DNF'd at 44%. My search for a lesbian vampire novel that's actually good is once again disappointed 💀

At the point where I gave up the plot felt stagnant and repetitive, and I cannot stand Rebecca/Cassie. She acts in whatever way fits the plot at that particular moment so she feels inconsistent and contradictory. There was no chemistry between her and Aliz, and every scene with them felt forced.

There were some interesting ideas and potential here, but at nearly the halfway mark I'm tired of waiting for it to convince me that it's worth finishing.

Man, this was one of my most anticipated reads for the first half of the year, but I have SO many mixed feelings about it.

This book has been getting a lot of buzz over the past couple of months, and everything everyone was saying about it excited me greatly. Female-authored political grimdark fantasy with a morally gray female protagonist? Oh, sign me the fuck up!

Unfortunately, it seems people just... straight up lied? This is not grimdark fantasy. This is not political fantasy. Wei, our protagonist, could arguably be called morally gray, but put next to every other grimdark fantasy protagonist I've read, she's a damn saint. And despite the title of the novel, this is barely her story at all, which is perhaps my biggest issue.

What I will give this book is that I absolutely flew through it. I tend to take a bit longer reading fantasy novels, but I read this in just a little over a day. Tao's writing style is digestible without being flavorless, and the short chapters really keep the pace going despite the fact that, for most of this book, absolutely nothing is happening. I would be lying if I said I wasn't invested, and there are genuinely some pretty emotional moments in here.

I did start to notice some cracks in the facade pretty early on. There are a LOT of plot conveniences in this book, and that carries through right until the final page. I truly wonder how people can call this a political fantasy, when Wei doesn't do much actual politicking. Things just always seem to work out almost perfectly for her, and when they don't, she recovers unrealistically fast. As a result, I was never filled with any real sense of urgency or worry for her, which, in my opinion, is vital for political grimdark. You can give your characters plot armor and not make it obvious, you can have stakes and still have your protagonist come out on top. This book never finds that balance, unfortunately, and that makes it very predictable.

Honestly, a lot of this book is set dressing. There are so many names and factions introduced to us, and hardly any of them end up mattering. So many side characters feel like they're set up to be important, only to never be relevant again. The magic system and world had so much potential, but neither of them are explored in much detail outside of what's directly relevant to the main plot. Hell, even Wei herself feels like set dressing for the real story the author wanted to tell.

Inarguably the best part of this novel is the doomed sibling relationship between Maro and Terren. It's the main emotional thread, and the tragedy of it all is the main reason I was so engrossed for much of the book. That being said, it's also the source of pretty much all of my problems with it as well.

Like... why make Wei the protagonist at all? She's given to us as a first-person perspective, so as the reader I'm immediately assuming this book is about HER. The title is "The Poet Empress", not "The Poet Empress's Husband and His Brother", but so much of the middle and latter half of this novel is given over to said husband and brother. Wei's motivations for most of the book take a DISTANT backseat to uncovering Terren's tragic backstory, which just... doesn't sit right with me. We're introduced to him in the present as a one-dimensional villain who tortures and kills people and animals, and even when we get the full picture of him, I, as the reader, feel no empathy for him in the present. There's a disconnect between his past self and his present self that's never truly reconciled.

So much of the book, then, ends up feeling like an abused female protagonist's journey to justify and humanize her abuser. I don't think this was the intention, but it's all muddied because there are things Terren does that don't provoke nearly the reaction they should from Wei (trying to remain spoiler-free, but I think this should be pretty obvious to anyone who's read the book). I was continuously flabbergasted at how much empathy she had for Terren, and how little she had for literally everyone else in comparison (namely, every woman around her just trying to survive). It all left a very bad taste in my mouth. She feels like an afterthought, an observer and rarely a participant in a story that's supposed to be ABOUT HER.

Given the author's priorities, I don't think Wei should have ever been the protagonist. The novel, the way it exists here, should have always just been about Terren and Maro. That was clearly the story Tao wanted to tell, and Wei suffers as a character for it. The story's integrity suffers even more for it. Any emotional thread ends up feeling like emotional manipulation to get me to empathize with a male character who ultimately doesn't deserve it. The themes of the power of the written word to humanize, and the inherent complexity of people (even terrible people), ring hollow, because they just come off in a way that reads as toxic male apologia at the expense of women.

This book had some good bones, some interesting potential, but man... I just really can't forgive the choices it made. There are so many critically acclaimed fantasy novels being released lately with this blatant undercurrent of misogyny running through them that everybody seems to miss, and it's really starting to piss me off. I don't understand how this has garnered the amount of praise it has, and I DON'T understand the subgenres people are putting it under (you can't just call something grimdark because it has dark content...). I was really rooting for this one, but I'm just left with a sense of disappointment.

2.75/5.

EDIT: After reading through some more reviews, it's come to my attention that this is actually being marketed as ROMANTASY in more mainstream circles (the book content creators I follow were describing it as political grimdark), which is equally as baffling to me. I have never seen a book be quite this badly misrepresented on multiple fronts 😭

I'm always chasing the high of picking something up on a complete whim and having it completely and utterly rewrite my entire brain chemistry. Variations on a Dream did that for me in the year 2026, where I feel like I'm being pelted with nothing but derivative and disappointing new releases. AND it's a debut novel?!

Variations has the thematic richness that I'm always searching for in every book I read. There's SO much to talk about here. Misogyny (overt and internalized), toxic masculinity, compulsory heterosexuality, identity crisis, the mundane horrors of the heterosexual nuclear family unit... But my favorite by far was how it discussed art: how we all bring something different to expressing and consuming it, how a creation becomes its own beast once you let it out into the world, the power it has to transform and recontextualize a life. These certainly aren't unexplored themes in literary fiction, but Lalonde approaches them all in a way that makes it feel like you're discovering uncharted territory. Can't say I've ever experienced a piece of media about art where the art in question is an arthouse porn film! But Lalonde makes it work so well. I went into this expecting an unhinged fever dream, but what I got was much more meaningful and down-to-earth, with just the right amount of absurdity.

The writing itself is polished and sharp, and there's an aura of self-aware pretentiousness to the prose that really sells the characters and the vibe. The internal monologues of our POVs are distinct, and it truly feels as though you're caught in their own respective thought-spirals with them. No scene overstays its welcome, and everything is given just the right amount of room to breathe. It's so refreshing to read from an author who understands how much weight a scene needs; Lalonde can just as easily weave an emotional tapestry as she can devastate with a single line, and she wields both of these approaches with a precision that I'm in awe of. Her use of myth, allegory, and symbolism had me absolutely DROOLING as someone who loves pondering every little detail. This even extends to the beautiful cover!

Most of the novel consists of the introspections of our two main characters, Sarah and Trevor, yet despite the focus on character over plot, it feels like you're reading a thriller with how engaging the writing is. I tore through the pages, celebrating every time Sarah carved out a little more autonomy, while raging at Trevor for doing... well, anything, because he's a fucking loser. Past tensions and traumas are introduced to the reader only as they occur in the characters' internal thoughts, making them feel like real people rather than only existing on the page. I often forgot I was a person reading a fictional book, and that's just about the highest praise I can give a novel. This approach also injects a delicious element of suspense, as you wait to see what fucked up thing will be introduced next that will redefine everything you thought you knew about these characters and their relationship. It feels, quite literally, like a literary psychological thriller.

There are a few instances in the latter half where things started to feel preachy and heavy-handed, which puzzles me because the writing is strong enough to speak for itself and I don't think the intention needed to be spelled out (dare I blame this on publisher interference...). I do forgive it a lot more than I usually would in a book like this since this is such a character-focused novel and we need to be shown these characters internally having these epiphanies. I just wish it gave more agency to the reader in a couple of places, since it certainly doesn't lack nuance across the board.

There are also a few characters outside of Sarah and Trevor that we're given the POVs of, and I wish they'd been introduced earlier in the novel as I was less invested in their stories than I wanted to be.

My few criticisms really are nitpicks, though, because they're overshadowed by just how quality the rest of the book is in comparison. When I wasn't reading this book, I wanted to be reading it, and when I wasn't reading it, I was thinking about it. I'm so beyond devastated that (as far as I know) this is only being published in Canada as of writing this, because I NEED everyone I know to read this book and talk to me about it. I think it will probably be pretty divisive (my mind kept going to Paradise Rot while reading this, though Variations is far less incoherent and disgusting), but for the people who'll love it, they'll really love it, and I am definitely counting myself among that number!

I hope this finds its audience. It's one of the best literary fictions I've read in a long while, and I will be eagerly awaiting anything Lalonde does next. One of the easiest 5/5s I've ever given.