summer fantasies (part 2)
some more stuff i've been reading and loving + thoughts on the change of seasons
Dear friend—
Fall has fallen!! The past few days in my neck of the woods have been marked by high winds, grey skies, and intermittent rains. My favorite time of the year has come, and with it: thick sweaters, hot lattes, and snuggling under the blankets at night.
I’ve been thinking a lot about growth vs. maintenance lately (though that seems like a recurring theme in my brain), and I think that so much of how we think of growth and progress is wrapped up in novelty. Our lizard brains want newness and excitement and so we look for more, better, greater. It’s one of the things that drives people toward consumerism and hedonic treadmills.
But I think a similar itch can be scratched by turning toward the cyclical. Instead of buying new clothes, I can keep a few pieces on rotation and get excited when I rediscover a great sweater. I can look outside my window and be entranced by the return of the chilly weather and yellowing of the leaves.
I think that’s what some of the wonder of the school calendar always brought me. Every year brought new possibilities, new clubs to join and a new place to live. Every semester brought new classes. Every month in elementary school brought a new seating chart, which could spark new friendships or a new crush or just offer a change of pace.
After closing out my first year at my first big-girl job last spring, I felt a kind of restlessness that I couldn’t quite explain. I liked and still like my job a lot, and yet I felt this itchiness and impatience that I couldn’t place. And then I realized this was my first year in 20-some years of sentience without that cyclical change that school had always created for me.
Relatedly, as I wrote last week, I’ve realized that my interests and passions grow and wane. Yet so much of the ~culture~, I feel, prizes discipline and consistency as the only way toward success or happiness. The path is a straight line going upward.
The minimalist content that I once devoured follows similar lines. The idea, it seems, is that If you could just find the one t-shirt, the one pen, the one software or technique or morning routine that fits you, you could find peace and success and cut away all the excess.
I used to get so frustrated that I couldn’t stick to anything; that I kept “falling off the wagon”; that I couldn’t strip my life of the “excess” to land on the essential, single style, single passion, single way of doing things that would provide me some sense of wholeness or completeness.
But I’m coming to realize that I thrive on variety and variability. I am bad at routine. I love going with the flow when it comes to work and hobbies. I love cycling through different systems and mediums. I love change. I love change!
So I’m trying to think more about how to dig into the cyclical as, like, a mode of keeping things interesting while rejecting perpetual growth. Like, we (I) can still sate that very human desire for novelty without turning toward the endless growth that capitalism wants us to strive for.
The seasons are such a great example of that. Things change; some things grow while others die; some things disappear and others return. It’s all about balance. Change as essential for maintenance, not co-opted for infinite growth.
Anyway. I promised four more books. So here are four more books I loved this summer. Maybe fall will bring a new vibe! Hope you find something you love among these reads :)
5. trouble the saints, by alaya dawn johnson
This book is everything I wanted to write from the ages of like 16 to 20. Taking place in the ‘30s and ‘40s in New York, Trouble the Saints tells the story of a clutch of characters who work for one of the city’s most notorious crime bosses. But in this alternate history, some people are born with the Hands—magical powers that are inexplicably bestowed only on people of color.
There’s Phyllis, a white-passing assassin for a crime boss who is trying to put her violent past behind her; Dev, an Indian American cop working as a stoolie (informing on the very same boss for the cops); and their friend Tammy, a Black performer in a club who can read the future with a single deck of cards.
Inside you’ll find love and revenge and secrets and magic; betrayals and deals gone south; racial politics and violence; World War II and Uncle Sam looming on the horizon; and attempts at a normal life away from violent pasts and violent magic. Harlem is bright and alive in this book, as is the history of the time period, which is almost ours but not quite.
The driving force of the book are the questions these characters confront in their lives—Who decides what is moral? Is violence and revenge ever justifies? How close can you get to violence while keeping your own hands clean? How do you atone for your past and make a new life?
There are some things I wasn’t quite a fan of—the varying points of view didn’t always scratch the same itch. Dev gets tiring after a while and you might have mixed feelings about the turn the book takes in the second act. But all that being said, this was a beautiful book that had me from beginning to end.
6. the spear cuts through water, by simon jimenez
The Spear Cuts Through Water had me in a chokehold for several frenzied weeks in which I spent every spare moment drinking it up. At a cool 544 pages, somehow no chapter dragged or lagged.
This is a fantasy adventure at its most grand, epic, and majestic. It spans dozens of points of views, hundreds of years, and across countries and oceans. Tyrannical kings and even more tyrannical princes, sprawling river systems, telepathic talking tortoises, hordes of warriors cresting hills, multiple palaces and a labyrinth and a theater stage on which history plays night after night. War and family and inheritance. First love and dreams and gods.
This book is filled with twists that shock and awe and moments that are breathtakingly sublime. I love the word “sublime.” It encompasses awe and terror and that which puts the fear of god—any god or higher power—in you. This book is suffused with the sublime. It looms and gleams on the page.
Along with fantastical magic and world-ending stakes, The Spear Cuts Through Water also leans into the deeply human. It peeks into the nooks and crannies of the characters and complicates them.
A stylistic note—It attends to history in a way that counters the histories we read in school. It lets everyday people, the “extras,” prisoners and peasants and servants and soldiers, have their say. It’s a striking reorientation in a genre that usually favors the stories of princes and heroes only.
Have you ever watched a Marvel movie during those city-leveling fight scenes and wondered, “What about the people in the collapsing office building??” If so, this book is for you.
I fear I can’t do The Spear Cuts Through Water justice without giving away anything, and the surprises and unwinding of the plot and landscape are half the fun.
7. city of dusk, by tara sim
Cute fun fact! I finished this book the day its sequel came out.
City of Dusk takes place in Nexus (the titular crepuscular conurbation), the heart of a realm ruled by a king and four noble families descended from each of the gods: life, death, darkness, and light. Nexus is in the realm of life and humans, and once the inhabitants of all realms traveled and visited between them.
But hundreds of years ago, the gods closed the portals between the realms, stranding the four families and immigrants from other realms in Nexus. Now, the realm is dying, and violence and strife are spiking.
The four heirs of the houses are used to competing for the King’s favor, but as the situation gets increasingly dire, working together might be the only way to save their kingdom.
Some things I loved—amazing world. Really cool fight scenes, magical beasts, corpse reanimation (CW for a touch of cannibalism lol), pentagrams. Great side characters. Court drama and politics. Complex relationships (familial, platonic, romantic).
Themes of growing up and out of friendships and rivalries, of losing trust and fighting for it, the thrill of new romance. Lovely, terrible, complicated family dynamics. Also, I’m fascinated by the theology of this world. Maybe it’s the Catholicism in me, but the words “basilica” and “prelate” light up some part of my brain.
The prose is really tight and clear and moves the story along well. The dialogue is actually fun and clever without being cheesy. This book does something I haven’t read in a while and really gets into the fashion. There’s a moment where the description of a single dress takes my breath away.
I did think the book was overly long (there are two climactic fight scenes! Staying invested after that first one, which was very emotionally intense as well as action-packed, was a little challenging). And the least complex/developed character gets the most “screen” time. But I loved nearly all the characters and the big twists were so juicy and perfect.
Overall, City of Dusk is a really fun book that’s also really cool from a craft point of view. I want to dissect this book and how Sim wrote so many characters so well and juggled them all.
8. a master of djinn, by p. djèli clark
P. Djèli Clark is fast becoming one of my favorite writers. I first read his short story, “A Dead Djinn in Cairo,” which takes place in the same world as A Master of Djinn. Like The Black God’s Drums, featured last week, this is an alternate history, though this one reimagines Egypt.
In this world, Egypt bucked British occupation, in part thanks to the opening of a portal to a magical realm by a mystic named Al-Jahiz. As a result, the country and especially Cairo now teems with all sorts of magic—djinn, ghuls, the works, as well as mysterious beings inhabiting clockwork bodies that call themselves “angels.”
(Sharing the sickass illustrations artist Kevin Hong did for “A Dead Djinn in Cairo” and “A Master of Djinn” in this post, which also give you a great glimpse of the vibe and world of Clark’s creations.)
A Master of Djinn is a spin on the whodunnit mystery/police procedural, following Agent Fatma of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities. She’s called in to a high-profile murder case: a prominent British businessman and the members of his secret society are grotesquely murdered by a man claiming to be Al-Jahiz returned.
But as Agent Fatma and her friends work to solve the mystery, they discover a power greater and more world-tilting than they ever expected.
This book was so much fun. It takes places in the early 1900s, so there’s the general vibe and thrill of a society rapidly modernizing1; new technology, new social mores, growing economic and political power, all layered with fantastical magic.
You’ll also find: goofy bureaucracy, high-octane chase and fight scenes, djinn of every cut and color, wicked fashion, tender romance, unveiled secrets, a glittering gala, mysterious priestesses and fortune tellers, fire and swords, and lots of heart and adventure.
I also loved the voice of the narrator. It leaned into the wonder and grandness without veering into purple language; letting great scenes and images speak for themselves without cluttering it with adornment. The dialogue was snappy and clever, too. I loved the protagonists and just want the best for them, lol.
Okay!! that’s all for this week! Hope you all stay safe and healthy. Take care, thanks for reading, catch you soon,
—mia xx
Insert disclaimer/critique about modernization and “progress” as Western/capitalist/imperial concepts here