Citizen Sleeper by Jump Over the Age (2022, Fellow Traveller)

Information

Title: Citizen Sleeper

Genre: RPG (Story & Mechanics), Board Game (Mechanics)

Platforms: PC, Mac, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox

Demographic: Adult (General Audiences)

Length: 6 1/2 Hours (Main Story)

Content Advisory: This work contains themes of death, violence, corporate servitude & enslavement, colonisation, et. al.

Representation: Queer, Trans & Nonbinary, and POC characters.

Links: Official Website

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Review

Citizen Sleeper is a game I've been aware of for a while, but it really came onto my radar through the TTRPG community. Specifically, Man Alone's wonderfully rambling video about the two TTRPG entries in the franchise Citizen Sleeper: Spindlejack and Cycles of the Eye. And boy am I glad I picked up the original before diving further into the larger world of Citizen Sleeper, cause this one is a masterpiece of hope, resilience, and tragedy all in one package.

Set in a post-earth sci-fi setting, you are a Sleeper. A robot built from an emulated human mind that was sold to a corporation as slave labour. Escaping this life and Essen-Arp, the corporation that owns you, you end up on Erlin's Eye (The Eye), an old, run-down station formerly controlled by the Solheim Corporation and abandoned when its corporate owners collapsed. It is home to many people and factions that have scraped out a life in the desolate Helios system after it was abandoned. And should you choose it, it will become your home too, Sleeper.

The primary objective in this game is survival. As a property of Essen-Arp, they have built a failsafe to ensure that their proprietary technology becomes worthless should it be lost. Your body is actively failing and killing you unless you regularly inject Stabiliser. You are also being actively hunted by agents of Essen-Arp intent on retrieving their property and collecting the reward for doing so. To survive, you must make connections, and in doing so, not only are you able to endure and thrive amongst the citizens of The Eye, but discover its deeper secrets as well.

Each Cycle, you must spend your Action Dice to gain resources and connections. Which you will use to ensure a steady supply of Stabiliser, Energy, and Cryo (money) to ensure you endure on The Eye. The number of Action Dice you have access to also goes down as your body fails and your Condition meter depletes. Starting with a maximum of five actions per Cycle, you slowly lose dice as your energy and body’s condition depletes over time or with failed rolls. To unlock new resources, you must complete quests or Drives. Drives are clocks that are completed either on successful or unsuccessful dice rolls or after several cycles. For those familiar with TTRPGs, these mechanics will be very familiar. However, the day-to-day action economy tends to lead more towards a resource management board game than an RPG.

Story-wise, Citizen Sleeper is very much a traditional RPG each new person you meet forming a connection with you as you unravel their story. It very much feels like an episodic anime - in a good way - where each Drive storyline gives you this larger connection to The Eye and understanding your place within humanity, but with very little crossover between the stories. Characters pop in and out as needed, but for the most part, when you start a new Drive, you are mostly dealing with a new set of characters and their struggles. This allows for deep emotional connections between yourself and the current character of the moment, but often makes The Eye feel like a facsimile of a society rather than a truly interconnected place. It also means that some characters just disappear from the narrative after their storyline is complete, even when it would make sense that they reappear or that The Eye would be drastically changed by the actions of their story.

The episodic feeling of the story, as well as the fact that the game now consists of the base game + 3 added DLC, also means that it’s possible to complete storylines in the "wrong" order or to abruptly end the game after a Drive. "Wrong" as in an order that does not make narrative sense for the decisions, encounters, and story you have already experienced. I only really encountered the story feeling out of order once during my single playthrough during the later part of the story. Where a character already revealed to be something they were not reverted to an early interaction style after completing a different Drive. But, nonetheless, it was jarring. As much as when I first encountered one of the three original endings to the base game, where, after completing a Drive, the credits just abruptly rolled despite feeling as though I had many more paths to explore.

The story itself, though, is amazing. An utter masterpiece of hope, resilience, humanity, and tragedy balled into one. Tonally, if you like The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. Harrow. Which I read and reviewed early this year as well. Then this feels like an excellent comparison piece that explores similar themes of corporate dystopia, identity and humanity, as well as resilience and adaptation against the odds.

It is a story where there is beauty in hope and endurance. And through the communities we create to lift each other up. You are a tiny cog in a wheel in a grand universe that keeps spinning regardless of whether you live or die, but it is the little things that make it worth living. The friendships, the favourite haunts, the things you build with your own hands, and the paths you cleave. At the end, you find you have a home, community, and everything you could ever want for, despite your struggles.

Each character you interact with gives you a slice into this rich and expansive world, while also becoming personally connected to your Sleeper. And I found myself at times going back to places for resources, not because that was the most optimal play for that round, but because of the story and connection I had made with the characters there. Those connections in the vast universe is what makes life worth living despite the struggle, and Citizen Sleeper highlights this reality perfectly; humanity is not money, fame, or material goods, but the community we build.

Citizen Sleeper has quickly become one of my favourite pieces of media I have experienced this year, and I cannot wait to jump into the wider franchise of Citizen Sleeper with Citizen Sleeper 2: Starward Vector, or its TTRPG spinoffs. Because the world gives me so much more yearning to explore it, and there is so much more that you can expand upon the action economy of this format, which can make an even richer experience.

Thank you for reading this review of Citizen Sleeper by Jump Over the Age (Fellow Traveller, 2022). Consider subscribing to my future reviews of mainly comics, manga, and SFF fiction and articles relating to writing and pop culture. Or consider buying me a Kofi so I can continue to deliver you new content.

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The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. Harrow (Amazon Original Stories, 2025)

Information

Genre: Dystopian, Short Story

Demographic: Adult (General Audiences)

Length: 36 Pages, 1 hour 17 minutes

Content Advisory: This work contains mature themes including violence, cancer, body horror, death and murder, et al.

Representation: Sapphic main character, queernormative world

Links: Goodreads, Storygraph

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Review

Another masterful short story from the author of The Six Deaths of the Saint, Alix E. Harrow’s The Knight and the Butcher Bird is a cutthroat tale of love and loss relevant to our times.

I definitely will say that if you love the dynamic of a knight and his cursed lady, whom he will do anything for, from the classic 1985 fantasy film Ladyhawke, starring Rutger Hauer, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Matthew Broderick, this short story is definitely one for you. It is, however, a darker and more gritter version of that dynamic with vibes similar to the Hunger Games in its commentary on fascism and class in a dystopian society.

Both Shrike Secretary and Sir John of Cincinnati serve as dual protagonists in this work, though only Shrike narrates it. Shrike is the young and cutthroat secretary of the holler, or Iron Hollow. Secretaries in this dystopia are not the notetakers and personal assistants of the elite but instead the storytellers and wise men and women of their village, advising the elders on what is the best action based on the stories and histories they keep. John is a knight of the enclave sent out by the city-states of the dystopian America to slay demons - humans mutated into horrible and mindless beings - in the wasteland and protect the people. He is a solitary protector with only his hawk for a companion. Both are protecting secrets of their own and serve as parallels for one another.

It is only once both their secrets are revealed that we really get to see the parallels between the two, and in their parallels do they shine. Shrike and John are more alike than on the surface they would first appear, but clash on the matter of dealing with Shrike’s recently turned wife, May. John sees the demons as only that, demons, menaces to be eradicated from the world. While Shrike hopes to protect her wife, and maybe find the human underneath the deadly deer-like creature she has become. However, because this is a rather short story, I cannot reveal how they come together - in a way - at the end.

I will say that I loved the world-building in this work. The enclave is hinted at being a fascist fortress of the former upper classes, who left the lower classes to rot out in the wastelands after the apocalypse. John is described as being “old—crazy old, maybe even fifty” and “raised on multivitamins and clean meat”, while those out in the wastelands married and died young, Shrike herself only being “barely seventeen; grief ages you”. Their short lives are lived in parasitic servitude to The Enclave, which takes without giving back. The holler, itself being an iron mining town that sends resources back to the Enclaves two hundred miles away. I just wish that it were a longer work that could more deeply explore and comment on this relationship.

I know that Alix E. Harrow is resisting similar themes in her next novel, The Everlasting,1 to her short story The Six Deaths of the Saint, so I hope that she revisits this world and expands upon it in the future. Either way, I can’t wait for her next short short story as they always seem to hit.

Thank you for reading this review of The Knight and the Butcherbird by Alix E. Harrow (Amazon Original Stories, 2025). Consider subscribing to my future reviews of mainly comics, manga, and SFF fiction and articles relating to writing and pop culture. Or consider buying me a Kofi so I can continue to deliver you new content in this new year.

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Only One Coffin by A.J. Truman (Truman Books, 2022)

Information

Genre: Romantic-Comedy

Demographic: Adult (General Audiences)

Length: 180 Pages

Content Advisory: This work contains mature themes including explicit sexual content and minor violence, et al.

Representation: Achillean main characters, Bisexual Main Characters

Links: Goodreads, Storygraph

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Review

Fun and cheesy, Only One Coffin is a classic romantic comedy of grumpy x sunshine and one bed trope. Following the vampire Magnus on his yearly vacation to Iceland, where he plans to spend his time doing stereotypical vampire things - hanging out in the dark solo and mourning the loss of his love, Gunnar, at the hands of vampire slayers three years ago. However, due to a mix-up with the booking system, he ends up rooming with the newly turned Kilroy, a sunshine of a man obsessed with surfing.

The heart of this story is the classic romantic trope of grumpy x sunshine. Magnus, who has retreated from life due to his age and the death of Gunnar, is learning to come out of the dark cave he has emotionally retreated into due to his relationship with the younger and lively Kilroy. It’s the classic pairing of a stiff, formal gentleman with the young hip youth, and they play off each other so well.

Kilroy, while the stereotypical surfer dude, also has this almost ADHD quality to him, spouting off anything that comes to his mind, even in inappropriate situations. But it also reveals a man who is naturally curious about the world and just excited to learn about being a vampire, soaking in Magnus’ wisdom. They’re pairing ultimately works because they gain from each other. Magnus learning to revel in the light of life, and Kilroy learning to embrace the dark reality of being a vampire.

The book itself is short, so their relationship moves at a breakneck pace, but it doesn’t skimp on giving them sweet moments of bonding. There is a bit of clumsiness to their relationship as they both think the other isn’t interested in them at first, but when they both acknowledge their feelings, they’re equally tender and heated. I especially liked it about midway through as Magnus was coming out of his shell, arranging a special movie date with Kilroy to see a surfing documentary - an activity he sorely missed due to his vampiric state.

My only gripes about this book come from two aspects. Self-Lubricating vampires and the Bi-representation. Vampires are apparently “naturally lubricated” due to the blood diet. I’ve read and put up with some bad MM fiction in my lifetime, but even I was taken out of the scene by this element. I’d rather authors who don’t want to write about prep just don’t than try to justify it with “self-lubrication” in an otherwise realistic depiction of sex - vampire nature excluded.

I also feel that the Bi-representation can be a bit iffy in some places. Both Magnus and Kilroy are Bi - due to vampires not caring about the social norms of the human world. But often I felt like rather than a meaningful exploration of that aspect of vampire society it was written as a justification for characters to be horny all the time. Kilroy himself says that in life he only preferred “chicks”, but as soon as he was turned - and attracted to Magnus - it was like a switch was flipped in his head, making all his past experiences as a human not matter. It is believable that Magnus, a vampire hundreds, if not thousands, of years old, had let go of his human social and sexual prejudices, but Kilroy, who's only three months old as a vampire? It’s especially unbelievable when a core aspect of Kilroy’s character is letting go of his human life, though his easy-going nature means he takes much in his stride, he still struggles to accept his new vampire life. A more serious work might have explored this aspect of sexuality and vampirism more and related Kilroy’s struggles with letting go of his humanity to letting go of his sexuality, but bisexual was just written as everyone is bisexual, thus easy lays.

I wasn’t sure what my sexual orientation was as a human, but as a vampire, I was fully bisexual. Becoming unshackled from the social norms of human society allowed vampires the freedom to experience pleasure with whomever we wanted. While I didn’t remember my own sexual awakening, other vampires confirmed the shift, saying it was like a weight lifted off them. As a result, most vampires were easy lays. We had all the time in the world; we might as well have fun with it.

Only One Coffin by A.J. Truman; Chapter 5 Magnus

There is something about the way Bisexuality is written in this work that just leans too heavily into the promiscuous bi-trope rather than a meaningful exploration of an adult discovering their sexuality later in life by being embraced by a society that is not bound by the same rules regarding sexuality. And while overall I enjoyed the work these two aspects did detract from my experience.

Ultimately, I'm glad I picked up Only One Coffin by A.J. Truman after the disappointment that was The Last Sun by K.D. Edwards. It was exactly the right amount of humour and cheesy I needed to not fall into a reading slump.

Thank you for reading this review of Only One Coffin by A.J. Truman (Truman Books, 2022). Consider subscribing to my future reviews of mainly comics, manga, and SFF fiction and articles relating to writing and pop culture. Or consider buying me a Kofi so I can continue to deliver you new content in this new year.

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More Achillean Fiction

Another Light Hearted Queer Story

The Last Sun (The Tarot Sequence #1) by K.D. Edwards (Pyr, 2018)

Information

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Demographic: Adult (General Audiences)

Length: 371 Pages, 13 hours and 18 min

Content Advisory: This work contains mature themes including: sexual content, sexual assault, coarse language, violence, death, child abuse, suicidal thoughts, et al.

Representation: Achillean main characters

Links: Goodreads, Storygraph

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Review

In my first DNF at 50% of the year, this wild ride with fun and snarky characters can't save this book from its convoluted plot.

The honest truth is that I wish I had liked this book so I could see where the series would go. But I have so many spoons and I’m not wasting them on pushing through bad books for the sake of it this year.

The first book in The Tarot Sequence, an urban fantasy thriller series, follows Rune Saint John and his Companion Brand as they are hired by Lord Tower to search for Lady Judgement’s missing son, Addam Saint Joshua, on the island city of New Atlantis. Each step of the investigation leads them down a rabbit hole of twists and turns, leading back to Rune’s own past and the fall of The Sun Court.

What I did like about this book was its world concept and characters. Set on a post-apocalyptic Earth on the island of New Atlantis, a city cobbled together from the ruins of human civilisation. New Atlantis is a chaotic mish-mash of buildings cobbled together from all over the world and a blend of modern pop culture and old world hierarchy. It is ruled over by god-like beings who embody aspects of the Major Arcana and Saints who rule with dictatorial force while keeping an uneasy peace between their factions. It’s cobbled-together nature suits its lead Rune, who straddles the line between the upper echelons of society and its lower sections, which have more interaction with humans, as a fallen scion of the now-dead Sun Court turned mercenary. The many modern pop culture and historical references Rune drops show how he is a child of both worlds while making the world familiar yet strange.

Rune is incredibly well fleshed out. Rune is a jaded, snarky character with a strong voice enhanced by Josh Hurley’s excellent narration. He gives incredible insight into his interority as well as the often convoluted New Atlantean society that he exists within. His relationship with his Companion - a human raised along aside an Atlantean child and trained from infancy to defend them, the Companion bond giving them insights into the thoughts and emotional state of their principles - Brandon Saint John or Brand is that of snarky love, they get under each other’s skin, but ultimately are there for each other. A review I read - and wish I could find again - when deciding whether to DNF this book describe the humor in this book as “frat boy jock humor” and I would say that is accurate to Rune and Brand’s relationship and extending into their growing brotherly bond with their ward Mattias (Max). While in their early 30s, they come off as guys who never grew out of the college bachelor lifestyle.

However, every other character introduced, while conceptually interesting, seems shallow compared to our two main protagonists, even when they are vital to the plot. The first secondary character we are introduced to is Mattias Saint Valentine, or Max. The novel starts not with the investigation of Addam’s disappearance, despite this being the main plot, but with a raid on The Lover’s estate, ending with Rune accepting an unknown side mission from The Lady Lovers before her downfall. This side mission, as they learn when they return to Half House, is to raise and protect Mattias Saint Valentine until his 21st birthday. In a normally structured story, this would lead into the A-plot being the investigation into Max and The Lovers and why he was sent to Rune for protection. However, Max seems only to exist within this novel to act as a reflection of Rune - a young scion thrust into an unknown world too early by the fall of his court, who also may have a history as a sexual assault survivor. And his story isn’t deeper delved into - in this book - than tidbits Rune or Brand either pick up on by guessing or investigate off-page. And I struggled to see why introducing him here was relevant to the plot of book 1 if his story is better explored in book 2, when he is given so little to do in the first half that highlights his necessity to Rune and Addam’s story which make up the bulk of book 1’s plot.

Another character I have gripes with is Quinn Saint Nicholas, the younger brother of the missing Addam Saint Nicholas, rather than a fully formed character he seems to act as a get out of jail card for our crew giving them the answers and solutions as needed - rather than letting them and by extension the audience figure it out organically. Quinn’s first appearance, though not the first time he apparently had affected the lives of Rune and Brand, is when Rune and Brand come to New Saints hospital to question Addam’s ailed brother Christian on his disappearance. Appearing seemingly out of nowhere, he then goes on a prophetic ramble that ends with him warning Rune of an impending mercenary attack, where Rune and Brand escape barely, but leave Quinn behind, protected by his sigil shield. After the attack, Quinn, however, is left in a coma, not to worry, he still can direct our friends into favourable outcomes with his friendship with the dreamwalker Ciaran - an acquaintance of both Addam and Rune.

And Quinn is the epitome of the problems of why I ended up dnf’ing this book. Things just happen with no explanation, and we move on to the next location or character. The book never gives readers the time to breathe, and it became the reading equivalent of whiplash, moving from action scene to action scene with lore dumps in between and characters just popping in and out. The story doesn’t meaningfully let our main characters stew in their newfound knowledge or expand or explain anything that it felt like a cobbled-together mess where magic and monsters are pulled out of nowhere in order to serve the needs of the current scene without creating a cohesive world. The solutions to every problem or puzzle just drop into Rune’s lap often by adding new elements when an expansion of or better foreshadowing an already established story element could have worked better.

So much happens in the first 50% of the novel, at such a fast pace for such long chapters, that I often found myself having to pause whatever I was doing and rewind the audiobook to see if I missed something or the scene just suddenly changed again. And the readability wasn’t improved if I switched formats either. It feels like there are about 20 fight scenes just in this first half, most of the time introducing new monsters and magic, and I struggled to keep up. When I got to a part where Rune and Brand are being attacked on the street outside The Tower estate and I couldn’t tell the “good guys” from the “bad guys” I think that was when I just gave up. First the pedestrians are attacking them then they are Lord Towers protection, what the fuck is this plot even doing.

And I’m going to be honest, maybe that’s badly remembered cause half the time I felt like I was tuning out and not invested in the plot at all because it was that hard to follow. And a well-written protagonist with a great character backstory with lots of potential future exploration can’t save a plot that can’t follow its own logic. What logic is there seems to be the obvious points any thriller would point out - the business partners abducted Addam for shares in their company, the sister did it to inherit their mother’s throne. This book feels more like an action spectacle with a mystery tacked on than the detective thriller it is trying to be.

The opening chapter should have been a bigger red flag that I wouldn’t have liked this book than it was because we are dropped right into the middle of the raid on The Lover’s estate and are just supposed to piece together what is happening, the background behind it, and the world from the badly given context clues of Rune’s narration. At this point, I don’t know Rune or about New Atlantis, and I struggled to know why he and, by extension, I, the reader, should care about the raid and its outcome - jokes on me, cause The Lover’s raid wasn’t relevant to the main plot of Book 1 at all.

There are so many cool elements within The Last Sun, but none of them are given adequate attention or time to breathe. A magical society based on the Atlantist myth and Tarot cards & Saints, absolutely cool; Sigil-based magic imbued into objects to create spells or change an object’s aspect, cool; early 30s protagonist with snarky banter, good self-reflection and a strong narrative voice, cool; A mysterious kidnapping of a highly influential heir to a kingdom, cool. When it is not a chaotic, consulted mess, The Last Sun is a compelling action-thriller with plenty of room to further explore in its sequels. But The Last Sun is so chaotic in its execution that I felt crazy just trying to decipher the plot. And this is why it became my first DNF of the year. I could push through and hope that the final act resolved some of my issues - but the looks of the wiki, they don’t - or I could cut my losses here and hope that the next book on my TBR goals for this quarter is less of a disappointment. No secret to what I ended up choosing.

I say if your a fan of like fast paced queer action thrillers and are willing to put up with a lot of the chaotic nature of this work maybe give this one a shot, wait for it to go on sale, but give it a shot. But for me, I’m done with both this book and this series and am moving on to greener pastures for my 2025 reading journey - and probably something a little fluffier as a palate cleanser.

Thank you for reading this review of The Last Sun (The Tarot Sequence #1) by K.D. Edwards (Pyr, 2018). Consider subscribing to my future reviews of mainly comics, manga, and SFF fiction and articles relating to writing and pop culture. Or consider buying me a Kofi so I can continue to deliver you new content in this new year.

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Momotekku by Alxndra Cook (Koguchi Press, 2022)

Information

Genre: Sci-fi, Adventure

Demographic: Adult (General)

Length: 100 pages

Content Advisory: This work contains themes of violence, sexual content, sexual violence (not depicted on page) & nudity and is intended for mature audiences

Links: Goodreads, Storygraph, Koguchi Press

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Review

Gorgeous art and an interesting sci-fi twist on the classic of Momotaro could not save Momotekku from its biggest flaw: bad character writing

I really wanted to love Momotekku it’s a comic I backed on Kickstarter that has this cool sci-fi aesthetic reminiscent of the movies I grew up on in the 90s and early 2000s, such as Aeon Flux, and is a loose retelling of the Japanese folktale Momotaro. However, the story just wasn’t there, relying too much on common motifs and archetypes and the myth that it is based on to get us to connect with its main character Ai.

The story starts with Ai’s mother telling her how she and her sisters were created from Momotekku - a woman created by the universe from a magical peach tree, the mother of all life in the universe. From that tree, Momotekku also creates Akuma, her husband, and they have many daughters together. But he grew discontent and against the mother trees will he created the Oni who hurt the Peach women with their aggression and lust. Afterwards, Akuma and the Oni were banished to a new planet. In despair, Momotekku retreated into the mother tree.

Ai’s mother eventually dies, leaving her daughter depressed and listless. While visiting her mother’s grave, the peach she offers to her mother is magically replaced by a wooden box and inside is a dog. Dog urges Ai to act to restore balance by rescuing her kidnapped sisters from the Oni planet. The two are joined on this adventure by Munki, a spaceship pilot, and set off almost immediately for the Oni homeworld.

This is an interesting premise built on common mythological elements. The prologue, in particular, has more in common with the Christian version of Adam and Eve than with Momotaro. The problem is that this origin story does not connect to Ai’s motivations at all. And the stellar art style can’t save it from weak writing.

Ai’s mother just acts as plot exposition and then dies of old age; the sexual violence themes explored in the beginning through Akuma and the Oni are never really given any depth; Ai is hinted at being the reincarnation of Momotekku but the story really doesn’t do anything with it or her depression over her mothers death; and Munki and Dog are just there. The characters have no depth and just feel like they are moved from set piece to set piece with no true emotional conflict tying them to the larger conflict.

In the beginning, I likened this piece aesthetically to Aeon Flux and indulge me as I make another comparison. For all of Aeon Flux’s flaws, one thing it does right is make sure that Aeon’s motivations are linked to the wider plot. Aeon’s sister, Una, dies, motivating Aeon to do everything in her power to find out the reason she was killed. When it is revealed why Una is killed at the mid-point twist - because she was pregnant; in a society where everyone is infertile clones - that leads Aeon into becoming apart of the larger “world shattering” plot occurring and siding with Trevor Goodchild her historic enemy as he tries to take down his despotic brother while trying to save the cure for infertility. Extremely simplified - and probably badly remembered - plot summary aside, there is no character moment like this for Ai. Her mother dies not because of the Oni and Akuma but because of old age. Her relationships with Munki and Dog are shallow, to the point that she just puts up with Dog for most of the plot. And she doesn’t have any on page relationships with her Peach sisters for her to be fully motivated and committed to saving them.

So what is meant to be a central theme, Ai coming out of her shell of depression and connecting with her sisters by saving them, is shallow and hollow because she has no meaningful relationship with the cast of characters she is given to act against. Her only meaningful relationship, with her mother, is not explored beyond the prologue pages. And her mother’s death is not connected to Akuma and the Oni plot, as she dies of old age, and she does not appear past the prologue acting as exposition on why this conflict exists. Her relationships with Munki and Dog serve only to move her towards the Oni planet. There is a montage of Ai bonding with Munki and Dog while repairing Munki’s ship. But, there is not enough interaction between the three to justify why Ai goes from being closed off to having a friendship with them in a short period of time.

There is also no interaction between Ai and Akuma until the finale confrontation so I struggled to care about why Akuma was waiting for Momotekku to be reincarnated other than she was his wife and he felt an abusive possessive ownership over her - which is more me extraploitating from the text then the text itself because it doesn’t explain it at all. Ai doesn’t seem to care or be aware that she might be the reincarnation of Momotekku till that final confrontation - and beyond the prologue, neither does the story. Ending in an empty and hollow confrontation with no real conflict.

However, though the writing is incredibly flawed, the artwork is beautiful. Mostly done in a monotone of red and pink hues and values, Cook makes her characters pop off the page and gives dynamic and frantic energy to her fight scenes. The thin line weight and eiree pin point eyes with feather-like eyelashes also give the characters an eretheral quality that is both haunting and beautiful and is reminiscent of Ligne Claire (Clear Line) art that was popularised by Herge the creator of Tintin. On art alone, this work has a fantastic style to it and I kind of wish I had backed the Sparrowsong Kickstarter so I had some more of Cook’s narrative work as a comparison. So, while I didn’t enjoy Momotekku like I had hoped, I will likely be picking up some prints from Alxndra Cook’s online store.

While Momotekku was a let down in writing due to flat characters with unclear motivations and a lack of stakes leading back to the wider conflict. I have found a new artist to follow in Alxndra Cook, whose Ligne Claire art style captivates the reader with its ethereal beauty. I want to read more from her to see if she is an artist that I follow just for her art or if I will enjoy her comics as well.

Thank you for reading this review of Momotekku by Alxndra Cook (Koguchi Press, 2022). Consider subscribing to see my future reviews of mainly comics, manga, and SFF fiction and articles relating to writing and pop culture. Or consider buying me a Kofi so I can continue to deliver you new content in this new year.

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Introduction

Considering my last three years of posting and reading habits being non-existent, Q1 2025 is a remarkable improvement. I had a turbulent Christmas period with work, but that spurred me on to restart writing again as an outlet. I also fractured my arm in March, which has not been great for my mental or financial health - since work won’t let me come back till I have “full work clearance” despite the fact they could accommodate me. However, that has allowed me some extra spoons to devote to The Back Catalogue, refreshing my social media graphics and creating a backlog of posts. We had some hiccups with consistency here and there, but it looks like a brighter future ahead for both myself personally and The Back Catalogue in general.

Books

In Q1 of 2025, I started 16 books and read 14 of them. Most of them are 3-star reads, with a few standouts like A Dowry of Blood, The Beast of Hadingley Hill, and Lunar Boy. The Female authors and Sapphic reads have dominated my reading habits, which, considering I am mainly an Achillean reader, I gaslit myself into thinking I wasn’t reading enough sapphic lit I’m kind of proud of.

Most of my reading came from comics, graphic novels, & manga, making up 53.4% of my reading, with fiction novels being my second most-read category at 33.3%. And I mostly owned the titles I was reading (46.%) with library borrows (26.%) taking second place where I acquire my reads. 20% of my reads were ARCs with 1/3 being reviewed so far.

Demographic-wise YA titles dominated my TBR at 40%, as did Queer books 66.7% (Main Character Queer Representation). While I had a stellar Sapphic quarter in reading, I did, however, notice that the majority of my books read in the Achillean category were by female authors, and I could improve on reading male-written Achillean books. I could also do with increasing the number of books with disability representation that I read, which only sits at 20%

The amount of books I read by BIPOC authors this quarter was 35.7%, and they were mainly American authors (African American and Nigerian American). With Indonesian and Japanese being the other two BIPOC ethnicities I read from. Usually, Japanese authors dominate my statistics because I read a lot of manga, which skews my data, but I haven’t read a lot of manga this quarter - though once my arm heals up, I’m raiding my book boxes. I need to read more Indigenous works and diversify the regions I am reading from.

Taking into account all the statistics from this quarter, I think that going into Q2 2025, my top three reading goals will be:

1. Read 20 Books

2. Read at least 3 Achillean books by Male Authors

3. ARC read/review ratio 50%1

TV Shows & Movies

This is a category of media I’m lagging behind, having only watched one movie - Wicked - and one TV show - Betrayal: The Perfect Husband - to my recollection. Lots of clips of TV shows on YouTube shorts - especially Bob Hearts Abishola - but not a lot of dedicated TV and Movie watching for me.

Bob Hearts Abishola is a bit dated, especially considering how recently it was produced, relying on the stereotypical fish-out-of-water humor, but there is also just something sincere about Bob and Abishola’s relationship that makes me gobble clips up. Abishola’s Uncle Tunde and Aunt Olu are delightful characters full of mischief and support for everyone around them. And I hate that there is no way to watch it in Australia.

I adored Wicked and can see now why the musical was such a smash hit. The casting of Cynthia Erivo as Elphaba is also inspired, taking the racial discrimination themes of the film to the next level - something a white actor could not have done. Themes like “be good” and songs like I’m Not That Girl just have a different impact when you have a racially marginalised actor in the role of Elphaba.

Betrayal: The Perfect Husband, however, was a bit of a letdown. I got hooked into it cause I follow Mike Rafi on social media, a lawyer who worked on the case of this season, and I love the analytical and legal side of true crime. However, the show itself is more about the emotional betrayal - an important topic to discuss, but not what I was looking for in a true crime documentary. However, it did jumpstart my review streak which only got broken in mid-February. So while a) it's not my usual review wheel-house and b) it's not what I hoped it would be about, I’m glad it helped me get back into writing.

The one last thing I will beg you all to watch is Pretty Pretty Please I Don’t Want to be a Magical Girl by Kiana Khansmith. It’s only an animatic, but in a short 11 minutes, this witty pilot concept really sells you on its story and characters. At 3.1m views at the time of writing and 536K likes on YouTube I hope it gets picked up by a studio for a full series. I love this new take on the magical genre and hope for more episodes soon.

I want to get back into reviewing and analysing movies and TV in Q2, so my top three goals are going to be:

1. 4 films watched and reviewed

2. At least 1/2 where the directors are Black or Indigenous

3. 1 review of a TV show or anime

Gaming

ESO continues to be my main stay in gaming since my Aunt got me hooked on it nearly two years ago. However, I have had to slow down due to my fractured arm because typing and using a controller hurts for long periods. Which sucks cause I recently got into PVP and I just loved logging on after work and following the zerg around for a few hours before going to bed. I wouldn’t say I’m any good, and I need to change my gear to a more meta-relevant set, but it’s still fun anyway.

Elden Ring was my go to second game for a while, but I haven’t played in the last month - and probably couldn’t for long periods at the moment anyway. But once my arm heals up, I need to get back into it and finish the base game. I’m still on the fence about whether I want to get Night Reign as I prefer solo play, but we’ll see once May rolls around.

Instead, my second go-to has switched to Dwarf Fortress and Ticket to Ride - less controls, less pain. Which have their own addictive qualities. My fortress in Dwarf Fortress usually dies pretty quickly, but I’ve managed to get the hang of the gameplay loop after about two years. I still think it can be pretty unintuitive, to the point of frustration at times, but it is a game I keep coming back to when I need my management sim itch scratched.

Three other games I got addicted to were Lowland Keepers, Dragon Sweeper, & Solitomb - all available on itch.io. Dragon Sweeper and Solitomb are innovative takes on the classics Mine Sweeper and Solitaire. Lowlands Keeper is a challenging card game where the strategy is to take the least damage possible while maximising your damage against your opponents. I sunk hours into all three of these games and will probably sink hours more into them.

Another game I recently enjoyed from itch was The Dark Queen of Mortholme. It is very much an onrails experience, but it tells a rather emotionally compelling story of a Dark Queen and Hero stuck in a time loop until inevitable defeat. I think if you're a fan of This is How You Lose The Time War and how it grapples with the emotions of time and war, this short narrative game might be up our alley.

Lastly I got back into Pokemon Go, which has been a great motivator for me to go on walks. However, it got off to a rocky start - my therapist told me to go outside, and I trip over an electrical box, fracturing my radial bone playing Pokemon Go. 100% my fault, but its a situation that still sucks because of the pain and being out of work till I can get full clearance. Strangely, tripping over did not make me adverse to playing Pokemon Go, and the consistent exercise has been great for my mental health during my recovery. I did, however upgrade my setup with an old Pokeball+ I had from Let’s Go Pikachu, so I’m less of a safety hazard.

I don’t have any specific gaming goals this quarter other than finishing the base game of Elden Ring.

TTRPGS

I haven’t been playing too many TTRPGs as of late. I am a solo player so I gravitate towards journalling games, but I don’t mind crunch as long as it’s not overly complex. I also really just love exploring TTRPG tools as much as I love playing. Currently, I’m in the middle of mapping out a megadungeon inspired by what I rolled up from Roguelike Megadungeon.

I love its core dungeon design loop which could be reskinned to any scenario. The four-level design gives you nice little blocks that you can combine in any fashion. One of the maps I made extending upon Roguelike Megadungeon core concept was a marketplace with each six room level being a building - with some extras added in. I veered towards a marketplace in this map because the way you connect rooms in Roguelike Megadungeon ends up with very interesting shapes. Take the second building from the top right below; you can imagine the three long, u-shaped rooms as a series of market stalls with a larger shop attached behind. The smaller 2x2 room might be a closet or storage, while the 2x4 room might be a small shop. There are infinite ways that you could take the output from Roguelike Megadungeon and come up with new maps and rooms.

One of the things that getting into TTRPGs has rekindled in me is my love of lore crafting. I often feel like a Lore Crafter first and a writer second because it’s the process of building and populating worlds that I love the most. And tools like Roguelike Megadungeon allow me to jot down little pieces of worlds without the commitment of a full-length novel. However, I really want to play more narrative-focused games this Q2 and flex more of my story telling skills through this hobby.

Writing

Other than my semi-regular reviews I haven’t done much writing. I want to get back into it, but a lot of my files are currently stuck on my NAS, which isn’t working. I had planned to get it up and running before the end of March - since it should be an easy fix - and then dumb me tripped over an electrical box and can’t lift. I’m starting to get to the point in my recovery where that is becoming less of a problem. I do have some files related to a few TTRPG projects on my main hard drive, though and have been working on them. My main goal is to get back into consistently writing fiction while finishing a few of the easier projects I’m in the middle of.

Personal Life

I started the year in a really bad place, mainly from work stress, but I sought out well-overdue help. Therapy has been a godsend cause it has given me small goals outside of work to work towards that are slowly improving my mental health overall. Being mostly consistent with reviews on this blog has helped as I felt stuck in a rut for a long time, and this gives me a little purpose outside of work and gaming.

However, injuring myself and being out of work has added a lot of stress to my plate, mainly from the financial burden. I’m lucky that last year I created an emergency fund so I’m not completely screwed, but I’ve set back my mental health. Though it has given me time to work a bit more on The Back Catalogue in ways I didn’t have the spoons for as a full-time employee who is also disabled.

Conclusion

At the moment, I’m channeling the energy of the turtle—slow and steady improvements and progress. And though it doesn’t feel like it, I’m seeing results. This entire blog post is a testament to it. While it is hard at times, I definitely want to keep up and improve upon everything I saw gains in Q1 and continue to bring my audience, for whom I’m entirely grateful, more new media reviews and recommendations going forward.

Thank you for being on this journey with me,

Eternally Grateful - Jack

Thank you for reading my January- March 2025 Reading Wrap-Up. Consider subscribing to my future reviews of mainly comics, manga, and SFF fiction and articles relating to writing and pop culture. Or consider buying me a Kofi so I can continue to deliver you new content in this new year.

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The Beast of Hadingley Hill by HoratioMarissa (Webtoon Canvas, 2021-present)

Information

Genre: Fantasy

Demographic: Young Adult

Length: 61 Chapters in Act 1; 136 Chapters Total as of December 2024

Content Advisory: This work contains themes of Violence

Representation: Sapphic Main Character, LGBTQIA+ themes, Racially Diverse Cast

Links: Webtoons

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Review

A wonderful loose retelling of the Beauty and the Beast fable with a sapphic slow-burn romance, a deep world mystery yet to be uncovered, and a biting friendship.

Running away from her problems, Mallory Blazh volunteers herself as the lady’s maid of the “Beast of Hadingley Hill.” Cursed as a child by a witch Clara Maria’s princess Juliette must find true love to break the barrier isolating Clara Maria from the rest of the world. However, who would want to marry a beast?

Mallory is our main POV character, and through her, we learn the deeper depths of the tragedy that is happening to Juliette. Trapped in a monstrous body and unable to find someone to truly love her to break the curse, Princess Juliette is lonely, and her kingdom is dying. Mallory is the first maid in a long time who has not quit her job, either after a short period or on the spot; even when times get tough, their friendship is the heart of this webtoon. But, Mallory has her own secrets that pushed her towards servitude in Hadingley Hill and struggles to keep her head down and hold her tongue due to her forthright nature. However, while Juliette's monstrous appearance puts her at a distance from those around her, it is Mallory’s forthrightness and ability to see the lonely and kind-hearted woman underneath the monstrous guise that allows the two to truly connect. The more Mallory gets to know Juliette, the more frustrated she becomes with the world that isolates her just because of her monstrous appearance and refuses to see the kind-hearted and lonely woman underneath. The chemistry between Mallory and Juliette is undeniable, but it is a slow burn. Neither fully realising or acting on the embers of attraction during this act, but the author has left plenty of room to expand upon their relationship in less platonic ways.

Juliette, despite her isolation is kind-hearted and lonely with a wonderfully expressive nature, even in her monstrous form. Her emotions come across in the simplest of actions. Whether that be hiding her face - in embarrassment or fear of disgust - or the joy of her girlish crush on Damien and friendship with Mallory. Her monstrous form is a reflection of her emotional state, from her posture, to her glowing eyes, and tentacle hair that defies gravity. Each piece is crafted onto the page wonderfully. Her kind-hearted nature is also reflected in how she treats those around her, including the servants. But, this is also a product of her upbringing. Having been cursed from such a young age, she is acutely aware of people’s reactions to her eldritch appearance, adjusting her tone and appearance to placate them, often at the cost of true connection. She is also acutely aware of how Clara Maria’s hope rests on her shoulders - if Juliette does not find true love and marry Clara Maria will fall to ruin. Because of this, watching the hope and despair that Juliette is subject to when viewings for a suitor resume is crushing. There are only a handful of people to whom Juliette shows her true range of emotions and watching Mallory slowly become privy to that world because of her steadfast support is the light at the end of a dark tunnel.

Mallory also has a wonderfully biting friendship with Sam, Juliette’s main guard. Initially disliking each other, they grow to trust and lean on each other when it comes to Juliette’s care. Out of everyone within the castle, Sam and Mallory truly care about Juliette in ways that even her father, the king, does not. This allows them to at first begrudgingly come to a mutual understanding that grows into a genuine friendship centred not only on Juliette’s well-being but also mutual trust. However, because their friendship begins as this prickly, begrudging allyship, it allows for some biting banter between the two as they warm up to each other. They are two people with similar goals but who don’t yet trust each other or understand how to work together. But, eventually they come to that mutual understanding.

However while I loved the main characters, I often felt because the story is so contained within the one setting that is - so far - not as marginalised by the larger conflict of the curse, isolation, and dwindling resources from those problems it meant that the solution - Juliette finding true love - didn’t feel like it needed an immediate resolution. It is as distant and isolated as Juliette is in her lonely castle tower. There is a diverse set of guards, servants, suitors, and scholarly residents of the castle that surround Mallory on her journey as a lady’s maid. Flitting in and out of the story as needed and adding extra info to the world lore. But except for a select few like Sam, their inclusion felt tertiary adding only extra flavour hinting at the larger world without any distinction between them - especially amongst the servants. I felt that if The Beast of Hadingley Hill had been set elsewhere in the realm, the threat of the curse and isolation would have played a more crucial role in this first act. Instead, it is slow-smouldering tension that will hopefully ignite into a firestorm in later acts.

My other minor problem with this work is that the chapters are so short that it doesn’t feel like the story has room to breathe at times before your being interrupted. It felt as though I was given one paragraph or page of a novel at a time and then cut off in the middle of the action before being given the next chunk. Since I was reading this all in one go after all of the chapters in Act One had already been released, there was less interruption to my reading experience, but I know if I had read this as it was release,d I would have been frustrated with the length.

Overall, The Beast of Hadingley Hil,l with its slow-burn romance, biting friendship, and larger world mystery, is a series I can’t wait to dive back into. Mallory and Juliette have been wonderful characters to follow with so much potential for growth and romance. I will be jumping into Act Two as soon as possible and looking out for Act Three when it drops (expected later in 2025). If you want to read The Beast of Hadingley Hill yourself, head over to Webtoons to read it for free.

Thank you for reading this review of The Beast of Hadingley Hill by HoratioMarissa (Webtoon Canvas, 2021-present). Consider subscribing to see my future reviews of mainly comics, manga, and SFF fiction and articles relating to writing and pop culture. Or consider buying me a Kofi so I can continue to deliver you new content in this new year.

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The Marble Queen Written by Anna Kopp & Illustrated by Gabrielle Kari (Dark Horse, 2024)

Information

Genre: Fantasy, Romance

Demographic: Young Adult

Length: 336 Pages

Content Advisory: This work contains themes of Death, Violence, Panic Attacks/Disorders & Anxiety & Depression, War, Murder, Homophobia, Lesbophobia

Representation: Sapphic Main Character, LGBTQIA+ themes

Links: Goodreads, Storygraph

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Review

A magical exploration of anxiety, depression, and love set against a tumultuous political landscape.

After months of bombardment by pirates, the country of Marion is at its breaking point. Isolated, hungry and unable to bring trade to ease the civil unrest they arrange for their princess Amelia to marry a candidate of her choosing to stabilise the growing unrest with new wealth from the alliance. Amelia not even looking at the candidates tells her father to marry her to the wealthiest one. Shipped out to the isolationist nation of Iliad she initially thinks she is being married to Prince Mateo but ends up married to Iliad’sMarble Queen Salira instead.

Amelia and her anxiety is the heart of the work. The artist Gabrielle Kari wonderfully depicts the depths of Amelia’s despair and anxiety. Using suffocating thorn imagery to highlight Amelia’s tumultuous state of mind. Amelia in comparison to many other romantasy heroines is a rather weak character, though politically savvy she lacks confidence and has immense amounts of depression and anxiety even before setting foot on Iliad’s shores. She is a character that has to grow and fight despite her weakness becoming more confident and less anxious over time, though she never really overcomes it. Blossoming instead because of the new relationships she forms - both platonic and romantic - and learning to lean on others as well as becoming more confident as she spreads her wings away from her stifling homeland.

Salira, our female romantic lead, however, is more standoffish. Coming off as cool aloof and put together in comparison to Amelia. However, the political instability inside of Iliad as well as her troublesome relationship with her ex worries her mind in the background. But through the lens of Amelia, she is the perfect woman capable and in control despite everything that is thrown at her. It is through truly getting to know each other that both characters realise each other weakness and strengths and learn to lean on each other. However, because of the story being told from Amelia’s sole POV we get less of her interiority than we do of Amelia’s. And Salira is often portrayed as the romantic ideal hero without flaws. As Amelia begins to connect with Salira we get more privy to her emotional state and she becomes less of an untouchable, marble queen and more of a loving but shy partner that we catch early glimpses of.

The cast is rounded out by a number of secondary characters that support and thwart our main protagonists along the road. From the queen’s brother Prince Mateo, his wife Anita, the enigmatic priestess Corina, Captain Claude, Personal Guard Iris, and Councilman Estevan each act as necessary steps in Amelia’s journey to understanding the political unrest within Iliad that affects her own country as well. However, despite having a robust cast of characters I do feel that they are underdeveloped at times with the narrative relying too much on mystery and underwhelming foreshadowing for you to understand the secondary characters’ deeper motivations. This leads to a third-act twist that while foreshadowed with not very strongly reinforced motivations. The foreshadowing is inadequate enough that the looming threat of pirates, political unrest, anxiety and depression, and the “will they won’t they” romance feel more relevant as conflict motivators for Amelia and Salira than the antagonists pulling the strings behind the scenes who only really reveal themselves at the end. The skeleton of the storyline is there but without the deeper execution needed to fully sell it. And I feel that if this was a longer series instead of a single volume the writing could have deeply explored each secondary character’s motivation and connection to Iliad and its unrest as well as Amelia’s relationship to the her new home country to fully sell the point and give a well-rounded cast.

However, despite the small disappointments I had with the narrative I absolutely love the art. Gabrielle Kari’s art style is reminiscent of webtoons with anime-esque character designs and flat colour rendition. However, their ability to depict Amelia’s anxiety, depression, and confusion is unpaired. Bringing dynamic life to scenes with suffocating imagery and vivid emotions. The costume design is also marvellous with Amelia and Salira having several different outfits depending on the political situation they find themselves in. Each beautiful designed to match the mood the artist wants to extract from the text.

I also really enjoyed the slow-building romance between Amelia and Salira. Amelia so focused on Marion’s political future doesn’t even consider Salira as a romantic partner till she finds herself in Iliad. Though the attraction between the pair is instantaneous Amelia pushes down her desire for Salira at first to “fulfil her duty to her kingdom,” thinking at first that she will be married to a man to save Marion to slowly realising that Salira doesn’t just want a “for show” political marriage but a true partnership. Kopp’s writing and Kari’s depiction of Amelia’s lesbian-panic as she discovers her immediate but suppressed attraction to Salira is wonderful bringing levity to this heavier work.

Salira’s attraction as well is instantaneous but much more subdued than Amelia’s. From their very first meeting Salira shows interest in Amelia as a partner, but her reserved nature doesn’t as well as Amelia’s own narrator bias means she isn’t as showy with her emotions to the reader. Salira is also a character that wants to do right by Amelia always letting her take her time in moving their relationship forward or giving her an out if she believes she has crossed a boundary. Queen Salira is the archetypical romantic lead ideal and as Amelia grows to love her for her strength, intelligence, and beauty while recognising her flaws so do we the audience.

Though it had its flaws I truly enjoyed The Marble Queen and would love to see more sapphic romantasy from Anna Kopp and Gabrielle Kari - either individually or in another collaboration. The depiction of Amelia’s depression and anxiety as well as lesbian-panic made reading her story such a ride of pain and joy with art that truly brought out that roller coaster of emotions. I can’t wait to see what these two creators bring out next.

Thank you for reading this review of The Marble Queen Written by Anna Kopp & Illustrated by Gabrielle Kari (Dark Horse, 2024) consider subscribing to see my future reviews of mainly comics, manga, and SFF fiction and articles relating to writing and pop culture. Or consider buying me a Kofi so I can continue to deliver you new content in this new year.

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Artie and the Wolf Moon by Oliva Stephens (Graphic Universe, 2021)

Information

Genre: Fantasy, Coming-Of-Age

Demographic: Young Adult / Upper Middle Grade

Length: 256 Pages

Content Advisory: This work contains themes of Death of a Parent/Guardian, Bullying, Blood, Violence, Toxic Friendships, Racism, and Slavery.

Representation: Black Main Character written by Black Author, Sapphic Main Character

Links: Goodreads, Storygraph

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Review

Discovering that she comes from a line of werewolves Artemis “Artie” Irvin delves into her family history, her father’s death, reconnecting with her family, and a newfound crush all while vampires hunt her.

Artie and the Wolf Moon is primarily about family history and reconnecting. As Artie discovers her werewolf history, we see her and her mother heal their family trauma, reconnect, and build a community with those who fully accept her as she is. This wonderful depiction of the Black community and family strengthens our protagonists for the better. The focus on family is the greatest strength of this work, especially the emphasis on reconnecting. Because of this, the older generation gets a lot of development and page space to recount and reconnect while the younger generation that Artie is a part of is a bit more flat on character development. Loretta, Artie’s mother, is one of the older-generation werewolves with the most character development. Through taking her daughter to Willow Ridge, a werewolf community, to learn to control her new powers she reconnects with old friends and finally gets to heal from the trauma of her husband’s death at vampire hands. And Artie finally learns about the father she has always felt close to through his photography but never met as the various elder werewolves share their history.

Artie and the Wolf Moon also adds an interesting take on Werewolf and vampire lore. Werewolves - at least Artie’s line - were born from a family of escaped slaves given the power of transformation by a mother wolf. It was “The Gift of Freedom” as the story calls it. And with that gift, they formed semi-isolationist communities to protect and care for each other while passing on their history through storytelling. Loretta’s central conflict is her love for Artie’s human father putting her at odds with her community. This change to the werewolf and the focus on family history gives Artie and the Wolf Moon an American Folklore feel.

Vampires however are born from death, literally. Killing a vampire revives all their previous kills as vampires themselves transforming them into horrifying creatures only consumed by manipulation, bloodlust and death. While vampires serve as the primary antagonists to Artie and her family they don’t show up to the 3rd act - though they are foreshadowed. And the central conflict instead tends to be an emotional one.

There is one main vampire that Artie interacts with before that, Cat, who befriends Artie under false pretences. However, I would have liked to see more interactions between Artie, the younger werewolves, and Cat that contrast the loving environment of the werewolf community versus Cat’s shallow and manipulative friendship. The sequence where Cat’s friendship is revealed to the reader as toxic happens over a two-page spread in the comic right after she is introduced so it feels like a sudden flip when she is revealed at the end to be a vampire. Storywise, it makes sense but feels shallow.

I love the art in Artie and the Wolf Moon, while the characters are rendered in flat colours with bold outlines the werewolf transformation scenes and backgrounds are far more textured with scratchy and harsh brush strokes making the characters pop off the page and the action scenes dynamic. The boldness of the colors even came across on my Boox Go Color 7 which I’m still fine-tuning to get the optimal image quality for reading comics.

There is also an artistic shift between the present narrative and the various folk stories Artie is told about the history of her people and vampires. The style shifts from a more cartoony but realistic image to one more reminiscent of rock art with a simpler more exaggerated style. The family history is also told via a quilted blanket, a traditional folk art in many communities for capturing family history as well as a tool used in the underground railroad as a means of communication between enslaved peoples, with the panels appearing stitched together. As the werewolves huddle around the blanket of their history this stylistic shift enhances the themes of family, history, and folklore wonderfully.

Artie and the Wolf Moon was a wonderful read full of familiar love and history. With gorgeous art that brings the story to life. I will absolutely be trying to track down more of Olivia Stephen’s work to read in the future and already have my eye on The Ballad For Black Cassandra for my TBR.

Thank you for reading this review of Artie and the Wolf Moon by Oliva Stephens (Graphic Universe, 2021) consider subscribing to see my future reviews of mainly comics, manga, and SFF fiction and articles relating to writing and pop culture. Or consider buying me a Kofi so I can continue to deliver you new content in this new year.

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You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight by Kalynn Bayron (Bloomsbury YA, 2023)

Information

Genre: Horror, Camp Setting

Demographic: Young Adult

Length: 242 pages, 6 hours 14 minutes

Content Advisory: This work contains moderate horror themes, gun violence, death and murder, and animal cruelty.

Representation: Black MC written by Black Author, Sapphic MC

Links: Goodreads, Storygraph

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Review

For fans of B-grade horror films You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight is a fast-paced thrilling ride.

You’re Not Supposed To Die Tonight feels like a distillation of eighties and nineties horror movies in the novel format. Beat for beat it recreates the charm of these movies; setup the spooky setting, have one or two spooky events happen but don’t immediately set up the red flag for our cast, heighten the danger at the conclusion of act one, investigate while ratcheting up the tension and danger, leading into the conclusion of the mystery and the final confrontation, that is halted by a twist ending, epilogue/denouement. On a beat-by-beat level Bayron hits all our favourites and for the most part, makes it work with a main character fit for the role. However, because both our wider setting and antagonists lack depth the story ends up feeling like certain events only happen because that is what is supposed to happen next in accordance with the “horror rules.”

Our main character, Charity the Final Girl, has worked at Camp Mirror Lake for several summers. Camp Mirror Lake is the ominous setting of a fictional horror movie, The Curse of Camp Mirror Lake, now a horror simulation owned by the absentee Mr Lamount and run by teenage staff. They spend their summers scaring guests by reenacting all of the audience’s favourite horror tropes and scenes from the movie with the Final Girl leading the charge. Recently promoted Charity thrives in this role despite its difficulties. The camp is understaffed, with many teens just ditching halfway through the season, and old and run down with dated facilities and lack of cellphone reception. Despite excelling at playing a fictional final girl Charity finds herself out of her depth when real horror comes knocking on the teens’ doorstep.

Rounding out the cast is Charity’s best friend Tasha, their mutual friend Paige an amateur reporter and confessed horror fanatic who knows all the rules, her kind-hearted girlfriend Bezi, seasoned operator Kyle, and tag-a-longs Porter and Javier. Of the group Paige is the most memorable being the audience’s insight into horror tropes, she is also the most energetic and enthusiastic to be there. While the other members of the cast feel like extras meant to be gruesomely picked off one by one.

I would have liked to see more depth out of Bezi and Kyle. Bezi acts as charity’s main emotional support and Kyle as the seasoned operator brings knowledge that other characters don’t have of the camp. But their portrayal was very surface level which didn’t help the feeling that while Bayron can hit the beats of horror she is not able to nail the execution or bring it to a greater depth.

This lack of depth carries onto our antagonists. Our two primary antagonists, Miss Keane and the Owl Society, are less memorable. Miss Keane is your stereotypical crazy gun-wielding cat lady in the woods with deeper knowledge about the mysterious camp. But, she doesn’t have much depth, she is there as our first warning of danger and a gatekeeper of knowledge that our characters foolishly pursue knowing that she is likely to harm them. She feels like the caricature of many other old-wise and sometimes dangerous ladies in horror films, even when we learn her greater connection to the wider threat she never really grows beyond that one note.

The Owl Society is the larger threat - revealed about halfway through as the primary antagonists they are a dangerous and old cult from the area. And unfortunately, they too feel like caricatures. Cheesy lines straight out of bad horror films and all. And if you read this work as something similar to those bad and sometimes good horror B-grade films of the eighties and nineties they fit perfectly. Unfortunately for me, they had little depth and the lack of any characters’ knowledge of them or even their previous activities in the area felt like a bygone relic of the movies this novel is imitating and not a product of the modern hyper-connected world that both the reader and the protagonists live in.

This is one of the big criticisms I have about the logic in You’re Not Supposed To Die Tonight. Because it is heralding back to classic B-grade horror movies it uses tropes and idiosyncracies that worked much better in the time those films were made. Complete isolation without cellphone reception; a lack of knowledge due to it being lost or becoming forbidden over time; all powerful cults that can operate for decades unnoticed. These worked well in these films because the lack of technology and the 24/7 news and entertainment cycle in those eras meant that the audience could suspend their disbelief about the characters’ situational awareness. Because the work is set in the modern period things like the lack of cellphone reception don’t work because most phones can still call 911 without reception - due to connecting to closer towers that may not be from your provider for emergencies. And because the camp is close enough to town for Bezi and Paige to drive in on short notice and reception is spotty at best it isn’t far enough from a cellphone tower that 911 reception would be a problem. And then there is just the lack of any information about the Camp’s original history until our teens go looking when several disappearances and murders have happened on the campground - in this post, Serial age there would have been podcasts, YouTube crack theories and 60-minute exposes on that. The fact that fifty years after the disappearance of several children no one in town knew or spoke of it just doesn’t seem realistic. I think if You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight had been set in the time period of the eighties and nineties I wouldn’t feel as though the logic didn’t work because it could have played with the limitations of the technology of the period.

However, what it lacks in depth it makes up for in its spooky setting. Camp Mirror Lake is the perfect horror setting. A “picturesque” lakeside summer camp in the middle of the woods gives our characters many sets to hide and fight in. Being the former set of a movie and current horror simulation also means that the camp has some unusual additions like cameras, speakers, and tunnels that our characters use to their advantage and Bayronn uses to drive home the fear and danger. Like many old horror films, the setting here is as much a character as our leads. With so much history - that I wished was explored in greater depth - and danger that it comes to life. Bayronn paints a wonderful picture of what Camp Mirror Lake is like that I could close my eyes and almost see it myself.

While I had some logical problems with You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight I overall enjoyed reading it. Each page I could see as a horror movie in my head Bayronn immerses you in the feel of those old movies through her work. It was pulpy fun with the right amount of horrifying that I wouldn’t mind reading again. As I was reading I kept thinking that it would be perfect as a movie or a limited-run TV series that expands on the lore. And Charity as a protagonist is a wonderful leader taking control of the situation despite her fear. You’re Not Supposed to Die Tonight would be perfect to add to your horror TBR later in the year for spooky season.

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A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson (Orbit, 2023; Self-Published, 2021)

Information

Genre: Fantasy, Gothic

Demographic: Adult (General)

Length: 320 pages, 7 hours and 21 minutes

Content Advisory: This work contains moderate themes of emotional, verbal, and physical intimate partner abuse, gaslighting, blood and gore, consensual sexual content, sadomasochism, self-harm, body horror, violence and murder, depression and mania, war, famine, plague, alcohol use; And minor themes of sexual assault (not directed at any named character), drug use, drowning.

Representation: Polyamorous relationships (MMFF main partners), Queer relationships, Bisexual Protagonist

Links: Goodreads, Storygraph

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Review

A hauntingly beautiful and melancholic retelling of Dracula’s Brides.

A Dowry of Blood is haunting and beautiful, sorrowful and yearning all in one. We are led through the story in three acts each centered around one of the unnamed Vampire master’s brides (though strongly suggested to be Dracula) and told through the lens of his first wife Constanta a former Romanian peasant girl who is risen up to lady of his house and wife. Constanta's narration is beautiful luscious and languorously shows you all her complex emotions going from completely enamored with her undead husband to her eventual betrayal of him out of survival and her complex love for her two vampire siblings and lovers. Kristin Atherton’s narration of the audiobook especially enthralls you in Constanta’s story and you feel every emotion of it acutely.

Part One follows Constanta’s early years as a vampire as she grows into her powers and newly undead life flourishing under unusual circumstances. Constanta is giving this shinning bauble that is strength, power, freedom, and revenge all in one and she revels in it at first only to slowly realise the promises of her sire and husband are hollow and the wings he gave her are only so she may fly in his gilded cages. And because of that her by appearances happy marriage is shattered when in part two her husband brings another woman into their marriage, Magdalena, a Spanish noblewoman who is vibrant and politically merciless. However, Magdalena eventually becomes depressed to the point of illness by the isolating immortal life and the imprisonment and control of their husband. In the final part, the brides are joined by Alexei, a poor young Russian actor, who is meant to bring life and happiness back into their marriage. But his feisty nature and unwillingness to just take their master’s wrath or strict rules exposes the house of cards for what it is.

While equal parts melancholy and despair, and lust and yearning this book is not a romance, but a gothic horror with a love-story subplot between the three brides - therefore it doesn’t follow the structure of genre romance and those looking for a deeper romance plot may be left wanting. In my edition of the book it included the story story An Encore of Roses at the end which satisfyingly wraps up the romantic story of the three brides. However, the majority of the piece is focused on the conflicted and complicated feelings of Constanta over her many centuries of life regarding her own vampirism as well as her complicity in her master’s abuse and predation. Because of that,t it is a novel that spends a lot of time in drawing rooms and quiet reflection rather than being action-packed. Constanta’s interiority and reflection on her marriage is the writing’s chief concern and through the three parts, we become intimately familiar with her at different stages of her undead life. We come to know her struggles with her abusive marriage and the only sweet reprieve being her yearning and lust she feels for the other brides as well as the strength that she eventually resolves to have to free herself and those she loves from the cruelty of their vampire husband.

A Dowry of Blood is a masterpiece in gothic literature that reinvents the tale of Dracula’s Brides masterfully. It is no wonder so many people love this hauntingly beautiful tale of despair and triumph. And it certainly has become a favourite of mine.

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Bare Your Teeth: Wicked Ones Duology Book 1 by Twoony (Self-Published, 2025)

Information

Genre: Romance (Hate/Lust), Fantasy, Fae

Demographic: Adult (18+)

Length: 361 Pages

Content Advisory: This work contains mature themes including explicit sexual content, violence & gore, war, PTSD, and death; and moderate themes of sexual assault, homophobia & transphobia, deadnaming, child abuse

Representation: Achillean Romance, Trans-Femme main character

Links: Goodreads, Storygraph

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Review

*ARC REVIEW: I was given an advanced copy of this book to read and review, with thanks to Booksprout and the author Twoony for the eARC.

A wickedly delightful hate-and-lust fae dark romantasy set against the backdrop of a magical war.

Bare Your Teeth is a wickedly delightful hate-and-lust fae dark romantasy starring the fae shade Nicholas Darkmoon and the human medic William Vandervult. Diametrically opposed these two loath each other so delightfully that it creates a vicious banter between the two that develops into lustful secret encounters and shared admiration. However, that does mean that for the majority of the book, the two loath and lust for each other over building a genuine romantic connection, only really coming together in a more romantic sense in the third act.

Despite the romantic pair in Bare Your Teeth having more of a lustful relationship in this first book, that does not mean there isn’t room for romance and a common understanding between the two. Nicholas and William are very similar, powerful, arrogant, and shaped by their environments; the cold and cruel faerie courts for Nicholas and being a child soldier for William. We see in the prologue under happy circumstances William is less closed off, softer, and not just living but thriving. But having this weighty duty of being sent away to war at such a young age and the cruelty of the military has drastically changed him to the point even William no longer recognises who he is though he still is fiercely protective of those he loves. In contrast, Nicholas revels in the attention, power and freedom away from his controlling father the war gives him, but, he has shallow relationships with those around him - from his father, Laurent, who sees him as only a tool, to his sister who wants him dead thinking he will turn as monstrous as their enemy at any second, and even his lover Arden who is using his position near Nicholas and Laurent to ascend in Fae society. William is the first person who doesn’t give a fuck who Nicholas is and honestly shows his disdain and lust for him at the same time and this intrigues Nicholas to no end. Leading the two to come together in a sort of unhealthy coping mechanism of lust-fueled bad decisions to cope with their feelings about the war, how they are treated by fae and humans alike, and their complicated feelings toward each other. Eventuating in them recognising the solace they gain from each other away from the cruelty of their own circumstances.

However, this mutual understanding and shared romance doesn’t hit its stride to the third act with the two seeking a more carnal connection before then. We also don’t really get a sense of how these two will function as a couple outside the dysfunctional setting of war. This leads to a little under-development in the relationship part of the romance that I hope will be expanded upon in the sequel when it comes out. However, the plot is fast-paced moving from action scene to action scene with lustful moments and introspection sprinkled in that it never really bothered me. This fast pace suits the wartime setting as well as the way the narrative focuses on the mental toll of war on our human characters. Bare Your Teeth is great at showing how William’s self-worth and humanity have been affected by his long deployment as well as his 180 personality change as a result of it. While also showing Nicholas's desire for a more human connection with those he is close to. There is an irony in the fact that Fae are reviled for their cruelty by their human allies but humans are just as cruel, capricious, and senselessly violent. It is through their relationship both Nicholas and William regain some of their humanity despite their circumstances.

Besides William and Nicholas, we also get a third POV character in the form of William’s best friend Charmaine. Charmaine is a trans-woman who hides her identity to protect herself from the cruelty and discrimination of the army. Charmaine is a lot like the younger William, having not lost all hope yet and often provides a bit of optimism in comparison to the cynical William. However, she is also a realist and is well aware of their circumstances and how it all could go wrong at any time and provides a counter view of the ongoing events. Charmaine is the well-needed injection of humanity into this novel that often focuses on the crueller aspects of our characters. As William's only true friend among the human soldiers. As his conscious and drive to live she plays a vital role in the narrative. However, she only has a few select chapters of narration as the secondary POV character to our two main protagonists. I hope in the second book we get more of Charmaine’s POV as she is often a delight to read.

The main antagonist Calix Fearworn however is less interesting. A stock standard “magical being driven mad by his power and curiosity” he often doesn’t play an active role in the narrative. Our heroes more often face his monstrous creations than the dangerous fae shade himself. His motivations also feel underdeveloped and two-dimensional. And the final confrontation was so quick that it felt anti-climactic. Instead, a lot of the antagonism in this book is better developed on characters like William’s fellow soldiers - whose mistrust and xenophobia towards fae as well as cruelty make his relationship with Nicholas dangerous - or Laurent - Nicholas’ powerful and controlling father. Because even when they are not physically there - and Laurent isn’t for most of the narrative - we still feel the effects of their toll on the characters. Because of these elements, Fearworn feels more like a plot-device antagonist over the themes of war, cruelty, and control that permeate throughout the narrative and are acted upon by human and fae alike.

Overall Bare Your Teeth was a fast-paced and heat-filled ride with a delightful hate-lust plot and two well-rounded protagonists with excellent banter that have the potential to expand upon romantic connection in the sequel. I can’t wait for the sequel when it drops to see the end of Nicholas’ and William’s story.

Thank you for reading this review of Bare Your Teeth: Wicked Ones Duology Book 1 by Twoony (Self-Published, 2025) consider subscribing to see my future reviews of mainly comics, manga, and SFF fiction and articles relating to writing and pop culture. Or consider buying me a Kofi so I can continue to deliver you new content in this new year.

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Rune: The Tale of a Thousand Faces by Carlos Sánchez (Flying Eye Books, 2024)

Information

Genre: Fantasy, Adventure

Demographic: Middle Grade

Length: 144 pages

Content Advisory: This work contains minor themes of fantasy violence and bullying

Representation: Deaf main character, multiple characters who can sign, sapphic main character (Sophie)

Links: Goodreads, Storygraph

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Review

A gorgeous work of art with loveable and diverse characters overcoming adversity in a strange new land.

Rune: The Tale of A Thousand Faces is an imaginative fantasy adventure that combines the best elements of Adventure Times zany character and world design, Steven Universe’s diverse cast and colourful palettes, and Over the Garden Walls's strange, magical and somewhat frightening adventure.

In this comic, we follow friends Chiri and Dai as they accidentally stumble into the magical world of Puddin’. A world full of magic, alchemy and strange creatures. Hunted by the Thousand Faces Monster the duo are joined by druid Sophie and the warrior Oko to make the journey home. Developing sword-fighting skills and magic along the way.

Our main female protagonist Chiri is deaf and uses both hearing aids and sign language to communicate with her companions and the audience. Carlos Sánchez weaves her disability into a wonderful gift that enhances her magical ability inside of Puddin’ with wizard signs being similar to sign language that Chiri uses. While Chiri’s adventurous nature revels in her adventure in Puddin’ Dai is more of a scardey cat who must learn to overcome his fear and stand up for himself whether that be against bullies or the ominous Thousand Faces Monster.

While intended as a series the story of this first volume is pretty self-contained having a neat resolution that leaves further mysteries and adventures to be explored in later volumes (not yet announced). The only disappointment I had with this book is that I would have liked to see more confrontations between Chiri and Dai and the Thousand Faces Monster that reinforced Dai’s fears as well as gave room for a more direct showing of our characters growing their powers that wasn’t in a travelling montage. Which for me would have delivered a more satisfying final confrontation. However, even with that small weak point, this is an exciting adventure with a satisfying conclusion.

The art of Rune is gorgeous from the spot shimmer foiling on the cover that would attract any kiddo’s eyes, to the gorgeous two-page spreads that populate the work. There is so much detail in the backgrounds that make the story and world more vibrant that I’m constantly discovering new details. The colour palette is also gorgeous. Comprising primarily of rich pinks, blues, and yellows that Sánchez switches between to highlight different scenes and panels. Masterfully he draws your eye along the page. While I 100% believe comics stand on their own as a medium without the need for adaption, I can also see Middle-Grade children eating up Rune as an animation.

Rune: The Tale of a Thousand Faces was a wonderful read, with gorgeous art and diverse and loveable characters. I can’t wait for the next instalment in this comic series, to see our young heroes grow and discover the mysteries left unanswered.

Thank you for reading this review of Rune: The Tale of a Thousand Faces by Carlos Sánchez (Flying Eye Books, 2024) consider subscribing to see my future reviews of mainly comics, manga, and SFF fiction and articles relating to writing and pop culture. Or consider buying me a Kofi so I can continue to deliver you new content in this new year.

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Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher (Tor, 2023)

Information

Genre: Fantasy, Fairy Tale Retelling (Sleeping Beauty)

Demographic: Adult (General)

Length: 128 pages, 3 hours and 43 minutes

Content Advisory: This work contains moderate themes of changelings, death, injury, animal cruelty, abuse of a corpse, and abuse in general.

Representation: non-devout Muslim main character written by a non-muslim author1

A melancholic retelling of Sleeping Beauty.

Thornhedge is an imaginative and melancholic retelling of Sleeping Beauty that flips the traditional tale on its head to tell it from the perspective of the supposedly evil faerie who cast the curse on the princess in the tower. Like many modern retellings of fables from our youth, the truth in this instance is a lot messier and more complicated.

Thornhedge immerses you in our protagonist Toadling’s tragic tale, from her kidnapping by fae as a babe - but having the luck to grow up amongst loving fae - to her reluctant return to the human world and the tragedies that ensue thereafter as she tries to contain the changeling threat that took her place. Toadling is stuck metaphorically and mentally by her circumstances and must overcome them to move forward. And the tower surrounded by thick brambles and thorns is her prison as much as it is the changeling inside.

And this is reflected in how passive Toadling is as a character for most of the book. Our deuteragonist, Halim and non-devout Muslim knight, is far more active in the story than Toadling, pushing onwards towards the tower without a second thought, while Toadling wallows in her memories of how it all ended up like this in the first place. But, Halim is not the perfect archetypical knight as he confesses “he is a knight, but, not a very good one.” and flounders at the last crucial second. However, the dynamic created between the two of mutual inspiration, very much like this Hayao Miyazaki quote below, is what spurs Toadling into action.

The ending is both a bit anti-climatic and actually well suited to the story. Our primary protagonist, Toadling, is not a grand archetypal hero but a reluctant hero thrust into an unknown situation outside of her control and then haunted by her mistakes. While Toadling finally discovers her courage at the end it is more through luck than outright strength she wins the day.

Narratively this book is very slow-paced and has a fairy tale-like vibe to its writing. I would situate it in a similar stylistic vein to Emily McCosh’s Under the Earth, Over the Sky in how it luxuriates on the interiority of our protagonist. But, lacks some of the cozier elements of that story, especially once we move past Toadling’s warm childhood upbringing in fae to the horrifying reality of the task she is sent to do.

Most of my reading experience of Thornhedge was via Audiobook and Jennifer Blom’s narration is excellent. She has a nice quality to her voice that accurately portrays Toadling’s scared naivete. But doesn’t quite have a deep enough range for Halim and comes across as someone with a feminine voice faking masculine most of the time - instead of someone who has trained their voice to flex between those ranges smoothly. But, I would listen to her work again should she do more high fantasy narration.

I enjoyed Thornhedge for its protagonist duo that inspires mutual respect and inspiration within each other and its imaginative retelling of Sleeping Beauty. As the first work of T. Kingfisher’s I’ve picked up I was pleasantly surprised and will definitely be reading more of T. Kingfisher’s work with her more popular work Nettle & Bone already on my radar.

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Bookshops & Bonedust (Tor, 2023)

Information

Genre: Fantasy, Cozy

Demographic: Adult (General)

Length: 336 pages (Paperback), 8 Hours (Audiobook)

Content Advisory: This work contains minor themes of animal cruelty and death, and moderate themes of death and necromancy, medical content and injury.

Representation: Sapphic Main Character with a “summer-fling” love-story subplot, LGBTQIA+ side-characters

Links: Goodreads, Storygraph

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Review

Bookshops & Bonedust returns to the world of Legends & Lattes to deliver an excellent follow-up to the 2022 cozy hit.

In this standalone prequel to the smash cozy hit of 2022, we follow a younger Viv as she recovers in the sleepy seaside town of Murk after recklessly getting injured on a job for Rackam’s Ravens tracking down the necromancer Varine the Pale. Like Baldree's first book, Legends & Lattes, Viv is joined by a motley crew as she helps the local bookstore, Thistleburr Booksellers, and its rattkin owner Fern to revitalise the dying business while discovering a love for books and making new friends at the same time.

Other than one character, Gallina who we briefly met in Legends & Lattes, the entire main cast of the book is completely new but familiar. This familiarity comes from Baldree leaning on similar dynamics that he established in his first book, the helpful labourer (Pitts), the struggling business (Thistleburr), the shop-keep love interest (local baker Maylee), the helpful but slightly eccentric shop-hand (Satchel), etc. Structurally this novel is very similar to its predecessor and executes similar themes just as stunning.

Some writers struggle to write follow-ups that are different from their viral hit, wanting to capitalise on the trend they have accidentally landed themself in. But despite having inherited its predecessor’s structure Baldree never once struggled to make Bookshops & Bonedust stand out on its own. So while each of the main cast fills similar narrative roles to the cast in Legends & Lattes they are well-written and come off as unique characters with their own struggles.

Another thing different from Legends & Lattes is that both the love-story b-plot and the fantasy b-plot are much more intertwined with the narrative. In Legends & Lattes while I enjoyed Viv and Tandy’s romance it very much felt like a C or D plot and the Scarlvert stone a MacGuffin. However in Bookshops & Bonedust, while the main focus is on the revitalisation of Thistleburr it balances that out with Varine the Pale’s every looming threat and Viv’s summer-like never-meant-to-be-forever romance with Baker Maylee.

I also really enjoyed that the Bookshop plot really was a love letter to romance novels, especially sapphic romance novels, and its fans and creators. With Viv and Fern eventually being able to convince local author Zelia Greatstrider to do a signing at the shop and many community members as well as travellers on moored ships coming out to show their support and love for the author.

Like the first novel, Bookshops & Bonedust is a book about hope. Once you're beaten down, there is a way to get back up; you just have to emotionally and physically try. And even change course if necessary. And sometimes, that requires getting back on your feet, even when it hurts.

Bookshops & Bonedust is a wonderful follow-up to the 2022 smash hit and I can’t wait to see more from this world when Brigands & Breadknives is published (expected late 2025).

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Betrayal: The Perfect Husband (Season 1, 2023, Hulu)

Information

Genre: Documentary, Crime

Demographic: Adult (General)

Length: 3 Episodes, 45 minutes per episode

Content Advisory: This documentary focuses on the themes of statutory rape of a student by a teacher, marriage infidelity, sexual assault, coercion, manipulation, and other mature themes.

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Review

A docuseries for those wanting to explore the emotions of betrayal and devastation from the perspective of the spouse of a perpetrator.

To be honest I went into this show knowing only the bare minimum aspects of the case from a @mikerafilawyer YouTube short so my interest was more leaning towards the details of the case and the trial surrounding it. This is not that type of show if that is what interests you in crime documentaries.

Instead, this show is extremely needed for partners like Jenifer Faison, ex-wife of perpetrator Spencer Herron, that validates their feelings of betrayal and devastation when finding out the person they thought was their soul mate is not who they thought they were. But, I hesitate to call its major focus the crime rather Spencer Herron’s infidelity and eventual escalation of behaviour that leads him to raping a student is framed primarily around Jenifer’s own reaction to these events and her relationship with Herron. It is essentially a martial issue piece that uses Spencer’s crimes as a hook to talk about how marriage infidelity and crime impacts the spouse.

Jenifer Faison is a victim of Herron’s criminal and moral crimes; she lost her house because of the depression relating to Herron’s trial and conviction, which meant she could not work; she contracted an STD because of his numerous infidelities; her home, place of work, and personhood were violated by her husband; just to name a few of the topics touched upon in the documentary. And she is incredibly talented at articulating her feelings about that time in her life backed up by an incredibly well-structured documentary. However, from a viewer point of view who went into this show thinking it was a crime documentary, I would have liked more emphasis placed on the student victim Rachel than on the wife’s reaction as that is what got me interested in watching this series in the first place.

However, the main focus of this show is not the legal aspects of crime but its emotional impacts. The first episode itself focuses mainly on “The Fairy Tale” romance between Spencer and Jenifer, meeting in college, amicably breaking up, and then reconnecting years later eventually culminating in the revelation of Spencer Herron’s crimes and lies with his arrest. The second focuses on his arrest and Jenifer’s discovery of the multitudes of women he had been having affairs with and that he had been victimizing throughout their marriage. And in the third, we finally hear from Rachel the student whom Herron raped for three years when he was a teacher at Kell High School (Marietta, Georgia). And whose disclosure first to her parents and then later to the police led to Herron’s arrest and discovery of his crimes and double life.

While the focus of this documentary didn’t interest me I will say that it is incredibly well structured and written. And it does hook you into Jenifer’s retelling of her relationship with ex-husband Spencer Herron. While it occasionally sides to expert testimony from psychologists, lawyers, and the Betrayal podcast host Andrea Gunning the majority of the piece is Jenifer just recounting her own memories, feelings, and reactions to her romance, marriage, and the revelation of her husband’s betrayal and crimes. Jenifer is also an incredible storyteller who hooks you into her feelings and emotions at the time and empathises with this fairy tale gone wrong situation. That made me see this documentary through to the end even though I picked up by the middle of the first episode that it was not the kind of documentary I had thought it was.

So even for me as a viewer who picked up this docuseries to learn more details about the criminal case I still think that if you are interested in exploring the feelings of emotional betrayal in cases like this from someone close to the perpetrator this is a fine documentary to get you started. But, for viewers looking for a docuseries that focuses on the criminal case, they will be left wanting.

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Is Love the Answer?

Information

Genre: Contemporary-Drama

Demographic: Older Teen (16+)

Length: Standard (256 pages)

Content Advisory:

Moderate: Ace/Aro-phobia, Sexual Assault and Sexual Harrasment

Published by Kodansha in the US and available digitally and physically in comic shops and bookstores internationally.

Review

Received as an ARC from Netgalley and Kodansha

A poignant coming-of-age contemporary drama that is a celebration and affirmation of asexual and aromantic identities.

Is Love the Answer? is a coming-of-age contemporary drama about a young woman named Chika who after some disastrous experiences dating in high school - including sexual assault - decides to go to university in Tokyo to study psychology to understand "normal" humans. As an Autistic Ace Chika very much gives off Autistic Ace vibes - the author only confirms that Chika is Ace and X-Gender - because it is not just that Chika doesn't experience sexual and romantic attraction it is that she does not fundamentally understand the "normative" human experience even in comparison to other Asexuals depicted in the work. Social "rules" like "if a guy invites you over to his house of course he wants sex" - it goes without saying that this is wrong - which her peers seem to intrinsically understand Chika doesn't understand. Which leads to her feeling alienated from her peers.

In her desperation to understand what "Everyone says is 'Normal'" Chika decides to study psychology in Tokyo where she meets Professor Shinobu Ishii the author of her favourite book "The Dawn of Modern Psychology." Eventually moving in with her and her roommate Mitsuru Umezaki (Ume-chan) as she begins to explore and learn about her own Ace identity in a safe and affirming environment.

The work depicts multiple Aspec characters who are confirmed, questioning or ambiguous in the text. Professor Ishii is ace married to another Aspec professor Miya - this queerplatonic relationship is mutually beneficial even though they hold no romantic or sexual feelings for each other because of the legal protection it provides them to make decisions on each other’s behalf in case of emergencies. There is a die-hard Fujoshi who wants romance someday but not now who could be read as Fictosexual. And finally, Ume-chan whose ace identity isn't revealed later in the book gives Chika guidance as navigates her difficult emotions surrounding all this new information she is learning. Through Chika's interactions with aspec/arospec and allonormative characters, Chika begins to grow and understand her own Aspec identity better. Including a wonderful exploration of the fluidity of sexuality when Chika begins to feel confined by the label of Asexual feeling as though she doesn't meet all the checkboxes.

However, I will note that while I overall found the book a wonderful exploration of the Asexual and Aromantic spectrum it does at times feel like a book that is very much Ace/Aro Identities 101 for both Allosexual/Alloromantic people and those just discovering their own Ace or Aro identities. It is a perfect distils that information in a way that doesn't detract from the fictional story it is telling and is greatly affirming to new Aspec/Arospec people. However, if you are an Aspec/Arospec person with a very mature sense of their identity you might find this work a bit lacking.

Is Love the Answer? is a work that celebrates, explores, and affirms Aspec and Arospec identities with a heavy focus on discovering and understanding one's own identity. Beautifully written it is a work perfect for those wanting to learn about these identities. I highly recommend you pick up this work if you haven't already.

Mine-Kun is Asexual

Information

Genre: Contemporary-Drama

Demographic: Adult (General)

Length: Short (45 pages)

Content Advisory:

Moderate: Ace/Aro-phobia

Note: Irodori Comics who publishes this work in English is an 18+ comics distributor purchasing this comic or accessing their site if you are under the age of 18 is against Irodori's terms of service.

Available Digitally from Irodori Comics

Review

Independently reviewed.

I decided to review these two works back to back as they are the perfect companion pieces to each other. While Is Love the Answer? focuses on exploring the asexual experience from an asexual person's point of view Mine-Kun is Asexual is about the difficulties of an Allosexual and an Asexual being in a relationship from the perspective of an Allosexual - Murai. It is one of the most compassionate works on the topic I have seen while acknowledging that these two people want different things in a relationship. The ultimate conclusion of this work is that two people can love each other and be compatible in other ways, but that doesn't make them the right people to be in a relationship together. Mine is simply unable to give Murai the type of love she needs and continuing the relationship would be selfish and ultimately harm them both.

Despite being such a short work Mine-Kun is Asexual acknowledges the complexities of an Allosexual / Asexual romantic dynamic, compassionately acknowledging at least for Murai and Mine-Kun their relationship was not meant to be. I highly recommend it if you adored Uta Isaki's Is Love the Answer? you pick this up afterwards.

Moonlight, Book 01 Dusk

Written By: Beau Van Dalen; Published By: Tapas Media 2021; Acquiring Editor: Cynthia Kim

Content Advisory This work is recommended for ages 18+ and contains Graphic depictions of xenophobia and racism within a fantasy context, cannibalism, dark magic, death and violence, homophobia and transphobia and a strictly gendered society. Moderate depictions of a death of a parent and bullying. And Mentions of genocide and rape

Review

An interesting concept bogged down by a wobbly plot.

In theory, Moonlight should have been the perfect epic fantasy story for my tastes. Dark fantasy with morally complicated characters in a high fantasy setting, a trans-masc main character full of angst and a love interest with golden retriever energy in a rivals-to-lovers plotline. Instead, Moonlight Book 01, Dusk was a frustrating mess bogged down by too many ideas and not enough focus.

To his family, Indigo Sarte is the perfect daughter who will eventually follow the same path as all elven women to be a wife, mother, and student of the healing arts. In secret, however, Indigo lives his truth and studies the arts not only forbidden to women but to all elves. And his ambition to prove himself as both a man and a mage and alchemist eventually gets his entire village killed. In order to escape punishment for what happened and investigate the truth he takes on a new identity with the help of forbidden magic and enters the gates of the academy.

And it is in this transition between the first arc and the second that the problems become evident. The first arc is very much centred around this conflict between Indigo and his identity and role within elven society, as well as the greater world conflict of Elves versus Humans. Indigo initially escapes to the academy to hide the fact that he used forbidden magic to kill humans that were hurting his village. It is only later he learns that the magic he learnt resulted in all of their deaths and must investigate the cause - and come to terms with the fact he may have caused the deaths of everyone he loved.

However, the second act takes us away from this high-stakes plotline to focus on Indigo's budding rivalry with fellow student and future love interest Aarte. As well as focus on the plotlines of newly introduced characters like Fay and Leuthar. And when it does dip back into the original premise it is jarringly juxtaposed between the relatively - this is still dark fantasy after all - lighter setting of the academy and its lower stake plot. Making these two sections feel only loosely tied together. Rather than one cohesive narrative.

This section also focuses more on new characters Fay, Aarte, and antagonist Leuthar than Indigo. Especially Leuthar the ambitious and malevolent son of the Director of The Academy. And Fay, a half-elf looking for her mother who Indigo helps out of guilt for killing her human father during the attack on his village.

And I think Fay's storyline of trying to find and reconnect with her Elven mother is a highlight of this work, being one of the better-constructed plotlines. But the introduction of Fay as a character also feels like a replacement for the character of Alice, a girl from Indigo's village who also studied the forbidden arts and gave him the forbidden spell to turn him into a man, at great cost to his humanity. Alice is initially set up as a parallel to Indigo but with fewer morals and would have been a great secondary character. But, she is immediately killed off and replaced by Fay whose low-stakes storyline seems to take over much of the second act.

In my opinion, this book clearly needed more structural and developmental edits before being published. Because there are good ideas here, the execution of those ideas however feels like the author threw every element they liked in fantasy stories at the wall without killing a few darlings along the way.

And for me, because of all these problems, I ended up feeling ambivalent about the story when it did return to focusing primarily on Indigo. And at this stage, I am unlikely to pick up Book 2 should the author continue the series.

Story & Art by: Asuka Miyazaki; Translation: Kathryn Henzler; Adaption: Cae Hawksmoor; Lettering: Vanessa Satone; Publisher: Seven Seas

Content Advisory: This work contains graphic depictions of Sexual Content including discussions and depictions of Pornography. Moderate depictions of Mental Illness, Biphobia, Body Shaming, Dysphoria, Blood and Body Fluids. And minor depictions of Transphobia & Homophobia including internalised Homophobia and Transphobia and the Death of a Parent. And is recommended by the publisher for those aged 16 and above.

Review

X-Gender is the funny relatable adult gender and sexuality crisis read we've all been waiting for.

X-Gender is the messy, relatable, and raw feelings of the author Asuka Miyazaki as they explore their gender and sexuality for the first time in their thirties. With that comes a lot of raw and uncensored emotions. Opening on Asuka feeling betrayed when their friend K as she announces her marriage. Asuka's feelings toward K throughout the work are uncharitable and unkind as Asuka blames her for leaving them behind. But, this moment also spurs Asuka to explore their gender and sexuality in a way they never fully did with K.

Within this exploration Asuka discusses everything from dysphoria from periods, the disconnect from body and gender, pornography and the role the viewer takes in the work and how that shapes gender identity, and feeling not quite welcome in Lesbian spaces as someone in their thirties exploring their sexuality for the first time as well as being X-Gender.

Asuka is very much a cynic as well, which colours their experiences both interacting with others as well as in these meetups they go to find a female partner. And it really evident that this is also holding them back because they meet someone who could be considered the "perfect partner" at one of these meetups - a fellow x-gender masc nerd - and they don't end up pursuing this relationship because this person has a more positive view on life and would like to have kids. And much of this negativity is explained by the trauma the author has experienced throughout their life including the death of their father from cancer and the disconnect they feel from their AGAB. But, this cynicism gets in the way of them making connections with people outside of the small close friend group they already have.

And it's this messy and raw exploration of life as an X-Gender person trying to figure yourself out as an adult that makes X-Gender so relatable. Things aren't always going to work out in your favour, nor are you always going to be the kindest and most understanding person. And in the end, you're going to have to find the solution that works for you not what people expect of you. And I love that about this manga.

While I generally love this manga there are a few downsides, because this work is very episodic in nature while telling a single story, often it will hope around topics at the author’s whim. Some of the topics in the back half of the work while connected to the larger theme of the author’s gender and sexuality don't fit with the main narrative of the author trying to find a partner. And it feels like the author wanted to talk about this topic but didn't effectively incorporate it into the main narrative. For Example, there is a whole chapter about the author wanting to create a sapphic Little Mermaid retelling inspired by Esu era manga. But it is shoved in between them trying to find and reconnect with an old friend and a single page about their OCD. And personally, I would love to see a full manga or even series by the author with this concept pitch they included. But it does feel mostly disconnected from the story around it.

The other major drawback to this work is that there is a recurrent theme of Goldstar Lesbianism in this work. The author views lesbians like K who have relationships with men for whatever reason as less than those who only have had relationships with women. While the author is clearly trying to work through this. It is however a very prominent theme in the work which you should be aware of if you decide to pick up this work.

Overall, I enjoyed my read of X-Gender Vol. 01, by Asuka Miyazaki and will be picking up the next volume when it comes out later in 2023.

Starting off the year I carried over both Aelita by Aleksey Nikolaevich Tolstoy (not the Anna Karina one) and The Boy From the Mish by Gary Lonesborough (US Title - Ready When You Are). I'll start off with Aelita since it is easy of the two to talk about - since I hated it.

I began reading Aelita because I wanted to use the name in a series I'm world-building. I needed a Russian feminine name for a character and I didn't want it to be Catherine, Anastasia, Natasha/Natalya, or Alexandria. And to be honest all of this is up in the air anyway because the world is still in the world-building stages. But I had found the name Aelita on Behind the Name my usual first resource when looking for names and thought it sounded pretty. Even the meaning given in Aelita - as Aelita is not a native Russian name, to my knowledge, and did not exist prior to the creation of Tolstoy's novel - is not only sadly pretty but sort of suits the character I wanted to use it for. AE meaning "as seen for the last time," and LITA "starlight."1

Pretty right.

The only problem being is the book is deeply racist, specifically drawing on the esoteric-fascist ideas about Atlantis in building its world and mythology of Mars. The current generations of Martians being descended from Atlanteans. The work draws heavily upon the ideas and work of Helena Blavatsky a Russian mystic, co-founder of the Theosophical Society and a central figure in the revival of nineteenth-century occultism. Many of her ideas around race contributed to Nazi ideology.

So with my main motivation being to research the origins of this name, before giving it to my main character, hitting the chapter Aelita's Second Story was like the wake-up call of not going to happen, never in my life will I name a character after this book. Much of the esoteric-fascist ideas are expressed in this chapter, and on top of that it is just so deeply racist, that I should have given up there. But, no I decided to push on, not in hopes that it would get better, but just to cover my basis. That is until I hit the revolution section. Our Russian heroes hastily aid in a labour revolution with only a small amount of knowledge of Martian politics and good old “communism” on their side, in the most hastily written and poorly constructed section of the book. And along with my TTS software just not wanting to work that gave me the final push to finally dnf this book 20-30 pages from the end.

The other book I carried over into January from last year was The Boy From the Mish. And don't get me wrong I like this book, I love how Lonesborough explores queer identity in the context of living within Aboriginal identity and living within a remote community. And the relationship he is building between Jackson and Tomas. But because December and January have just been retail hell and Aelita put me into a reading slump, I've had trouble concentrating on reading anything. I'm about halfway through and I intended to finish it. I just needed a pick-me-up read in between.

This gets us to our next book and my current active read, Moonlight Book I, Dusk by Beau Van Dalen. This is an 18+ dark fantasy book with a Trans-masc lead and an academy setting. The book is plot-wise, not good, entertaining yes, but the plot is all over the place. You can also really see its origins as episodic web fiction leak through. Characters are introduced and then killed off immediately, there is a lot of plot convenience, and secondary characters feel more fleshed out at times than our lead Indigo Sarte. But if you're looking for pulpy dark fantasy with a trans-masc main lead, and a found family friend group this one is alright. It's also free on a number of sites including, Wattpad, Tapas, and Royal Road. The only thing I'm truly salty about at the moment is that it does appear to end on a cliffhanger where the author intended to continue into another season/book of content, but the last update was in December of 2021. Hopefully, they return to this story, as while there are plot things that do annoy me I'm still mostly engaged with the story to want to see a sequel. That could change by the time I finish it, but as for the first half, once you get passed the first 1/4 and into the academy section the quality vastly improved, enough for me to want to keep going.

While I have three half-completed books - with one of those being a DNF - in January. I did manage to complete two books that I managed to read. Both of them are short the first being My Love Mix-Up! Vol. 06, story by Wataru Hinekure and art by Aruko. I started collecting this series last year and I think it's fine. It's cute, adorable, and manages to sprinkle in some moving conversations about the meaning of relationships, but ultimately it is your run-of-the-mill shojo-romance with a BL "twist." That doesn't mean it’s bad, just that like many formulaic series it inherits the flaws of that genre. And a big one is that it simply does not know how to create conflict between the main characters now that they are together, which is why we've focused more on the secondary and side characters over the last two volumes. And also for me a lot of the conflict in more "realistic" high school romances is simply uninteresting to me as a grown adult. They are perfect for its demographic, but less interesting the more distance you have from that experience. It's still one of my favourite manga series that I read in 2022 and I will continue collecting and reading the volumes. I just find myself bored by it at times.

The next "full" book I read was The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E. Harrow this is a part of Amazon's Into Shadow short story series, featuring authors such as Tomi Champion-Adeyemi, Tamsyn Muir, Lev Grossman, and Nghi Vo, and centring around the themes of forbidden knowledge. And I can't really say much about this story without spoiling it seeing as it is a short 30 pages in length. But spoiler-free, what I will say is this: It is heartbreakingly good, the twist absolutely earth-shattering, and watching our unnamed servant girl protagonist go from the depths of despair to the heights of glory, and then fall, and fall again, and again, is heart-wrenching. It does take until the twist for the story to actually become interesting and I do wish this was a full-length novella or even novel that had time to delve more deeply into its subject matter. But at the same time, I also feel it doesn't overstay its welcome. I will maybe write a full, spoiler-filled, review of this short story because what it does with its premise is so masterful, that I cannot help but want to revisit it.

The final piece of media I will include on my January Wrap-Up, as I didn't watch any series or movies this month, is Tunic. My birthday was this month and with some of the money I got from it I brought a controller for my PC, and with it came a month’s free Xbox Gamepass, which seemed the perfect opportunity to delve into this little adventure game I had been wanting to play since it's release earlier in 2022. And I love it it has such whimsical Zelda-like energy without being a 1-to-1 Zelda clone. It is difficult in parts being a conlang-based puzzle game similar to Fez, as most of its instructions are spread out throughout the world and not written in English. Making you pour over manual pieces you pick up in the world for context clues about its gameplay - which I am incredibly bad at, eventually I just gave in to looking at a walkthrough because I couldn't figure out how to increase my health and was stuck on a particularly challenging early game boss with no other paths forward. But I feel a lot of my gripes are less flaws of the game and just my personal playstyle preference. I am very close to the end now and I really like the darker twist that presents itself closer to the end. I have also enjoyed the fanlore surrounding this game by creators such as Jess Zakilly.

I've also been playing Age of Empires IV and Dwarf Fortress, both of which I'm incredibly bad at but do find enjoyable. But, they're the type of games I don't have much to say about. If you like strategy games and city builders these are the games for you.

And unfortunately, that is the end. My goal is to have The Boy From the Mish and Moonlight Book I, Dusk completed within the first two weeks. And being Black History Month in America I will probably pick up some books by African-American authors after that, along with Convenience Store Woman - as I promised someone I would read and review this months ago, and life just killed me. After I finish Tunic I will probably move on to Star Wars: Jedi, Fallen Order. And as far as series and movies go I want to get through the shows I missed out on in 2022 and are definitely going to be renewed such as House of the Dragon - a Negroni... Sbagliato... with Prosecco in it (Sorry I had to) - as well as the movies I missed out on, particularly I want to get to Matilda. Other than that I have no concrete plans for reading, watching, or gaming throughout February and just plan to go where my mood takes me.

Happy Reading,

J. Bowden