Moving on…
It was two weeks of next installments in favorite series and second books from new favorites which suited me just fine as everything was so excellent, I didn’t have a chance to pause and review until today. The bad news is that those of you who don’t have access to advanced copies are going to have to wait until fall for a couple of these reads. I promise the payoff will be worth the anticipation.
Sa Ye Vol. 2 by Wu Zhe (Seven Seas)
First off: if you don’t know about the crackdown on danmei authors in China, I have a short summary here: https://www.swsondheimer.com/book-reviews/i-am-glad-there-are-a-lot-of-books-in-the-world-because-it-is-never-going-to-stop-raining (sorry, I have an iPad and I only have access to the mobile version of the app. Saving up for a computer but “in this economy” etc…)
@dawn.writesstuff (IG and Threads) is continuing to update. Please read and share.
Sa Ye continues to be an unfiltered, unflinching look at two teenagers trying desperately to make it to adulthood, and the freedom they hope it will bring, without anyone to rely on except themselves and, maybe, one another. That isn’t to say it’s all dark and gloomy; there’s lots to laugh about and when it comes to love, Jiang Cheng and Gu Fei are absolutely adorable dorks who, like so many of us, end up laughing uncontrollably when attempting to romance one another, or even tell the other person he looks nice today. Their basketball games are all epic. They’re both a little weird (affectionate). Their classmates are personalities. The writing really captures how huge everything is for teenagers, how massive everything seems when you’re experiencing it for the first time, and how perspective shifts as your brain starts to sort what’s truly monumental from the chaff of the everyday, especially when trauma enters the picture.
That last is especially real for Jiang Cheng and Gu Fei who are just trying to live day to day: deadbeat parents, money struggles, babies raising babies, abandonment, and gang violence. Impending homelessness, lack of medical care, grades, university, the loss of a promising future. The fact that, while homosexuality isn’t technically illegal, it is deeply frowned upon and if these boys get caught, they are in for a world of trouble and hurt.
All of these details and quirks create characters with depth, breadth and life. The reader cares about them. As a mom, I’m worried about them. I am real mad I have to wait until October for more (ugh, three year of Mandarin is not enough to read a book, if you can believe it).
In America, they like to feed us a lot of propaganda about the Chinese police state. And while much of what we hear is true to some extent, I think the truth is that most people there are just trying to live their lives day to day, much as we are here. Which is, beyond a great story and gorgeous character development, another reason to read Sa Ye. Listen, I’m as much a sucker for the gorgeous historical danmei as the next girl (see below) but expand your horizons with a foray into the modern just to see how people on the other side of the world live. I think you’ll be glad you did.
Sa Ye Vol. 2: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9798891609822
Peerless by Meng Xi Shi (Seven Seas)
These bitches are my favorite bitches who have ever bitched. I mean, honestly. It’s probably not the slowest burn in danmei history but it has definitely been my favorite slow burn because it has, in fact, not been traditionally slow but that absolute torture Feng Xiao and Cui Buqu have put each other through not only in the name of one-upsmanship but by mutual agreement purely because they both want to win at intrigue is a thing of such glorious, ego-driven, narcissistic insanity that they cannot possibly be meant for anyone except one another. And yet, when it comes to acts of service for one another and for those closest to them, they are both faultlessly gentle and kind but gods forbid anyone should notice.
Let’s just hope we make it through the qi-deviation interlude so we can get back to Cui Buqu making Feng Xiao call him Daddy in exchange for hauling him back over the edge of a cliff.
Peerless Vol. 4: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9798891605886
Lucky Seed by Justinian Huang (Mira, 11/11)
The Emperor and the Endless Palace was, by far and away, my favorite book of 2024. You can imagine, then, my excitement when I found out that Justinian Huang had a second book coming out in 2025. When I saw a social media post that ARCs were out, my little fingers (they’re not actually little, which you all know if you follow me in IG because I complain every five minutes about how big my hands are and yet, they’re not big enough to have the same reach as Freddie Mercury’s so playing Queen on the piano is just hard enough to be annoying and why can’t my hands just pick already) raced to NetGalley to smash “request” and lo, I forgot that Mira was Huang’s publisher and I am auto-approved for Harlequin so I instead I smashed mine and did shrieked for a while.
I know it’s only July-ish but I can assure you that Lucky Seed is going to be in my top five of 2025, most likely my top 3, and it Huang may very well be at #1 again (it’s going to be very had to dethrone). The best way I can think of to describe the vibe is Dallas/Dynasty x Kinn/Porsche (I was going to say The Godfather but Sunbern is so Tankhun coded and Galahad reminded me a little of Vegas trying to pull Porsche… I could go on but I won’t because Lucky Seed is very much original and it’s own thing but there were some parallels that made me giggle in reminiscence).
There is so much in this book and I’m struggling to talk about how amazing it is without giving too much away because I want everyone to have the experience of reading it for the first time. It manages to be epic while also being about individual people, the history of a family and also about what the individual members of that family want and hope for and dream about. It’s about generational curses and the way they shift as they’re passed down, the way they warp each successive generation and its members differently and how much energy and it takes, and pain it causes, to truly break them. It’s about who you hold close and who you can trust. It’s about how difficult it is to really, truly walk away and how hard it is to stay. About getting what you think you want. About real active truth and actual truth and the lies we tell ourselves to make it through the day and to make it through life and what happens when we stop. About the little lies we forgot we told until the blow up in our faces. It’s about all the things that go into making family.
And it’s hopeful and funny. So funny. So fucking funny. Intriguing and honest and dark and tarnished and there are dogs which is how we know that there’s good in most of the people in this book and also how we know who’s beyond redemption. Lucky Seed is so real despite the scale being massive. I’m always in awe of writers who can plot and execute a story at such a massive scale and, somehow, keep it so personal and so human, the way that Huang has done in both of his novels so far, the first across time, and in this one across time, space, and cast of characters.
I guess “in awe” is the takeaway here. Highly recommend. Pre-order. Poke the library. Yell at your local bookstore. Do all the things. Read Lucky Seed. And if you haven’t read The Emperor and the Endless Palace yet, do that while you’re waiting. It’s a Stonewall Honor book. Those are important right now.
Lucky Seed: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780778387862
The Emperor and the Endless Palace: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780778387596
Redneck Revenant by David R. Slayton (Blackstone, 10/28)
So, as I always do at the beginning of reviews of David’s books: full disclosure, we’re friends. However, if I didn’t like his books, I would follow the rule I follow with other books I don’t like which is: If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
Hooray! Adam and Vic are back! I missed by literary sons. I’ve known them for a very long time and the break (while full of literary goodness, including: Rogue Community College and Dark Moon, Shallow Sea) was kind of killing me.
As the pandemic calms to a dull roar, Adam finds himself still in Denver with a steady job in Jesse’s garage, living in Bobby’s basement. Vic has left the police force for the chef life. The boys are still together (of course) and talking about finding a place of their own when Halloween night waltzes in along with something unexpected: Annie, Bobby’s dead wife (not a spoiler - it’s in the plot summary).
Commence action.
Most excellent action I could not put down. Like, I had stuff to do and decided not to do it could not put down. Dinner almost burned could not put down. Stayed up too late and didn’t regret it the next day could not put down. Lots of swords and sorcery and some fun new critters. A time loop that actually worked - and I am judgy about time loops people. I am judgey about time loops and I have very high expectations of David because I know what he can do and he nailed this one. There’s also really excellent development on some non-main duo characers: Cousin Jodi; a character from RCC who has a short but meaningful cameo; Annie; and perhaps most importantly, our erstwhile Winter King Silver, specifically the ways in which he’s had to change to fit the role of reigning monarch to maintain the supernatural peace. Ways Adam, and Silver himself, don’t particularly like.
There’s also a sense of existential dread that permeates Redneck Revenant one can’t quite put one’s finger on, a sort of humming ominousness you can almost hear while you’re reading that’s new to Slayton’s writing and that makes this book extra creepy. There are hints throughout that something very, very bad is coming and that the new evils that present themselves in Revenant are merely harbingers to whatever the new hellspawn is; I for one, am both terrified and absolutely stoked to find out.
Hurry up, Backwoods Banshee.
Redneck Revenant: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9798212913775
Rogue Community College: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9798200977505
Dark Moon, Shallow Sea: https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9798200977307
I also listened to Poverty by America by Matthew Desmond (https://bookshop.org/a/56337/9780593239933) this week. I am appalled. This should book should be required reading in high school.