Hey everyone. For another episode of Dia tries to catch up with her reviews, today we’ve got Books I read for r/fantasy book clubs but never got round to reviewing

Heart of Stone by Johannes T.  Evans

Happy Ever After Book Club

This is a super slow burn, super slice of life historical romance. I absolutely loved it, and so did most of the club, but everyone should be warned that almost nothing happens, the entire book is just about two people very slowly opening up to each other. And somehow it manages to do that in such a way that almost all of us binge read the entire book.

I loved it from the start, the dynamic between the characters works so well. Theo, the secretary, is very quiet, very proper and Henry, his vampire boss is always cheerful, excited, and all over the place. They’ve got this strong opposition that works beautifully, and getting to know Theo as he lets down his barriers is pure joy.

The main characters are the stars of the show and while the rest don’t really get a chance to shine, I just want to mention how much I loved the two old vampire friends, there’s a dude who’s larger than life and cheerful and great.

The author mentioned working on more books in this setting, which is great as the ending suggests that changes are a coming to the vampire/magical society, and I’d love to see what they are.

Side-note – after reading this and watching a few Austen adaptations and I am entirely convinced that spraining one’s ankle and remaining at love interest’s home overnight was a common pick-up move in the days of yore.

Strongly recommended to fans of the “The Untamed” sort of MCs

Bingo Squares: Book Club (this one!), self-published (hard mode)

The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz

Happy Ever After Book Club

We read this for the romance book club and I loved it. It’s a slice of life romance in which both the main leads are ace, so that was cool because it’s not something I see a lot. It’s all really sweet and cozy and involves drinking a lot of tea from cute mismatched cups.

First, we meet Clara who’s an AI repair technician that doesn’t like staying in one place. She has a really cute little bird-like robot companion that she’s tweaked a lot. Then we meet Sal, an old robot who runs a small tea shop. Sal’s very much stuck in her place and her past. I liked her introspective parts, learning about her history and the times she was setting up the shop every day. They slowly and shyly come together and it was all really lovely, while not without conflict. The only thing I minded about this novella was that the final resolution felt a bit rushed and forced.

Bingo Squares: Book Club (this one!), Romance, Ace Character (HM)

Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was by Angélica Gorodischer

Goodreads Book of the Month Club

Oh, boy did I ever read this at the wrong time. The book itself is more like a collection of short stories telling the story of a world. Other than being set in the same world there doesn’t seem to be a connection between them, if events from one story impact events from others, it was done too subtly for me to notice. And when I’d read this I’d just finished a bunch of short stories and was hoping for a nice linear tale.

Expectation mismatch aside, the book itself was fine. The world it painted was strange, sometimes nonsensical, and as if often the case of collections, some stories stood out more than others. My favorites were about a city that kept changing and evolving and one about a prince learning about his family secrets. There’s a strong sense of rising and falling and things circling back to the beginning. There’s so much of history repeating itself that I wondered if any of the individual stories ended up mattering. The Empire is on a scale of thousands of years, shifting, evolving, at one point there are flying cars, at a later point only basic agrarian tools.

I did like all the different storytellers, a lot of times it felt like sitting down with someone telling you a story, and I’m a fan of this oral-storytelling style.

Bingo squares: Novel in Translation (HM), r/Fantasy Book Club, Featuring Politics 

The Bone Witch by Rin Chupeco

Feminism in Fiction

I listened to this on audio and loved Emily Woo Zeller’s narration, and the book is still free to listen to through audible’s kids program at the time of writing. There was something that was a bit confusing in audio. The story has a frame structure, every chapter ending with a present-day scene where the main character is telling her story to someone. I wasn’t paying enough attention in the prologue, so I was super confused by who that was, but I relistened it was actually really clear right from the start.

I enjoyed this one a lot, I thought the present-day story worked great as a teaser, I really want to keep reading and find out how Tea got from where we see her in book one to where … we … see her also in book one but … at a different time.

The worldbuilding was great, there are different kinds of people who can do magic, and what kind of magic a person can wield makes a huge difference. Tea is a necromancer, which comes with a lot of power and a lot of prejudice against her. She trains in a house that is a cross between a magic school and a geisha school, learning to entertain and fight. I liked that combo but not everyone in the bookclub was on board. The necromantic monsters that we meet are awesome.

I’ll be continuing the series because I have so many questions after how book 1 ended. There’s a lot of character relationships that I’m really curious to see the evolution of.

Bingo: necromancy (hard), feminist (hard), book club