Happy 2023! January feels like it was many things. I wrote over 15,000 words of fanfiction and short fiction for deadlines. I re-outlined all of my novel code-named AquaShame. I did a lot of reading and watching movies, and honestly, it’s been a pretty good time. The biggest thing, however, is that I dropped the title of my forthcoming novella! I made a handy dandy press kit that has all the information you need: content warnings, links to goodreads/storygraph, pre-order information, and more.
Blog Interviews are resuming next month with Freydís Moon (who is also showing up on the blog tomorrow with a cover drop).
ARCs
- Swift the Storm, Fierce the Flame by Meg Long (YA, science fiction)
- Remy is the main character of this sequel of Cold the Night, Fast the Wolves
- Taking down corporations with your girlfriends and a whole lot of the thorniness of fixing relationships after great betrayals
- y turn
- Bad Cree by Jessica Johns (adult, horror)
- A young Cree woman is visited by her deceased sister in increasingly disturbing dreams
- All about leaning on community, tradition, and generational knowledge in response to supernatural phenomena wreaking havoc
Audiobooks
- The Dangers of Smoking in Bed: Stories by Mariana Enríquez (adult, horror short story collection, 2019)
- Every story feels very much like it’s plucked from a perfect intersection of situational horror and urban legend
- Please do mind the trigger warnings, especially for my favorite stories in the full review
- Empire of Ice and Stone: The Disastrous and Heroic Journey of the Karluk by Buddy Levy (adult, nonfiction, 2022)
- An under-prepared and poorly-managed ship leaves to do a North Pole expedition and several disasters and much arctic survival later, several people survive
- If you’re a fan of these kind of survival epics, you’re going to love it
- Definitely do not read this one if you are interested in stories where nothing bad happens to dogs, specifically
- Madoff Talks: Uncovering the Untold Story Behind the Most Notorious Ponzi Scheme in History by Jim Campbell (adult, nonfiction, 2021)
- The stock market crash of 2008 and the uncovering the largest Ponzi scheme in history was more a footnote in my upbringing, but since fraud fascinates that much, I needed to dive neck-deep into everything
- The book itself reads a bit like a finance textbook, but I’d say it’s necessary to understanding how this scheme took place and also how it went unnoticed for literal decades
Physical Copy
- Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk (adult, mystery, 2019)
- A woman living in the woods with a deep love for animals finds that a bunch of hunters around her have turned up dead
- Satisfying mystery with an even more fascinating character study at its core
- If you like dogs, skip this one too
Light Novels
- Bakemonogatari Part 01 by NISIOISIN (illust. Vofan) (contemporary fantasy, 2016)
- About a boy who’s a former vampire who is deathly attracted to girls haunted by aberrations
- The teens are so shitty in ways that feel very true to adolescent experience
- The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System Vol 1 by Mo Xiang Tong Xio (illust. Xiao Tong Kong (Velinxi)) (adult, transmigration fantasy danmei, 2021)
- Shen Qingqiu is such a colossal idiot as he tries to navigate being the villain in his favorite story that made his mad, it literally killed him
- A book that leans so hard into tropes that I do not have the genre savvy for, but presented in a way that’s super easy for a newcomer to understand
- Vampire Hunter D Vol. 4 Tale of the Dead Town by Hideyuki Kikuchi & Yoshitaka Amano (adult, dark fantasy science fiction western, 2006)
- My favorite of the light novels so far (there are still so many more to go)
- The specificity of the mystery of this roaming town is such that this story can only take place in the world of Vampire Hunter D
Manga
- Barbarities Vol. 1 by Tsuta Suzuki (historically-inspired yaoi, seinen, 2023)
- A Viscount becomes a body guard to a Lord who he immediately falls for
- The characters are great, but it’s the political intrigue has me by the throat
- Gunbured Sisters Vol. 1 – 3 by Wataru Mitagawa (fantasy yuri, seinen, 2022)
- Parallel revenge plots in a world that’s as deadly as the tone is over-the-top irreverent
- Cool world-building, vampires, werewolves, warrior nuns, genderfuckery – what more is there to love?
Jo Writes Fantasy 