These are some of the books I’ve read for the Tarot Black Lives Matter book bingo, presented by The Tarot Sequence fandom! This is run primarily by Kathy @pages below vaulted sky.

I made a post-signing up for the challenge with my plans, and if you just want the challenge info head over to Pages Below Vaulted Sky. I also did a similar mini-review post for Dread Nation, Queen of the Conquered and Song of Blood and Stone, and a larger update thread at the beginning of this month. As of today, I’ve got 3 books to start, 2 books to finish and a whole month left to go, so feeling optimistic about getting the full board!

If you’re looking for books to use, we’ve got some great lists on reddit in our /r/Fantasy Black Lives Matter Megathread

These mini-reviews turned out pretty normal-reviews, but oh well.

Mem by Bethany C. Morrow

Set in the glittering art deco world of a century ago, MEM makes one slight alteration to history: a scientist in Montreal discovers a method allowing people to have their memories extracted from their minds, whole and complete. The Mems exist as mirror-images of their source ― zombie-like creatures destined to experience that singular memory over and over, until they expire in the cavernous Vault where they are kept.

And then there is Dolores Extract #1, the first Mem capable of creating her own memories. An ageless beauty shrouded in mystery, she is allowed to live on her own, and create her own existence, until one day she is summoned back to the Vault.

Mem is an alternative history story that’s very thoughtful and introspective. It falls under science fiction, but the past is not what immediately comes to mind when I think of SciFi. The actual technical aspects of the technology which allows people to extract their memories into un-sentient copies of themselves are glossed over, it’s been there for about 20 years now, people know it just works. What the book is concerned with is the philosophical implications of this technology. There’s a lot of scientific study, but it’s focussed on the human element.

Dolores is a Mem, a memory extract, like none other. Instead of being just a human-shaped shell that can only recite her one memory, she can think and act like a person. Legally she’s a thing, not a person, and a lot of the book is her trying to figure out her place in the world and if she is a sort-of-clone, does that mean that she can be her own person or not. We spend a lot of time in her head, and that was an aspect I found really interesting. She’s lived amongst scientists all her life so she’s really into studying and helping out with all their experiments. There’s this constant mystery of herself that she keeps trying to solve, and I thought I was paying attention but the conclusion took me by surprise.

The other characters were interesting too, the doctor and his son, and I liked how we got to learn about them through Dolores’ experiences. A lot of the tale is told in memories and flashbacks. And, the audiobook especially, has got a sort of soothing, pleasant memoir tone, though the subject is pretty dark, I think in the first few pages the MC sees an ordinary mem expiring, so she’s always dealing with the question of how long she’s got to live.

A strong theme that I found really interesting to explore was what memories people choose to extract, when and why they want to forget them, and how that ends up affecting them.

Goodreads link

BLM Bingo squares:  TEMPERANCE: set during the 1920s-1930s, MOON: explore mental health, MISFIT: featuring found family, WHEEL OF FORTUNE: theme of “actions have consequences”, WORLD: set in a country that’s not your own (Montreal)

r/fantasy bingo squares: Canadian Author, Graphic Novel / Audiobook

A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow

Tavia is already at odds with the world, forced to keep her siren identity under wraps in a society that wants to keep her kind under lock and key. Never mind she’s also stuck in Portland, Oregon, a city with only a handful of black folk and even fewer of those with magical powers. At least she has her bestie Effie by her side as they tackle high school drama, family secrets, and unrequited crushes.

But everything changes in the aftermath of a siren murder trial that rocks the nation; the girls’ favorite Internet fashion icon reveals she’s also a siren, and the news rips through their community. Tensions escalate when Effie starts being haunted by demons from her past, and Tavia accidentally lets out her magical voice during a police stop. No secret seems safe anymore—soon Portland won’t be either.

A Song Below Water is a contemporary YA story that is very much set in this moment, and that made it not an easy read a lot of times. It’s the story of two found sisters, Tavia is a siren and Effie plays a mermaid in the renaissance fair. There are PoV chapter from both girls, and I liked the audiobook narration for both of them. The magic is pretty low level. Everyone knows supernatural people exist, but sirens are feared and hated so Tavia spends a lot of time and energy hiding who she really is. Effie’s side of the story is focused on practicing for the ren fair and figuring out some secrets from her past.

If the cover makes you think this is going to be a cheerful YA mermaid story, well have I got news for you. There are some of the usual highschool elements, crushes, grudges, etc, but the entire personal story is set on the background of the Black Lives Matter movement. The case on the news of another Black woman getting killed becomes one of the main drivers of the plot. I’m not a Black person and I’m not in North America, my experience of this is just through the filter of the internet, so I’m not gonna talk about representation or anything. I’ll just say I really liked how the actual and the fantastical were merged and how sirens seemed a very deliberate stand-in or metaphor for Black women.

Overall I really liked the book and found the story engaging, I cared a lot for Tavia and I was right there with Effie trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

Goodreads link

BLM Bingo squares: JUSTICE: basedon or inspired by real life injustice, HIEROPHANT: coming of age or YA contemporary, MISFIT: featuring found family LOVERS: featuring strong friendships or romance,

r/fantasy bingo squares: Published in 2020, School or University H, Feminist H, Canadian Author, Graphic / Audio Novel

The City We Became by N.K. Jemisin

Five New Yorkers must come together in order to defend their city in the first book of a stunning new series by Hugo award-winning and NYT bestselling author N. K. Jemisin.

Every city has a soul. Some are as ancient as myths, and others are as new and destructive as children. New York City? She’s got five.

But every city also has a dark side. A roiling, ancient evil stirs beneath the earth, threatening to destroy the city and her five protectors unless they can come together and stop it once and for all.

I listened to the audiobook and I really recommend that version, the narration is top-notch and there are great sound effects really turning up the otherworldliness.

What if cities came alive? What if something from another dimension were trying to kill them? You know how in some urban fantasies people say the city is like another character? Well, here New York City is the main character, in the most literal sense as the main cast is made up of people who become avatars of the boroughs of the city. They lean heavily into local stereotypes, though as an outsider, other than Manhattan’s connection with money, I don’t really associate specific things with the boroughs so I’m sure I missed a lot there. Even so, I liked them, and how they interacted together. My favorite was Bronca the older, tough, lesbian who’d been through it all. Brooklyn, the former rap-star now successful businesswoman was also very cool. The antagonist was, well not fun, because I couldn’t stand her, but fun, a cosmic horror being from another dimension trying to kill the city as it was becoming, she’s all tentacles and yuck, preying and using the worst of people and bringing out their fears to suit her purpose.

I think one thing about this book is that it benefits from a bit more suspension of disbelief than usual. A lot of things are very on the nose, it’s got a sort of personification of ideas, in the way the city characters have the characteristics most strongly associated with their cities, even the way they’re named, and the people the antagonist manipulates have their hatred and worst characteristics amplified. And there’s also what I perceived as a deliberate flipping of the script on a lot of fiction. If often in books and movies white people get the good parts and people of color are stuck with small side characters and antagonists, here it’s the other way around. As far as I know, The City We Became is a response to Lovecraft’s fiction so I took this as part of that. While it can be uncomfortable to read as a white person, it didn’t strike me as an unfair mirror. Especially not this year with everything that’s been on the news, I did not need to suspend anything to believe the hatred and the racism.

I loved the writing, mixed with the excellent audio, the characters all felt very vibrant and it was just great to be with them, even as they were going through so much nasty shit. I really liked the mix of wit and anger. I gotta admit I was much more invested in how they were learning about their new powers and adapting to being a city, than in the actual potentially-world-ending main plot. I think towards the end I might have missed something, it felt a bit rushed I was left kinda confused. That said, this is supposed to be a trilogy and I’m certainly curious to read on and see more of this world.

Goodreads link

BLM Bingo squares: JUSTICE: basedon or inspired by real life injustice, TOWER: building or structure on the cover, New Atlantis: urban fantasy

r/fantasy bingo squares: Published in 2020, Feminist (H)

Brown Girl in the Ring by Nalo Hopkinson

The rich and privileged have fled the city, barricaded it behind roadblocks, and left it to crumble. The inner city has had to rediscover old ways-farming, barter, herb lore. But now the monied need a harvest of bodies, and so they prey upon the helpless of the streets. With nowhere to turn, a young woman must open herself to ancient truths, eternal powers, and the tragic mystery surrounding her mother and grandmother.

She must bargain with gods, and give birth to new legends.

This one was tough for me to get into. A good chunk of the dialogue is in Caribbean English which I’m completely unfamiliar with, I kept tripping over the difference between what I expected the words and the word order to be and what they really were. I did eventually get used to it, but it took me a few chapters.

The setting is sort of locally-post-apocalyptic. The rest of the world seems fine, but Toronto has collapsed into complete disorder, the authorities have left and there aren’t any utilities and services. When I read this I was playing The Outer Wilds, and thinking of the Fallout games, so that overlayed strongly over what I was picturing. There are some similarities in the way the area is run by a crime boss and his goons, and his office is set in the highest building around, people have gone back to bartering, farming and hunting small animals for food. The protagonist’s grandma is a local healer, trading goods for her herbs and scavenged medicine. I guess the setting should’ve tipped me off, but I was really surprised by how dark, violent and gory things got.

The fantasy aspects of the book were great, all the magic and power is derived from summoning and worshipping old African gods and ancestors. One thing I liked was how personal the relationship between the magic wielder and god was, which came with benefits and disadvantages. And they are so cool, we only meet them for a bit but they’ve got great personalities and humor, while being very powerful and scary. There’s also some really evil necromancy and a genuine zombie, raised by magic and controlled to do its master’s bidding. It was really cool seeing magical zombies as opposed to virus-induced ones. At the end, there’s this really epic showdown with lots of power and magic that had me fully glued to my book.

The unusual thing about the cast of characters is that the main protagonist is a young mother, so for a lot of the book TiJeanne’s carrying around her 3-month-old baby. And the theme of motherhood and family is a really strong one as her family’s history becomes increasingly important in the story. We also meet her ex, a drug-addict that she has trouble staying away from, but as usual, my favorite character is the tough old woman. I just love tough old ladies and Mami is a fountain of knowledge and power as well as a well-developed, complex and flawed person.

Goodreads link

BLM Bingo squares: WHEEL OF FORTUNE: theme of “actions have consequences”, EMPRESS: mother MC or mother-child relationship

r/fantasy bingo squares: Epigraphs, Necromancy