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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
emotional
hopeful
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is such a delightful book.
The prose is beautiful and compelling, it’s almost poetic, and the story is raw and simple despite the themes of gender identity, disability, and nostalgia.
The story is seen through the eyes of Sol, a trans man and a vampire who works as an archivist. When the story begins, he is secretly living at work because the windowless basement room is safe from sunshine. He is painfully introspective, loves his comfort zone, and is devoted to his archives.
The story proper begins when Elsie, the widow of a famous lesbian science fiction screenwriter, brings in her deceased wife’s papers.
Elsie is messy, as she is trying to separate herself from her difficult relationship with an overbearing (and now deceased) wife, but she is so affectionate and strong and has a soft but sassy edge that I loved.
Their relationship is messy and a bit unhealthy at the beginning, but it improves as both become healthier individually. This is in part because Elsie has a gender crisis of her own, and finally embraces a genderfluid identity. (Happy scream for genderfluid rep) The story ends with Sol taking responsibility for his choices and being fired from his job, but taking that as an excuse to embrace a life that is less secure but more honest to himself.
I think this is one of my favorite fictional portrayals of vampirism. It fully embraces the concept of vampirism as a disability- being a vampire is almost exclusively disabling for Sol- it affects his ability to keep a job, to get to that job, to interact with others. He goes to a clinic to receive blood infusions. The systemic prejudice against vampires is a skilled combination of ableism and homophobia, in which vampires are assumed to be the cause of all sorts of problems and the blood offered at the clinic is of the worse quality available because it doesn’t actively harm them.
The themes of gender identity are complex- questions of how to address dysphoric comments made by deceased individuals, an older lesbian who persists in being transphobic, and Sol’s struggle with how his turning affected his transition.
It’s such a cozy but deep story, and brings depth alongside lots of quiet humor.
The prose is beautiful and compelling, it’s almost poetic, and the story is raw and simple despite the themes of gender identity, disability, and nostalgia.
The story is seen through the eyes of Sol, a trans man and a vampire who works as an archivist. When the story begins, he is secretly living at work because the windowless basement room is safe from sunshine. He is painfully introspective, loves his comfort zone, and is devoted to his archives.
The story proper begins when Elsie, the widow of a famous lesbian science fiction screenwriter, brings in her deceased wife’s papers.
Elsie is messy, as she is trying to separate herself from her difficult relationship with an overbearing (and now deceased) wife, but she is so affectionate and strong and has a soft but sassy edge that I loved.
Their relationship is messy and a bit unhealthy at the beginning, but it improves as both become healthier individually. This is in part because Elsie has a gender crisis of her own, and finally embraces a genderfluid identity. (Happy scream for genderfluid rep) The story ends with Sol taking responsibility for his choices and being fired from his job, but taking that as an excuse to embrace a life that is less secure but more honest to himself.
I think this is one of my favorite fictional portrayals of vampirism. It fully embraces the concept of vampirism as a disability- being a vampire is almost exclusively disabling for Sol- it affects his ability to keep a job, to get to that job, to interact with others. He goes to a clinic to receive blood infusions. The systemic prejudice against vampires is a skilled combination of ableism and homophobia, in which vampires are assumed to be the cause of all sorts of problems and the blood offered at the clinic is of the worse quality available because it doesn’t actively harm them.
The themes of gender identity are complex- questions of how to address dysphoric comments made by deceased individuals, an older lesbian who persists in being transphobic, and Sol’s struggle with how his turning affected his transition.
It’s such a cozy but deep story, and brings depth alongside lots of quiet humor.
dark
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Complicated
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A strange book, in a good way. Incredibly readable narrative with inserts of screenplays and letters and email records and in-universe book excerpts. A mashup about fandom and vampirism and archival science and romance shouldn't be so readable, but it is.
Normally I give a book 100 pages before I decide if I’m going to DNF, but I didn’t think I’d make it that long into this one. For all that this book had a fascinating premise (transmasc archivist vampire falls in love with the widow of the woman whose papers he’s archiving), with so much potential for interest and discovery, I found the writing style and pace to be boring and self-satisfied. The dialogue between the characters is at times odd/hard to follow and unrealistic. We are told there is a spark between our two romantic leads, but since that spark is told to us and not shown to us, we are just going to have to take the narrator’s word for it. The POV character Sol is inconsistent and kind of an asshole. Information is fed to the reader periodically that helps flesh out the world building, but it kind of comes out of nowhere when it appears, and leaves me more frustrated than enlightened.
I’m disappointed because, as mentioned above, the premise and opportunity for diving into a magical setting was very exciting, but the first 50 pages just did not hook me and did not appear to be trying very hard to do so. It was as if the book itself was saying “I don’t care what you think of me,” which could even be a cool approach on its own, if it felt like it was actually pushing any boundaries of imagination in the first place beyond its basic setup.
I’m disappointed because, as mentioned above, the premise and opportunity for diving into a magical setting was very exciting, but the first 50 pages just did not hook me and did not appear to be trying very hard to do so. It was as if the book itself was saying “I don’t care what you think of me,” which could even be a cool approach on its own, if it felt like it was actually pushing any boundaries of imagination in the first place beyond its basic setup.
Popsugar 2022: a book about gender identity
2022 Spells and Spaceships: a new release
I absolutely adored the author's previous book, The Breath of the Sun, and was excited to see that he had another book released; I read it as soon as I could.
This author really thinks about words- gets into multiple meanings, puns, and unintended references. He also has a sense of humor that I actually get- this doesn't always happen to me with written humor. The author is an archivist himself and also a trans man just like the protagonist of the book, Sol Katz (see that word humor there?). I did a little bit of archival training when I was getting my master's in history. It was not so much for me. I like using primary sources from archives, but the actual work of cataloguing and preservation is too detail oriented and methodical for me to really enjoy. But you rarely read about an archivist, especially from someone who intricately knows the work!
Here are a couple of quotes that I really enjoyed or found myself ruminating upon:
" A thing is just a slow event. " In other words, change keep happening to things (and people) and what appears to be a concrete object is actually in the continual process of change. I find that I am a more rapidly deteriorating event as I get older. A trans person in transition must be even more acutely aware of this. Sol was changed to a vampire shortly after he began his transition and being dead, that change is mostly arrested, a source of frustration for him.
** Sol occasionally eats. He can no longer taste much except for the strongest flavors, like kimchi, pungent cheese, strongly sweet jams or jellies. He's all about preservation. I laughed at this.
"Yes, but any reasonable person would want to be a librarian." So true, Sol!
"How do you feel desire with a body that you can't bear to have touched?" This book was ultimately more about the trans experience than it was about vampirism, or even archival work. There were a lot of intimate statements like this that made me slow down and think.
"The soul knows what's not possible." This is a statement about the deep certainty about what can and can't change. I felt this one too.
"Letters come from longing, which means that archives run on longing. You make less to archive once you get what you want." This is a quote about love letters, but it makes sense in a lot of ways. People leave records when they are striving to achieve something or work toward something, but once that is satisfied there usually aren't many records anymore. You've bought a house; you don't need many records after the sales records. You have an operation; after you have healed you won't have doctors' records. Satisfaction leaves fewer things behind.
"I lifted my face up, and we kissed, and the kick of shame- the good shame, the shame of getting what you need- lasted." This one really got to my feelings too.
"We've been brought up to feel that men's stories are more important and interesting than women's stories- so two men in love is twice as interesting, and two women in love isn't interesting or important at all." There's a lot about fanfic in this book- both of the main characters were involved in a 90's fan community around a fictional science fiction TV show called Feet of Clay, about clay-like aliens that can kill humans and then transform themselves into facsimiles of those humans, gradually taking over everything. There are a lot of metaphors there. This is part of a discussion about slashfic between some of the main characters. I confess that I was brought up in and have absorbed enough of this male-centric way of thinking that I have to push against it a lot myself. The characters in the book have also done this work and are farther along on it than I am, and I liked their self-awareness. Just because I'm aware of it doesn't make it easy to change, and I always wonder what I'm not even thinking about because I've grown up in a certain way.
So, there was a lot I liked about this book. However, I almost ended up rating it a 3 before I looked back on what I've just written. This is because I was expecting more vampires, less trans experience. Ultimately the book is mostly about what it's like to be born trans, slowly find yourself, and slowly work toward changing to what you need. Apologies here if I'm phrasing things poorly; I'm not trans myself and am unsure of the right language to use. Sol meets Elsie, who is the widow of the creator of the show Feet of Clay when Elsie beings all of her wife's documents on Feet of Clay to the archive. Elsie is also trying to figure out some things about herself, and these two end up in a passionate romance quite quickly. That's a big part of the book. Another big part is about Sol finding that he has allowed himself to stagnate and shrink his world in an effort to be safe (this is about Sol's vampirism but it's also about trans identity) and how his efforts at caution have ultimately hurt himself in the long run and given him fewer survival skills. A lot of people end up hurt in this book, one way or another.
The book is also about laying things to rest and how things left behind need to be honored instead of ignored so that they don't cause problems later.
I liked how up front Elsie and Sol were about communicating their feelings and their needs. I also felt like they were using each other for more than one thing and I wasn't sure how healthy that would ultimately be. We don't see much past the beginning of their relationship. But most relationships aren't entirely healthy and a lot of it comes down to communication, so they had that going for them. I thought this book was an amazing window into what it's like to be trans. I'm not part of that community and it gave me a lot to think about. I hope that those in the community will feel themselves seen. BUT- I wanted a bit more vampire. The book is exquisitely written and it earns at least 4 stars for that. I will eagerly read whatever this author writes next.
2022 Spells and Spaceships: a new release
I absolutely adored the author's previous book, The Breath of the Sun, and was excited to see that he had another book released; I read it as soon as I could.
This author really thinks about words- gets into multiple meanings, puns, and unintended references. He also has a sense of humor that I actually get- this doesn't always happen to me with written humor. The author is an archivist himself and also a trans man just like the protagonist of the book, Sol Katz (see that word humor there?). I did a little bit of archival training when I was getting my master's in history. It was not so much for me. I like using primary sources from archives, but the actual work of cataloguing and preservation is too detail oriented and methodical for me to really enjoy. But you rarely read about an archivist, especially from someone who intricately knows the work!
Here are a couple of quotes that I really enjoyed or found myself ruminating upon:
" A thing is just a slow event. " In other words, change keep happening to things (and people) and what appears to be a concrete object is actually in the continual process of change. I find that I am a more rapidly deteriorating event as I get older. A trans person in transition must be even more acutely aware of this. Sol was changed to a vampire shortly after he began his transition and being dead, that change is mostly arrested, a source of frustration for him.
** Sol occasionally eats. He can no longer taste much except for the strongest flavors, like kimchi, pungent cheese, strongly sweet jams or jellies. He's all about preservation. I laughed at this.
"Yes, but any reasonable person would want to be a librarian." So true, Sol!
"How do you feel desire with a body that you can't bear to have touched?" This book was ultimately more about the trans experience than it was about vampirism, or even archival work. There were a lot of intimate statements like this that made me slow down and think.
"The soul knows what's not possible." This is a statement about the deep certainty about what can and can't change. I felt this one too.
"Letters come from longing, which means that archives run on longing. You make less to archive once you get what you want." This is a quote about love letters, but it makes sense in a lot of ways. People leave records when they are striving to achieve something or work toward something, but once that is satisfied there usually aren't many records anymore. You've bought a house; you don't need many records after the sales records. You have an operation; after you have healed you won't have doctors' records. Satisfaction leaves fewer things behind.
"I lifted my face up, and we kissed, and the kick of shame- the good shame, the shame of getting what you need- lasted." This one really got to my feelings too.
"We've been brought up to feel that men's stories are more important and interesting than women's stories- so two men in love is twice as interesting, and two women in love isn't interesting or important at all." There's a lot about fanfic in this book- both of the main characters were involved in a 90's fan community around a fictional science fiction TV show called Feet of Clay, about clay-like aliens that can kill humans and then transform themselves into facsimiles of those humans, gradually taking over everything. There are a lot of metaphors there. This is part of a discussion about slashfic between some of the main characters. I confess that I was brought up in and have absorbed enough of this male-centric way of thinking that I have to push against it a lot myself. The characters in the book have also done this work and are farther along on it than I am, and I liked their self-awareness. Just because I'm aware of it doesn't make it easy to change, and I always wonder what I'm not even thinking about because I've grown up in a certain way.
So, there was a lot I liked about this book. However, I almost ended up rating it a 3 before I looked back on what I've just written. This is because I was expecting more vampires, less trans experience. Ultimately the book is mostly about what it's like to be born trans, slowly find yourself, and slowly work toward changing to what you need. Apologies here if I'm phrasing things poorly; I'm not trans myself and am unsure of the right language to use. Sol meets Elsie, who is the widow of the creator of the show Feet of Clay when Elsie beings all of her wife's documents on Feet of Clay to the archive. Elsie is also trying to figure out some things about herself, and these two end up in a passionate romance quite quickly. That's a big part of the book. Another big part is about Sol finding that he has allowed himself to stagnate and shrink his world in an effort to be safe (this is about Sol's vampirism but it's also about trans identity) and how his efforts at caution have ultimately hurt himself in the long run and given him fewer survival skills. A lot of people end up hurt in this book, one way or another.
The book is also about laying things to rest and how things left behind need to be honored instead of ignored so that they don't cause problems later.
I liked how up front Elsie and Sol were about communicating their feelings and their needs. I also felt like they were using each other for more than one thing and I wasn't sure how healthy that would ultimately be. We don't see much past the beginning of their relationship. But most relationships aren't entirely healthy and a lot of it comes down to communication, so they had that going for them. I thought this book was an amazing window into what it's like to be trans. I'm not part of that community and it gave me a lot to think about. I hope that those in the community will feel themselves seen. BUT- I wanted a bit more vampire. The book is exquisitely written and it earns at least 4 stars for that. I will eagerly read whatever this author writes next.
I really wanted to love this but wow, I hated it. I was bored to tears, the characters were insanely annoying, the dialogue was horrible and I could not handle the fandom stuff. Managing to make vampires boring is a skill too I guess.
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I... struggled with this book. I didn't realize that fanfiction would feature so prominently in it, and when a book talks about fanfiction, it almost inevitably talks about AO3, and as someone who strongly disagrees with AO3's politics, discovering that the author thinks very favorably of that abominable website was... off-putting. Still, this was only the first chapter, and so I pushed through.
I should have listened to my gut and stopped there.
This book was difficult to read solely because the author's politics are made plain in their narrative choices, and they are politics I vehemently dislike. The LI is a board member of AO3; the MC wrote slash smut to discover his gender identity (and used this as an excuse to avoid writing about female characters); there are 2 lesbian characters -one of which is a huge transphobe, and the other is posthumously declared a closeted trans man, despite the MC's declaration that archivists should admit their lack of ability to "know" about their subjects.
But by far, the worst grievance I have with this book is this:At one point, the LI is exploring their gender and decides to try being a man. (This part, on its own, is fine; I typically quite enjoy a good gender exploration.) During this part, the LI and the MC have sex -- during which, the MC thinks to himself, "I'm having lesbian sex with a man," and then CLIMAXES because of this. What the actual fuck?
So, my only conclusion is that the author himself is a huge lesbophobe, or at least a misogynist, which is a terrible shame because his diction is incredible, at times even poetic, lyrical. It was so difficult to read because I would be in love with the writing style on moment, then slapped in the face with the narrative in the next. So...
Honestly, two stars feels generous. Marked as non-diverse because all the characters are either explicitly white or not given a race at all.
(Oh, and I didn't even get in to how the "eidolism" stuff makes no sense from a scientific perspective, and the book can't convince me it's intentionally being paranormal when it creates a medical explanation for vampires.)
I should have listened to my gut and stopped there.
This book was difficult to read solely because the author's politics are made plain in their narrative choices, and they are politics I vehemently dislike. The LI is a board member of AO3; the MC wrote slash smut to discover his gender identity (and used this as an excuse to avoid writing about female characters); there are 2 lesbian characters -
But by far, the worst grievance I have with this book is this:
So, my only conclusion is that the author himself is a huge lesbophobe, or at least a misogynist, which is a terrible shame because his diction is incredible, at times even poetic, lyrical. It was so difficult to read because I would be in love with the writing style on moment, then slapped in the face with the narrative in the next. So...
Honestly, two stars feels generous. Marked as non-diverse because all the characters are either explicitly white or not given a race at all.
عابرين ومصاصي دماء وكمية خانقة من التفهم والحب.
أنا ما بخير قاد——كيف يعني أخلص هالكتاب وبعدين المفترض اكمل حياتي عادي ؟ أحسني بفقد عقلي بسببه ؟؟ أبا أتكلم عنه أحس مشاعري له ياسه تخنقني من الداخل بسسس ما عارف أرتب هالكلمات ؟؟ الله يهديك يا ايزاك انت وكلماتك ايش السحر اللي حطيته فيهننن شككشمشمشمششكمش أحب العابرين قاد وأبا أعرف قصصهم ومشاعرهم ورحلاتهم بإختلافها ! أبا أعرفهم كلللهمممم !!
أنا ما بخير قاد——كيف يعني أخلص هالكتاب وبعدين المفترض اكمل حياتي عادي ؟ أحسني بفقد عقلي بسببه ؟؟ أبا أتكلم عنه أحس مشاعري له ياسه تخنقني من الداخل بسسس ما عارف أرتب هالكلمات ؟؟ الله يهديك يا ايزاك انت وكلماتك ايش السحر اللي حطيته فيهننن شككشمشمشمششكمش أحب العابرين قاد وأبا أعرف قصصهم ومشاعرهم ورحلاتهم بإختلافها ! أبا أعرفهم كلللهمممم !!
challenging
dark
funny
hopeful
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes