What’re Hiu Reading? Cabbage-fed mini reviews

Hey folks, long time no see!

It’s been just over two months since I’ve made any proper contributions to this website, and as anyone who follows my Twitter or hangs around on the Inn Discord will know, that’s because I got married last month! It was all very exciting, very stressful, and very lovey-dovey. Sorry that none of you were invited, but in fairness… some of you might be axe murderers. It wasn’t worth the risk.

My wife (still not used to that) made me buttonholes made out of some of my favourite fantasy quotes!

In any case, it’s about time that I start contributing around here again. Over my hiatus and the weeks leading up to it, I read quite a lot of really quite awesome books! The only issue is… My memory isn’t great at the best of times. Throw a wedding into the mix and… yeah. A lot of the nitty-gritty details of these books are buried under memories of dancing, delicious cocktails (mmmm, white russians), and a gorgeous woman in a white dress.

But those books deserve some shouting. And after two months away, my head is full of shite to talk about. So what I’m gonna go is throw it all together into a list of mini-reviews and general bookish yelling. Sound good?

Here we go.


Book Reviews

The usual disclaimer first β€” I received copies of some of these books from the publishers in exchange for fair and honest reviews. Thanks to Penguin Random House, Pan McMillan, Gollancz, and Harper Voyager for the review copies!

Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon

This fucking book, man. I read this quite a while back, actually, but no matter how many times I tried to write a review for it, it just seemed like I couldn’t do it justice. Trying to convey how it made me feel would honestly require me to be a much better writer than I currently am.

Even just explaining what this book is about seems an impossible task. Vern is a Black albino teenager born and raised in a cult and made to marry their leader. While pregnant, she flees the compound to give birth and raise her two children in the woods. The family is then hunted by a mysterious enemy, all while Vern undergoes drastic bodily changes, and becomes subject to increasingly vivid visions.

Sorrowland touches on a lot of things. It comes with pretty much every content warning that it is possible to have, so please don’t enter into it lightly. This feels like a book trying to work through a lot of complex, messy feelings. But I have to admit that I love how it doesn’t try to “solve” any of the issues that it explores. It doesn’t gloss over them, but instead tries to sort through them.

The celebration of culture, but the wariness of having that weaponised against you. The love and joy of being a parent, but wanting to be your own person. Recognising that an experience was shit, but making the most of the strength it gives you. Showing empathy for the struggles of others, but not forgiveness for the shit they do to you.

“Enjoyed” isn’t the word, here, as Sorrowland does go to some pretty dark places. But I will never regret, and will always appreciate having read it. It is one of my top books of the year so far. There are some aspects that weren’t for me (I’m not much of a smut reader, so supernatural threesomes are a bit outside my wheelhouse), but many that really struck a chord with me.

I particularly loved that Vern isn’t necessarily the nicest or most “likeable” of characters, and I loved how the book engages with that. There’s an element of… “Okay I came from a really shitty place, but I have to recognise that I have, to some degree, internalised some of that shittiness, and I need to work on that.” That’s the kind of complex, messy, real shit that lots of books don’t dare to tackle. And that’s why I hold Sorrowland in such high regard.

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho

Black Water Sister can basically be summed up as… Closeted American-born girl goes to Malaysia with her parents, gets haunted by her dead gran, and involved with a very violent, very spooky god.

And hey if that sounds like a wild ride, that’s because it is. For a book that prominently features such things as ghosts, spirits, and gods, this felt remarkably “grounded”. With some urban fantasies, the real world kind of takes a step back in order to let the supernatural shine. But here, both are interwoven in such a way that really makes those supernatural moments feel like they matter. Zen Cho lures you in with such relatable scenes as your mother and aunties talking about you as though you aren’t right there, and then hits you with the magic jump-scare when a spooky murder god appears at the window.

I really enjoyed this book, but would say that it has quite a wide tonal range that I’m not sure all readers will get along with. There are some genuinely funny moments, there are some scenes that drip with emotion and vibrate with family tensions, and then there are some really, really dark scenes (content warning for attempted sexual abuse).

I know that every family has its secrets, but this one might take the cake…

The Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman

This book has been talked about in almost every online fantasy circle since it released, and honestly it’s not hard to see why. What we’ve got here is an imaginative grimdark-adjacent world, seen through the eyes of a very snarky and opinionated thief. Historically, this is the kind of mix that tends to do very well β€” it feels like fans of Locke Lamora have been looking to scratch that itch for years.

The Scott Lynch comparison is one that has been made a lot, along with the likes of Joe Abercrombie and Nick Eames. I agree with those to a certain extent, but I also thought there was a slight horror element in there, too. Which seems silly to say given how comedic some sections can be, but it’s a mix that works. It reminds me a little bit of Glen Cook’s The Black Company, honestly, with those humorous sections cutting through an oppressive atmosphere.

This is a series that I’m definitely gonna continue reading, so Buehlman has absolutely made a fan out of me. If you’re thinking of picking it up, well… If you like any of the names mentioned above, you’re probably gonna have a good time with this one. If thievery books and dark humour aren’t really your bag, then I’m not sure if this will change your mind.

Among Thieves by M.J. Kuhn

Talking about thievery books, this one was FUN.

There’s a quote I’ve always loved from the late, great Roddy Piper β€” “Just when they think they got the answers, I change the questions”.

When reading Among Thieves, you’d be forgiven for thinking that M.J. Kuhn lives by that line. I found this to be such a fun, twisty, whats-gonna-happen, oh-no-they-didn’t, oh-fuck-what-now story. It’s the kind of book that knows exactly what it wants to be, and does exactly what it says on the tin. You want a heist? You want plotting and backstabbing and criminal underworlds? You want high-action mayhem and lots of group banter? Then Among Thieves has you covered.

I devoured the entirety of this book in one sitting. Lost a fair bit of sleep because of it. I’m not mad about it. Would stay up to 3am again.

There are some really fun and memorable characters here (I love Ivan), and a couple of very menacing antagonists, too. It perhaps doesn’t spent a lot of time building a world you’d want to get lost in, but it gives enough detail to inform the story, and give our characters a sandbox in which to go balls-to-the-wall mental.

My one major complaint is that there’s no indication as to whether a sequel is coming.

The Righteous by David Wragg

I didn’t know this was a duology! I don’t know about anyone else, but when I see a new fantasy series, I tend to assume by default that it’s a trilogy.

But while I was a wee bit pissy that I’d been robbed of another book in the Black Hawks series, The Righteous won me back over. Wragg has a great kind of in-your-face humour that absolutely up my alley. In what other series would one character refer to another as “pig-fucker” as a term of endearment? In what other series would a character dismiss an attacking wolf as “a dog with a haircut”?

The Righteous picks up where The Black Hawks left off, and manages to thread that needle between “funny” and “serious” (which is a hard thing to do). There have been a lot of books over the years that feature idealistic protagonists wanting to do the right thing, but it says a lot for this one that I didn’t ever feel like I’d seen it all before. In fact, Chel’s mix of idealism, determination, and “fuck it, I guess I’ll charge into battle” attitude is something that really caught my imagination. The side-character cast holds a special place in my heart, too. Lemon is maybe one of my favourite side-characters ever. And while I maybe had some slight frustrations with some scenes that I felt maybe ran a bit too long, or with some subplots that I wasn’t a fan of, I thought Wragg managed to stick the landing in a satisfying way.

I’ll be keeping an eye out for whatever comes next from this author.

The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan (Books 1 & 2)

So the big news in fantasyland recently is that The Wheel of Time TV Show is dropping in November, right?

WoT was one of the first big series that pulled me into fantasy back when I was a teenager. A friend recommended it to me before I fully immersed myself in the genre, and I remember thinking it was just alright for the first few books before I really got sucked in. With the TV show coming up, and with my wedding taking up all the braincells I’d otherwise have used on reading & reviewing new books, I figured an audio reread of the first few was in order prior to the TV show.

Man, I’d forgotten so much. I’d forgotten how repetitive the Eye of the World could be (all of those inns! so many cart rides!). I’d forgotten how at odds the end of the first book feels when compared to the rest of the series. I’d forgotten how Mat doesn’t really become the Mat we know until a few books into the series. And, honestly, I’d forgotten just how… young… it feels. If the Wheel of Time books were to drop in the current fantasy climate, I wonder how it would compare to current adult fantasy offerings. Or perhaps young adult?

I’ve never been overly enthused with Jordan’s prose, so while it was fun to re-visit some old friends (and while I might continue this re-read as the seasons for the TV show drop), it was a bit of a nostalgia-check.

Did I enjoy the re-read? Yeah, partially. It’s fun watching Jordan flex his imagination muscles. But I feel like I’m more excited about the TV show than I am for any future Wheel of Time re-reading.


Other Stuff

Since this has been a bit of a brain-dump post, I figured I might as well share some random thoughts, updates, and links to things that have caught my interest & attention recently.

  • SPFBO! The reading is going by very, very quickly at the moment. I only have one more book to read in Phase 1, and the Inn’s other judges are at around the same point. We’ve started to crank out the posts now (see our SPFBO hub), and are hopefully not too far aware from a healthy debate to decide who our finalist should be.
  • This essay by Sid Jain for Uncanny Magazine has been living in my brain for a few months, ever since I read it. It compares the colonialist portrayal in the Baru Cormorant books to the historical colonisation of India by the British Empire, with some very, very chilling quotes from real-world colonialists. It’s sickening just how much thought and design went into uprooting another culture just for the fact that it was different to their own. This essay is a hard read, but one that I’d recommend. Especially for any writer who is looking at a colonial portrayal in their books, or any reviewer who is critiquing such a portrayal.
  • Justin over at FanFiAddict has pulled together a great series about neurodivergence in fiction, with posts from a variety of folks in the community. This was the first one I’d read, written by Justin himself, and it was certainly an eye-opening read. I don’t want to put any more words to it when he’s already said it better, so go and check out the series.
  • Fabienne over at LibriDraconis has been a friend to the Inn for a while now. Not so long ago she posted a review of a book that had perhaps the most thoughtful content warning I’ve ever seen.
  • I’ve also recently finished reading both The Splinter King by Mike Brooks and The Bone Ship’s Wake by RJ Barker! I adored them both, and will have full reviews of those dropping as soon as I can find the time to write them.
  • I’m on the lookout for guests for Common Room Conversations episodes! These things take a little while to organise, put together, and format. But I love these chats, so I’m really keen to be doing more of them. Bug me on Twitter if you have a topic and/or guest you’d like to see.

So yeah, there you go! I might make this kind of post format a regular thing, if I come across some books that I have some thoughts on, but not enough to make a full-fat review. Who knows, I guess we’ll find out!

Author: HiuGregg

Crazy online cabbage person. Reviewer, shitposter, robot-tamer, super-professional journalism, and a cover artist's worst nightmare. To-be author of Farmer Clint: Cabbage Mage.

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