leonidskies's reviews
140 reviews

This is an enrapturing, horrifying, and thoughtful book. It's very short, but incredibly precise - it does what it means to do and it does it well. 

I'm not the biggest fan of Lovecraftian horror - a book about the same Cthulu mythos was my only DNF last year, but this book is like day to its night. It's tense, mysterious, and cuts close to its unfathomable horror without teetering into absurdity. 

It's short - I read it in about two hours - and well worth your time. Its sparing use of physical gore pairs well with its more 'mundane' but equally horrifying attention to police brutality. I'm really glad I took the time to read this novella.

I received an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for my review. 

This is a book I took a little while to warm up to, but GOSH once it warmed up it was so good. The character complexity here - especially the reality of the way relationships developed - was so, so good. This is some of the best character work I've read all year, and a really good piece of dual-perspective writing.

I also loved the way queernormativity and mental health were presented in a fantasy world - I really liked the way the use/lack of use of specific terminology was handled alongside making it clear what individual characters were struggling with. I was not a huge fan of the way a nonbinary character was near-immediately killed off, but if you're okay with that then the rest of this novel is well worth your time.

It also worked wonderfully as the start of a series - the setup didn't detract from the narrative, but in the back third of the novel the world of the setting really expanded into something I'd be happy to read more of.

The only reason this isn't 5* for me is the comparatively weaker opening and occasionally clumsy writing/editing mistakes (the worst of which is the misgendering of a nonbinary character in the narration), the latter of which might not be reflected in the book when it's released. Otherwise, a really wonderful book and well worth picking up if you want to read a sapphic romantasy with a queernormative world and compelling character arcs.

This is a really solid, achingly beautiful and lovingly constructed story. I really enjoyed the two main characters, and absolutely ADORED the journey they were on together. The food descriptions especially were so, so good, and I could feel the care poured into the atmosphere. I also really liked the supporting cast - there were lots of really fun moments. This had just the right mix of heartbreak and hope, bitterness and pining. I truly had such a blast reading this novel and absolutely flew through it.

There was a comment in the book about sexuality that didn't agree with me as an asexual person, to the point it threw me out of the mood for a decent chunk towards the back third of the novel. That, and the fact that there were simply way more sex scenes than are to my taste, are the only real reasons I wouldn't give this novel a 5* rating.

This was an absolutely DELIGHTFUL book and I loved it start to finish.

Contemporary romance is not my genre but I'd heard of the author and my copy was reduced because it was damaged while on the shelves, so I thought I'd pick it up and I do NOT regret it. This was put together so utterly lovingly, from the characters to the food descriptions (ohhhhh god some of those food descriptions made me so hungry).

My kingdom for romance with a trans person. My kingdom for other trans and otherwise queer people also being in the book!! Without revealing the plot point itself, the emotional payoff relating to transphobia in the workplace by the end of the book.........so good. So good I teared up while reading this in public.

The only thing I could possibly have wished for is more of it. Oh no, looks like the author has published other books too 👀👀

I received an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for my review. 

This is a really fun, heartwarming book! I super enjoyed the core characters and absolutely adored how queer everything was (and how NORMAL that was. I'm always mixed on queernormative worlds, but I really enjoyed this). I love love loved how the story revolved around chosen family - I'm a sucker for it and this hit the spot for me.

The plot was pretty simple and relatively predictable, but the individual elements were super strong - the writing of the function and malfunction of cybernetics was 👌👌 and wasn't so high-tech that I felt lost.

The only real weakness this book has, beyond preference on content/pacing, is the worldbuilding, which was definitely more vibes than something that felt real to me. I still enjoyed what was there, though! 

This book is really lovely for anyone looking for a queerplatonic sci fi road trip kind of vibe, and I'd highly recommend it if you're into that!

I received an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for my review. 

This is a really good collection of transmasc and nonbinary disabled perspectives, which ranged largely between insightful and moving. It's a pretty short read too, and the anthology can easily be picked up and put down for those with limited energy or time.

There were a couple of disappointing essays - a few I found a little basic for my tastes, and one that was basically an advert. I also found myself noticing the lack of transfemme perspectives when the collection was looked at as a whole.

Overall, this is a really strong collection that I would highly recommend to any and all who are at all interested. It's very thoughtful and many of the contributors clearly come from spaces of knowledge and experience. There are so many whose past and future work I'd love to check out after reading this anthology.

This is the first book written solely by Pratchett that I've read, and I enjoyed it quite a lot! It was a really solid read that split itself between silliness and cutting social commentary, with a dash of things that felt pretty obvious to me but maybe weren't when the book was written.

The concept was charming and the execution was better in parts (took itself more seriously than I expected), but occasionally dragged itself down (for me) by returning to the refrain of the joke it's based upon with mixed success.

I did REALLY enjoy it though, and I'm definitely inclined to pick up some of the political-leaning Discworld works if there are any that strike my fancy. 

I received an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for my review.

I wanted to like this book, I really did. I'm a queer and disabled person with training as a historian, so this looked like an absolutely ideal read for me. Instead, I would honestly say that this author has been failed in being told this book is publishable as a work of history.

The writing, in the version I received, needed serious editing, from structure to line edits. Much of the content was tenuously linked together, such that this was not a queer disability history but was mostly a history of several individuals who were queer and disabled, with frequent tangents into general queer or disabled history. The tone was entirely unacademic to the point of disparaging the work of historians that the book should have (and only occasionally was) built upon, and was otherwise sarcastic to the point of confusion. Some of the historical facts were wrong, and the historical analysis was next to nonexistent. The sources referenced were of low quality (and often formatted inconsistently), ranging from BBC news articles to podcast episodes, with barely any use of original or academic sources.

Some of the content was interesting, but that's probably the only positive point I can find. I know the author is clearly passionate about the content, but I would instead have encouraged them to do further high-quality research and work on their writing skills without trusting their work to a press that doesn't give their book the editing or cover (seriously, why is the cover a fake tweet by the author?) it deserves. This book would have been much better served by good framing as to what it actually is.

If you think you would like to read a 'popular history' (written for an audience with no academic/historical knowledge or study experience) book which gives the very basics of some queer and disabled history in the US and UK, like books written in a sarcastic tone, and have no trust for any academic historical work, then this book is genuinely for you. I like none of these things and this book was therefore not for me.

I've read all three of Andrew Joseph White's books this year. This is the one he's best known for, I think, and is my least favourite of the three but still utterly fantastic.

This book is vulnerable, messy, and tangled in the weight of its limbs - in the best way, of course. I adored Benji and Nick (I maintain that AJW's greatest strength is the writing of his autistic characters. I was obsessed with Nick), and Theo's complexity was also fascinating. I enjoyed the supporting characters even if a few were a little one-note, but what they built was a hopeful landscape in a near-hopeless setting (which was also fantastically pieced together).

The thing that really blew me away about Hell Followed With Us was its empathy. Normally, there's a predictable response to what is functionally the zombies of a zombie apocalypse, and the different approach taken to the Graces was both surprising and did a lot for making this book as unique as it was. Characters in this book do terrible things for reasons that make sense in their own way, and the understanding of that was really heartfelt.

Some of the religious elements of HFWU were uncomfortable - I have no kind of evangelical background, so the strongest association for most of the religious framing was Christianity's worst kind of bigotry. Most of the stuff in this book is intentionally worse, though, and I know it was meant to make me uncomfortable so. Success! 

The only place this book ever really falls down is the ending, which - while satisfying - felt rushed. I got the impression a few times while reading that this used to be a longer novel that had to be edited down in the first and final quarters, and would have liked a little more breathing room at the end. Otherwise, this was an incredible piece of work and I can't wait for the movie AND everything else that White writes next.

I received an advance digital copy of this book in exchange for my review. 

Truly, this is a really lovely book. It's really sweet and portrays a very touching, heartfelt story of a second chance romance in the wake of an emotionally abusive relationship. Equally wonderful is the plot relating to the young son of one of the main characters, which was the highlight of the book for me. 

The only real issue I had with this book, I think, was that it just wasn't to my tastes. It didn't really grip me at any point, and there was little sense of place or much materially going on beyond the romance. That's not necessarily a bad thing, it just isn't my thing! I was also a little put off by how the prose was occasionally repetitive, had a few basic editing errors, and particularly mixed up pronouns for the nonbinary character. However, I read an advance copy, so it's possible these errors have been or will be fixed in future.

All in all, this is a very nice story, just not for me and a little under polished in the state I read it in. If you don't mind that, then this would be a great read for anyone really craving an f/nb romance or a romance that really speaks to and makes every effort to include parents of neurodivergent kids.