takes pride and comfort in keeping Ora safe from all harm.

All that changes when a mysterious visitor enters the city carrying a cabinet of curiosities from around the world, with a story attached to each item. As Anima’s world expands beyond the borders of Ora to places—and possibilities—æ never before imagined to exist, æ finds ærself asking a question that throws into doubt ær entire purpose: What good is a city if it can’t protect its people?”

A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers - Book Cover

A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk and Robot #1) by Becky Chambers

Becky Chambers begins a new series with A Psalm for the Wild-Built, coming July 13 (hardcover, ebook, audiobook).

Her Hugo Award–winning Wayfarers series is known for its optimism, and A Psalm for the Wild-Built is also supposed to be a hopeful story.

 

In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, Hugo Award-winner Becky Chambers’s delightful new Monk & Robot series gives us hope for the future.

It’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gained self-awareness and laid down their tools; centuries since they wandered, en masse, into the wilderness, never to be seen again; centuries since they faded into myth and urban legend.

One day, the life of a tea monk is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of “what do people need?” is answered.

But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how.

They’re going to need to ask it a lot.

Becky Chambers’s new series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?

The Helm of Midnight by Marina J. Lostetter - Book Cover

The Helm of Midnight (The Five Penalties #1) by Marina J. Lostetter

Marina J. Lostetter begins her first fantasy series with The Helm of Midnight, coming April 13 (hardcover, ebook, audiobook). She is also the author of the science fiction trilogy Noumenon.

The Tor/Forge Blog has an excerpt from The Helm of Midnight.

 

Hannibal meets Mistborn in Marina Lostetter’s THE HELM OF MIDNIGHT, the dark and stunning first novel in a new trilogy that combines the intricate worldbuilding and rigorous magic system of the best of epic fantasy with a dark and chilling thriller.

In a daring and deadly heist, thieves have made away with an artifact of terrible power—the death mask of Louis Charbon. Made by a master craftsman, it is imbued with the spirit of a monster from history, a serial murderer who terrorized the city.

Now Charbon is loose once more, killing from beyond the grave. But these murders are different from before, not simply random but the work of a deliberate mind probing for answers to a sinister question.

It is up to Krona Hirvath and her fellow Regulators to enter the mind of madness to stop this insatiable killer while facing the terrible truths left in his wake.

Since I’ve fallen rather far behind on reviews given 2020, I’ll probably be writing some shorter reviews. Usually when I write posts covering more than one book, the titles have little in common other than being speculative fiction that I’ve read, but this time I’m covering two fantasy books about magical women pushing back against patriarchies: The Midnight Bargain by C. L. Polk and The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

The Midnight Bargain
by C. L. Polk
384pp (Hardcover)
My Rating: 7/10
Amazon Rating: 4.3/5
LibraryThing Rating: 3.88/5
Goodreads Rating: 3.78/5
 

Book Description:

From the beloved World Fantasy Award-winning author of Witchmark comes The Midnight Bargain, a sweeping, romantic new fantasy set in a world reminiscent of Regency England, where women’s magic is taken from them when they marry. A sorceress must balance her desire to become the first great female magician against her duty to her family.

Beatrice Clayborn is a sorceress who practices magic in secret, terrified of the day she will be locked into a marital collar that will cut off her powers to protect her unborn children. She dreams of becoming a full-fledged Magus and pursuing magic as her calling as men do, but her family has staked everything to equip her for Bargaining Season, when young men and women of means descend upon the city to negotiate the best marriages. The Clayborns are in severe debt, and only she can save them, by securing an advantageous match before their creditors come calling.

In a stroke of luck, Beatrice finds a grimoire that contains the key to becoming a Magus, but before she can purchase it, a rival sorceress swindles the book right out of her hands. Beatrice summons a spirit to help her get it back, but her new ally exacts a price: Beatrice’s first kiss . . . with her adversary’s brother, the handsome, compassionate, and fabulously wealthy Ianthe Lavan.

The more Beatrice is entangled with the Lavan siblings, the harder her decision becomes: If she casts the spell to become a Magus, she will devastate her family and lose the only man to ever see her for who she is; but if she marries—even for love—she will sacrifice her magic, her identity, and her dreams. But how can she choose just one, knowing she will forever regret the path not taken?

The Midnight Bargain, a standalone fantasy of manners novel by World Fantasy Award–winning author C. L. Polk, kept me turning the pages, eager to find out how two young women’s attempts to make it through Bargaining Season with lots of magical knowledge and no fiancés went—especially after Beatrice falls for someone in spite of herself and is caught between her lifelong dream of practicing magic and her newfound wish to wed.

With her family’s financial difficulties, Beatrice is expected to find a match among the many eligible sorcerers who could prevent her household from falling into ruin. It shouldn’t be a problem for her to find a suitable match since her strong aura makes it obvious she’s an exceptionally powerful magician—or rather, she would be an exceptionally powerful magician if women were given the opportunity to study magic. Instead, women like Beatrice are valued for their ability to pass on magic to their children and must wear a collar that suppresses their own magic once married, as it protects any future children they carry from spirit possession.

Beatrice cannot bear the thought of being separated from her own power and has other plans: finding the secret spells women magicians have hidden and using them to prove she’s more useful to her family as a sorcerous business partner than a means of procuring financial security.

But two wealthy siblings, Ysbeta and Ianthe, complicate matters for Beatrice. Ysbeta also seeks the grimoires disguised as ordinary books with extraordinarily dull titles, and she purchases one that Beatrice discovered first and was intending to buy. Not knowing the true nature of the book, Ianthe suggests that his sister and Beatrice share the volume: a suggestion that his sister likely would have conveniently forgotten if not for the fact that she does not know how to read the grimoires she’s collected and learns that Beatrice can. As the two pursue their mutual goals of increasing their knowledge and remaining single, they become friends—and the more time Beatrice spends with Ianthe, the more she falls for him.

The Midnight Bargain is a delightful story that didn’t take long to draw me in, and I had fun reading it. The romance is closer to insta-love than the more drawn out type of slow burn that I tend to prefer, but it was a sweet love story that had me rooting for Beatrice and Ianthe to get their HEA from the start. However, my favorite relationship was the friendship that developed between Beatrice and Ysbeta because of their determination to find ways around the constraints placed upon them by their patriarchal society and become sorcerers themselves. Ysbeta was my favorite secondary character with her tenacity and spirit, and I enjoyed that this Regency-style novel not only had a romance but also a major character who did not want to marry at all, regardless of whether or not it had any effect on her own magic.

Though it kept me engaged enough to distract me from the world (in 2020, no less!), The Midnight Bargain did not have the amount of depth or beautiful prose that tends to make a novel and its characters memorable to me. It’s one of those books that I’m happy I read, but I doubt I’ll reread it even though I do appreciate C. L. Polk’s skill in writing such an entertaining, compelling story.

My Rating: 7/10

Where I got my reading copy: I purchased it.

Read an Excerpt from The Midnight Bargain

The Once and Future Witches
by Alix E. Harrow
528pp (Hardcover)
My Rating: 5/10
Amazon Rating: 4.5/5
LibraryThing Rating: 4.14/5
Goodreads Rating: 4.11/5
 

Book Description:

In the late 1800s, three sisters use witchcraft to change the course of history in Alix E. Harrow’s powerful novel of magic and the suffragette movement.

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR Books • Barnes and Noble • BookPage

In 1893, there’s no such thing as witches. There used to be, in the wild, dark days before the burnings began, but now witching is nothing but tidy charms and nursery rhymes. If the modern woman wants any measure of power, she must find it at the ballot box.

But when the Eastwood sisters―James Juniper, Agnes Amaranth, and Beatrice Belladonna―join the suffragists of New Salem, they begin to pursue the forgotten words and ways that might turn the women’s movement into the witch’s movement. Stalked by shadows and sickness, hunted by forces who will not suffer a witch to vote―and perhaps not even to live―the sisters will need to delve into the oldest magics, draw new alliances, and heal the bond between them if they want to survive.

There’s no such thing as witches. But there will be.

An homage to the indomitable power and persistence of women, The Once and Future Witches reimagines stories of revolution, motherhood, and women’s suffrage—the lost ways are calling.

The Once and Future Witches was a book I had been especially excited about. It’s Alix E. Harrow’s second novel after her enchanting, beautifully written portal fantasy The Ten Thousand Doors of Januarymy 2019 Book of the Year—plus it’s about suffragette witches. Unfortunately, I struggled to make it through this one, even taking a break about halfway through to read another book. Although it did improve after that point, I probably still would have left it unfinished if I hadn’t loved the author’s previous novel as much as I did.

This standalone novel sounded like one I would love, and there certainly were a lot of elements that I appreciated. It’s a book brimming with feminist anger as women fight back against the patriarchy in an alternate 1890s United States, and it explores the Maiden, Mother, and Crone archetypes through the three sisters who make up the heart of the story. It has remade fairy tales and women passing down spells through oral and written words like songs and rhymes, and though this is a book with men’s magic and women’s magic, magic is not actually gender-based: those divisions were created by people.

It has so many pieces that make it seem like one of my types of books, but I found it rather boring. I don’t mind slower pacing at all if the writing, characters, or exploration of themes resonate with me, but that was not my experience with this book. The characters never came alive enough to get me invested in their stories, and the exploration of the sisters’ archetypes didn’t delve into them deeply enough to make up for them seeming more like constructs than complex characters. There were occasional glistening lines that exemplified the gorgeous prose Alix E. Harrow does so well, but they didn’t shine as brightly as in The Ten Thousand Doors of January, in which nearly every single sentence felt finely crafted.

Though The Once and Future Witches attempted to do some interesting things, it didn’t manage to keep me interested. In the end, I didn’t find it memorable, and it didn’t have enough good qualities to make it seem worth persevering through that many pages.

My Rating: 5/10

Where I got my reading copy: ARC from the publisher.

Read an Excerpt from The Once and Future Witches

The Ikessar Falcon
by K. S. Villoso
640pp (Trade Paperback)
My Rating: 10/10
Amazon Rating: 4.7/5
LibraryThing Rating: 5/5
Goodreads Rating: 4.28/5
 

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Although the bulk of my reading is speculative fiction because of its myriad worlds and endless possibilities, I primarily read for characters. In particular, I appreciate stories with characters so vividly multifaceted that I have complicated, difficult-to-articulate feelings about them—when I don’t simply love or hate them, when the way I think about them changes from moment to moment, when I’m left uncertain precisely what to think of them because they have decent qualities amidst glaring flaws or vice versa.

And a major reason I loved The Ikessar Falcon the way I did is that K. S. Villoso created characters eliciting just that reaction, filtered through the perspective of a protagonist who is far from perfect and frequently frustrating herself—and is one of the best-realized, well-written protagonists I’ve ever encountered.

The characterization and world expand masterfully from the foundation built in The Wolf of Oren-Yaro, the excellent first book in The Chronicles of the Bitch Queen trilogy and a shorter, more contained volume that nevertheless conveys a lot through its rich first-person narration. I was drawn into Queen Talyien’s story from the very first line, and I ended the book feeling that her voice was one of the strongest I’ve read.

Talyien’s personality comes through every page, and her complexity shines through her expressive, poetic narrative. I particularly loved how she made me question just how self-aware she truly was as she related her tale—fitting for someone who never had the chance to be herself or explore exactly who that person may be, given that the course of her life was shaped by her warlord father and his ambitions. Even though her father is long deceased by the start of the trilogy’s main plot, Talyien still carries the weight of attempting to live up to his expectations and legacy. It’s not until close to the beginning of The Wolf of Oren-Yaro, after being separated from her guards overseas and meeting a kind-hearted conman (really!), that she gets to experience what it might be like to just be herself—not a queen, not a notorious warlord’s daughter, not the wife of the Dragonlord or the mother of the next Dragonlord, but simply Tali.

Tali’s confidence about the world and her place within it is further upended in The Ikessar Falcon. It picks up about three months after the previous novel with Tali in much the same situation we left her: far from home and unsure of when she’ll be able to return, worried about her son, and shaken by the realization that she may not have known her father or his plans very well after all. In this installment, Tali comes to understand that there is actually a lot she didn’t know as well as she had heretofore thought, including the husband with whom she was so desperate to reunite, her country, and her people. Though she’s well versed in warlord politics so she can fulfill the duty she’s had since birth—preventing civil war—she has not given much thought to the lives and needs of the common people. She neglected regions of her country, remaining oblivious to some rather large problems that had been developing there for some time, and though some of the blame for that falls on those who provided her with information, she also ignored several requests for meetings from those who live there.

Partially due to faults like these, I loved reading about Tali because she has depth that makes her seem real. As she’s often reminded throughout this novel, she’s not been a good ruler, and she has a habit of being oblivious to other people—such as forgetting that her guardswoman/cousin has a daughter and not even remembering the girl’s name or face after being reminded she gave her niece a gift for her last nameday. Yet when she does care, she loves fiercely and can be loyal to a fault, giving a second chance after a betrayal instead of doing what one may expect from a sword-wielding queen with her reputation. Tali doesn’t shy away from violence, especially defense of herself or others, but she’s not one to revel in bloodshed and cruelty, either.

Tali’s many layers make her a fascinating protagonist, as does the way she navigates a society that makes her feel powerless in a lot of ways despite literally being a queen. From the moment she was born, she’s had the weight of being the embodiment of peace on her shoulders and had people telling her how she must act and behave. She’s judged more harshly as a woman—instead of blaming her husband for leaving her and their child, people tend to blame her for not being a good enough wife to make him want to stay. And from her perspective, she does seem to be trying her best amid the huge mess she inherited.

At least, she seems to be trying her best some of the time. Though she’s certainly been left with a lot of problems created by previous rulers and their systems, some of her mess is of her own making, and there were certainly times I found Tali and her decisions intensely frustrating. But even when I wanted to yell at her for making a terrible choice, I wanted to applaud her author for her terrible choice because it felt so very true to Tali.

Overall, the characters are wonderfully done. The Ikessar Falcon is filled with complex people with a mixture of good and bad that made me feel complex emotions with a couple of exceptions: a despicable villain, and Khine, the aforementioned kind-hearted conman. Khine is my favorite secondary character and only frustrated me by not fleeing the chaos and destruction following in Tali’s wake when he deserved so much better.

Khine is also the only one of the three men who spend the most time in Tali’s company who did not make me want to throw the whole man away, but I really appreciated how the other two were written. Often, I’d find myself wondering why Tali put up with her former childhood friend turned guardsman and husband, though I understood she did for complicated reasons related to loyalty, guilt, and nostalgia. Then there would suddenly be a moment when seeing them through Tali’s eyes made me really understand—not in my head, but in my heart—why she put up with them. After spending the whole book loathing them, they’d show a different side of themselves or have such camaraderie with Tali that I’d find myself kind of liking them in spite of myself and realize it’s complicated. Everything in this story is complicated, even these fraught relationships with men who make me want to throw the whole man away.

Even the pacing ties into the characterization. As in the first book, I thought the most engaging parts were the more introspective ones and those focusing on Tali’s past, but I found the main storyline more compelling in this installment since it took some time to breathe and really show the world and characters. The faster pacing with Tali constantly jumping into situations was suitable for who she was at that point, and though a lot still happens in The Ikessar Falcon, it also allowed more time for reflection and getting the most out of a scene—just as Tali herself seems to be pausing to think a bit more at this point in her life.

The Ikessar Falcon is complex, character-driven fantasy at its very best, as it takes everything I loved about The Wolf of Oren-Yaro and expands on it to make both books stronger. Every conversation and description seems significant, it has more banter and revelations, and it also has more dragons and magic. But most importantly, for me as a reader, it’s about a protagonist who has me invested in her story, and I can hardly wait to read the rest of it in The Dragon of Jin-Sayeng (coming May 4).

My Rating: 10/10

Where I got my reading copy: ARC from the publisher.

Read an Excerpt from The Ikessar Falcon

Read K. S. Villoso’s Women in SF&F Month Guest Post on Queen Talyien

Reviews of Other Book(s) in The Chronicles of the Bitch Queen:

  1. The Wolf of Oren-Yaro

Happy book release day to Namina Forna! I’ve been excited about her debut novel, The Gilded Ones, ever since I read an excellent interview with her on Refinery29 discussing why she wrote a YA epic fantasy book in which women literally bleed gold, among other subjects—and I’m thrilled to have a guest post by her to share today!

 

The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna - Book Cover
Read an Excerpt

About THE GILDED ONES:

The most anticipated fantasy of 2021. In this world, girls are outcasts by blood and warriors by choice. Get ready for battle. 

Sixteen-year-old Deka lives in fear and anticipation of the blood ceremony that will determine whether she will become a member of her village. Already different from everyone else because of her unnatural intuition, Deka prays for red blood so she can finally feel like she belongs.

But on the day of the ceremony, her blood runs gold, the color of impurity–and Deka knows she will face a consequence worse than death.

Then a mysterious woman comes to her with a choice: stay in the village and submit to her fate, or leave to fight for the emperor in an army of girls just like her. They are called alaki–near-immortals with rare gifts. And they are the only ones who can stop the empire’s greatest threat.

Knowing the dangers that lie ahead yet yearning for acceptance, Deka decides to leave the only life she’s ever known. But as she journeys to the capital to train for the biggest battle of her life, she will discover that the great walled city holds many surprises. Nothing and no one are quite what they seem to be–not even Deka herself.

The start of a bold and immersive fantasy series for fans of Children of Blood and Bone and Black Panther

The Importance of Feminist Boys in YA Literature

Some weeks ago, I was scrolling Twitter when I came upon a heinous tweet. It was written by a man, and it espoused some truly concerning thoughts regarding women. It was the type of tweet I would have usually rushed to correct, but before I could do so, one of my mutuals, a young African man, waded in. He battled the tweet-sogynist with facts and data. He was not just a feminist ally—he was a feminist himself.

Growing up in the hypermasculine cultures of Sierra Leone, West Africa, and Atlanta, Georgia, I saw precious little in the way of male feminists. Boys were supposed to be tough and strong. They weren’t supposed to be soft, weren’t supposed to cry, and certainly weren’t supposed to defer to women.

Somewhere along the way, this dynamic changed. Boys started to realize that the patriarchy was just as much a trap for them as it was for girls. It helped that there were new portrayals of heroes in books and film, particularly young adult and middle grade works.

Malik, one of the dual protagonists from this summer’s A Song of Wraiths and Ruin, is one such hero. A nervous, but sweet soul, he is understanding of his weaknesses and respects his reluctant partner in crime, the calculating princess Karina, knowing that she is both bolder and more ruthless than him—necessary characteristics to survive in the cutthroat city of Ziran, the main location in the book.

Other notable feminist boys include Peeta Mellark of the Hunger Games franchise—a much kinder and softer person than protagonist Katniss Everdeen; Peter Kavinsky in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before; Daniel Bae from The Sun Is Also a Star; and Rishi from When Dimple Met Rishi.

In film and TV, there’s Ang from Avatar: The Last Airbender, Otis in Sex Education—even Uber-masculine icon Mad Max has undergone a bit of a transformation in recent years. In Mad Max: Fury Road, he defers to protagonist Imperator Furiosa, even going so far as to hand a gun to her when he can’t get a shot right. Progress.

In my novel, The Gilded Ones, Keita, the love interest of my protagonist, Deka, is a soft boy with a hard shell. He has no choice but to be. The world of The Gilded Ones is brutal and deeply misogynistic, especially Otera, the empire in which my story unfolds. Otera is absolute theocracy: women are considered lesser than men and required to undergo a ritual to prove the purity of their blood—red for pure, and gold for impure.

Even worse, the alaki—girls who bleed gold and are stronger and faster than regular humans—are branded as demons and executed on the spot. That is, of course, if they aren’t bled first. Gold is gold, even if it comes straight from the veins.

Despite all this, Keita, a hardened warrior with the battle scars to prove it, develops a deep and abiding respect for Deka. He listens to her when she speaks, doesn’t try to change her, and genuinely cares for her as a human being. In a world where women are considered little less than property, he sees her as an equal, and that’s an important thing.

We have a long way to go when it comes to gender equality, but portrayals of boys in books and film are helping along the way. That, for me, is an awesome thing, because now, whenever I go on Twitter, I can always find a feminist boy there, ready to do the work of dismantling the patriarchy.

Photo of Namina Forna Namina Forna is a young adult novelist based in Los Angeles, and the author of the epic fantasy YA novel The Gilded Ones. Originally from Sierra Leone, West Africa, she moved to the US when she was nine and has been traveling back and forth ever since. Namina loves telling stories with fierce female leads and works as a screenwriter in LA.