Marth Muffins

These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs

Whilst I had a lot of fun with this one, especially with the Esek and Chono focused sections, sadly the book never fully clicked into place for me to truly love it. The main stars here are the aforementioned Esek and Chono. They're easily the most nuanced and multi-faceted characters present here and their relationship, with the added third wheel complication of Six, is what kept my attention throughout. Esek is who shines here, her manipulations, her violence, and her whole attitude to life stand in such stark contrast to everyone else in this book. Where pretty much everyone else here is rather solemn and/or withdrawn into themselves Esek really is the Burning One, blazing through the story with so much glee and murderousness and plots on plots. Chono meanwhile does feel somewhat undercooked, we focus a lot more on her relationships to other people than necessarily who Chono is which, whilst integral to her character and how she behaves, leaves her with less foundation to build from than Esek. I do worry that Six replacing Esek will lead to the sequels losing me as the series will no longer have 90% of the reasons I enjoyed this novel but we'll see whenever I get around to reading the rest of these whether that's the case.

The other half or so of this book, centred on Jun, Liis, and Masar, loses me though. I just don't really care about these characters? I did find Jun and Liis as a couple very solid and compelling, plus at one point Liis straps Jun which waow @-@ I don't care if some readers find it out of place Jacobs wanted to write some ladies fucking and I will always support a lesbian with this goal o7. Ahem anyways besides their actual relationship I just did not find their characters compelling on an individual level, nor did I find their plotline or struggles nearly as compelling as the events unfolding around Esek and Chono. This changed somewhat in the last third or so as the book's plotlines and characters began to converge but I was still reading Jun's chapters patiently waiting to return to Chono's or Esek's chapters.

World-wise I was never super engaged either. It's there, there's some interesting ideas peppered throughout but they're never explored in enough detail for me to really become interested or invested. I know there's a Kindom and Ruling Families and a religious system but I really don't know much about them beyond the dealings of the Nightfoot family. Despite two of our main characters being Clerics of the central religion, one of whom who actually cares deeply about said religion, I don't really know anything about that religion besides the names of the gods and where they're worshipped. Similarly the Kindom is just there as a vague "Interstellar Empire" with no real insight into how it operates and despite being the central confilct of the book the conflict between Jeve and the rest of the Kindom is quite underbaked. It's a fun sandbox to play around in but nothing stands out as particularly compelling element, but rather a series of sketched out ideas which haven't been filled out yet.

Overall this review has been a lot more negative than I intended. I would like to reiterate that I did enjoy this book, the sections with Esek were genuinely super good, but it did just leave me somewhat cold by the time I reached the final page. I do still think the book is worth checking out though, and I do plan to hop into book two at some point in the future!

Cirque Du Freak - 3/5

Flew by pretty quick. Nice return to a book I loved when I was younger. Didn't entirely hold up on a reread but still a good time and makes me want to continue with a reread of the rest of the series.

Gwendy's Magic Feather

The sequel to Gwendy's Button Box is a curious book. Like Stephen King's foreword says it wasn't ever really meant to exist, Button Box was intended as a standalone and it works perfectly as that in how self-contained it is and how neatly it wraps itself up. But here we are with a second (and later third) book expanding Gwendy's story and as of right now I'm wondering "why?" Magic Feather feels like it's repeating a lot of the same beats as Button Box and whilst its shorter timescale, it takes place over about three-ish weeks compared to the first book's decade or so, does help focus it and more satisfyingly build Gwendy's relationships I'm still left with an overwhelming sense of déjà vu in terms of the themes and situations it's exploring. We get the same exploration of responsibility with the button box itself, more examinations of pre-destination and such, and I'm just left wondering why we're looping.

The actual plot doesn't help with this either. It's very perfunctory: there's a serial killer in Castle Rock who needs to be stopped but the book barely dips into that storyline and when it does it's very half-hearted, and leads a truly terrible and disappointing resolution. There is a subplot about the president who's not based on anyone at all antagonising North Korea which is interesting but it never comes to anything either, and the whole book feels far more open ended than the first in a way that's just unsatisfying and obviously setting up for a sequel.

What does shine here however are the character relationships. Gwendy's relationship with her parents is explored much more here and it's really good to see, especially the whole struggle dealing with her mother's cancer which becomes the book's primary focus. Her parents are kind of distant forces in the first novella and it's nice to see them as a warmer, more human presence here. But even the relationships that are less focused on are good: Gwendy's husband Ryan is absent for much of the book but his presence is always felt, Gwendy's relationship with new sheriff of The Rock Norris Ridgewick is solid, and there are a host of minor characters that stand out. Taken as a "slice of life in Castle Rock" story this is enjoyable, and it draws on The Rock's history in King's work without it ever being overwhelming or feeling like fan service. It also takes a lot of King's ideas about the town from his Castle Rock novella Elevation, released the year before this, but where Elevation feels sterile and I never really got a sense of the town Castle Rock feels lived in here.

But yes, whilst I definitely enjoyed a few aspects of this book it does leave me wondering why exactly it exists. Overall I had a good time, and I'm still excited to get to the third book when I do, but this was a definite step down from Gwendy's Button Box and I hope Gwendy's Final Task can bring the series back up to the first book's level, or exceed it.

Welcome to Dorley Hall - 4/5

Look, gender is real fucky. It's gets all weird and tangled up in expression, perception, expectation, and prescription that I'm honestly shocked anyone anywhere can even claim they have such a handle on their own that they can enforce gender “norms” on themselves and others. But isn't that, in the end, what Dorley Hall kind of does? The Sisters who come out of Dorley after their unwilling transitions are prescribed a very rigid view of femininity by Aunt Bea, forced to act and behave and dress in specific ways that fit what Bea believes validates their change from shitty little cis men into reformed women who can be let back into society. Yes, most of the Sisters are, in the end, happy with their transition, or at least content enough with the changes that when they finally escape the walls of Dorley they don't “become men” again, instead embracing a myriad of gender outside of that. But how much of that is because of the trauma of Dorley? Of being locked in a basement for a year, of another year forced into a new box of “correct feminine behaviour” in the Hall itself, and a third year perfecting that behaviour of learning to enforce it on yourself? How would being subjected to forced feminisation perfected over decades remove the concept of masculinity in your brains as anything approaching acceptable?

I should say, I have an extremely negative view of, and very unhealthy relationship with, masculinity, and if I learned of somewhere like Dorley and was given the choice Stef was I would skip into that basement and lock myself in for as long as it took to change me, whatever the other consequences. But is Dorley any less restrictive in its enforcement of gender? Or is it just a literalised encapsulation of how gender is enforced in reality; that to be the woman the programme deems acceptable you must conform to this very narrow and prescribed view of what “woman” is to finally graduate? Most of the Sisters aren't, or weren't, trans women when they woke up in that basement but they are made into women nevertheless, women the programme deems acceptable to allow out into the world, even if they move away from that label once they are free.

I don't know, I don't have much else to say about how gender is discussed without getting into spoilers and gender theory so I'll leave it at that, but I do think that there is some interesting shit here which is very y'know, Internet Trans/Tumblr/A03 (of course) coded, but in a way that examines and deconstructs and reconstructs those tropes which have existed in fandom and internet queer spaces for a good while now in honestly engaging ways for someone who's been in out of those spaces on and off over the years.

And I also like the fun Sapphic dates and cute shit and yeah, maybe that is tonally discordant with the forcefem and the trauma talks and all of that but I like the contrast, I like the humour of the coffee mugs with their boomer humour forcefem jokes and the fun and ironic little bits and lines and whatever. I like the dates and the Sapphic Yuri stuff, and it adds so much for me that the dark content is contrasted with the happiness which yes, is still filled with fear and confusion, but in different ways.

Sure, this might fuck the pace up, but it's a webnovel and I don't think any author on A03 has ever heard of the concept of pacing, plus the “book” does just kinda end because it wasn't written to be divided into two like it is for print publication (I believe what makes up book 3 was released later and 4 is currently being released chapter by chapter rn) but eh. Shit will happen for as long as it does and its honestly kind of freeing that so much can just be fun relationship “fluff” and hangout vibes without needing to drive shit forward necessarily. Idk, it's been a while since I really read anything on A03 or a webnovel generally but it's nice to come back after so much in my life has changed lol. I think the last webnovel actually I read was the first couple chapters of this back when it first released in 2022 and I was entering my peak regression/repression phase around my gender, which in retrospect is wild and kinda fun despite how shitty that time was for me (“Give a trans woman an inch and she'll steal 10 years from herself” etc).

Anyway, ramble over. I liked this a lot basically.

Read here on A03, idk if the printed version has any changes.

Spock Must Die!

I largely read this book because it's the first original adult Star Trek novel released telling a story that wasn't first broadcast as an episode of the show, which as a fan of Trek and tie-in media I was very interested in seeing the origins of original Trek books + it kinda acts as the origin of original tie-in media, as such a thing didn't really exist until Trek started putting out licensed books inspired by the fanfic culture that was built around the series in the 1970s. So from that perspective the book is a really interesting piece of literary history, but how is it as an actual reading experience?

Look, it's not great alright. It's aged incredibly poorly in a few ways, especially when it engages in some casual what I would call "liberal racism" whenever Uhura is on page or has this weird aside about why white women wanna fuck Spock which is kinda interesting in that it's lampshading the fandom but also just becomes weirdly racist at the end. The series also just makes weird, out-of-left field "scientific" claims like people only develop stutters because they were forced to go from being lefthanded to right which, huh? And whilst I do think the character voices are fairly well realised (well, the Scotty dialogue is very painful to read due to all the fake Scots gibberish but anyways) their internal logic just doesn't match up a lot of time and they make dumb decisions in service of not resolving the plot too quickly.

However I did enjoy some aspects of the book, specifically how weird it got in the back third which felt very in keeping with Star Trek as a whole and was a fun read. I also love how bold the ending is, it puts it way out of ever being actually worked into Trek continuity at all but it's very fun in how it just changes up the whole universe.

Anyways, a fun book to check out, and one I do not recommend.