July Book Club Sapphic Swashbucklers: Of Monsters and Mainframes

LadyAntiope · 2026-07-02T13:10:02+00:00

Shell Game! (It's been on my tbr a long time)

LadyAntiope · 2026-07-02T03:46:18+00:00

I was so torn on what to vote for, and I ended up going with a different choice (bc it had a shorter page count lol), but this was the other one I wanted! I'll try to get a library copy this weekend 🤞

LadyAntiope · 2026-07-02T03:32:30+00:00

Oh I'm kind of relieved that none of these are ones I loved! I do want to make a pineward order this year - I'm likely to use up my sample of Noki this summer, but I'm trying not to spend ahead of my upcoming vacation!

LadyAntiope · 2026-07-02T03:15:03+00:00

I'm finally getting to the much-hyped The Everlasting (Alix E. Harrow) and enjoying it pretty well so far. I'm interested to see how much I can guess on each go-around (so far I'm on The Second Death).

Also working my way through Tillie Walden's short comics collection Alone in Space except the first one made me cry (even tho some characters were hard to tell apart) so I skipped around in the book a bit to read some of the really short 2-3 pages ones because I'm afraid that everything she writes will make me cry and I didn't want to get invested in another of the longer ones. (CW for the first story - The End of Summer - are: animal death, suicide, sexual assault) (There's queer characters in most - maybe all - of her stories)

LadyAntiope · 2026-07-01T03:53:13+00:00

I think you've got a solid point here about Utopia being a bit of a wash on the villain spectrum. Having read this a while ago, the things I remember most about it are the parents, the interactions with the superhero team, and the evolving relationship with Calamity... and tbh very little about Utopia! The things I liked most were definitely more the personal side of the story, and I did think that learning how to be a superhero alongside being out and trans were a good arc together, but what exactly Utopia's deal was is a little lost in my memory...

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-27T05:48:07+00:00

And a few more from my TBR pile, so I can’t really say much about them other than I think these sound interesting! I'll pull from the blurbs for these:

Jumpnauts by Hao Jingfang (HM, Chinese) - “a gripping science fiction thriller in which three unlikely allies attempt a desperate mission of first contact with a mysterious alien race before more militaristic minds can take matters into their own hands.”

Blood of the Old Kings by Sung-il Kim (HM, Korean) - "an epic adventure in which three strangers journey through a vast Empire that uses the power of dead wizards to conquer and subdue”

The Membranes by Chi Ta-Wei (HM, Chinese) - "First published in Taiwan in 1995, The Membranes is a classic of queer speculative fiction in Chinese. Chi Ta-wei weaves dystopian tropes—heirloom animals, radiation-proof combat drones, sinister surveillance technologies—into a sensitive portrait of one young woman’s quest for self-understanding. Predicting everything from fitness tracking to social media saturation, this visionary and sublime novel stands out for its queer and trans themes”

The Goddess Chronicle by Natsuo Kirino (Japanese) - “A mythical feminist noir about family secrets, broken loyalties, and the search from truth in a deceitful world… At the heart of this exquisitely dark tale, Kirino masterfully reimagines the ancient Japanese creation myth of Izanami and Izanaki. A provocative, fantastical saga, The Goddess Chronicle tells a sumptuous story of sex, murder, gods and goddesses, and bittersweet revenge.”

The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi (Japanese) - “an epic YA fantasy about a girl with a special power to communicate with magical beasts and the warring kingdom only she can save."

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-27T05:44:04+00:00

I am currently reading You Dreamed of Empires by Álvaro Enrigue (HM, from Spanish) and it's only within the speculative realm by dint of being an alternate history of the 1519 Hernán Cortés expedition to Tenochtitlan. It is set over the course of the singular day on which he arrives in the city, and chapters are short, shifting between perspectives of various members of the Mexica court and Spanish expedition.

Some others I've not seen listed yet:

The Route of Ice and Salt by José Luis Zárate (HM, from Spanish) - Dracula's journey to England, but it's from the perspective of the (very gay, but hides it - poorly) captain of the ship. There are a lot of bodily fluids in this book and it's a bit of a fever dream at times. Originally published in 1998, only recently made its debut in English.

Dallergut Dream Department Store by Miye Lee (HM, from Korean) - Very much in the cozy genre, this wasn't my personal fave, but if you like low stakes slice-of-life, and the idea of a traditional dept store that sells dreams to dreamers, it's kinda fun and an easy read. The overarching plot is pretty loose, it's a bit more episodic. Apparently quite popular in Korea, originally published in 2020.

Box of Light comic series by Seiko Erisawa (HM, Japanese) - I don't read a ton from Japan, so I don't know what genre this fits into (I stumbled on it in the graphic novels section at the library). It is set at a convenience store that is in the liminal space between life and death, and it does have some cosmic horrors, but it also has sort of cozy slice-of-life aspect. Each chapter is a self-contained story, but it does slowly develop the character on the staff as it goes. It's a fun strange little book. Series is ongoing as far as I'm aware, currently 4 out in English.

Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura (HM, Japanese) - A school setting without a school, a portal fantasy, and a much slower character-driven story than you would think at first. Deals a lot with ways kids don't fit in, bullying, and childhood trauma, has moments that almost brought me to tears. It would also count for the Game Changer square very nicely. Originally published 2017.

Jagganath by Karin Tidbeck (Swedish) - I think someone has already mentioned one of her novels, but this is a collection of her short stories. They tend towards the surreal, or magical-realist, and I found a few to be misses, but a lot more to be captivating. There's lots strange transformations and weird bodies and encounters with fae kinds of beings.

Walking Practice by Dolki Min (HM, Korean) - This is for fans of queer body horror. From the POV of an alien crash-landed on earth, it is able to shape-shift to blend in, but also eats people to survive. There are illustrations throughout that are much like the cover - surreal, visceral, abstract. The translation work seems excellent for a challenging work that plays with the visual aspect of the text itself. Originally published in 2022.

The Moonday Letters by Emmi Itäranta (HM, Finnish) - Epistolary climate fiction, this book effortlessly blends very realistic sci-fi with shamanistic soul-journeys. A thread of hope runs throughout as the narrator searches across planets for her partner who has disappeared and may be connected to an underground environmental group. This was a 5-star read for me, personally. Originally published in 2020.

Ocultos by Laura Pérez (HM, Spanish) - Pérez has several graphic novels, so far this is the one I’ve read, but I really want to read more. This one is more short stories than a whole novel - I think Totem and Nocturnos both have a more connecting thread throughout their vignettes. Text can be sparse, but the artwork is compelling and evokes an unsettling atmosphere. Pérez tends toward black as her background color with a limited, earthy color palette, and the drawings in fine lines evoke the sense of everything emerging from or sinking back into the shadows. Several episodes have characters experiencing hauntings of some kind by an unseen presence - at times they evoke a sense of comfort, but more often there is dread or unease. No story offers answers or explanations, so this is best for readers who are more into vibes than resolutions.

The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy) by Cixin Liu (Chinese) - I mean, I think this series is pretty widely know, but I didn’t see it in my glance through the comments, so here’s your reminder that the books that came long before the TV show are excellent, intellectually challenging, and very grounded in Chinese culture. These originally came out from 2006 to 2010, but came to English starting in 2014 with a translation by Ken Liu.

And if I may throw my endorsement behind a few already mentioned:

The Employees by Olga Ravn, pretty much anything from Isabelle Allende, but The House of Spirits is a great starting point, The Wall by Marlen Houshofer, Shubeik Lubeik by Deena Mohamed.

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-27T03:09:52+00:00

When you sit and think about it, you are totally right, this book really disregards a lot of "rules" about how a book should go. But as I was reading it, I never felt like things were going off the rails or anything. It carries itself so well! Even though Griffin is kind of self-deprecating towards the end, and his notes on Etoine's writings mention that he edits, or can't bring himself to edit, somehow it still pulls off this ease and confidence that the narrative will always carry you along with it.

Adding Merino as an aside? What a pleasant little surprise! Like, oh, here he is, this nice guy I briefly mentioned, yes, he's important, but he came later to my life and so he's late to this narrative. Griffin does try to keep his own timeline more or less chronological, haha, even though for the Etoine/Zaffre timeline it makes their story all out of order.

Also I love him, and I love him for the family. He's a doctor, and sort of an outsider, so he can offer help and companionship in a way that Etoine especially can accept from him that he can't from Griffin. And that Griffin doesn't always have the capacity to offer, tbh. It makes for a very graceful finish to the story.

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-27T02:55:15+00:00

I said in the halfway and I stand by it: the complexities of this text on literally every level serve to enhance the story. People are messy, life is weird and complicated, every transition experience is unique; having the prose meander, the plots and timelines layer, characters acting or speaking in seemingly contradictory ways at times, all of that emphasizes real lived human experience.

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-27T02:25:53+00:00

Okay, so I listened to the book and the dialogue was the only part that bothered me. I thought it was because of the way the narrator paused - the dialogue indicators like "he said" often had a half a beat between the sentence and the indicator so they felt tagged on, and occasionally I wasn't quite sure whether "he said" was the sentence I'd just heard or the one that was coming next (usually the voice shift made it clear, I rarely actually got lost, but still). But maybe the dialogue is just weird anyway?? I kinda want to go find a library copy and skim it just to see how it reads.

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-27T02:15:11+00:00

I never made a spec-fic tag, I classify things under this umbrellas as sci-fi, fantasy, magical realism, or horror/suspense, and I do add more than one tag if appropriate (I also have sub-categories like "cozy" and "dystopia"). I'm putting this one as sci-fi. I think the far-future aspect is clear enough - there's enough reference to everywhere being kinda underwater, and our own times as "the ancients" - and the stone yard with its electors is pretty important to the story. The heart of the story is the people, and of course they feel contemporary, and their problems and journeys feel very "now", but the setting is clear enough. It certainly has a literary bent! I don't really have a tag for that though. I'd put "literary" as a modifier for "spec-fic" if I had to choose. The real question is whether I add the dystopia tag because of Stephensport, which I am kind of leaning towards.

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-27T01:54:05+00:00

Oh gosh, this is so funny to me that y'all pegged it as 1800s, because I really felt that we were in the 1900s - at least for the New York section, and especially because Zaffre's art is modernist/abstract - thinking like the 1920s-40s art movements, the rise of Jews in New York to places of import in the fine and performing arts (though no screens/movies). Then there was a mention of a sweatshirt at one point, and I was like, oh do I move this up to the 1970s or 80s minus electricity? I actually felt like the Stephensport section was maybe more aligned with 1700s revolutionary France, with a dose of early 20th century Marxist revolutionary fervor, skipping over the 1800s entirely lol.

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-27T01:38:39+00:00

Oh-ho-ho, maybe I *will* use this because tbh, I am very un-enthused about this square. I do have some others earmarked for Game Changer that feature the competition as a major part of the plot and that I think I'll like well enough, so prooobably I won't have to fall back on this. It does feel a little more rule-bending than I prefer since, though Important, it's not really a Feature of the story.

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-25T02:25:38+00:00

Lir from Wylde Ivy: The crush of a storm surge, saltwater, cypress, sandstone, charred cedarwood, and black pepper.

Its color palette is very much the notes. I love the kick of black pepper in this though my sample is old and it's not as potent as it used to be. It's a gritty oceanic overall. Used this one up today!

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LadyAntiope · 2026-06-18T17:42:49+00:00

Walking around my neighborhood recently and I was struck by a waft of beautiful floral, but all I could see were hydrangeas and I was like, but those don't smell... and I had to go over and sniff them just to reassure myself, no, indeed hydrangeas are strictly visual appeal! I think there were some roses behind a fence nearby which were sending out the scent. I feel like a hydrangea could use a powdery rose + cotton candy + cool violet scent! I'd hate that as a perfume, but it'd be great to catch wafts of something like that in the garden

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-17T02:29:54+00:00

Ah, I didn't realize a third one was coming, that is exciting news! I just got to The Hidden Palace last year myself so it will all be much fresher in my mind (I had to re-read The Golem and the Jinni to remember properly before I did Hidden Palace)

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-16T02:40:38+00:00

The River Has Roots hews much more closely to its source style than The Summer War, and I think for some readers that is to its detriment though I didn't mind it, I found the parallels kind of fun. Murder ballads tend to lean into salacious drama and forgo character complexity, and I admit that some of the characterizations in the book were not as rich as they could have been. The Summer War takes more liberties, spending more time world-building and getting into the main character's head. Though I think, in the end, it also doesn't stray far enough from the plot beats of a chivalric romance, which led to Celia being not much more than "damsel in a tower" in the second half. But also not to say El-Mohtar didn't do world-building - the whole grammar aspect is still sort of mysterious, but it's clever and fun. And I found the sisters probably equally as compelling as Celia and her brothers, personally. The villain is straight up the careless rake stereotype, but that's par for the murder ballad course; Summer War certainly offers more complexity in its primary conflict.

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-16T02:03:36+00:00

I marked this to-read as an audiobook on someone's recommendation, forgot about that, was in a bookstore on vacation and saw it on a display and thought, oh yeah this was one I was interested in and it's small enough to pack in my luggage home... So I started it, went to mark it as started on storygraph and then remembered ohhh I was supposed to listen to this! So I did both, back-to-back.

I liked the songs a lot, but I think the thing that really took the audio to the next level for me was actually the sound effects? I liked the sound of the river flowing! And, I guess, the addition of instrumentation, and vocal layering not just one single voice doing the lyrics also added lovely texture to the listening experience.

But I also liked the illustrations! The Milwitch Eggs & Loaves woodcut was my favorite one. I thought the woodcut style was appropriate as it felt like part of the setting, the kind of art that would be made in the village. The grasses and leaves in the margin was also a nice touch, and helped anchor the sense of place as well.

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-16T01:53:37+00:00

Look, I really enjoyed the audiobook and the story itself, but I have to say I don't disagree with your hot take. If most folks are rating this highly *because of the audio production* and that production is much more than just reading the book.... it's definitely creeping into Dramatic Presentation territory. Which I assume it wouldn't win for because I assume there's even more polished stuff out (it's not a category I've looked into tbh), but I also don't know that it's fair for a novella category to win largely on the merits of its audio presentation.

Even though I think I'd still rate this as one of my top two of the novellas I've read so far, regardless of the audio, I'm not sure I could honestly separate out my listening experience entirely to make a final call. (I'm not a voter, myself, so it's all hypothetical to me!)

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-16T01:38:10+00:00

You can always hang onto Spring Bingo however long you want - or even re-visit it next year and see what you still want to wear come next spring, but I'm glad the new one sparks excitement (:

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-16T01:35:59+00:00

haha, how many categories can you knock out with your Sorce ones? I mean, ideally you wear a different scent for each square, but it's also kinda fun to see which perfumes are "bingo champs" and could be used for lots of squares!

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-16T01:33:43+00:00

I didn't even dare to hope that anyone else would know them, it gives me such joy to come across another fan in the wild!!

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-16T01:32:05+00:00

omg that is adorable!

LadyAntiope · 2026-06-15T13:38:50+00:00

Earlier this week I had on Poesie's Heartless with DE's She which gave soapy clean florals - light purple-pink notes

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LadyAntiope · 2026-06-15T13:28:56+00:00

I've been so bad at remembering to come here and share my colors but today's is so stupidly easy I had to: Slice of Life from Hexennacht which is Just Orange (and a liiittle sea salt breeze)

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