Siavahda's Blog

Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted over at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about but haven’t yet read. Most of the time they’re books that have yet to be released, but not always. It’s based on the Waiting on Wednesday meme, which was originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. 

This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is Villain by Natalie Zina Walschots!

Villain (Hench, #2) by Natalie Zina Walschots
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Bi/pansexual disabled MC
Published on: 19th May 2026
Goodreads

The Boys meets Starter Villain and Assistant to the Villain in Natalie Zina Walschots’s electrifying, sharp, violent, and hilarious sequel to the highly acclaimed novel Hench, in which the Auditor must confront the near-impossible in order to right the many wrongs in the superhuman industry…or cause more of them. She’s not picky.

Anna, better known to superheroes as the Auditor, has carved out a name for herself. Any hero unlucky enough to cross her path knows her potential and powers. Surely, success should taste she has an incredible job with lots of perks, and her boss will literally annihilate anyone who crosses her, and her greatest enemy, the former hero Supercollider, has been utterly defeated and literally ground to a pulp.

But Anna still has her sights set on a greater destroying the Draft, the organization that makes, trains, and manages the world’s most powerful superheroes. These “heroes” have shown time and time again that they do more harm than good, and now is the time to stop the damage at its source.

Yet all is not well for the Auditor and her fellow evildoers. Her employer, Leviathan—the world’s most feared supervillain—is not coping well with Supercollider’s defeat at someone else’s hands. Moreover, her unlikely ally and unexpected friend, Quantum Entanglement, has vanished without a trace, leaving Anna to examine all the ways they deceived each other. Tension and uncertainty fill the air, and fear that this moment of triumph is about to crumble looms over all of them.

Anna soon finds herself facing down an opponent unlike any she’s taken on before—not another superhero, but someone like her…someone much more the Draft’s Chief Marketing Officer. This isn’t a test of physical prowess, but ideas, and as the fight spirals deeper and deeper, with new foes popping up every day—she’ll need more than just her superpower—data research—to keep ascending through the supervillain ranks.

It’s guerrilla ad warfare, and the Auditor might have finally met her match.

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AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Listen. L I S T E N! Hench is one of my forever-books, okay? It’s SO fucking good: it’s viciously clever, it’s wet-yourself-laughing hilarious, it has a deeply non-traditional non-sexual romance that makes my queer weirdo soul go heart-eyes, it’s so effortlessly inclusive, it’s so so so unique and outside-the-box AND I LOVE IT AND WILL LOVE IT FOREVER!

And it didn’t end on a stupid cliffhanger or anything, I didn’t think we would get a sequel because Hench didn’t need one. You know? There was room for sequels but it was a perfect standalone, too. BUT YOU BETTER BELIEVE I SHRIEKED TO THE STARS WHEN A SEQUEL WAS ANNOUNCED!

And yes yes yes, whatever, the pub date was pushed back several times, I DON’T CARE, authors can rewrite and edit as much as they want and I will only be grateful (you deal with all the stress of delaying release so that the book I eventually get to read is perfect??? THANK YOU <3) but the current pub date is for-sure-final AND LOOK WE EVEN HAVE A COVER NOW!!!

I love it so much, like, flaily-shrieky much. IT MATCHES THE HENCH COVER SO PERFECTLY! (It didn’t even occur to me before that some twit in the cover department might give the sequel a completely different style of cover, because sometimes that happens, doesn’t it? I’M SO HAPPY IT DIDN’T THIS TIME) Anna with her cane, front and centre! Excuse me while I get a bit weepy. (I’m a lot more disabled than I was when Hench came out, okay, getting a disabled character on the cover hits a lot harder now!)

And if you haven’t read Hench yet – that’s okay! Villain won’t be out until next May, so you have LOADS of time! I’ll even join you – I will ABSOLUTELY be rereading Hench to prepare!

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go back to going

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

The post I Can’t Wait For…Villain by Natalie Zina Walschots appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

soupçon/ˈsuːpsɒn,ˈsuːpsɒ̃/ noun
1. a very small quantity of something; a slight trace, as of a particular taste or flavor

Sunday Soupçons is where I scribble mini-reviews for books I don’t have the brainspace/eloquence/smarts to write about in depth – or if I just don’t have anything interesting to say beyond I LIKED IT AND YOU SHOULD READ IT TOO!

Both these books deserve MUCH better reviews than I can write them at the moment – so just take it as read that I love them both extremely!

Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens by Lynn Hutchinson Lee
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Horror
Representation: Romany MC, secondary Native American character
PoV: First-person, present-tense
ISBN: 1738316521
Goodreads

Orchid Lovell is a young Romany woman haunted by a fear of being found out. Her family has been chased out of town before. After settling in a seemingly idyllic northern mining town that she soon understands as rife with unseen cruelty, Orchid finds solace in a lush orchid fen where she doesn’t fear the town’s judgement. Amid the green beauty of the fen, Orchid meets her beloved Jack, and marries him in a secret blackfly-infested ceremony.

But the town’s waters don’t only harbor life. In the nearby creek, dead girls take revenge on the men who murdered them, luring them into murky waters. Despite the unyielding nature of the water spirits, one man evades their violence. After a devastating attack linked to the expansion of the mine, Orchid’s fate is entwined with the panni raklies’ ruthless justice.

Written in over 100 dreamy mini-chapters, this novella explores the tenuous reality of the Romany diaspora living in troubled times on troubled lands.

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Origins of Desire in Orchid Fens is one of those thrillingly odd treasures that couldn’t care less about being easily categoriseable. Call me whatever genre you like, it says, but I will only be myself. It’s a little bit magical realism, a little bit horror, a dash of eco-fiction, almost poetry. The prose is lush even while what’s being written about is so perfectly mundane, and the contrast of that is head-spinning in a most wonderful way. And it’s not just prose; Lee weaves together text-message chains, excerpts from non-fiction, even shopping lists to tell this story, to ground it in the real world and the travails of ‘normal’ daily life, which makes it all feel so much more real and vivid than if all the focus had been on the magic.

The plot wanders, neither perfectly linear nor entirely straightforward. On the one hand, Orchid is building a small but heart-felt life with her husband Jack, and reconnecting with her ill mother; on the other, the local fen that is Orchid’s sanctuary is under threat from the proposed expansion of the local mine, being pushed by the town’s richest family. Within the fen are panni raklies, water spirits who started out as human women before they were murdered by men; Orchid is fascinated by them, knew some of them while they were human. The existence of the panni raklies is an open secret among the women of the town, but is kept hidden from the men

The role of men is to know nothing.

and somehow this is all of a piece with the antiziganism, external and internalised, that Orchid deals with – because while she passes as Caucasian, she’s still surrounded by her mother’s (justified!) fears and the casual micro-aggressions of fans of the ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’ tv show. (Sidenote: ew, why is this is a thing, I was so disappointed in humanity when I realised this was a real thing not something Lee made up for her book.)

It’s a weird treasure of a book, full of powerful relationships (Orchid and Jack, Orchid and her mother, Orchid and Rose, her Native American best friend who understands what it’s like to be a minority surrounded by clueless-at-best white people) and dark, twisted themes. Violence against women, especially domestic partner violence and the disappearances of Native American women, are quiet but ever-present threads; then there’s the kind of violence done for money, houses burned down and cars driven off the road to silence protests against the mine’s expansion. It should be ugly, but it isn’t, in large part thanks to Lee’s absolutely stunning prose, which I would lick off a knife if I could.

Most of us come from away. Coming with hope across an ocean or from other towns, seeking a new life in this new place with its buried gold, too many of us believing nobody had ever lived here before we came. We invent or erase histories, tell the old fairy tales and myths and come up with new ones. We repurpose lives, gossip, tell stories, but never the truth. Never the darkness. The dark of the mine with its claws in the earth, in the people. The mine batters the men, the men batter the women and children, and the dead take their revenge.

Especially when it comes to writing about nature, all the flora and fauna of the fen. I am NOT a wilderness person, I don’t do well with mud and bugs, but Lee – I don’t know if it’s truer to say that her writing transformed these things for me, or if she removed some scales from my eyes to show me how beautiful these things are, that I was missing. Regardless, it’s very nearly a spiritual experience.

I’d rather be at the fen, that place where the laws are true, real, embedded in the underground networks humming from root to root.

The ending was a little random, a little maddeningly inexplicable, but I’m so glad I read this, and I hope it gets to more readers.

You can find a MUCH better review of this book over here!

Two Dark Moons (Sãoni Cycle, #1) by Avi Silver
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Aromantic pansexual MC, nonbinary love interest, F/NB
PoV: Third-person, past-tense
ISBN: 1775242730
Goodreads

Sohmeng Par is sick of being treated like a child. Ever since a tragic accident brought her mountain community’s coming-of-age ritual to a halt, she’s caused nothing but trouble in her impatience to become an adult. But when she finally has the chance to prove herself, she’s thrown from her life in the mountains and into the terror of the jungle below.

Cornered by a colony of reptilian predators known as the sãoni, Sohmeng is rescued by Hei, an eccentric exile with no shortage of secrets. As likely to bite Sohmeng as they are to cook her breakfast, this stranger and their family of lizards are like nothing she’s ever seen before. If she wants to survive, she must find a way to adapt to the vibrant, deadly world of the rainforest and the creatures that inhabit it—including Hei themself. But Sohmeng has secrets of her own, and sharing them could mean losing everything a second time.

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Gender weirdness wrapped up in a giant-lizard adventure! This is another quick read, but otherwise couldn’t be more different from Origins of Desire. It’s outright fantasy, for one thing, in a secondary-world setting with multiple moons, set in a culture where your gender (and thus role in the community) is determined by your birth month. I LOVE unusual gender systems, and this one delighted me in many ways (not least because ‘feminine’ in this culture means something like aggressive, dominant, problem-solver – so even without the moon phases/birth months, gender here looks very different from the Global North take in our world!)

Sohmeng is an IMMENSELY sympathetic character, a teenager who wants to be allowed to be a teenager instead of being kept to the role of a child – and who is being kept in that role for utterly ridiculous reasons. (Sorry, but it’s true. When cultural traditions stop being helpful and just cause harm, as this one is doing, you’re supposed to get rid of them! Not cling to them even more tightly!) Of course, the moment she convinces her community to give her an inch, she…falls off the mountain they live in.

It’s very difficult not to read this as divine punishment. Probably it was just bad luck! But. Eep.

At the mountain’s base, the jungle that makes up most of the region is full of dangerous beasties, not least the sãoni, six-legged giant lizards fully capable of eating humans. But instead of being eaten, Sohmeng gets adopted. Cue my original review of this book: Sometimes a family is you, the kid that screech-danced and bit you, and a pack of (not!-)murderous lizards. And that’s okay.

It is, in fact, more than okay: it’s almost idyllic. The relationship that develops between Sohmeng and Hei – the first human to be adopted by this sãoni pack – is really sweet, and a refreshing change from your typical romance because Sohmeng is aromantic (but not asexual). And that is completely fine. It doesn’t bother Hei in the slightest, and, just – it brought tears to my eyes, okay, how much of a non-issue it was! It made me SO HAPPY!

Sohmeng and Hei together start to unravel the mysteries behind the changes in the region – changes that led to the loss of Sohmeng’s parents and Sohmeng being unable to undergo her adulthood rites. There are some tough-to-swallow reveals, but the story ends – a little abruptly, it must be said – before anything can really be done. Though the ending does hint strongly at what direction Sohmeng and Hei will be going in next – if, that is, Sohmeng can convince the prickly Hei that her idea is a good one.

On to book two!

What have you been reading this week?

The post Sunday Soupçons #42 appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Have I finished my Summer tbr? Absolutely not. Will that stop me making a new one? Refer to previous answer, please!

Specifically, these are the horror and horror-adjacent reads near the top of my tbr, which seemed like a seasonally-appropriate theme!

Between the Walls by Caspian Faye
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Horror, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Queer MC, trans love interest, M/M
Goodreads

When James Thorne and his recently divorced dad move into their new house, in a new town, looking for a new start, James can’t help thinking about all he’s left behind.

Missing his best friend, his high-maintenance boyfriend, and troubled by the paranormal occurrences rattling his nerves, James wishes he’d never moved.

But when his presence awakens Nathaniel, the ghost of a seventeen year old trans boy who has haunted the walls of this house since the 1700s, things take a surprising turn.

After a false start or two, Nathaniel and James hit it off, an easy connection that could become something more.

But only if they survive.

Because Nathaniel isn’t the only ghost haunting this house. In the basement hides a dark entity, longing to escape, to claim their souls.

Can James and Nathaniel cross the boundaries of the living and the dead in order to see each other and themselves for who they truly are?

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Will this be actually scary? I doubt it – off the top of my head I can’t remember a YA horror ever properly freaking me out – but who knows! Either way I really like the premise.

A Sword of Bronze and Ashes by Anna Smith Spark
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Horror
Published on: 12th September 2023
Goodreads

Readers of Shauna Lawless and Thilde Kold Holdt will love this Celtic-inflected adventure by critically acclaimed, grimdark epic fantasy novelist, Anna Smith Spark.

A Sword of Bronze and Ashes combines the fierce beauty of Celtic myth with grimdark battle violence. It's a lyrical, folk horror high fantasy.

Kanda has a good life until shadows from her past return threatening everything she loves. And Kanda, like any parent, has things in her past she does not want her children to know. Red war is pursued by an ancient evil, Kanda must call upon all her strength to protect her family. But how can she keep her children safe, if they want to stand as warriors beside her when the light fades and darkness rises?

FLAME TREE PRESS is the imprint of long-standing independent Flame Tree Publishing, dedicated to full-length original fiction in the horror and suspense, science fiction & fantasy, and crime / mystery / thriller categories. The list brings together fantastic new authors and the more established; the award winners, and exciting, original voices. Learn more about Flame Tree Press at www.flametreepress.com and connect on social media @FlameTreePress

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Officially I’m already reading this one, but I got distracted. I need to focus back in on it! What I’ve read so far has been equal parts beautiful and horrifying, with an interestingly off-beat writing rhythm.

The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer MC
Published on: 14th October 2025
Goodreads

'An intriguing work of whimsi-grotesquerie' OLIVIE BLAKE

He was sent to kill a pest. Instead, he found a monster.

Enter the decadent, deadly city of Tiliard, carved into the stump of an ancient tree. In its canopy, the pampered elite warp minds with toxic perfume; in its roots, gangs of exterminators hunt a colossal worm with an appetite for beauty.

In a complex, chaotic city, Guy Moulène has a simple keep his sister out of debt. For her sake, he'll take on any job, no matter how vile.

As an exterminator, Guy hunts the uncanny pests that crawl up from the river. These vermin are all strange, and often dangerous. His latest quarry is a worm the size of a dragon with a deadly venom and a ravenous taste for artwork. As it digests Tiliard from the sewers to the opera houses, its toxin reshapes the future of the city. No sane person would hunt it, if they had the choice.

Guy doesn't have a choice.

'A lush and seductive story, rife with opulent horror and decaying decadence' SUNYI DEAN

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Again, I started this one ages ago – but when I got to 70%, I stopped, because I DIDN’T WANT IT TO END! So I’m restarting it. It’s so horrifically gorgeous and weird with the most incredibly unique worldbuilding!!!

Midnight Timetable: A Novel in Ghost Stories by Bora Chung, Anton Hur
Genres: Adult, Horror
Goodreads

From the author and translator of the National Book Award finalist and Booker Prize shortlisted Cursed Bunny, comes a new novel-in-ghost-stories, set in a mysterious research center that houses cursed objects, where those who open the wrong door might find it’s disappeared behind them, or that the echoing footsteps they’re running from are their own…

The acclaimed Korean horror and sci-fi writer’s goosebump-inducing new book follows an employee on the night shift at the Institute. They soon learn why some employees don't last long at the center. The handkerchief in Room 302 once belonged to the late mother of two sons, whose rivalry imbues the handkerchief with undue power and unravels those around it. The cursed sneaker down the hall is stolen by a live-streaming, ghost-chasing employee, who later finds he can’t escape its tread. A cat in Room 206 reveals the crimes of its former family, trying to understand its own path to the Institute’s halls.

But Chung's haunted institute isn't just a chilling place to play. As in her astounding collections Cursed Bunny and Your Utopia, these violent allegories take on the horrors of animal testing, conversion therapy, domestic abuse, and late-stage capitalism. Equal parts bone-chilling, wryly funny, and deeply political, Midnight Timetable is a masterful work of literary horror from one of our time's greatest imaginations.

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I’m fascinated by the set-up of this – multiple ghost stories that tie together into one big story? Yes please, I want to see what that looks like!

The Captive by Kit Burgoyne
Genres: Adult, Horror
Goodreads

A darkly comedic, cinematic horror about a revolutionary group who kidnap an heiress, only to discover she's pregnant with the antichrist, and she's about to give birth.
From Ned Beauman, the Man Booker Prize longlisted author of The Teleportation Accident and Clarke Award winning author of Venomous Lumpsucker. Perfect for fans of Grady Hendrix and Joe Hill.
Underground revolutionary group, The Nail, and their newest member, Luke have kidnapped 23-year-old heiress Adeline Woolsaw, whose wealthy parents run the Woolsaw Group, a vast outsourcing company. They run everything from prisons and hospitals to military bases – quietly suffocating the country with the help of powerful friends in government.
The Nail's to use the kidnapping to draw attention to the Woolsaw Group and their terrible practices. But with Adeline bundled into their van, The Nail discover two things. The first is that she's just about to give birth. And the second is that this isn't a normal baby. In fact, it has devastating supernatural powers. Because the father of this baby wasn't a man, it was… something else. Something that her parents make human sacrifices to on an altar in the basement of their Highgate mansion. And all this time the Woolsaw Group has been preparing the ground for the Woolsaws' real an infernal new kingdom that will rise with Adeline's son sitting on its throne.

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This one was just released this week, and since I have a morbid fascination with antichrists and other supernaturally-Wrong pregnancies/kids stories, it’s one I’ve been excited for!

Out for Blood by John Peyton Cooke
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Gay MC
Goodreads

An avid reader of Dracula and a fan of old Hammer horror films, Chris Callaway has always fantasized about becoming a vampire—and the idea of immortality is even more alluring now that he has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. So when a vampire appears at his apartment and offers him eternal life as one of the undead, Chris jumps at the opportunity. But unexpected terrors await him in the world of the night. A new enemy, relentless and insatiable, is hunting vampires for his own evil purposes. And unless Chris can stop him, he will face a fate even worse than death ... One of the few gay-themed novels of the horror publishing boom of the ’80s and ’90s, John Peyton Cooke’s groundbreaking and tremendously entertaining Out for Blood (1991) returns to print at last in this edition, which includes a new afterword by the author.

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I think I came across this one while looking into the indie press publishing Vincent Virga’s Gaywyck Quartet (which is Gothic, so arguably Horror, and which you should read if you haven’t already!) Out For Blood is an old-school queer vampire book, so I’d be intrigued by that alone, but I also like the tagline: the night spawns a hideous evil even the undead fear. A monster even vampires are scared of? I’m in!

To You Shall All Flesh Come (Honoré Sloane, #1) by Lumen Reese
Genres: Adult, Horror
Goodreads

A brilliant Chief of Surgery and his team ensnare vampires, harvest their organs to donate or sell on the black market, then tag them like sharks and release them back into the wild. Encased within the 'pacetaker' attached to the heart are a toothpick and a monitor of the levels of human blood in the vampire's system. Their levels rise too high, and they get death by toothpick. It's a barbaric new method to keep vampires docile. Apparently, they've been on the honor system this whole time...

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THIS IS SUCH A COOL, FUCKED-UP IDEA!

The Church of the Mountain of Flesh by Kyle Wakefield
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Trans MC
Goodreads

THE CHURCH OF THE MOUNTAIN OF FLESH is a cosmic horror novel about mad artists, bodies spiralling out of control, and a trans man's merciless desperation.

Sole De Gasinis drowns his grief in wine and buries his hatred of his body in twisted sculptures. When, one drunken night on the beach, God orders him to rebuild his village's church, he knows he wasn't chosen for his piety.

Instead, he and God make a deal. If Sole rebuilds the church, God will give him the body of a man.

As Sole works in a frenzy for salvation, lifelong friendships decay, a village united to tear down its church fractures into pariahs and zealots, and power and grief reshape the prophet into a tyrant. Grief for a boy he fell in love with ten years ago, who claimed to be a virgin birth, who died in agony in the church crypt when the God inside him wanted out -- and whose monstrous remnant Sole must commune with for every piece of his prize.

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This has been on my tbr for FREAKING AGES – longer than any other book on this list, easily! – and I really need to get to it already!

Hinterland by Logan Spurgeon
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer MC
Published on: 6th December 2025
Goodreads

Kestrel awakes in the woods without a real name or his memories. Before him are twelve strangers, an altar on fire, and bones hanging from the trees like wind chimes. He’s to be initiated into their group so they may fulfill their purpose: head to the mountain of the so-called gods, have a feast, and bring about the end of the world. Kestrel is willing to risk it all to escape, but without any memories, he knows he must play along until he finds a way out.

It won’t be easy. Winter is on their heels, hunters are searching for them, and the strange rituals they perform will rip his humanity from his flesh. But Kestrel isn’t alone. One of the strangers claims to be his friend from before, and there are others willing to join his side and leave the wilderness... if the gods let them.

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I just got approved for an arc of this, and I’m very hopeful – old gods! Some kind of cult-thing that wants to end the world! And missing memories, which is a trope that is most excellent in the right hands!

Corrupted Vessels by Briar Ripley Page
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Queer MC
Goodreads

With CORRUPTED VESSELS, Briar Ripley Page takes hold of the alienation, placelessness, desire, and need to belong [that haunts] the queer world and slowly sculpts [the characters] into something at once disturbing and achingly familiar; a story about the people we throw away and the dreams [we] cling to in order to survive.
-Gretchen Felker-Martin, Manhunt

Southern Gothic meets surrealism, CORRUPTED VESSELS is a story about terrifying angels, messy realities, and queer life on the margins. [ Volume includes a previously unpublished standalone novelette called NEW EDEN.]

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Like Out For Blood, this one made it onto my radar because I was checking out the publisher – tRaum Books, who published one of my favourite books and who I got to work with on a copy-editing project! Corrupted Vessels jumped out at me from their catalogue, and after talking a lot with the editor about the kind of books he wants to publish, I’m expecting to adore this one!

Have you read any of these? Do you have any spooky reads lined up for the season? Let me know!

The post 10 Horror-y Reads On My Autumn TBR appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

It’s been a rough month, my friends. Putting it under a spoiler tag because it’s definitely a downer. Trigger warning for mentions of cancer, dementia, implied parental abuse, and doggie health scares (the dog is fine!) If you do read under the spoiler, I am okay and don’t want to talk about any of it. I already know you’re all lovely enough to wish me well <3

[View post to see spoiler]

This all made it much harder to read than usual, but at least what I did read was great!

ARCs Received

The Flowers I Deserve is the newest novel from Tamara Jerée, whose debut The Fall That Saved Us I adored. Poison-girls being Extremely Queer – yes please!

Boy, With Accidental Dinosaur caught my eye with that fabulous cover, but I initially wasn’t going to request an arc – just pick it up when it was released. But then I saw it was in the lgbt+ category on Netgalley! So yes, I pounced MOST GLEEFULLY.

And I’m desperately hoping that Gollancz, who’s publishing it in the UK, hasn’t done the editing (because they’re fucking abominable at it) but there was no way I could resist The Wolf and His King!

The Gods Must Burn features a bi man becoming a god after he sacrifices himself to save some wolf cubs – can you say hells fucking yes??? Plus it’s from Rebellion, and while I don’t always love their books, they do consistently publish outside-the-box stuff that’s usually worth taking a peek at!

Apparently, Sir Cameron Needs to Die is one I’ve been hearing great things about, and I’m hoping it’ll end up one of next year’s Unmissables. Same with City of Others!

Whereas We Dance Upon Demons wasn’t on my radar at all – I had no idea Vaishnavi Patel had a new book in the works! – but using magic to defend an abortion centre against pro-forced-birthers??? That sounds so cool!

Artifact Space is the US edition of one of my favourite books, and I’m intensely curious about whether any editing’s been done (the UK edition was by Gollancz, and is chock-full of everything from typos to continuity errors).

Read

18 books read this month! A fair bit less than last month’s 25 reads, but considering what a mess this month was I’m actually very positively surprised.

Nine-Tenths was a wonderful love story that refused to be just one thing; extremely outside the box in all the ways! The Summer War delighted me too – despite the premise it gave me so much joy! But the unquestionable stand-out this month was Eight Doors From Dawn to Midnight, Rachel Neumeier’s newest fantasy. GOING STRAIGHT ON THE FOREVER-FAVOURITES LIST, HOLY WOW. Extravagantly beautiful and strange and thinky with fantastic characters and super-unique worldbuilding and magic! Literally flawless.

I reread the rest of the Rivers of London series this month – well, the novels, anyway – which were really great when I was grey-brained. Alas, I didn’t really love the newest instalment, Stone & Sky – adored Abigail’s plotline, but a lot of the rest of it made me twitch.

DNF-ed

18 DNFs in September – which is a new record, damn it. GAH. (An equal number of books read and books DNFed – does that mean anything?) Quite a few of these were great but just not for me – Herculine, Lost Reliquary, and Philosophy of Thieves in particular – and Overgrowth especially I want to try again later.

Reviewed

Honestly, given everything going on, I’m amazed I managed two reviews. And they weren’t terrible, either!

Next Up

The sequel to Witch King is out in a WEEK and I haven’t started my reread yet; and I was about to reread the UK edition of Artifact Space before I was approved for the arc of the US edition, so that feels wonderfully appropriate! Reigncloud Palace is a cosy fantasy about someone who repairs magical items and has been on my tbr for ages; Captive just came out today, and I’m SO EXCITED to finally be able to pounce on it! In Solitude’s Shadow is one I spotted on bluesky, and the author was kind enough to send me a copy (it was free on the Big River site, but I can’t buy through them any more because of this bs). It’s supposed to be queer Epic Fantasy and I’m really hoping it delights me!

ARCs Outstanding

I was hoping and planning to get through a chunk of these this month, but it was not to be!

Unmissable SFF Updates

The Unmissable list for next year got some covers added, and now has 24 books! And after realising I’d somehow managed to include one book twice, this year’s list is 81 books long!

How did my predictions/anticipated reads for September go? I declared five books Unmissable for this month, and–

two were five-star reads (Audition For the Fox and Summer War)one was a two-star read (A Blood as Bright as the Moon)one was a DNF (Sunward)one I haven’t finished yet (Angel Maker)

Honestly Audition and Summer War were both so freaking awesome that they easily make up for the others.

Misc

This month my interview with Martin Cahill, author of Audition For the Fox, went live! He was such an incredible person to talk to, I had so much fun.

I’m genuinely not sure whether or not I can mark Neveryóna by Samuel R Delany as read or not – I got so fucking frustrated with it I skimmed a lot, so do I count it as a DNF or read?

The copy-editing for tRaum Books was wrapped up early this month, so was complete before everything came off the rails. Thank the gods. I’m really proud of the work I did, and collaborating with the editor there was a JOY. If I thought there was any chance I could make a sane amount of money doing it, I’d set up as a self-employed copy-editor in a heartbeat!

Looking Forward

October is EASILY the most exciting book-release month this year! New books from Nghi Vo, Alix E Harrow, Martha Wells, Freya Marske, Tamara Jerée, AND Hiron Ennes! A sequel to Bored Gay Werewolf! THE NEXT ARCANA IMPERII BOOK! If you don’t hear from me until November, THESE’LL BE WHY!

May we all have a most optimal October!

The post In Short: September appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Nine-Tenths by J.M. Frey
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
PoV: First-person, present-tense
Published on: 30th September 2025
ISBN: 1738148556
Goodreads

Colin Levesque is at loose ends. He's finished university, but has no career; he adores romance novels, but he's crap at relationships; and his prickliness is a detriment at the café where he's making ends meet. He also has a crush on his regular Dav, a homo draconis who comes in every morning to read his newspaper, sip his double-strong coffee, and stare longingly at Colin in return.

So it figures that the day Colin gets up the courage to do something about the sexual tension simmering between them, he also learns that Dav has an embarrassing habit of hiccupping fire when he's nervous. Which, in this case, destroys the fancy custom-made bean roaster. When Dav volunteers to take over the coffee roasting with his fire-breath, being squished together in the hot, cramped kitchen leads to even hotter kisses.

Everything's finally happening for Colin—until people start claiming the dragon-roasted coffee has cured their genetic ailments. As their budding relationship struggles under the scrutiny of scientists and media, the hype around the coffee leads the lovers to be inducted into a centuries-old conspiracy: dragon-roasted food has always healed humans. And the most powerful draconic nobles have been withholding this symbiotic advantage to keep themselves on top. Colin and Dav are determined to expose the truth, but if they're not careful, their objections could goad power-mad monarchs into destroying everything they hold dear.

Including each other.

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I received this book for free from the author in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Highlights

~dragons are watching your social media
~chocolate allergy BEGONE
~brain weasels begone also
~in hindsight I’m embarrassed the title confused me
~whatever genre you think this is, you’re wrong

This isn’t exactly what it looks like, and that DELIGHTED me!

The synopsis already does a good job at alerting you that Nine-Tenths isn’t especially conventional: it’s a Coffee Shop (not-)AU, in a contemporary fantasy setting, with (shapeshifting) dragons, and a queer romance. But, it’s also a mystery – a mystery which leads into a capitalist conspiracy – and uncovering that is going to be world-changing.

ALL OF THIS IS ON THE BACK OF THE BOOK.

But this is Frey, who as far as I can tell has never cared about making her stories fit in neat little boxes – so Nine-Tenths is a good bit more than that, too. The romance took several turns that had my jaw on the floor. There’s political intrigue. There’s mental health. It even digs into environmentalism and the Land Back movement!

THIS BOOK IS AS TWISTY AS A SNAKY DRAGON, IS WHAT I’M SAYING HERE.

Colin is adorable, and far too relatable – a Millennial with anxiety, a Most Excellent friend group, and no idea wtf to do with his life. He is also very into Mills & Boon-style romances, and I loved how that influenced his narration – there are moments where he breaks the fourth wall to explain to the reader that this is the point in a romance where such and such typically happens, or perhaps that other thing, and maybe it would get annoying if he were doing it constantly, but as it was, it tickled me pink.

There’s this thing in stories called “the inciting incident.”

And mine? It’s a goddamn doozy.

Dav is, uh. Far less relatable. Because he is, in fact, a dragon. Albeit one who spends most of his time in human form (which seems to be the norm for dragons in this setting). This is perhaps the first of Frey’s surprises for the reader – because although it looks very, very like ours, Colin’s world is in fact ruled by dragons. And humans know this and are fine with it. Possibly because the dragons stay out of most people’s day-to-day lives, very deliberately obscuring exactly how much power and control they have over humanity. Which is something Colin runs into face-first after the events of the synopsis go down, because dragons REALLY don’t want everyone to know that they could cure every one of humanity’s ills and just…don’t.

He thought humans should rule humans.”

“That’s stupid,” I chuckle. “It never works. Hello, look at America. They had a whole failed revolution about it.”

I mean, understandably? I would be upset. I imagine most other people would be, too. Especially after Covid, which is over in Colin’s world (I’m jealous) but left Colin in particular wrecked after his dad died of it.

Nine-Tenths packs a lot of different genres into its pages, but it is primarily a romance, and whether that romance will work for you or not…is going to vary, I think. Because Dav is not exactly the Perfectly Unproblematic love interest; he’s not, thankfully, the kind of Toxically Masculine hero we get in, say, Paranormal Romances, but if you have hang-ups about love interests not disclosing really important shit, then you – like me! – may be unhappy with our Dav. This sort of thing would usually have me defenestrating a book, but two important details made it work instead: first, Frey is very, very good at making you believe that Dav really does have good intentions and is not trying to be an ass. I was never in any doubt that Dav really and truly loved Colin to the ends of the earth and back again, even when I wanted to toss him off a cliff. (He has wings, he’d be fine!)

I had spoken.

And he had listened.

I had dreamed.

And he had made it a reality.

The second point is…a little hard to explain, but critical.

I think – I worry! – that some readers are going to be nonplussed by the way in which Colin doesn’t react to A Terrible Thing. The Thing is obviously, objectively bad. But Colin seems to shrug it off – even to himself, in the privacy of his head, he doesn’t freak out the way he very clearly should. But this is so freaking believable! This IS how people (don’t) react to Really Bad Things, a lot of the time! Because The Thing is so completely inconceivable that it becomes ridiculous, it doesn’t register as real, not on an emotional level. Instead there’s shock, and incomprehension, and the kind of reflexive justification/rationalisation/dismissal that a lot of us do when our loved ones do something that we can’t make sense of. Most people would just…carry on, until something caused the reality of the situation to smack them in the face. So you don’t burst into tears, or start throwing things, or yelling. Because it doesn’t feel real, yet, even though you know it is.

And also…there’s a…not very rational element to romantic love, quite often. If my partner pulled what Colin did… I’m not saying I wouldn’t care, but I wouldn’t freak out the way I probably should because it’s this person specifically. To whom the normal rules do not apply, when we get right down to it. I think the same thing is at play between Dav and Colin. And that’s why I found Colin’s (not-)reaction so believable, so relatable. It makes no sense on any kind of rational level, I get that, but in context, on an emotional level, I don’t struggle for a second to understand why Colin stays so calm. It’s because he loves Dav far more than is rational, reasonable, or safe.

He should be running for the hills. But it makes perfect emotional sense that he doesn’t. And it’s only luck, really, that that doesn’t end incredibly badly for him.

Moments like this one, where we were both still sleep-muzzy and warm, it feels like I might overflow, like there’s no way I’ll ever find room for all of this…all of this. But maybe I’ll expand, somehow, to hold it all under my skin, close to my heart. I’m Dav’s ground, and his gravity, and his center. And he’s my air, and my laughter, and my heat.

(Except, it’s not really luck, is it? Because it’s not random. Colin decides he can live with this specifically because it’s Dav – because he trusts Dav. And he has reason to trust Dav, Dav has earned it. Colin doesn’t flip a coin to determine whether or not he’s okay with all this; he decides, based on his experience and knowledge of the man he loves. And I guess he could have been wrong – but he wasn’t. His idea of who Dav is was correct. That’s not luck, is it? That’s – knowing someone well enough to trust them, I think.)

There are also contextual mitigating factors, which are crucial in keeping this the kind of glittery, joyful romance that it is, instead of something much darker. Basically, dragons are wired in such a way that this Deeply Problematic Thing they do is okay, really, mostly, because…they do it with genuine adoration and love? Or put another way: it’s Deeply Problematic when humans do it to each other. It’s…less dodgy when a dragon does it to a human? Or, no wait, let me try again: within the relationship, the couple, human and dragon – between them, everything is perfect. The Deeply Dodgy Thing is only in how other dragons perceive the relationship. It’s not the relationship that’s fucked, it’s…how it’s viewed by outsiders…?

This is so hard to talk about without spoilers, GODS.

If you can’t accept what Dav does, and that Colin is okay with it, and that this is despite that a True Love story – then Nine-Tenths isn’t going to work for you. But I think Frey does a really excellent job at convincing us of their love, and convincing us that yes, it really is the huge, all-consuming, ridiculous love that would make people let something like this go. It’s not just that I have experienced that myself; I was convinced that Colin felt it too. Not every writer can pull that off – I’ve definitely seen times where it’s failed, and you probably have too – but this isn’t the first time Frey’s done so; her book Lips Like Ice, written under another penname, hinged on the same thing, on her ability to convince us that the characters felt something deeply not safe, sane and consensual for each other. Not obsession; nothing as simple as obsession. Love doesn’t have to be obsessive to be…not-logical?

I don’t know how else to put it. But if you haven’t felt it in your own life, I think Frey will make you feel it here, between these two characters.

I’m making this book sound so much more fucked-up than it is, I swear! It’s not like that (even if, objectively, it probably should be!) Nine-Tenths made me GLITTER. That sparkly, bubbly, giggly feeling you get while reading the best kind of romances? I felt that the whole way through reading this book. It’s FUN, even though it’s tackling a myriad of serious topics. Colin goes into a proper depressive spiral at one point; the story digs into (the tip of) colonialism; there’s creepy totalitarian/Big Brother stuff with the dragons controlling so much more than the humans think they do. And so on. And yet, despite all of that, I was having fun.

“That’s just the brain weasels talking.”

The resolution depended a little too heavily on some neat coincidences and the villain being abominably stupid at a crucial moment, but not so badly that it broke my immersion in the story. And…those are really my only critiques. It’s not just that Nine-Tenths is really fun, a book that elicits that incredible glitter-glee that Romance is always chasing – it’s also the twistiness of the plot, how Frey consistently declined to take the story in the directions genre-conventions have us expect. Sometimes this was extremely dramatic and jaw-dropping; sometimes it was much quieter and subtler; but it’s always, in a word, awesome. I had to laugh several times when the story flipped the tables on me and what kind of story I thought this was: from Contemporary to Contemporary Fantasy, to Cli Fi, to [View post to see spoiler], to Political Intrigue (Land Back), to Political Intrigue (Elizabethan) – it was just REALLY GREAT to read a story unabashedly colouring outside the lines, one where I couldn’t predict WHAT was going to happen on the next page, never mind the next chapter!

That could have felt messy and disjointed, but it didn’t – Frey’s too good for that. Despite playing hopscotch with genre Nine-Tenths is wonderfully cohesive; it feels twisty in the way that real life is twisty, where curveballs can come from outside your frame of reference but not outside your reality. The world fits together so well that it supports even the most unexpected reveals – it’s always ‘oh, yeah, I can believe this world would do that/have that’, not ‘wtf is this now?!’

And ultimately? I love Colin. I LOVE him. He is wonderful. He is a mess and he is funny and he cares so much and he’s SMART and he’s a romantic and he is Fierce and he COMMUNICATES LIKE A GROWN-UP, and does Dav deserve him??? In my humble opinion, no, Dav doesn’t – but Dav means well, he is so intensely and unquestionably earnest and genuine, and he makes Colin happy, so we’ll allow it.

I loved this book. It surprised and delighted me from start to finish; it made me laugh so much; every single character, down to the most minor, felt fleshed-out and fully alive; it gave me all the glitter-glee I could possibly ask for. It made me ache and flail and rage and kick my feet, and I teared up more than once. I’ve highlighted so many wonderful lines. I can already tell I’m going to reread this over and over, whenever I want something that makes me feel fizzy and joyful. It’s going directly onto my Best of Year list, and a has a forever-spot on my Faves shelf.

TL;DR: The tagline says ‘love is a treasure worth hoarding’, and SO IS THIS BOOK!

And if you still need convincing, you can read the first five chapters here!

The post A Non-Stop Rollercoaster of Delight: Nine-Tenths by J.M. Frey appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted over at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about but haven’t yet read. Most of the time they’re books that have yet to be released, but not always. It’s based on the Waiting on Wednesday meme, which was originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. 

You can find the releases I’m most anticipating this year over on my Unmissable list, but I use Can’t-Wait Wednesday to feature books I’m hopeful about but aren’t 100% sure will be five star reads.

This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is The Witch Who Chases the Sun by Dawn Chen!

The Witch Who Chases the Sun by Dawn Chen
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Chinese-inspired cast and setting, F/F
Published on: 1st October 2025
Goodreads

Sometimes, true love is not the answer.

A decade after the Second War, Aixauhan Alchemist Ying Cai-Li seeks to rekindle her relationship with her ex-lover, the Inabrian Oracle Anne Barberry.

However, the war changed them both. Estranged by their losses, Cai-Li has gained a notorious reputation as the dark magic-wielding Blood Hawk and Anne barricades herself in a castle on a hill where her family’s dark secrets lie. Rumors in the village say Anne is a monster, responsible for the disappearance of innocent visitors.

But when the two witches reunite and begin unraveling the mysteries of the village, it becomes clear that scars left by the war do not easily fade. Things are not as they seem. Old ghosts come back to haunt them. Past truths are revealed. Can the witches be each other’s salvations or are they doomed to repeat the past that tore them apart?

Fans of The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang and The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon will fall in love with Dawn Chen’s sapphic high fantasy epic about anti-colonialism, grief, generational trauma, and the cycles of war.

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I mean…look at that synopsis: which part am I NOT supposed to be excited about? Two messed-up, very-not-NiceTM witches having to deal with their trauma together! With lots of tangled, thorny themes! (…I actually didn’t mean for that to alliterate, but I’m keeping it.)

Some of the early reviewers have mentioned that not only are there multiple magic systems, but that they draw influence from Chinese and British mythology. Which – I always love when we have more than one kind of magic that humans can practice, but I’m not sure I’ve often seen multiple systems with such wildly different influences! Probably the British-esque magic is going to be tied up with the anti-colonial theme?

This post from the publisher also promises an ‘unconventional happily ever after’, which, GIMME! I’m not holding my breath that the two characters won’t be romantically together at the end, whatever the blurb is trying to imply – and honestly, by the time I get to the end I’ll probably want them to be happily together. But I would really, really like a happy ending that doesn’t look like a thousand others I’ve seen before. Just for variety’s sake!

This one is out NEXT WEEK – not long to wait now!

The post I Can’t Wait For…The Witch Who Chases the Sun by Dawn Chen appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

The Thread That Binds (Eternal Library #1) by Cedar McCloud
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Nonbinary aromantic asexual MC; nonbinary asexual MC; brown pansexual MC; queerplatonic NB/NB; NB/F; secondary NB/NB
PoV: First-person, present-tense; multiple PoVs
ISBN: B0DWVSBJSW
Goodreads

The books are restless. At the Eternal Library, books are more than the paper, ink, and thread they're made from--they're full of spirits. Only a handful of people will ever be invited to the Bindery to learn the craft of etheric bookbinding: the creation of intricate illuminated manuscripts, Bound with a secret that will make them last forever.

Tabby is a dreamwalker, a witch who escapes into the stories of sleep to avoid a birth family that's never loved em enough. Amane is a cartomancer, a medium who speaks for the Unseen, but doesn't know how to speak for her own needs. Rhiannon is highly psychic, an archivist who can See into the past, but only has eyes on the future.

Their stories intertwine as they discover the secrets of etheric binding, the Library's archives, and those of their mentors--the three of whom are competing to be the next Head Librarian, the Speaker for all the books. How do you know who's truly worth being part of your family? Sometimes we must forge connections in order to heal; other times, those bonds must be broken.

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~making magic books!
~what if libraries were a religion
~ghosts are quite chatty actually
~divination and dream-walking
~many original fairytales

Cedar McCloud is an author I first discovered through their artwork back when they were working on their stunning Numinous Tarot (still one of my favourite decks!) Later, when they were creating their Threadbound Oracle, I followed that project too – and was VERY intrigued when they revealed that they had written a novel inspired by and entwined with the oracle! I backed both when they came to Kickstarter, obviously.

Alas, I bounced off Thread That Binds a few times. But then the New Voices book club on r/Fantasy chose it as their read for August this year, so I tried again – and was completely hooked!

I’m never 100% sure what cozy fantasy means, but plenty of others have said Thread That Binds falls under that category, so that should give you an idea of what you’re in for here. There’s no saving-the-world plot, but the stakes certainly feel high for all our characters, and I spent a lot of the book much more anxious than I thought I’d be! But there’s a lovely unhurried pace to most of it, a dreamy kind of sweetness; I used Thread That Binds as a bedtime book, something to read while winding down for the night, and that worked wonderfully (aside from a few of the more nail-biting chapters here and there!)

Some quick worldbuilding, for context: the world of the Threadverse is a fantasy one, but it has a similar level of technology to ours, with magical equivalents of mobile phones and the internet and the like. Thread That Binds is set in the country Caspora, which has no concept of gender and everyone uses e/em pronouns by default; only a very rare few, and immigrants from elsewhere, use other pronouns. Caspora houses the world-famous Eternal Library, which is pretty much what it sounds like: a magical library that seeks to house and preserve a copy of every book ever written. A tiny but sacred department within the Library is the Bindery, where the rare, very magical, and indestructible Illuminated books are created by hand. The only way to learn Illumination is via a long and secretive apprenticeship, and apprenticeships don’t come along very often.

But one of the Illuminators has decided it’s time to take on an apprentice, and Tabby (e/em) and Amane (she/her) are both interviewing for the spot in the opening chapters. It’s an even bigger deal than it would otherwise be, because while most Illuminators leave for other libraries after their apprenticeships, whoever gets this one will gain a permanent position at the Eternal Library – the dream of every would-be Illuminator. Rhiannon (e/em), Tabby’s platonic partner, already works at the Eternal Library as an archivist, and gets bumped up to Assistant Head Archivist when the previous one quits – meaning e now works directly for and with Mairead, the charismatic, mercurial Head Archivist.

The book switches between Tabby, Amane and Rhiannon’s PoVs, and McCloud does an excellent job at giving each of them a distinctive voice and perspective on life, each other, and the Library. Tabby is a dreamwalker who struggles with stress-induced narcolepsy, the child of dysfunctional parents; e and Rhiannon live together as platonic partners. Rhiannon has what seems like a stronger, maybe more abrasive personality; e protects Tabby from Tabby’s parents as much as possible, but has eir own insecurities around having been a Gifted Child who feels e has little to show for it – and is very unsensitive to magic, which makes em blind to much of what makes the Eternal Library such a special place. Amane is an intense perfectionist, who uses the oracle deck handed down through her family to access her psychic abilities; she’s also not a native of Caspora, and has to adjust to the language and culture of her new home a fair bit.

A huge part of the story is not just the relationships between the three protagonists, but also each of their relationships with their respective mentors. Tabby apprentices with Binder Aeronwy; Amane with another Binder, and Aeronwy’s spouse, June; and Rhiannon is taken under the wing of eir boss, Mairead. Aeronwy and June both work hard, in their different styles, to connect with their apprentices and help them grow both as Binders and as individuals; Mairead, on the other hand, is deeply manipulative and toxic, good at twisting scenarios and words so that nothing is ever eir fault. Which is pretty ironic, considering that Mairead is a priestex of a religion that believes people are characters in a divine story – and that some people are protagonists, while others are npcs. (There’s a level of meta there that feels delightfully tongue-in-cheek!) Mairead is sure that e is a protagonist…and yet, somehow, nothing that happens could ever be a consequence of eir own actions. E is always done to, never doing. Sounds pretty npc to me!

Mairead is the kind of small-scale villain who is unfortunately believable, and who made my skin crawl whenever e appeared; I suspect most readers will have at least brushed up against similar personalities, and it’s easy to see how Rhiannon gets as twisted up as e does by Mairead’s charisma and poisonous promises. The other pitfalls of the story are equally familiar, and just as authentic: Tabby’s struggles with eir parents, in particular, made me sick with tension even while my heart was breaking for em. On the flip side, the friendships forming between the main characters also rang true; they felt very organic, and low-key, in a way that I really liked. All of them grew over the course of the book; I wouldn’t call this a coming-of-age story, but the vibe reminded me of university, that point in your life when you’re legally an adult but still figuring out who you are and how to be a grown up – full of possibility, but also kinda terrifying.

Thread That Binds gets right what a lot of cosy fantasy seems to get wrong: the stakes are low, relatively speaking, but very high for the characters – and McCloud writes the tension of that really, really well. Sure, the villain is fairly obvious, and the gentleness of the book means you’re never in any doubt that the main characters will triumph. But neither of those kept McCloud from playing my emotions like a fiddle. I didn’t think I was going to get sucked into this; I thought it would be something to read when my brain was misbehaving, or right before bed. Instead, I ended up obsessed, and I’m still not sure how that happened!

The world McCloud’s created is quietly magical, a believable attempt at mortals building a utopia. (Meaning, not actually perfect, but a good try.) The magic reminded me a lot of Wiccan-esque magic, with lots of visualisation and minimal cinematics, the mechanics vague. It felt fairly mundane, to be honest, which is partly a reflection of how normalised magic is in this setting; there’s very little sense of it being anything unusual or special, most of the time. There are several faiths, with tensions between them; historical figures who are deities in one country but viewed as mortals in another. The dead aren’t gone forever; Amane speaks with, or for, ghosts all the time, and not only through her divination cards. There’s virtually no physical violence in this setting – but equally, that does mean that when there is, most people have no idea how to deal with it, and they struggle to deal with non-physical violence just as much as we do in our world. There’s magic-internet, and magic-social media, even. Given the cultural and global importance of the Eternal Library, there’s a great deal of book imagery worked into everything from religion to speech, which was a constant delight for me as a bookwyrm.

And of course, there’s Caspora’s lack of gender. I was frustrated by how much I struggled with this; not because of the way it’s written – I think it’s written very well! But even being nonbinary, which I am, doesn’t mean you’re automatically Enlightened enough to stop reflexively gendering people, and I had to struggle not to do that based on names and context clues. But that just made Thread That Binds good practice for me! McCloud’s approach to this was as realistic and believable as their utopia; instead of creating a nation of androgynous people, McCloud’s characters gleefully mix-and-match what we’d think of as gender markers; beards and dresses are a common combination, for example. I loved this so much, because yes! The vast majority of nonbinary people aren’t androgynous in real life, and well-meaning allies don’t seem to realise what they’re implying when they write all their enby characters that way. McCloud instead works from the premise that none of these things have anything to do with gender; beards aren’t masculine, they’re just beards. Dresses aren’t feminine, they’re just dresses. Or perhaps they are masculine and feminine, but if they are then they don’t necessarily reflect the gender of the person wearing them. It’s a depiction that’s a breath of fresh air, honestly, and I’d like a lot of other storytellers to be taking notes, please!

The prose is quite simple, but each of the characters bring so much feeling and sincerity to their narration that the fairly straightforward writing didn’t bother me. Tabby and Amane and Rhiannon all felt so genuine – both in the sense that they’re incredibly easy to believe in, with the sorts of hopes and cares that are extremely familiar – but also in the sense of being…open and honest with the reader? That sounds ridiculous, but I don’t know how else to say what I mean. I felt that I knew these characters better than I’m used to knowing characters, that I knew them more deeply and completely than your typical protagonist. I can’t figure out how McCloud pulled that off, but it was wonderful!

The climax was probably the weakest part of the book – Tabby and Amane have to go through magical trials alongside their mentors, and the trials themselves made almost no sense to me, besides being pretty boring to read about. But that didn’t really matter, because I wasn’t really here for the big plot, I was here for the characters, who I adored, and the writing that soothed my brain-fizz and got me right in the Feels.

Thread That Binds…is like being hugged. Sometimes tighter, sometimes more loosely; sometimes rocking you gently, sometimes jumping up and down with excitement. I don’t know how else to put it.

I loved it, and can’t wait to dive into the next book in the series!

The post Cosy in the Eternal Library: The Thread That Binds by Cedar McCloud appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Audition For the Fox is easily one of my best-of-year books, the kind of instant fave that you shelve behind your heart forever. So of course I jumped at the chance to interview the author, Martin Cahill!

Audition for the Fox by Martin Cahill
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Representation: Brown cast, major nonbinary character, secondary sapphic character, secondary disabled character
Published on: 16th September 2025
Goodreads

In this stellar debut fantasy, a trickster Fox god challenges an underachieving acolyte to save herself by saving her own ancestors. But are Nesi and her new friends from the past prepared to defeat the ferocious Wolfhounds of Zemin?

“If you love my worlds, you’re going to love Cahill’s: stunning imagination, daring premises, and deep character dives. A new author to watch.”—N. K. Jemisin, author of the Broken Earth series

[STARRED REVIEW] “A marvelous and heartbreaking tale.”—Library Journal

Nesi is desperate to earn the patronage of one of the Ninety-Nine Pillars of Heaven. As a child with godly blood in her, if she cannot earn a divine chaperone, she will never be allowed to leave her temple home. But with ninety-six failed auditions and few options left, Nesi makes a risky prayer to T’sidaan, the Fox of Tricks.

In folk tales, the Fox is a lovable prankster. But despite their humor and charm, T’sidaan, and their audition, is no joke. They throw Nesi back in time three hundred years, when her homeland is occupied by the brutal Wolfhounds of Zemin.

Now, Nesi must learn a trickster’s guile to snatch a fortress from the disgraced and exiled 100th Pillar: The Wolf of the Hunt.

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You can read my full thoughts on Audition here, but – seriously, people, this one’s something really special.

This interview has been edited slightly for ease of reading, and for brevity (it would be roughly three times as long, and chock full of spoilers, if I’d included all of it!)

The Interview

Sia: Okay, easiest question first: how would you introduce yourself – and Audition For The Fox! – for readers who don’t know who you are? (‘Easiest question’ was a lie, obviously, let’s do the hardest one first so afterwards they only get easier!)

Martin: Thanks again for having me, and thanks again for your enthusiasm and support for me and Audition For The Fox! I’m so happy to be here today!

So, introduction: My name is Martin Cahill, please feel free to call me Marty! I’m a 35 year old neurodivergent writer living in the Hudson Valley. I’ve been writing for over half my life and sold my first story when I was 23. Since then, I’ve had the pleasure and fortune to publish over 20 short stories across a myriad of wonderful magazines, digital and physical. I also have spent a long time in non-fiction, specifically essays and reviews for Reactor, B&N SFF Blog, Book Riot, Strange Horizons, and more. I’ve also been fortunate enough to work in various IPs such as Batman, D&D, and Critical Role, as well as some actual game writing and game design, with more on the horizon. My latest projects on that front include the story, “Under Golden Boughs,” collected in Vox Machina: Stories Untold and Critical Role: Armory of Heroes. Audition For The Fox is my first fiction book and my debut novella.

This novella took over six years to get right; tried on my formats and narrative forms until it decided it looked best in novella, (and I think looks quite dapper). I was trying to explore the whole purpose behind trickster gods; across civilizations and cultures, there’s always been a lil scamp or a dogged bastard or a righteous gremlin or a pompous ragamuffin who is there to throw wrench after wrench into the works; sometimes the wrench is just hilarious. Sometimes the wrench breaks something awful. Sometimes the wrench frees something in pain. And sometimes the wrench is just a wrench and while you were looking at it gum up your works, some tricky little so and so is right behind you, tying your shoes together. From a cultural point of view, it makes sense; sometimes not all goes according to plan, but it’s not always an ultimately evil being who is the cause of that. Sometimes, you need to make sense of shenanigans in life, and who better than tricksters? But their narrative purpose, THAT is what I was caught on. Why do tricksters exist? Why do they have their own stories? What are they for beyond the jokes, the entertainment? And it was then a flash of red-orange caught my eye. And I followed the Fox into the underbrush, intent on figuring it out with them. So far, it’s been an incredible journey. And it has grown beyond my intentions. A story of failure, anxiety, oppression, resistance, and how to fight back with the tools at hand, Audition For The Fox outgrew my own hopes for it, and I’m so proud of what it turned into.

Sia: You managed to answer something like five of the questions I prepared for this already!

Speaking of heroes… Right at the beginning of Audition, your main character Nesi has to choose which of the gods she’s going to audition for next: the god of war, the god of assassins, or T’sidaan. And that feels very deliberate? Traditional fantasy heroes tend to be the kind who would pick war or assassins; T’sidaan is such a stark contrast to that. It’s like you’re telling the reader right away that we’re going off the beaten path here. (I approve immensely.) Did you set out to write a story that goes so hard against genre expectations? Or did that just sort of happen as you were writing?

Martin: hmmmm . . . little bit of column A, little bit of column B! At first, it was meant to illustrate which Pillars out of 99 has Nesi been avoiding for years now, and having a sense of her character, yes, warfare and brutally killing people in cold-blood were just not things that appealed to her. The Lion and the Serpent have their place, of course; they exist to hold up the world and their parts of the world in specific. But Nesi just doesn’t have the stomach for it. And with the Fox, it really came down to simply not knowing what it could look like; as we learn later, the Fox hasn’t had an acolyte or an audition since before she was born. So it really was the final choice of, “Well, this should be better than war and murder, yes?” Readers will have to determine that for themselves; the Fox has plenty of tales with blood on their muzzle, even if Nesi isn’t quite the acolyte for that yet. (Future books might dig into that a little, he said with authorial wink).

Sia: Honestly, that makes perfect sense: I’d have chosen the Fox too (though I’d have been a lot more worried going in than Nesi was!)

Martin: Please include this if you see fit to, but I’ve really loved your note of how little violence there is in the resistance of the Zemini occupiers, and I wanted to speak to that real quick, if that’s okay! Because I totally agree with you; tricks and fear tactics and such can only do so much. And I don’t want to downplay the brutality and violence that was very much a part of the Occupation. But as I was writing and revising and revising, especially with the world in the mostly horrendous state it is and Nesi being who she is, I chose to emphasize that her path forward in her audition and her role in history, was to engage in as little bloodshed as possible. In my mind, there were MANY, many battles and skirmishes and conflicts chock full of resistance as violence and meeting oppressors with spear and shield, and again, those are valid. But for me, I wanted to show one of the ways that was accomplished without murdering every Zemini in sight. 

Sia: I had the violence thing in my list of questions, I promise! But yes, this was the one part of the book I struggled with. It wasn’t the lack of violence that bothered me – I’m very glad to not have to read that! – so much as, the book edged towards ‘violence/murder is always wrong’ at times.

I do think it was implied that there was going to be violence elsewhere in this world against the Occupation, later. But I just get wary when I see anything that sounds like ‘you shouldn’t meet oppression with violence’, especially because it’s historically a very white, Western idea that gets thrown at minorities and colonised people. But as someone who just DNFed a book because I couldn’t cope with the honest depiction of real historical evils…I’m still grateful you didn’t go there with Audition. It would have changed the tone entirely. And I think we do NEED resistance stories that can be inspiring without being bleak. I think you balanced the awfulness of the compound really well with…optimism? Optimism with teeth, maybe. Trickster-optimism!

Martin: you are 100 percent correct that it is a VERY privileged and ignorant position (aka White and Western) to claim violence doesn’t help, because sometimes it is the ONLY way to stand up for yourself, your cause, and your people, and it can often be the line across which your oppressors actually start taking you seriously. But at the same time, exactly, this is not a Game of Thrones style story where disembowelment gets pages of visceral detail dedicated to it, and that level of horror is indulged. I did my best to strike a balance of “Occupation is real, violence against minorities, the marginalized, and the colonised is VERY real and those things exist here in this story, but the way Nesi and T’sidaan (at this point in their life) are trying to address the Occupation doesn’t fully rely on that same level of violence as the Zemini at the fortress.” I have no doubt I didn’t do quite as good a job as I could have and I will learn from this and do better, but at the same time, meeting violence and brutality with tricks, humor, community, being kind and being clever were very much a choice. The violence does exist (as you said, the ending certainly has a lot of uh, violent implications as well as the coming years of conflict), but in this mode of somewhat-fable, somewhat-epic, it was definitely a choice not to focus on it solely. As for a certain spoiler-y moment towards the end, I totally agree on your thoughts, and again, will always listen and do better as I continue to write, but the hope at least was, if people are making declarative statements, those are centered as best as possible in the character’s thoughts and current reality, and not a universal declaration of morality in this world or our world. 

And please feel free to edit as much as you’d like the above, and this, because I will say: I promise by the Pillars, I am not trying to defend myself or explain away anything. Your feelings as a reader are 110% legit and I love that you’ve engaged with the text at this level, and I can only hope others do the same! This story is not mine anymore, and I never want to be one of those writers who was like ::pushes glasses up the bridge of my nose:: WELL, ACTUALLY–lol; that is not how you endear yourself readers, and it’s also not how you become a better writer! Being a better writer means being a better listener, and I’ve loved how your questions and thoughts have made me think of the text in a new way, too! Like I said, I can only listen, engage, and learn to do better without ego or certainty. 

Sia: I know I feel a lot better about it, a lot less uncomfortable about it, after reading your answers and thinking about the book some more. So genuinely, thank you for being willing to talk about it and explain your thoughts and intentions. I do think most of it came through in Audition.

But let’s leave the heavier topics for now and dig in to the fun stuff! Like your WORLDBUILDING, because SIR, your MYTHOS, I was swooning at it the whole way through the book! Where on EARTH (or off it???) were you pulling influences or inspiration from? How did you go about building the pantheon, for example?

Martin: I am so, so glad you enjoyed the worldbuilding in this world, and the Pantheon and the creation myth, all of it. For the Pillars as a whole, 99 Pillars of Heaven is just one of those fantasy terms I threw in on the first draft, and I knew I had a Fox showing up, and then the idea of auditioning for a Whale god was interesting to me, and then we met the Lion and the Serpent, and soon I went, “Huh, I think this is working,” and then I went, “Well, shit, I need to name all of them now, don’t I?” and we went tumbling down from there! As for the creation myth, I realized I had written the Clay and Cloud tales before the creation myth, and so the implication that humanity was formed FROM clay and clouds made me think, “well, where the hell did that material come from?” and I just really loved the idea of a universe not built from scratch but sort of “angel in the stone,” carved away, so that from the detritus, you have humanity. And I love that it is three of the smallest who brought the universe into being and began to shape it, and I love that it is one of the smallest who suggests creating humanity not out of any ego or desire to be worshipped but to learn from when they return to clay and cloud once more. (If you can’t tell, I’m an Invy’thi stan haha). 

Sia: I absolutely LOVED that that the first Pillars were such typically-underappreciated beasties – they’re not animal forms that get considered big and glorious by humans most of the time, and I really liked that. (Oh fear not, I stan Invy’thi right along with you!)

Martin: I love the Three Builders as well, and they ARE underappreciated little friends in my opinion, too. Who else but the smallest could dream reality into being? Who could find the strength to shape it, the ethos to focus? Just a little shout-out to the smallest and unregarded, playing a little with themes that Nesi is a part of =]

For inspiration, I was mostly pulling from animism in total, that the world and each aspect of it contains some spirituality, some divine connection, but when it came to certain Pillars, it was individuals that got more direct inspiration. The Raven has big Morrigan energy with a splash of a gentler Anubis. The Spider definitely has roots in Arachne’s pride but became her own being the more T’sidaan messed with her. T’sidaan themself, an unnamed Pillar who appears later in the story has some Sekhmet to them with a dash of old Mesopotamia. In this story, the Fox has a lot of Anansi by way of Loki, and big shout out to the Fox from Worlds Beyond Number, whose own trickster energy and matter-of-fact slyness informed the final revision of T’sidaan because at the end of the day, sometimes a Fox has to be a Fox, and that means a meal, warmth, or outthinking something much larger than you. And in the end, if I did my job right, you’ll see shades of those inspirations, but my hope is the Pillars really are themselves in the tapestry of the world. (And fingers crossed, if we get a sequel someday, I want to showcase how the rest of the world sees the Pillars, because it’s really only Oranoya and Zemin that see them in an animalistic concept; Qaffinu interprets them as more ecological/nature-based gods, while others interpret them more as concepts; it’s a fun time! That, and what does worship look like a century from Nesi’s time?)

Sia: …Listen, I was already pining for a sequel, but I’m going to have to write Tachyon paper letters demanding one now because DIFFERENT COUNTRIES SEE THE PILLARS THAT DIFFERENTLY?! SIR. SIR IT’S *MEAN* TO TEASE WORLDBUILDING NERDS, OKAY. #RUDE! 

Martin: Ha, I hope we can get into it! The Oranoyan on their supercontinent have majorly shaped the Pillars because of their bestial worship and understanding, but yes, other cultures/countries/communities think of them in different ways and thus see them differently. The Fox of Tricks can sometimes be Coyote-Grinning or Hangman’s Joke or Rainbow-Shadow-Fang-Twirling, depending on the people. And we haven’t even gotten into the various Saints of the Pillars, acolytes who start getting candles lit to them in their names . . . feels like good fodder for a sequel :D

Sia: I can see some of the influences on some of the Pillars, but I think they are all very clearly themselves. T’sidaan especially. How long has the Fox been trickster-ing away in your brain, anyway? Are they a character who’s been with you a long time?

Martin: I’m glad each Pillar stands on their own! I do love each of them for their own reasons, even Nera’je, poor spider. If we get a sequel/another story, we’ll definitely have a bunch more to spend time with as well as one of the Dragons of Chaos . . .

Yeah, T’sidaan has been with me for a long time now. I think they first showed up around 2017? Just sort of snuffling in the underbrush, rolling through the leaves, sneezing at inopportune times, poking me to start their story. And then in 2018/2019, they started to crystallize into who they are now!

Sia: Which is a trickster! I really loved your approach to the Trickster archetype, by the way. I’ve been fascinated by the moral ambiguity of trickster figures for ages, and your Fox, T’sidaan, is even pretty heroic, if maybe not in the usual sense of the word!

Martin: I agree, it does feel like a lot of tricksters have their own ever-shifting perspective on good and bad, but I do think a central thing that ties them together is a sense of justice. To care when no one cares. To hold those accountable that no other can hold to account. To thwart injustice or cruelty or abuse. And yes, sometimes that can be to amusing and silly ends, (you don’t even want to know the incredibly petty grudge the Fox has against their brother, the Pangolin), but I think they find themselves in stories as a way to address powerlessness. What I, and I think many of us, wouldn’t give to have the Fox in my back pocket to cause fascists and wicked politicians migraines and tie their shoes together and make their teeth fall out of their head on live television. I do think you’d have to be careful though with the Fox in your back pocket; like those children’s cautionary tales, if you give a Fox a pocket to live in, they’re going to want a snack, and then perhaps a drink, and then perhaps, maybe a party? It could and will easily get out of hand.   

Sia: Tricksters bring justice when nobody else can; it’s absolutely part of why they’re so vital. But I think the making-people-laugh is almost as important a part as the justice. Making people laugh is really powerful – not just, making them laugh AT scary people, but making them laugh when otherwise things are quite bleak. Those little moments of brightness, when you’re in an awful situation, keep you going. And it made me so happy that that was a big, important part of Audition! Like – okay, they don’t forward the escape plan. But if you don’t keep people’s souls alive, there’s no one to ENACT the escape plan, is there? Because everyone’s dead inside. There needs to be…be reasons to be glad you’re alive. Tricksters are so good for that!

Martin: You’re totally right about not just defending the inherent dignity of life, but also the cherishing of what it means to enjoy life, too! And not just laughter, but those things that are inherent TO that very dignity: joy, community, kindness, comfort, all of these mean something, even if it can only be found or created in small moments. That was a very important part of this story, and something my editor and I decided to really double down on in the edit towards the final version of the story. Sometimes that’s a smile or a bad joke, and sometimes it’s a pastry or an extra blanket or letting others rest. That’s how the bastards win: if you keep people underwater for long enough, drown them in misery, exhaustion, and only alleviate either when they stop struggling, eventually they’ll forget they ever knew what sweet air felt like. In many ways, fascists and bullies and monsters use the tools of a trickster for evil ends; because if you can trick people into rewriting their own reality with yours, then they’ll start to choose it over the consequences of denying that reality. Part of me thinks now that’s why T’sidaan is so invested in the Oranoyan plight during the Occupation, because it’s a reminder of what happens when a trickster’s tools lack a trickster’s heart. And so these little reminders, not only bring the comfort and dignity mentioned, but they also help deny the reality enforced by the Zemini without the Oranoyan risking their safety and each other.

Sia: That is an EXCELLENT point, that fascism uses a lot of the same tools as tricksters! It absolutely does, and it makes perfect sense to me that T’sidaan would Object Vehemently to that. (As they should!) But that means T’sidaan and Nesi’s efforts – the bad jokes and extra blankets – aren’t just denying the Zemini ‘reality’, they’re reinforcing the TRUE reality. And now I think maybe that’s another way of explaining what tricksters do, actually? They reinforce or expose reality when others get lost in their own prideful delusions; they remind people who think they’re better than everyone else that actually, they’re not. Which I think came through very clearly in the fables of the Fox that you included in Audition!

Martin: Just another reason why fascism is so insidious; it uses the tools of storytelling for its own ends. And it doesn’t have to be smart or clever or subtle. It only needs everyone to be saying the same thing and saying it loudly. Definitely I think another reason why those small moments resonate so much, because they’re also reminders of the cultural, social, and religious parts of the Oranoyan way of life. So yes, definitely having Nesi and the Fox each contributing to rebuilding the story of the prisoners, but also objecting to the reality imposed on them by the Zemini, each part is just as important as the other.

Sia: I’m really glad you guys focused on that in final edits, because it comes through beautifully and it’s really, REALLY wonderful to read. Those ‘small moments’ elevate Audition, I think.

Martin: Thank you! Me too. I had a few instances but big shout out to Jaymee for her thoughts on expanding that level of care and those small moments of care and comfort. It was also indicative of Nesi in general; she has some endurance and some magic from her great-great-grandfather, but she isn’t someone who can take on guards or intimidate or make demands. And so a lot of how she realizes she can give back is by helping create those small moments. 

Sia: I actually really liked that despite being a demi-god Nesi ISN’T some big dramatic hero in the typical sense. It made it much easier to relate to her – and to see her as an example, you know? I think a lot of readers will be able to look at her and think, oh, I could do some of this too! She’s inspiring in a way that an action hero isn’t (because, uh, most of us cannot be action heroes!) and her NOT being the usual kind of superhero is a vital part of that. So good call!

Martin: Thanks for seeing that in Nesi. I always wanted her to feel like just another young person struggling with issues of growing up, self-worth, deciding who to be . . . the only “super” thing about her is that her great-grandfather’s blood affords her a little hardiness (think of a 22 year old person in a game of D&D having a Constitution score of 19 or something, ha). To be honest, she’s not even demi-god-ish, (those are our saints, to be discussed below). She’s like . . . 20% godly, ha. Now, depending on training and her life to come, if she works at it, gets her great-grandfather’s blessing, etc., maybe that might change. But yeah, Nesi was always just meant to be a person going through it, who when push came to shove, just had a bit more of an ability to push or take a shove.

Sia: A more writing-craft question for you: HOW did you resist putting in/explaining more of your worldbuilding??? The effect is perfect – the world FEELS immense without drowning the reader in info – but I wouldn’t have been able to resist explaining the saints, for example!

Martin: Sincerely, thank you for that note on worldbuilding! It is one of my favorite parts of writing and it is one of the toughest to get right. I love an en media res story, and it’s funny, I was rereading the beginning the other day and I was like, “Damn, I really don’t explain anything, do I?” But, the hope is that there’s enough context and character and plot drive to get the reader to stick around long enough to get us back to Nesi at the temple. It’s a tricky balance, but for me, it helped to have years to edit this for example, AND when in doubt, stay in your character’s point of view. BE them as much as you can. I have many years of comedy improv under my belt, and when you’re making a character to play, the rule is to play them to the height of their intelligence. So if you’re playing a doctor for example, you won’t pretend a stethoscope is like a pair of binoculars or be surprised to have one. And for Nesi, she is a temple kid with very few friends, a big heart, bigger anxiety, and she’s kind of a history nerd. So she’s going to know the Pillars like a superfan, she’s going to be able to place things like clothing, weapons, etc., and she’s going to be earnest but not great at making friends, (at first), and then she’s going to panic. There’s A TON I could have explored, but especially in the beginning, the reader needs to only know what Nesi knows, and feel what she’s feeling. That keeps the worldbuilding focused, and then, once other factors have been established, you can build out from there. Likewise, the fables were a fun way to worldbuild outside the main plot, so I have a cake and I took a few bites too ;)

TLDR; worldbuilding isn’t the story. The character is the story and so is the world they live in, but if you focus on the latter more than the former, you’re not telling your readers a story, you’re dictating a textbook. Which is fine! But one needs to know the difference, once you know the rules you can break them, etc. =]  

Sia: A lot of implicit worldbuilding comes through in the three ‘Cloud and Clay’ tales that divide the parts of Audition. Do you have more than those three? If so how can I get my paws on them??? Where did the ‘cloud and clay’ line, this world’s equivalent of ‘once upon a time’, come from? It enchanted me utterly! AND: were you at all hesitant about the reaction to the Stallion fable? That was, um, very different to the others! (I do not disapprove!)

Martin: Clay and Cloud Tales! I do love how I stumbled on them. I don’t think the phrase has any major origin beyond I was looking for something mythic/fable sounding and I think a part of my brain was like, “well pillars only connect with the earth and the sky, so let’s . . . go from there?” And we did! Oh, and the stories came WAY before. I think The Fox and the Turtle was the first I wrote, and I’m really happy with how they came out. Meant to illustrate some parts of the world, but also each story deals with the themes and scenes in the next section to come, so hopefully that came across. And no, I was very happy with the story of the Stallion! Balance needs to exist, even in the pantheon, and no family is perfect. As much as T’sidaan is a pain in the ass on purpose, the worst you could do is disrespect those they care about; it’s like, oh I can take a joke, but leave my friends out of it. And is often the one who chooses to act, as we see throughout, as the rest of the family doesn’t want to get involved. (Which only makes them act out more). And I haven’t written many but I do know a few in my head I want to write someday, like the Fox and their brother, Huth’ku, the Bat of Stars, and how he tries to stop T’sidaan from eating constellations out of the sky, or the Fox and the Koala of Sleep, Agi’uhn, in which the Fox tries to get Somni’drom to mess with the Koala during one of her decade long naps, and uh . . . yeah, that doesn’t go well!

Sia: This is not helping my pining for a Clay and Cloud tales collection.

Martin: I will campaign with you for A Book of Clay and Cloud Tales! That would be a lot of fun, especially if we could get some art, ha. And I’m glad you like those stories! It was important to me to show different ways of growth; some people react with shame, others with anger that gives way to knowledge, and with Nera’Je, it really is as simple as: some people won’t change. No matter how much you try. End of the day, her and a few others have their toxic pride, and it’s those siblings the Fox delights in tormenting the most. 

Sia: I don’t think I consciously noticed that each fable showcased a different way of reacting to critique (constructive critique!), but I love that now that you’ve pointed it out!

It makes me think of the Zemini, because – allegedly, they’ve invaded Oranoya because they disapprove, right? Invasion is kind of the ultimate critique (when ‘critique’ is the motive…if it’s ever REALLY the motive…) T’sidaan was doing the same thing to their siblings. But T’sidaan is trying to make their siblings more compassionate, happier people, and the Zemini… I don’t know how to articulate what they want.

Martin: I’ve been thinking about those Clay and Cloud tales a lot, especially since I’m writing a new one for the book launch event (The Fox and the Bat, (and the Butterfly, Eaten)). A lot of the purpose of a Trickster, the use of them as a counterweight to universal hurt, or an instigator toward change, or an individual who has no qualms doing something about It, whatever It may be. In these stories, T’sidaan has their reasons for doing what they’re doing but at the end of the day, they’re doing what they’re doing because there is something about being a rogue force, about forcing the proud, arrogant, and mighty to see themselves for who and what they are, that makes a marked difference for the Fox. There’s something about their siblings, and we see it with the Spider, that some of them refuse to learn the lesson. And with the Turtle, it takes a long time for it to sink in. But there’s something that the Fox can do that others can’t, which could be that there is a level of freedom and risk they can incur because at the end of the day, they’re forcing beings like them to really see themselves in the mirror.

And with Zemin, let’s not forget: they are in communion with only one Pillar and that is a being who knows how to nurse hurt, how to wait in the shadows until the pack is in place, who believes it is their role to corral the weak together and pounce. Think of that attitude trickling down from generation to generation, a sense of hurt being nursed by a nation, your perspective beginning to skew and shift until all you see when you look out are prey that think they’re better than you because they don’t NEED to hunt. They don’t need to cull the weak, don’t see the world as a war yet to be won. And so the Occupation has many reasons for starting, but to relate it back to the Clay and Cloud Tales, it is a very skewed, disturbing twist on T’sidaan’s logic: we know what’s best. We see you and you are Wrong. Your Wrongness is insulting. It’s so insulting, we will do what we must to fix you. Weird how all those pathways lead to facism!

But yes, in a weird way, the Fox exists in the cosmic ecosystem for a reason, and the Pillars, on some metaphysical level, are meant to hold one another accountable. And so the Fox, though they are but one individual, are able to take on that challenge and in fact, it is healthy of them to do so. But with the Wolf isolated and excommunicated, literally excised from the divine ecosystem, we see how his very nature begins to influence Zemin and how that nature needs to be a part of a group. ANYWAY! Long answer but hopefully there’s something there.

Sia: Okay wait one sec – AHHHH YOU’RE WRITING A NEW CLAY AND CLOUD TALE!!!

Ahem. Okay, I can be Serious now. Just had to get that out of my system first!

To circle back to what we were talking about earlier: I think fighting the Zemini in the Trickster way, rather than the physical violence way, actually helped me believe in the Zemini. I often have a problem where I struggle to really buy into villains like them, because it’s so hard for me to imagine real people being like that. (Even though it absolutely happens. My brain just rejects it.) But seeing how they reacted to being made laughingstock – that was so human that I could wrap my head around them. Which is interesting, because that’s what using trickery/trickster methods to combat fascism DOES: it knocks fascists off their pedestals, for us to see but also for THEM to see, themselves. So with Audition, you were kind of – accomplishing what you were doing with the story in a kind of meta way as well? I don’t know how to phrase what I mean! But it’s deeply cool and I wanted to comment on it!

Martin: It’s very real that people, in life and in fiction, hate being laughed at; no one likes becoming a joke, even if T’sidaan says it can be healthy at times. I think what happens after you’re knocked off the pedestal is what matters most: do you get back on it? Or do you stand equal to the person before you, and try to see if what they were saying is true? I feel like that’s the calling card of a lot of bullies, fascist, oppressors, etc… if they can determine what is true, if they can determine what is real, then it always gets to be everyone else who is wrong. People don’t like being laughed at, and no one likes being wrong. 

Sia: 100%! You have to have the – courage, I think? to face the mirror that’s being held up to you, and actually LOOK AT IT. That’s always painful, but some kinds of pain mean healing, damn it! (And we know fascists are cowards, really.)

Something like that was bubbling in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t articulate it until you said it – Tricksters are what they are because they see Objective Reality. Kind of? They can see who needs what lesson, and crucially they are correct. Part of the Wolf’s/Zemin’s problem is that they do not see what’s really there, they are not correct but think they are. T’sidaan teaches lessons that actually need to be learnt (even if not everyone learns them); the Wolf is teaching a lesson that does not need to be learnt, because the problem he sees doesn’t actually exist.

But otherwise, T’sidaan and the Wolf’s actions are…very similar, actually? It’s just a crucial difference of clear-sightedness and motive. Which I guess means they’re two halves of one coin, really. The Wolf is what happens when someone is not…ruthless in constantly checking their own beliefs, maybe? And metaphorical eyesight?

Martin: I love what you wrote about truth and reality and lessons; the Fox and the Wolf in many ways ARE two sides of that same coin. A being of the Hunt, a being of Tricks . . . both a little nebulous, both can used to justify their own ends, both used to deceive and work others into corners; how many times is the pack deployed to lull, corral, and chase another? And in my own brain, the reasoning of T’sidaan often making the Wolf the target of their jokes and tricks is that the Wolf, both as an entity and concept, needed reminding. The Hunt doesn’t exist to serve him, others aren’t just prey and food, the forest is larger than your shadow, there are things you’re not meant to devour. And of course, for every lesson taught, the Wolf would double down, and their singular focus would turn to the Fox and vengeance for trying to teach said lesson. Maybe it wasn’t always like that, and I do believe the Pillars are shaped by their worshippers as much as the other way around, but in those last centuries headed towards the banishment to Zemin, that is who the Wolf was and had become. 

Oh, T’sidaan is NOT always correct, right, or someone to be listened to, haha. Don’t forget, we are only seeing what they want us to see, and there are many stories throughout where they are incorrect or trick out of pettiness or are just plain unhappy and decide to make that everyone else’s problem. As they say in the book, and as we’ve discussed here, sometimes the lesson is to be humbled. If they begin to fiddle outside of the cosmic balance, then of course they won’t be surprised when they’ve had their voluminous tail loped off by a sibling’s saint or get a snoot full of soot for their annoyance. Sometimes, like any good trickster, I feel like the Fox has to have a Homer Simpson moment; my Dad always said that what made Homer a good hero of the Simpsons is that for anytime he’s stupid or does something petty or vain, he usually learns his lesson, even if he might do something silly again. With 98 siblings, the Fox has DEFINITELY had their share of lessons, too.

Sia: *furiously scribbles letters to Tachyon pleading for sequels*

I think we’ve gone through almost all the questions I had ready! This next one is about the book itself: Where do the wonderful illustrations in Audition come from? I absolutely adored them! Related: how did you get T’sidaan to pose for them???

Martin: Elizabeth Story is the artist and designer for Tachyon Publications and she is the absolute best in the world forever and ever! I adore her work, I love the Fox she gave us, all of the illustrations inside are absolutely delicious and engaging and stunning, and I just feel so absolutely grateful to her!! Getting the Fox to pose isn’t really the issue, it’s distracting them long enough so they don’t begin to tweak your rendition of them too much. Treats help, or dangling a nice tasty constellation in front of them and daring them not to eat it.

T’sidaan watching the tasty constellation

Sia: All right, final (and most portentous!) question: If someone offered you a portal leading into the world of Audition…would you step through?

Martin: Yes! I would love to go to the world of Audition. It isn’t perfect by any means, but it is a world where myth and modernity live hand in hand, and the chance to spend time with godsblooded or the Pillars themselves would be too cool. Plus there are all sorts of juicy other spots in the world of Oranoya, Zemin, and beyond to visit, like the Divine Table, the Valley of the Drakes, and more!

Sia: Honestly, I would be RIGHT behind you!

We may not have a functioning portal, but we can at least VISIT Nesi and T’sidaan’s world, because Audition For the Fox is out TODAY!

Get your copy from the publisher Tachyon or bookshop.org!

The post What Does the Fox Say? Interview With Martin Cahill, Author of Audition For The Fox! appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted over at Wishful Endings to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about but haven’t yet read. Most of the time they’re books that have yet to be released, but not always. It’s based on the Waiting on Wednesday meme, which was originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. 

You can find the releases I’m most anticipating this year over on my Unmissable list, but I use Can’t-Wait Wednesday to feature books I’m hopeful about but aren’t 100% sure will be five star reads.

This week my Can’t-Wait-For Book is Fawn’s Blood by Hal Schrieve!

Fawn's Blood by Hal Schrieve
Genres: Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Trans MC, bisexual MC
Published on: 16th September 2025
Goodreads

Vampires, vampire slayers, and a bloodthirsty underground resistance converge in a campy YA fantasy about being a queer teen in a world that wishes they did not exist.

Kids’ librarian and critically acclaimed author of Out of Salem puts a pulpy spin on vampire fiction, and bites back at anti-trans moral panic.

Fawn and Silver share nearly coming out together as trans in their small Maryland town, clocking a copious number of hours in detention, and spending their sleepovers secretly making out. They’re also uniquely obsessed with vampires, who are being hunted, imprisoned, and executed for the danger they allegedly pose to human life.

Rachel is a bisexual teen, who has secretly been turned vampire and who is contending with the fact that her mom is a notorious vampire slayer. When Silver disappears and Fawn goes west in search of him, her and Rachel’s fates converge, both falling into the hands of Cain, an edgelord vampire known for his proselytizing for the drinking of human blood.

But in discovering hidden tunnels and secret bars, youth shelters and punk shows and safe houses, Fawn find herself in the middle of a vampire underground in Seattle—an organized resistance keeping each other alive through a network of blood distribution and protection from slayers.

Fawn’s Blood is a timely antidote to the anti-trans moral panic of today. Taking the queer-coded villain and flipping it on its’ head, this multi-voiced vampire novel offers a paranormal YA fantasy full of complicated queer characters—human and monster alike—all of whom are simply trying to survive in a world that wants them dead.

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Schrieve’s debut, Out Of Salem, is a freaking INCREDIBLE take on urban/contemporary fantasy – creating a world where magical elements are woven into the every-day in a way so few urban fantasies manage! Not to mention teenagers that actually feel and read like teenagers.

Which is why I fully intent to POUNCE on this next book – I mean, queer teens biting back??? YES PLEASE!

I’m not expecting a new take on vampire lore, exactly, but I’m willing to bet the relationship between humans and vampires won’t map neatly onto anything I’ve seen before. And I’m interested in seeing what an underground network looks like here – Out Of Salem gave us a glimpse of one for werewolves, but it sounds like we’ll be seeing much more of the vampire one!

Plus, ‘taking the queer-coded villain and flipping it on its’ head’??? GIMME!

So excited for this – and we’re only a week away from pub day now!

The post I Can’t Wait For…Fawn’s Blood by Hal Schrieve appeared first on Every Book a Doorway.

Must-Have Monday is a feature highlighting which of the coming week’s new releases I’m excited for. It is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all books being published that week; only those I’m interested in out of those I’m aware of! The focus is diverse SFF, but other stuff sneaks in occasionally too.

EIGHT books this week!

(Books are listed in order of pub date, then Adult SFF, Adult Other, YA SFF, YA Other, MG SFF.)

The Driftcap Inn (Innkeepers of Itharos Book 1) by Kate Valent
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: M/M
Published on: 8th September 2025
Goodreads

Howl’s Moving Castle meets Legends & Lattes in this cozy fantasy set on a magical inn in the sky.

Welcome to The Driftcap Inn, a cozy perch among the clouds. Drift on in and stay awhile!

In all of Itharos no inn is more enchanting—or peculiar—than The Driftcap Inn, a cozy haven in the sky carved from a giant floating mushroom. Its owner, Eino the Wanderer, enjoys a life of breathtaking views and freedom from the petty wars and political intrigue of the kingdoms below. But a home set adrift in the vast, empty skies can also be unbearably lonely.

When a handsome and enigmatic apothecary named Joren comes aboard, an unexpected companionship blossoms between the two men, stirring the possibility of something deeper. But their peaceful journey through the clouds is shattered when a string of unsettling events threatens to send Eino’s home plummeting to the ground.

Something wicked is spreading its roots across The Driftcap Inn, and Eino suspects there’s much more to it than just bad luck. With dark secrets surrounding every guest and danger creeping ever closer, Eino must decide who he can trust with his life — and with his heart.

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This sounds whimsical as hells, and I’m here for it!

Pantomime (Micah Grey) by L.R. Lam
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Secondary World Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Bi/pansexual intersex MC
Published on: 9th September 2025
Goodreads

From the USA Today-bestselling author of Dragonfall comes a fantasy trilogy about a circus aerialist's quest to escape his past and decipher the magical prophecy that will shape his future

In a land of lost wonders, the past is stirring once more . . .

Micah runs away from a debutante’s life at home and joins the circus, harboring twosecrets–one: he was born between male and female, and two: he may have powers last seen in mysterious beings from an almost-forgotten age. Micah discovers the joy of flight as an aerialist, courting his trapeze partner, Aenea, and confiding in the mysterious white clown, Drystan. He finally feels free. But the circus has a darkside, and Micah’s past isn’t done with him.

Meanwhile, the strange 'ghost' of a woman with damselfly wings whispers to Micah that only he can help magic return to the realm, and he fears she may be right...Micah has much to learn, and he must do it quickly—before his past and future collide, withcatastrophic consequences.

Pantomime is a gorgeous and inventive fantasy with queer elements, inspired by Victorian Scotland. L.R. Lam weaves a coming-of-age tale, stirrings of first love, and prophetic whispers into this unforgettable first installment of the Micah Grey series.

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Pantomime was originally released as a YA book over a decade ago, but it’s been extensively rewritten and is being re-released as Adult now! Very interested to see how it’s changed!

An Unbreakable World by Ren Hutchings
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Queer MC
Published on: 9th September 2025
Goodreads

If something seems too good to be real, you’ve got to get out of there.

That’s the rule that Page Found has always followed. She’s a petty thief with no memory of her past, scrounging to survive on a backwater outpost – until she’s kidnapped by one of her marks.

Her kidnappers – the cruel, self-serving Zhak and the tough maverick Maelle – plan to pass Page off as a monk from an ancient, isolated planet to help them capture a treasure-filled ship. If Page is willing to play along, they all stand to become richer than they can imagine.

Everyone is keeping secrets, and Maelle finds her loyalties conflicted as she gets closer to their captive. Page can’t remember the last time she counted on anyone. But to navigate this deception, she and Maelle will have to trust each other to survive.

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KB Wagers is quoted on the cover as describing this as ‘Beautiful hopepunk at its best’ which is absolutely all I need to hear: I am SOLD!

You Weren't Meant to Be Human by Andrew Joseph White
Genres: Adult, Horror, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi
Representation: Trans MC, M/M
Published on: 9th September 2025
Goodreads

Alien meets Midsommar in this chilling debut adult novel from award-winning author Andrew Joseph White about identity, survival, and transformation amidst an alien invasion in rural West Virginia.

Festering masses of worms and flies have taken root in dark corners across Appalachia. In exchange for unwavering loyalty and fresh corpses, these hives offer a few struggling humans salvation. A fresh start. It’s an offer that none refuse.

Crane is grateful. Among his hive’s followers, Crane has found a chance to transition, to never speak again, to live a life that won’t destroy him. He even met Levi: a handsome ex-Marine and brutal killer who treats him like a real man, mostly. But when Levi gets Crane pregnant—and the hive demands the child’s birth, no matter the cost—Crane’s desperation to make it stop will drive the community that saved him into a devastating spiral that can only end in blood.

You Weren’t Meant to Be Human is a deeply personal horror; a visceral statement about the lives of marginalized people in a hostile world, echoing the works of Stephen Graham Jones and Eric LaRocca.

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Honestly, I will probably skip this one, because it sounds like it’s gonna hit SO MANY of my ABSOLUTELY NOT places – but I’m not going to NOT feature an Andrew Joseph White release!

The Most Unusual Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy by Roan Parrish
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Contemporary or Urban Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Nonbinary MC
Published on: 9th September 2025
Goodreads

Jamie Wendon-Dale may design haunted houses, but they don't actually believe in ghosts—until they meet Edgar Lovejoy, who is tall, clever, beautiful…and 100% haunted.

A COZY, GHOSTLY LGBTQIA+ ROMANCE

Jamie Wendon-Dale creates haunted houses for a living. Haunting is their life—but nobody working New Orleans' spooky circuit actually believes in ghosts.

Edgar Lovejoy is 100% haunted. No, really. Ghosts have tormented him since childhood and he's organized his life around attempts to avoid them.

Opposites? Get ready to attract. But while Jamie's biggest concern is that Edgar sometimes seems a bit distracted, Edgar's fears are much greater. Not only is he scared of encountering the dearly departed whenever he leaves the house, but he's terrified of making himself vulnerable to Jamie. After all, how do you tell someone who believes ghosts only exist as smoke and mirrors that you see them everywhere you go? And how can you trust in a happy future when you can't even believe in yourself?

A little spooky, a little magical, and a whole lot The (Most Unusual) Haunting of Edgar Lovejoy will leave you feeling like you've found a brand new bookish family of your own.

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Sounds potentially adorable; I plan on tucking this on the to-be-read-when-in-need-of-fluff pile!

Bind Me Tighter Still: A Novel by Lara Ehrlich
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Published on: 9th September 2025
Goodreads

AUTHOR OF AWARD-WINNING, ANIMAL WIFE
WINNER OF CAI EMMONS FICTION AWARD and ERIC HOFFER AWARD
FOREWORD INDIE AWARD FINALIST

"The poetic prose mixed with the intense subject matter creates an undertow that will pull readers in."—Booklist

“A modern-day fairy tale that is both ghastly and beautiful.”—Kirkus

Mother and daughter mermaids navigate starting over and finding their place in the world in Lara Ehrlich’s debut novel.

The youngest siren sister, Ceto is weary of an existence driven by hunger, no better than a fish. She trades her tail for legs, marries the first man she meets, and bears a daughter—only to find domesticity as suffocating as the sea. Craving more, Ceto flees with her daughter Naia back to the ocean, where she reinvents herself as the star of a mermaid burlesque, performing in a lavish tank carved into the limestone cliffs above the waves.

At Sirenland, Ceto’s sensual performances and the erotic allure of her trained sirens transform the seaside attraction into a national sensation—a glittering empire where spectacle, desire, and female power reign. But as Naia comes of age and begins to question her mother’s vision, the boundary between empowerment and exploitation grows dangerously thin. When a shocking death rocks Sirenland, Ceto’s rule is threatened, and mother and daughter must reckon with the cost of performance on their already tenuous bond.

Bind Me Tighter Still is a lush, provocative exploration of power, sex, sacrifice, and motherhood—a celebration of female strength in a world determined to tame it.

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I am SO HYPED FOR THIS, I cannot even. MERMAID BURLESQUE WITH REAL MERMAIDS?! GIMME!

An Embroidery of Souls by Ruby Martinez
Genres: Fantasy, YA
Representation: Mexican MC
Published on: 9th September 2025
Goodreads

Jade can manipulate souls with the tug of a thread--it's up to her, and a boy with a soul as bright as the universe to stop a creature on the loose before it claims its next victim in this lush, Mexican & German inspired romantasy.

Jade Aguilar can kill a man with nothing more than a needle and thread. Like her mother, a thread speaker in the queendom of Mérecal, she has the unique ability to stitch love, beauty, intelligence and to unravel even death. When her mother goes missing, the queen orders Jade to find her or be conscripted into a life of servitude.

Lukas Keller is desperate to feed his family and makes a deal with a vicious gang leader. Though he swore never to seek the help of a thread speaker, he's in over his head and it might be his only option.Jade and Lukas form a mistrustful alliance. But as Mérecal erupts into chaos and the killer closes in, they must cling to one another for survival--and perhaps . . . something more?

From debut author Ruby Martinez comes a wildly romantic, heart pounding mystery set in a lush fantastical world inspired by Mexican and German lore.

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I only heard about this one at the last minute, which is outrageous: can’t believe my usual sources failed me like so badly! Very glad I did hear about it, though, because it sounds fascinating. Mexican and German is not a myth/folklore mash-up I’ve seen before!

Elegy of the Stars: A Medieval Dark Fantasy by J. J. DE GROOT
Genres: Fantasy, Queer Protagonists, YA
Representation: Queer MC
Published on: 9th September 2025
Goodreads

Dive into an apocalyptic medieval world from multiple perspectives in this standalone debut novel from award-nominated author J. J. DE GROOT that combines the epic horror of Attack on Titan with the religious mysteries of Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose.

The Horsemen are here, and they aren't leaving until the last remaining kingdom is burned to the ground.

Fifteen-year-old Balmung works as a necromancer, negotiating with malevolent ghosts and helping lost souls pass on. His goal? Join the Necromancy Guild – trusted by Brevaria’s High Astrologers to protect their kingdom from the Horsemen – and repay Guild leader Magdalene for saving his life.

To earn her favor and a place at her side, Balmung must journey into the heart of Horsemen territory and retrieve a holy relic that could save Brevaria. The quest sets him on a collision course with others seeking its Roma, an astrologer determined to bargain her way out of a political marriage, and Dieter, an undercover prince who must dethrone Brevaria’s king if he wants to save his people.

New horrors lurk in the ruins of fallen nations, and longstanding truths begin to crack. What is the true nature of the relic they're after, and are the Horsemen really mankind's greatest threat?

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I’ve heard very little about this one, but that’s one heck of a synopsis!

Will you be reading any of these? Did I miss any releases you think I should know about? Let me know!

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