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!

One book I appreciated more than I enjoyed, and one I adored!

What a Fish Looks Like by Syr Hayati Beker
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Trans and nonbinary MCs, many BIPOC
PoV: 1st/2nd/3rd-person at different points
Published on: 4th September 2025
ISBN: 1738316564
Goodreads

What are the stories we need to survive?

In ten days, the last spaceship is leaving for a new planet. Some of us will stay on Earth. How do we decide?

#TeamEarth. Once upon a time, the oceans were full of fish and the forests dark with brambles. Seb read about it in a book of fairy tales, and memory means hope.

#TeamShip. Adaptation means knowing when to walk away. Jay is ready. So their ex, Seb, shows up on the dance floor, T-minus-10. What’s the harm in one last dance?

What if the stories themselves are evolving?

Told in margin notes, posters, letters scrawled on napkins, and six retellings of classic fairy tales, What A Fish Looks Like gathers the stories of a queer community co-creating one another through the strange landscapes of climate change, wondering who is going to love us when there are not, in fact, plenty of fish in the sea.

And now this book belongs to you.

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

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Well, I don’t think I really Got this one. The premise sounded incredibly magical, but in practice it’s much more spec fic, with a touch of sci fi and magical realism, than clear SFF. If I’d known that, I might not have requested it, because I prefer much ‘harder’, more obvious magical/sci fi elements!

The main thing that didn’t work for me is what NEVER works for me with these things (even though I insist on continually trying): I didn’t find it hopeful. I found it so, so bleak, and depressing, and heartbreaking. I don’t think that was the author’s intent – and some of the other early reviews I’ve seen make it clear that not everyone has this takeaway for this book. But this was painful to read – it’s really a story about climate collapse, and snippets of these different lives as the planet is dying and human civilisation is falling apart (or so I inferred from the not-Snow Queen story?) And like – nothing is fixed? We see climate protesters etc around the edge of some of the stories, but they don’t accomplish anything, we’re still going down, so???

I don’t know.

this is what theater is: the thing you do when crying isn’t enough.

The set-up is amazing, though: the framing is that there is a book of fairytales, and the stories we read have been written over them – modern, very queer reimaginings of stories like The Matchstick Girl and The Snow Queen. But between the stories, we also have flyers and letters and things, scribbled on by one of a handful of interconnected trans and nonbinary people who are trying to survive, and (some of them) decide whether or not to leave Earth on the last spaceship. It’s very mixed-media, and I LOVED that, I wish we saw that so much more often!

Question: Is the ax part of the forest for its wood handle?

The stories themselves…Well, I didn’t Get them. And apart from the Snow Queen and Red Riding Hood ones, I couldn’t tell what fairytales they were supposed to be retelling (although I’m guessing the mermaid one was meant to be the Little Mermaid? Somehow?) But I loved all the queer rep – specifically, so many trans and nonbinary characters, which made me SO FREAKING HAPPY – and I loved the way some of the stories were told, especially the Red Riding Hood one, which is framed like it’s a series of transmissions/queries between different machines? I think? Seb – arguably the main character? – writes notes in the introduction to the book-within-the-book, the collection of fairytales that is being written over, and I enjoyed those immensely. The writing itself is objectively excellent; Beker has a wonderful way with words, and a twisty, let’s-experiment imagination that felt playful and wickedly smart. I’d really like to read more from them in the future, even if it never gets more overtly fantastical than this!

With the caveat that I found this very depressing, I’d recommend this one to anybody interested in mixed-media stories, especially readers who are pining for trans and nonbinary rep. What a Fish Looks Like is a beautiful book, even if I definitely wasn’t smart enough to understand or catch everything it was doing. I’m very glad it exists, even if it’s not quite for me.

Karen Memory (Karen Memory, #1) by Elizabeth Bear
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Sapphic MC, Desi love interest, F/F, major trans character, minor Chinese character, minor amputee character, major Black character, secondary Native American character
PoV: First-person, past-tense
ISBN: 194279407X
Goodreads

“You ain’t gonna like what I have to tell you, but I’m gonna tell you anyway. See, my name is Karen Memery, like memory only spelt with an e, and I’m one of the girls what works in the Hôtel Mon Cherie on Amity Street. Hôtel has a little hat over the o like that. It’s French, so Beatrice tells me.”

Hugo-Award winning author Elizabeth Bear offers something new in Karen Memory, an absolutely entrancing steampunk novel set in Seattle in the late 19th century—an era when the town was called Rapid City, when the parts we now call Seattle Underground were the whole town (and still on the surface), when airships plied the trade routes bringing would-be miners heading up to the gold fields of Alaska, and steam-powered mechanicals stalked the waterfront.

Karen is a “soiled dove,” a young woman on her own who is making the best of her orphaned state by working in Madame Damnable’s high-quality bordello. Through Karen’s eyes we get to know the other girls in the house—a resourceful group—and the poor and the powerful of the town. Trouble erupts into her world one night when a badly injured girl arrives at their door, seeking sanctuary, followed by the man who holds her indenture, who has a machine that can take over anyone’s mind and control their actions.

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, the next night brings a body dumped in their rubbish heap—a streetwalker who has been brutally murdered.

Bear brings alive this Jack-the-Ripper-type story of the old west with the light touch of Karen’s own memorable voice, and a mesmerizing evocation of classic steam-powered science.

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This was so much FUN. Especially because of Karen’s narration – she has a ‘Wild West’ style of speaking, whatever the official term for that is, full of delightfully colourful turns of phrase! She’s that wonderful combination of street-smart and no-nonsense that I love (even if she can, absolutely, be more impulsive than is strictly sensible), with lots of wry insight into people and her world. (I loved the questions that occurred to her every now and then, lots of ‘why ARE things this way actually?’ that really make you stop and think.)

Miss Francina went striding out into that burning cold in her negligee and marabou slippers like she owned the night and the rest of us was just paying rent on it.

I also appreciated the fact that she’s not very brave in combat situations! She freezes when things get scary, sometimes! It made her feel so much more human. (And honestly, made it more impressive when she was brave, because we know how hard it is for her.)

I was trembling like a marriage license in a young man’s hand.

I wouldn’t call Karen Memory a murder-mystery, but it’s kind of difficult to say what it IS instead. There’s adventure elements and political stuff and rescues to enact, and the setting is Old West but with Mad Scientists (no really, they’re actually called that) and a streampunk aesthetic. (In fairness, I think it’s more than just an aesthetic, because the outlook and flavour of the whole story seems pretty damn punk to me, with the cast packed full of people who are, shall we say, under-served by the patriarchy; but your mileage may vary.) And yes, there’s some kind of serial killer about, who maybe has ties to the foul man running what I don’t want to call brothels with indentured/enslaved women. It’s a book about human trafficking and sex work and – is ‘minority solidarity’ a term? I’ve heard ‘female solidarity’, but it’s more than that here, there’s a very deliberate aligning of Karen and the other white women with the BIPOC characters, because white women – and especially sex workers – were in similar societal positions to a Black ex-slave in this time period, even more overtly than now. There’s an important trans character on the edge of the main cast, and she has an unquestioned place in that solidarity too (I loved SO MUCH that when she needed to go undercover as a man, the narration says “he” when referring to the undercover persona – with the quotation marks. Just a small detail to drive home that she is not, ever, a guy). IT’S SO GREAT.

Can I just call Karen Memory a romp? It’s a romp. It’s FUN. It doesn’t ignore or flinch away from all the issues affecting the characters, all the awfulness built into their society, but it doesn’t lecture us about those things either, just presents them, and though those things obviously effect everything the characters do, we’re not drowned in the bleak bits. Things absolutely do get scary, and there’s really horrific things happening, but it’s the kind of book where you’re never in doubt that it’s all gonna end well, you know?

I jumped so high I near came down next to my pants.

More than anything, it’s Karen’s voice that makes this a great read, puts a grin on your face. It might have become quite a bleak story, with a different narrator, or written in third-person instead of first-, but instead we got Karen, and Karen is, simply, wonderful. I’d recommend this especially to anyone interested in writing in first-person, actually, because Karen’s a fantastic object-lesson in the power of perspective and voice and how the angle of the audience view alters the tone.

But I also recommend it to anyone who ‘just’ wants to read something fun that doesn’t talk down to you. In fact, you should read it soon, because the next book in the series came out last week!!! So when you love it (and you will definitely love it) you can IMMEDIATELY dive into more Karen Memory!!!

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