• Reviews

    Review: This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (2019)

    “There should not be a sheet of cream-colored paper, clean save a single line in a long, trailing hand: Burn before reading.

    Red likes to feel. It is a fetish. Now she feels fear. And eagerness.

    She was right.”

    This Is How You Lose The Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

    Rating: ★★★★
    Genre: Sci-Fi, Post-Apocalyptic
    Categories: F/F, time travel

    Description: A post-apocalyptic time travel novel written in a swapping-point-of-view style, featuring letters between the protagonists. Red and Blue are operatives from different factions of time travelling organizations trying to manipulate the worlds and their timelines to their own ends. They’re both the best at what they do, and recognize each other’s skill—leading to them starting to secretly, covertly exchange letters, and slowly start to care about each other. Obviously, that has consequences.

    Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. And thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Except discovery of their bond would be death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That’s how war works. Right?

  • Reviews

    Review: Once Upon a Haunted Moor (Tyack & Frayne Mysteries #1) by Harper Fox (2013)

    Rating: ★★★★
    Genre: Mystery, Paranormal, Romance
    Categories: M/M, Ghosts/Spirits, Psychics
    Content Warnings: N/A
    Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

    Description: Gideon Frayne, a policeman in the little town of Dark in Cornwall, has spent nearly two weeks looking for a missing child with no leads and no suspects. When his higher-ups send in a handsome TV psychic, he’s as annoyed by the possibility of a con man playing with the hearts of the victims as he is attracted to the stranger. But Lee Tyack has true sight, and between his psychic visions and Gideon’s knowledge of the town and its inhabitants, maybe they’ll solve the crime—and solve Gideon’s loneliness, as well.

  • Reviews

    Review: Darkling by Brooklyn Ray (2018)

    “I don’t know what to do. One day I’m doing a reading with Liam, the next he’s going down on me on the hood of a car and I’m sucking his soul out of his body. What the fuck, Jordan? What do I do?”

    Darkling, Brooklyn Ray

    Rating: ★★★½
    Genre: Paranormal, Romance
    Categories: M/M, Trans, Witches, Demons

    Content Warnings (highlight to read): Scenes of bloodletting and death (and resurrection) of an MC.

    Description: A paranormal romance set in a small town where most of the characters are queer, witches, or (more often) both. In this world, there are clearly-delineated “types” of magic and the witches who practice them; the main character, Ryder, learns that he’s a necromancer, and has to tackle what that means for him and his circle-mate and best friend who is also all caught up in this strange magic with him.

    Ryder is a witch with two secrets—one about his blood and the other about his heart. Keeping the secrets hasn’t been a problem, until a tarot reading with his best friend, Liam Montgomery, who happens to be one of his secrets, starts a chain of events that can’t be undone.

  • Reviews

    Review: Possibilities (A King’s Council #1) by Nicole Field (2018)

    Rating: ★★★½
    Genre: Fantasy, Romance
    Categories: Non-binary (genderfluid), Trans, Royalty & Nobility, Arranged Marriage
    Content Warnings: N/A
    Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Less Than Three Press

    Description: When Prince Ernest unexpectedly becomes King Ernest, he quickly finds that it’s lonely at the top — until the appointment of his new court jester, Drel, gives him some company. But he quickly finds himself deeply attracted to them. Would an affair with the Court Jester weaken his reign? Or can they find a way to make it strengthen it instead?

  • Reviews

    Review: The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (Danielle Cain #1) by Margaret Killjoy (2017)

    Rating: ★★★★
    Genre: Urban Fantasy, Horror, Eldritch, Paranormal
    Categories: F/F, Queer, Ghosts/Spirits, Demons
    Content Warnings: (Highlight to read) References to a character’s previous suicide (off-screen).
    Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

    Description: Itinerant traveler Danielle Cain arrives at the “ghost town” of Freedom, Iowa, a haven for squatters and anarchists living off the grid. She’s looking for an explanation for why an old friend of hers died after living here; what she finds is a guardian god who was summoned a year ago, and a town split in two between whether or not they should overthrow their oppressors via this summoned god which has begun to turn on them, or whether they should try to get rid of it entirely and live on their own.