stevehughwestenra
Trans horror and fantasy author - The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle, The Wings of Ashtaroth, & The Barbarian at Dream's End. Academic with a PhD in monsters and the monstrous! Words New Edge Sword and Sorcery!
2450 points
stevehughwestenra TBR'd a book
1w
Into the Drowning Deep
Mira Grant
New York Times bestselling author Mira Grant, author of the renowned Newsflesh series, returns with a novel that takes us to a new world of ancient mysteries and mythological dangers come to life. Seven years ago, the Atargatis set off on a voyage to the Mariana Trench to film a "mockumentary" bringing to life ancient sea creatures of legend. It was lost at sea with all hands. Some have called it a hoax; others have called it a maritime tragedy. Now, a new crew has been assembled. But this time they're not out to entertain. Some seek to validate their life's work. Some seek the greatest hunt of all. Some seek the truth. But for the ambitious young scientist Victoria Stewart this is a voyage to uncover the fate of the sister she lost. Whatever the truth may be, it will only be found below the waves. But the secrets of the deep come with a price.
stevehughwestenra started reading...
1w
To Dream a Darker Realm (Rai Ascendant, #1)
Angela Boord
Stranger Things meets Robin Hobb in this Cold War portal fantasy series set in a world of dark conspiracies and quantum magic, where reality can’t be trusted but family means everything. Sergei relives his mother’s tragic death in nightmares every night… but he’s the only one who believes she’s still alive. Sergei lives an ordinary 1980’s American life… but every night he travels back to the frozen Russian lake where his mother made the ultimate sacrifice for her children’s freedom. So when a mysterious woman tells him his mother is alive, he jumps at the chance to find her. The problem? The only clue to her whereabouts is an otherworldly book written in a language no one has ever seen before. Lured into a risky game of cloak and dagger with a shadowy government cabal that wants his mother as badly as he does, Sergei will risk everything to find the truth. But when his nightmares start bleeding into reality, his double life might tear his family completely apart before he has a chance to bring them back together. The clock is ticking. With one last chance to save his mother from the ruthless forces plotting to use her, can Sergei make it in time... Or will everyone he loves suffer the consequences? To Dream a Darker Realm is the new, completely revised first book in the genre-bending Rai Ascendant series, blending portal and paranormal with epic fantasy. If you like complex intrigue, messy friendships, and flawed but relatable characters, you’ll love this thrilling dark fantasy by award-winning author Angela Boord! Angela Boord writes some of the best characters in modern fantasy. — Fantasy Book Critic
stevehughwestenra finished a book
1w
Violence & Vigilance (Turesia Untamed, #1)
David T. List
Violence & Vigilance is book one of Turesia Untamed, an epic fantasy series featuring an eternal vendetta, scars of grief and loss, untethered rage, and hope against all odds. Irdessa the Undying, a renowned arena fighter in Fohrvylda, has escaped imprisonment but at great cost. Broken and alone, she must outwit and outfight her pursuers. Basalt Kale, a failed Consonant monk of the lowest order, embarks on a quest to improve Ausgan but discovers vile secrets of his order that he cannot abide. The heathens of Fohrvylda amass ships and beasts of war to sail the Faithless Sea and assault the monks of Ausgan, who will greet the steel-bearing invaders with elemental destruction. Violence & Vigilance is a story of survival with dark humor, exotic settings, savage beasts, and damaged characters. If you enjoy the grittiness of Joe Abercrombie's First Law or the urgency of Pierce Brown's Red Rising, you'll love Violence & Vigilance.
stevehughwestenra finished a book
3w
The Cosmic Color
T.T. Madden
CAN ANYONE ESCAPE THE MACHINERIES OF FLESH AND STEEL? Eric Fisher, a Black recruit finishing up his training, has always felt strange in his own skin. Now that he’s finally a mecha pilot, ready to join the fight against the monstrous Imago, he gets to be in a body that feels more right. But this new sense of self and gender must be navigated while uncovering revelations about the machineries of flesh and steel he’s now a part of.
stevehughwestenra started reading...
3w
The Cosmic Color
T.T. Madden
CAN ANYONE ESCAPE THE MACHINERIES OF FLESH AND STEEL? Eric Fisher, a Black recruit finishing up his training, has always felt strange in his own skin. Now that he’s finally a mecha pilot, ready to join the fight against the monstrous Imago, he gets to be in a body that feels more right. But this new sense of self and gender must be navigated while uncovering revelations about the machineries of flesh and steel he’s now a part of.
stevehughwestenra started reading...
4w
The paradox of cruelty,
Philip Paul Hallie
Book by Philip P. Hallie
stevehughwestenra commented...
4w
Oh man! Thanks so much for replying in that case and apologies for overstepping--I'd assumed it was a general list you were making.
If you are interested, mine's a queer horror comedy called The Erstwhile Tyler Kyle. It's about a cryptid-hunting YouTuber who follows a video of his presumed-dead mom to an isolated island in the Canadian wilderness while fleeing the "straight" co-host he drunkenly made out with. Twin Peaks vibes!
𝖘𝖚𝖒𝖒𝖊𝖗𝖜𝖊𝖊𝖓
the people of this town love halloween so much they celebrate it twice a year
Carrion Saints is unlike most books I’ve read, but it did put me in mind of lore-rich videogames like Elden Ring, with a truly vast world that feels thought-out and interconnected. By no means cozy in the traditional sense, its nonetheless a book with a stable, steady pace that’s uninterested in conforming to a traditional three-act structure and that rarely prioritizes tension. As my fellow judges have noted, it’s episodic, and I’d most recommend it to readers who enjoy episodic storytelling. In a rare anti-recommendation, I would suggest that, despite the marketing, category Romance readers are unlikely to find what they expect or look for from a Romance in Carrion Saints. However, if you’re a fan of the TV show Hannibal, you may enjoy the dynamic of the two leads.
Hiyodori’s Carrion Saints is the story of two immortals wandering a dying world as they contemplate the difference between good and evil, as well as the very personal internal forces that bind us to our paths. The protagonist, Crow, is a saint–a variety of being popularly associated with Good. When the story opens, Crow is on a mission to destroy the last Great Adversary of mankind–a monster who takes the form of a disembodied head and who is trapped on a hillside above a village. The monster–Magnolia–proves more powerful than Crow expected. When Magnolia defeats Crow, she not only breaks free from the hillside, but takes control of her, forcing the saint to journey with her and do her bidding. As Crow is forced to work for Magnolia, their conversations reveal key worldbuilding elements. The most significant of these elements is the difference between saints and monsters. Each type of entity feeds on magical “cores” that exist within certain humans (as well as other monsters and saints). While monsters violently and non-consensually extract cores, saints consensually remove cores from sworn companions. Crow herself is, perhaps, one of the most rigidly moral saints that Magnolia has met. Crow travels the world protecting humans from monsters and hasn’t taken a sworn companion since the tragic death of her last one many years prior. Although saints do feed off cores, they are also bound by magical logic to honour a sworn companion’s choice to voluntarily tie themselves to a saint. While there is a loose, overarching plot, each of the novel’s parts tends to focus on the particular village or location in which Magnolia and Crow find themselves. Over the course of their travels, Crow expresses a desire to free herself from Magnolia’s spiteful and often abusive control, but rarely acts on this desire when presented with the opportunity.
Prose is incredibly important to me–especially in the context of a writing competition–and Carrion Saints has gorgeous and evocative prose. The sweeping yet specific descriptions of the natural environment really bring Hiyodori’s world to life, and her reflections on landscape impressed me. In dialogue, both Crow and Magnolia also have very distinct voices–Magnolia bratty and modern, and Crow more ethereal. There are banger lines (and banter) throughout, and I was spoiled for choice when selecting a quotation to include in my review. Mood and tone are also critical to how Carrion Saints unspools, and I’d argue with anyone that Hiyodori has absolute command over both. There’s a melancholic, elegiac quality to the atmosphere that looms over and characterizes each of the varied environments and locations that Crow and Magnolia travel to. In Carrion Saints the world is ending, and the reader feels it. There’s a distinct vision behind the novel–this is a book that, despite its episodic structure, is much more than a series of pre-selected tropes slapped together. At a line level, it’s clear Hiyodori is a skilled, intentional writer–something I expect from a SPFBO finalist.
Structurally, I did have issues with Carrion Saints. Throughout, I couldn’t help but feel it was much longer and more repetitive than it needed to be, and unfortunately this impacts many of the book’s other aspects (character, theme, etc). In many ways, the philosophical underpinnings of the book are its Achilles heel, since they often suggest depth without ultimately being as profound as the exquisiteness of the world feels, and because until the end, those underpinnings are revisited at about the same level of depth again and again. Aside from enchanting descriptions of the physical world, the focus of Carrion Saints is really on using the conversations between Crow and Magnolia to explore both worldbuilding and the book’s own internal philosophical problems. First and foremost of these is the question of the differences and similarities between saints and monsters. In fiction, these kinds of questions tend to be powerful for the reader insofar as they reflect or relate to real-world questions and problems. Certainly, the differences between heroes and monsters (or villains)–and who gets to be called what–is a meaningful field of study (my own in fact!). Yet in Carrion Saints the parameters that help define “monster” and “hero” largely answer the question themselves–saints consensually feed and monsters don’t (with some rare counter examples that we’re told about late in the novel, but which we don’t see on page). The labels of “monster” and “saint” seem to be either chosen or innate–they aren’t externally imposed–removing the possible relevance to questions of how humans brutalize one another through the reduction of individuals (or marginalized groups) to monsters and heroes. Given that fact, the question becomes more of an analysis of predation–is predation ever morally just, even when it’s necessary? Since immortals don’t exist in the real world, it seems to apply most to whether it’s ever morally just to eat animals, but I’m unsure that was the intention, and if it was, the answers provided are opaque. Key information that might change our perspective–or Crow’s–is also withheld for longer than seems ideal, so that it often feels like the book is spinning its wheels, waiting to get past its filler episodes to juicier character moments. It’s not that every book about an immortal preying on humans needs to engage with these questions to work–some of my favourites really don’t–but Carrion Saints directly presents itself as a book that is interested in a more philosophical treatment of the topic.
In terms of character, I had a very solid feel for Magnolia, who leaps off the page. She’s unquestionably irritating, petty, small-minded, and manipulative–an exceptionally unlikable person who’s nonetheless well-drawn and realistic (she even reminds me of people I’ve known). To be clear, despite disliking Magnolia on a personal level, I say all of this in praise of her construction as a character. It’s naturally very easy for me to root for an abuse victim, especially when the abuser is someone like Magnolia. There’s also a lot of nuance to Hiyodori’s depiction of someone who’s experienced her own trauma, later participating in abuse herself–a cycle of violence all too common and familiar. Crow, in contrast, is retiring and secretive–even from the reader. I never disliked Crow, but I did feel that she came across much less powerfully than Magnolia, and much of that is to do with Hiyodori’s choice to withhold Crow’s emotional motivations until the conclusion of the novel. I couldn’t help but feel as though this was to the book’s detriment, since it kept me at an emotional distance from her, without much of a payoff in terms of a twist or reveal. On the surface, the text is more interested in the debate over monstrosity and sainthood (in terms of their in-world meanings, at least), than it is in Crow or Magnolia’s personal journeys. This wouldn’t be an issue, except that my impression is that beneath the surface, the book is intended to be about how the characters’ visions of themselves conform to reality. Since we lack critical pieces of worldbuilding information to do with saints, as well as Crow’s backstory, it’s challenging to invest emotionally for most of the book and I did find myself lacking much motivation to pick the book back up, even if a previous section had wowed me with its visual acumen. That said, when those hooks do at last sink in, they sink in deep. The last of Carrion Saints’ six parts is powerful, compelling, and does a lot to enrich Crow as a character.
I find stories about immortals hit or miss. At their best, they communicate something about grief and our relationship to our own mortality. I think Carrion Saints does a fantastic job of capturing the right mood in terms of these themes, and there’s a layer of solastalgia to the work that I found especially moving, yet I did want more from it at the same time. I’m very grateful that SPFBO gave me the kick up the pants I needed to finally read some of Hiyodori’s work, which has been on my TBR since SPFBO9! Although I had some qualms, I want to emphasize that I was impressed by Hiyodori’s skill overall and that there’s much here that really works. If Carrion Saints were broken up into novellas, short stories, or were tightened up as a novel, I feel it would be even stronger. If you’re a fan of episodic storytelling, Elden Ring, or the relationship between Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter (by way of The Last Unicorn), I recommend checking out Carrion Saints.
stevehughwestenra TBR'd a book
5w
You Will Not Kill Our Imagination: A Memoir of Palestine and Writing in Dark Times
Saeed Teebi
A vital, fearless memoir in the vein of Between the World and Me that explores what it means to be a Palestinian in this moment, the effects of the genocide on Palestinian art and imagination, and that to even claim a belonging to the land from a country thousands of miles away is an act of subversion.Imagination is a more powerful force than hope. Acclaimed author Saeed Teebi was at work on his first novel when the attacks on Gaza began in late 2023. The violence and cruelty of the attacks, accompanied by the assent and silence of international governments, stunned many across the globe, like Teebi, into a new state of permanent horror. What does it mean to be of the Palestinian diaspora in such a moment? What does it mean to be of a people who have sustained such a large-scale assault not only on their homeland, but their entire identity? What is the role of art, of language—of imagination—in asserting one’s identity, when that very assertion is read as an act of subversion? In this incisive work, Teebi explores, with searing, razor-sharp prose, the effects of genocide on the bodies, minds, and imaginations—of Palestinians especially, and humanity in general. This is at once a memoir of one family’s displacement, a scathing indictment of global complicity in the face of brutality, and a profound rumination on art and imagination as a means of defiance. It is an astonishing work of resistance by a major intellect, and it is both urgent and timeless.
stevehughwestenra finished a book
5w
Carrion Saints
Hiyodori Hiyodori
“Now reach back,” she said, “and tear off your wings.”Carrion Saints is a sapphic enemies-to-lovers romance between an immortal saint and a severed head.Crow can pass for human. She may come off as eccentric, but she’s good at hiding her wings. As a saint, she’s devoted her endless life to protecting humanity from other immortals: the ones they call monsters. She’s finally ready to take on the worst monster of all, a great evil sealed at the edge of civilization.Magnolia is the worst monster of all. A villain who amuses herself by preying on valiant heroes. At first glance, she looks powerless. She looks, in fact, like a decapitated head (a very chatty one). But her magic lets her issue absolute commands to humans and immortals alike. She’s been waiting centuries for a challenger powerful enough to break the seal binding her in the wilderness. In other words, she’s been waiting centuries to magically seize control over someone like Crow.Crow has always been patient and forgiving. Sadistic, remorseless Magnolia awakens new depths of loathing in her—a hatred of frightening intensity. And now, she's forced to use her full power to grant Magnolia’s one heartfelt wish: to see the rest of the world. To make up for all the years she spent trapped alone with only trees for company.What follows is an ultra slow-burn romance between true enemies. Between good and evil. Between a winged woman and a talkative severed head (who occasionally sprouts the rest of her body, just to keep things lively). They travel together across a post-apocalyptic landscape marked by strange magic and scattered human settlements. Yet the apocalypse happened a long time ago, and eons will pass before their gradually fading world dies for good.In the meantime, these immortals are stuck with each other. Even a saint and a monstrous villain might eventually fall in love—but the path there will be dark, crooked, and sometimes surprisingly cozy.This standalone fantasy novel can be read without prior knowledge of the author’s other work.
stevehughwestenra started reading...
5w
Violence & Vigilance (Turesia Untamed, #1)
David T. List
Violence & Vigilance is book one of Turesia Untamed, an epic fantasy series featuring an eternal vendetta, scars of grief and loss, untethered rage, and hope against all odds. Irdessa the Undying, a renowned arena fighter in Fohrvylda, has escaped imprisonment but at great cost. Broken and alone, she must outwit and outfight her pursuers. Basalt Kale, a failed Consonant monk of the lowest order, embarks on a quest to improve Ausgan but discovers vile secrets of his order that he cannot abide. The heathens of Fohrvylda amass ships and beasts of war to sail the Faithless Sea and assault the monks of Ausgan, who will greet the steel-bearing invaders with elemental destruction. Violence & Vigilance is a story of survival with dark humor, exotic settings, savage beasts, and damaged characters. If you enjoy the grittiness of Joe Abercrombie's First Law or the urgency of Pierce Brown's Red Rising, you'll love Violence & Vigilance.
Really enjoyed this! Proper review to come
stevehughwestenra finished a book
7w
Old Wounds
Logan-Ashley Kisner
Erin and Max are two trans kids who are just trying to get to California. Max is desperate to finally be able to transition, and Erin is longing to understand why she’s on this trip to begin with, after Max suddenly broke up with her two years earlier. But when they find themselves stranded - and eventually separated - in the creepy woods of rural middle-America, they suddenly have much bigger problems. First, there’s the creature that, according to legend, feeds on girls, hunting them through the shadows. And then there are the locals, who are searching for a female sacrifice. If either of them hope to survive to see the sunrise, Erin and Max will have to come together and stop running: from their attackers, from each other, and, ultimately, from themselves.
stevehughwestenra joined a quest
7w
Intro to Poetry
🍋📜❤️🔥
Main Quest 🏆 // 1768 joined
This is an introduction to modern poetry, with a focus on breadth of voices and styles rather than depth. In the words of Leonard Cohen, "poetry is just the evidence of life...if your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash." This quest is for those who love poetry, hate poetry, want to write it, read it, or perhaps have nothing to do with it (or all of that at once)!
stevehughwestenra started reading...
7w
Old Wounds
Logan-Ashley Kisner
Erin and Max are two trans kids who are just trying to get to California. Max is desperate to finally be able to transition, and Erin is longing to understand why she’s on this trip to begin with, after Max suddenly broke up with her two years earlier. But when they find themselves stranded - and eventually separated - in the creepy woods of rural middle-America, they suddenly have much bigger problems. First, there’s the creature that, according to legend, feeds on girls, hunting them through the shadows. And then there are the locals, who are searching for a female sacrifice. If either of them hope to survive to see the sunrise, Erin and Max will have to come together and stop running: from their attackers, from each other, and, ultimately, from themselves.
