Category: Reviews

I did an awful lot of reading in 2020. Nearly a book a week, and I even wrote reviews for some of them! These are the books I enjoyed the most in 2020, not books that came out this year, with a ranking based on how I feel about them as I read them.

7. Mindtouch

This book was just really comfortable. It was a slice of life story looking at a life that I had no idea about, with interesting worldbuilding and left me feeling like I’d just been hanging out with an old friend catching up. Which, well, hopefully we’ll get to do this year.

6. Emotional Currency

I’ve been wanting to get more financially literate and I’m not sure that this book did anything like that. What it did do was help to contextualize some of my interactions with money in a way that didn’t hit me until a month or two after reading it. And honestly, it was well worth the read.

5. Cemetery Boys

There’s good reason why this book became an NYT bestseller! I had a lot of fun with the book and the characters, as well as the perspectives that the book brought out. In case you were wondering, it’s definitely worth the hype.

4. Vicious

This might just be my history with comics, the fact that I’ve written a book set in a superhero universe, or the fact that next year’s series is also about villains, but this one just scratched an itch I’ve been having for a while. Doesn’t hurt that I also found it fantastic.

3. Strangers

Canadian content! I made the effort this year and I found something pretty fun in a story about a Native American teen being harassed by Coyote and uncovering secrets to a small town that he can never quite escape. I am absolutely planning to pick up the rest of the series in the new year.

2. Witches of Ash and Ruin

I loved this book and the focus on how each of the girls was dealing with the madness of what was going on around them. It’s filled with things like understandable misunderstandings, people actually talking to one another to clear things up, and murder. Of all the books that might have sequels, this is the one that I most want a sequel to.

1. This is How you Lose the Time War

I don’t like romance, I’m iffy on time travel, and I’m very skeptical about poetic writing in general, but this book was amazing. It had the largest impact on me this year, and I’m so glad it was mentioned in that UX conference.

Did I miss any books you loved? Let me know so I can add them to my list for this year!

I don’t remember how I found out about The Root. I think it was on one of those collages of books about fantasy books that have representation or fantasy worlds that aren’t the standard Lord of the Rings style worlds or something. And I have developed a problem with impulse buys.

The Root follows the story of Erik as he discovers that he is a Blooded, a person descended from ancient beings that has powers that he can use to defeat the Angelics that are invading the world and kidnapping people. In a mirror dimension, Lil is an apprentice to her Holder, dealing with her parents death and taking care of her sibs as she’s pulled into a world of politics and intrigue.

The two stories are told interspersed throughout the book, but I would highly recommend readings one storyline, and then the other. They are both interesting stories, but learning two different set of universe rules at the same time is a lot all at once. On top of that, Erik and Lil don’t share any scenes together, don’t communicate with one another, and don’t really interact directly, so you aren’t missing anything by doing it one arc at a time.

Lil’s universe in particular threw me quite a bit. This might be a me thing, since I was reading the start of this while dealing with the commination wildfire smoke and creosote fumes, but I don’t think I ever really understood Lil’s universe outside of the broad strokes. It didn’t get in the way of the story, but I was always aware that I didn’t ever quite know what happened.

I did enjoy both of the stories, though! Erik’s is much more about the action and adventure, where Lil’s follows the intrigue of the people who hold a lot of power trying to keep things from falling apart. There’s a large, diverse cast of characters with varying perspectives and information that all compete with one another so you need them all for a fuller picture, which is exactly what I like. I would absolutely recommend the book, though maybe read it when you aren’t dealing with smoke inhalation.

First and foremost, you can get Halfsoul for free if you want to check it out! It’s a comic on Tapas! So if anything I say in here sounds interesting, then do go check it out.

The second in the series follows Nalia, the member of the party who does not talk a lot and communicates primarily in sign language as they go after another Halfsoul that the organizations wants to eliminate. What we discover for the majority of it, however, is Nalia’s backstory and perspective on how she came to not speak and how her interactions with the world have made her who she is.

The story as a whole uses the backdrop of a fantasy setting to explore mental health and I really do enjoy it. There are a lot of very interesting concepts and visuals paired with these characters who are having trouble moving on from their past and what happens when you let yourself live in that.

I really enjoyed this installment. Nalia is an interesting character and I found myself relating to her and her struggles quite a bit. You don’t need to read the previous story about Tale to understand what’s going on, but I would suggest it for a better introduction to the universe. Definitely check it out!

I should probably start with a disclosure here. I do know Aiden personally and have been waiting for this before it was officially announced. And I knew before I got it that I was going to enjoy it.

The story follows Yadriel, a trans boy wanting to prove he’s a brujo to his family and does this in part by summoning a ghost to release to the other side. This goes wrong almost immediately upon summoning Julian and he has to uncover what happened to him.

The book is deeply rooted in Latinx culture, which is a welcome change given what I normally read. The book doesn’t so much explain the world to you as display it as is, making you feel more like this is the way things always were rather than like you’re stepping into something other worldly that might make it feel foreign and strange. It’s all presented like typical daily life, which was great.1

It’s also great to see the central narrative of a what’s been branded as a romance novel be about self-actualization instead of the pursuit of romance.

It is kinda a little romance-y in parts, but it’s mostly done in the service of character exposition and doesn’t overtake the more interesting parts of the story. Also, there’s a bunch of Spanish in this book which, while I don’t speak it, I was able to understand most of it from context cues.2

Overall, you should read it. It’s a fun book with a lot of things that I haven’t seen in any other books. Also, I want their book to be successful, so go check it out.

1. Even if the scene with the Vicks was not at all what happens in an Asian household and threw me [↩]
2. I’ve grown up listening to Mom speak Thai with her friends about me, you learn [↩]

This one’s been on my TBR for a while and I could not remember what this was about at all. But I am still waiting on some physical books, so I figured it was about time to check it out.

We follow two aliens, Jahir and Vasiht’h as they become roommates at a university specializing in psychology for aliens. The story is a slice of life, following the daily lives as the two of them get to know one another and become very close, as well as trying to figure out what they are going to pursue for their majors.

I generally like actual stakes and have trouble with the slice of life stuff, but I think this came at a really good time for me. It centers the story almost entirely on the characters, their troubles with internal and external struggles, and they play off of one another really nicely. While Vasiht’h is combating an internal struggle to pursue something where he won’t ultimately get hurt1 , Jahir is dealing with being the strangest alien on campus, being from a race that does not leave their corner of the universe, and dealing with the fascination and prejudice from the people around him.

The relationship between the pair of them developed really naturally. There were a few parts where it felt like it was contrived, but not so much that it took me out of the story. It doesn’t rely on misunderstandings and watching characters actually talk things out, even with cultural differences, is really refreshing.

Overall it’s really good. I had a lot of fun with it, even if there was no world ending or looming dread over the plot. If you’re looking for a sci-fi where the world building is pretty secondary to the characters, and want to see aliens in med school, this is your book.

1. Psychology is a rough field, dealing with other people’s difficulties [↩]

My journey to this book was a bit of a strange one. I attended a panel at a UX conference called This is How You Win the Time War that I really liked, and the speaker talked about this book and the concept behind it. The idea of two rival time travelers gently manipulating time in small ways that cause ripples into the future and competing with one another to create different futures was interesting, so I picked it up!

That’s not really what the book is about. The story does follow two time travelers, both on different sides of the time war as they gently manipulate the strands of time to create the future their separate sides want. But that is more of a framing device for the actual story. The crux of the story is that these two rival time travelers are very secretly communicating via letters to one another. It starts out as taunting one another, but gradually it turns into the two of them finding their soulmates in one another. 

And I loved it! I normally tolerate-to-hate romance narratives because most of them are written in that “You know what this is like, we’re so relatable” kind of way. In this, the relationship grows and is very much about the characters, who are both very alien at first and grow familiar over the course of the narrative. Watching them open up to one another with increasingly strange methods of delivering letters and grow close was a delight and emotionally satisfying.1

It is weird, though. The time travel aspects are done in a very European manner, which is to say it exists without explanation. Besides knowing that Red and Blue are female, you don’t really know what they are, and the explanations are sparse and scattered. Red seems to be some kind of cyborg that has been rebuilt with technology, whereas Blue is an organic shapeshifting creature, I think? Both are creations of their factions, and what they are doesn’t really matter as much in the grand scheme of the narrative. 

Overall, if you’re looking for a time travel book, this is not the one for you. The time travel is very secondary. But if you want a very weird story about two people finding one another and keeping their relationship a secret from their rival factions for fear of persecution, then this is definitely worth a read. It’s light, it’s quick, and it reads like reading poetry. Check it out. 

1. Also I cried. [↩]