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The Woods All Black is a queer and trans 1920's story about a nurse named Leslie being called out to help the small Appalachian town of Spar Creek. The initial foreground of trying to provide services to chilly and creepy Christian townsfolk is backgrounded by both gothic and body horror, as well as some romance.

One element of this book that I thought was done well is that it deals with Leslie's wartime trauma (and homophobia trauma). In this aspect, it echoes a lot of the things I liked about T. Kingfisher's What Feasts at Night, about somebody trying to understand what they can trust about their own perceptions in a strange and disturbing environment.

I love the queer solidarity in this book, about people trying to be themselves while being torn down by the airquotes community around them. The feeling of being somewhere unwelcoming and magnetically being pulled to befriend the one other outcast resonated particularly strongly for me.

I also appreciated reading a book taking on a historical trans perspective. Of course that's my language, and not the book's. Leslie calls himself an invert, and follows butch femme scripts that he learned in Paris, not having any other signposts to follow. Stevie is a local to Spar Creek that the locals read as a willful tomboy; he doesn't have the same language as Leslie, but still has a strong sense of his own identity. Mostly, I love that they each have things to teach the other about themselves.

The subtitle to this book is "When they call you a monster, show your teeth". It's got a delightfully sharp "be gay do crime" ring to it, but it's also an accurate depiction of the shape of its story and the revenge fantasy of fighting back against hatred by being the things they hate you for.

This book was fantastic. The setup is that shapeshifting, people-eating, amorphous blob Shesheshen is rescued by overly kind Homily, believing Shesheshen to be a person. Ironically, Homily comes from a monstrously toxic family of wyrm hunters, who are all out to kill Shesheshen specifically, while not realizing that Shesheshen is said monster. (Hijinks ensue.)

It's a story that deals with passing and masking--Shesheshen works really hard at trying to be a person, physically and socially assembled from what she can scavenge. She's got a wry non-human perspective that's especially biology-focused, like how to form legs and have a humanish shape, the tricky mechanics of eating with your mouth closed, and the overwhelmingness of smells and noises.

This book also deals with physically and emotionally abusive family, and how hard it is to struggle through trauma, no matter how much you are being hurt. Also, as you might expect, this book is also about family and royalty being the true monsters.

Normally, I am not keen on stories where a good bit of relationship tension comes from an intentional deception leading up to an eventual awkward reveal. Even if you ignore the self-protective reasons here, I think the setup in this book works partially for comedy reasons, as Shesheshen considers devouring Homily at the outset, but as she gets more entangled in Homily's family life, it also works as a deception told for protective reasons. It narratively worked for me enough to not be feeling "just tell her already!" throughout the book. The fact that there are a number of worse deceptions elsewhere also makes this feel more minor than you'd imagine it could be.

I devoured (pun not intended) the whole book in one day. Strong recommend from me.

LM Sagas's Cascade Failure is a debut sf novel about found family on a scrappy spaceship working against the evils of capitalism. You love to see it. I don't know why this trope is such catnip for me, but I could really read so much of this.

It's full of snappy dialogue, fun relationships, and action-filled set pieces. Honestly, so much of the book felt visual that I could easily imagine a comic or film adaptation. The relationships between the characters, especially Jal and Saint, had a lot of depth.

I wish there was a little bit more heft to the worldbuilding. It's a space corporations vs unions situation (although it gets at some good nuance about how these can work too closely together), with a guild that sits sort of outside that. I didn't really get much sense of what guild hierarchy Captain Eoan existed in, as it seemed like they and the crew largely went off and did whatever they pleased.

Overall, my take is that this was fun but not amazing, and I'd read more by this author or in this universe for sure.

How to Keep House While Drowning felt like a distilled therapy session about cleaning. I saw this recommended on fedi somewhere, and felt like this was useful for me to read right now. It's less "here's my life hack productivity advice for folding shirts" and more "here's some better ways to think about and emotionally approach taking care of yourself and your space". (Honestly, this is probably the more valuable thing.)

A bunch of thoughts I enjoyed that stuck with me: * cleaning is morally neutral * your space exists to serve you (do you hang clothes on a chair? if that works for you, then that's awesome) * interrogating preconceived notions of what cleaning looks like * prioritizing health > comfort > happiness in care tasks (and cutting out perfectionism saying you have to do all of these things all of the time) * balance in care tasks between people being less "am I contributing enough?" and more "am I taking advantage of someone else?"