ohmage_resistance's reviews
49 reviews

Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang

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challenging dark emotional medium-paced
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
  • The first female high mage and her marginalized immigrant lab assistant do magical research and deal with some dark realizations about their society.
  • I really liked this one. I saw the twist coming from the first few chapters. It did make the beginning a bit slower, although I had fun trying to figure out what was really going on with certain details. After the twist was revealed though, the emotional fallout was really well written and felt realistic. Also, that ending was extremely satisfying. I wasn’t sure if Wang could wrap the entire plot up in one book, but it worked out very well. On the downside, it could be a bit info dumpy in places, and it’s generally pretty dialogue heavy, although neither one of these bothered me.
  • Although feminism isn’t the only theme in this book, it’s still a major one. ML Wang takes feminism in a cool direction. Most popular feminist books I’ve read either go in a girlboss power fantasy direction and/or they are female rage stories. This one was interesting in that it was a female rage story, but the rage was more for a marginalized racial group than purely about sexism, although both play into the same system of oppression. It's also a specific critique of white girlboss feminism. I also really liked the commentary about women in STEM. The main character isn’t perfect, she has internalized misogyny at times, and her ambition isn’t always a nice. This book also deeply understands how women are shamed for showing emotion, wanting things, having pride, and being selfish in a way that men/male scientists are not. At the same time, it does question if being proud and selfish (the peak of male power) is something that women should really aspire towards.
  • I also really liked the themes about being part of a marginalized racial group. There’s commentary on racism, immigration, assimilation, and colonization, even if there’s no one to one real world parallel. These were just as much as a focus as the themes about feminism, and I think both worked really well together. Both themes could be a bit on the nose at times, but I think having them grounded in the experiences of the characters really helped them feel more impactful.
  • I liked all of the characters and though they were well written. Sciona was definitely not an admirable person in a lot of ways, and although she got a little better, she still stayed flawed. That being said, I think these were all put into context of why Sciona turned out to be that way and how it compares when we see male characters have those same traits. Thomil, Sciona’s lab assistant, was really cool, and I especially liked his relationship with his niece Carra. Now I kind of want to read Babel to compare these two books.

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Dreadnought by April Daniels

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adventurous inspiring medium-paced
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Closeted trans girl gets to magically transition as a side effect of getting superpowers.
  • I generally liked this one. However, superheroes generally aren’t my favorite genre, and so I generally didn’t like those parts about the book too much. I didn’t hate them, just didn’t find it super interesting. I think it’s often difficult to translate the kind of slap dash worldbuilding of superhero comics into a novel, and this book did an ok but not a great job (I think a lot of the more successful cases I’ve read do this by using comedy—shout out to The Meister of Decimen City—or by making the world a dystopia). Danielle was also quite difficult to physically hurt, and I feel like that took the tension away from a lot of the fight scenes.
  • What I think this book did really well is exploring Danielle’s experiences after she came out and transitioned, both good and bad. I’ve seen some reviews commenting on Danny’s experiences with a TERF superhero and with her sexist best friend, but I think the one that really stuck out to me was her experiences with her abusive parents. It has some really powerful examples of how strong verbal abuse can be, even without physical abuse, and how toxic masculinity leads to abusive behavior. You can really tell just how much Danny’s father has influenced how she views herself, and her struggle to overcome that was the most interesting arc in the book for me. It also shows how Danny’s mother’s more passive but still transphobic behavior just adds fuel to the fire. I will say all of these elements do make this book a lot darker than a lot of YA books, but I still think these issues are really relevant to teens. There’s also a lot more slurs in this book than I was expecting, but April Daniels is very deliberate about when she uses them. There were also examples of Danny celebrating having a body she feels comfortable in and people who accept her, so it’s not all just depressing stuff.

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The Last Fang of God by Ryan Kirk

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adventurous medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
  • A father and daughter in a Norse inspired setting go on a journey so that the girl can complete a ritual or else she dies.
  • I didn’t really like this one very much. Ultimately, I was pretty disappointed in it because it felt very generic. For me, when I read self published books, I typically want to see something that traditionally published books can’t provide. This can be representation or a subgenre or complex themes that mainstream media doesn’t really deal with much because trad published books are meant for as general of an audience as publishers can manage. And for me, having these more unique elements makes up for the tradeoff in not having a full team of people polishing and editing the book. I’d rather see an interesting idea not executed 100% perfectly than a perfectly executed generic idea, especially in self published books. The Last Fang of God was relatively good at what it was trying to do (although it could have used some polishing), I just didn’t find really any compelling ideas in it.
  • The worldbuilding in this one was pretty generic—you have a variety of different animal themed clans in a vaguely Norse inspired setting. The author did try to make it somewhat gender egalitarian by having some female warriors, but I found this element to be really inconsistent. The central relationship between father and daughter is very much reflective of modern gender roles, and there’s so many other examples (female lead is an archer because close combat is too violent for her, apparently; women are associated with family and healing; men being motivated by protecting their wives; a man describing his sons as “terrors” but his daughter as “too good for this world”; I could go on). All of those elements I wouldn’t expect in the gender egalitarian society it seems like the author was going for. It just felt super inconsistent on a cultural worldbuilding level.
  • Sascha, the female lead, is written like an adult man’s idea of what a stereotypical teenage girl is like. She and her father Kalen had the most generic arc you could think of for a father-daughter relationship (
    Girl needs to realize her dad isn’t perfect but loves her and is doing his best, dad needs to realize his daughter is growing up and wants more independence
    ) . I also thought the narrative tended to be way more sympathetic to Kalen than to Sascha which was odd because I was generally was feeling the opposite. For example, Kalen would just not tell Sascha things for no good reason multiple times, and then side characters would pop up when Sascha got mad to defend him. There would be zero accountability, but it’s ok because Kalen feels bad about it, apparently? I also found the way this book treated the themes of temper and suicide to be in rather poorly handled (suicide was treated pretty casually and Sascha getting mad and storming off was treated like a sign of immaturity but Kalen showing a temper was not ideal but fine as long as he was never violent towards innocents. Which was particularly annoying considering I was reading Dreadnought at the same time and it has some great depictions of verbal but not physical abuse and this book didn’t even recognize that this is a thing.)
  • I can see people who just want a travel and fighting heavy story without thinking about the themes too hard liking this one, I just got bored, and when I get bored apparently I overanalyze things.

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Our Bloody Pearl by D.N. Bryn

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adventurous hopeful slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
A pirate rescues a siren from an abusive situation and helps them heal.

I can see a lot of other people really liking this one, but it wasn’t quite my thing although I’m glad I read it anyway. It was a bit too much of a romance for me, even if it didn’t follow too many of the stereotypical romance novel plot beats. I did appreciate that there were some more action-y parts in the plot. The emotional healing part of the book did clash a bit with the casualness of the siren eating human body parts and other violent actions for me, but I can see that not bothering other people. The coastal/ocean setting was very lovingly described, so that was pretty fun. I also am not the biggest fan of pirates and mermaids and stuff like that, so given that, I’m a little surprised I liked it as much as I did.

I really liked the disability representation in this book. I think it was handled very thoughtfully, and I liked how being disabled never prevented a character from having adjacency and being able participate in the plot. At the same time, representation of the difficulties of being disabled was never sacrificed for plot connivence. This is just as a small nitpick, but I think it would have been cool to see how a deaf sailer deals with the sirens. We do get to see use of sign language, but there’s no deaf characters.

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Legacy of the Vermillion Blade by Jay Tallsquall

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adventurous inspiring medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

I enjoyed this book. There was some parts of the pacing that felt a bit off, but that was the only major part that bothered me. I really liked the surprisingly healthy masculinity of the main character and also the importance of non-romantic bonds as well as romantic ones. This book did a great job portraying some common asexual experiences. I found it especially refreshing to read about a more masculine asexual character—those are very rare.
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Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson

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adventurous emotional reflective slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

It was slower paced and had more romance than I was expecting, which wasn't really what I prefer to read. The world building and magic system were very cool, those were my favorite parts. It was also a bit heavy on the themes about art, but
what do you expect from Hoid?
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The Last Echo of the Lord of Bells by John Bierce

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adventurous emotional fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Chameleon Moon by RoAnna Sylver

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adventurous hopeful fast-paced
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.0

The plot felt a bit out of control the entire time, and there are definitely parts about the world building that don't make much sense. It's also a bit too sweet/preachy for me at times. I liked the message, though, and the anxiety representation was pretty good. 

I read this book for the asexual representation (Regan is ace), and it wasn't too much of a focus so far, but I’m curious to see what will happen with it in future books. 
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Common Bonds: An Aromantic Speculative Anthology by C.T. Callahan, B.R. Sanders, RoAnna Sylver, Claudie Arseneault

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  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

I read this anthology for the representation, and the quality of that varied somewhat. Some stories had really great representation, some less so. There were even a couple where I had no clue who the aromantic character was supposed to be. I liked the representation in "The Aromatic Lovers" by Morgan Swim and "Would You Like Charms With That?" by E. H. Timms the best. The writing quality also varied a bit from story to story. I liked "Seams of Iron" by Adriana C. Grigore the most. 
The Dragon of Ynys by Minerva Cerridwen

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adventurous hopeful inspiring lighthearted medium-paced
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.0

 I liked this one! It was a great queer comfort read/cozy fantasy book. The ending was a bit simplistic, but it didn’t bother me too much. I loved how wholesome it was. I liked how an entire book focused on LGBTQ acceptance can have an aro ace MC, because I feel like it’s easy for a-spec people to be forgotten about in these discussions. There were also major trans and lesbian characters, which was also fun to see.
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