The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (Hainish Cycle series)
Witchmark by C.L. Polk (The Kingston Cycle series)
Voting ended onDec 14, 2024
Book summaries below:
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
A groundbreaking work of science fiction, The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of a lone human emissary to Winter, an alien world whose inhabitants spend most of their time without a gender. His goal is to facilitate Winter's inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the completely dissimilar culture that he encounters.
Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction.
Witchmark by C.L. Polk (The Kingston Cycle series)
In an original world reminiscent of Edwardian England in the shadow of a World War, cabals of noble families use their unique magical gifts to control the fates of nations, while one young man seeks only to live a life of his own.
Magic marked Miles Singer for suffering the day he was born, doomed either to be enslaved to his family's interest or to be committed to a witches' asylum. He went to war to escape his destiny and came home a different man, but he couldn’t leave his past behind. The war between Aeland and Laneer leaves men changed, strangers to their friends and family, but even after faking his own death and reinventing himself as a doctor at a cash-strapped veterans' hospital, Miles can’t hide what he truly is.
When a fatally poisoned patient exposes Miles’ healing gift and his witchmark, he must put his anonymity and freedom at risk to investigate his patient’s murder. To find the truth he’ll need to rely on the family he despises, and on the kindness of the most gorgeous man he’s ever seen.
trying to figure out faces for these gay people in witchmark by cl polk hehehe... had a lot of fun giving tristan the most Jaw ever
[id: two bust illustrations of miles singer, followed by two bust illustrations of tristan hunter. miles is wearing a black waistcoat and green tie in one drawing, seen in profile, wearing small round glasses. in the other, he is facing the viewer, wearing a brown coat. his "little doctor glasses" are labelled, as are his sack jacket, his tired face, and his unbrushed hair. he has an olive complexion and dark brown hair, with honey brown eyes.
the first drawing of tristan has him facing the viewer, wearing a grey waistcoat with a silver ascot. his wavy blond hair is braided over one shoulder and artfully swept back. he has arched brows, narrow blue eyes, a prominent jaw, full lips, and slightly tan skin. he has one dimple. in the other drawing he is seen in profile, wearing a red robe embroidered with gold, using one hand to brush loose hair off his forehead. his thick eyebrows, "silly monogrammed robe", and blond hair are labelled. end id.]
fic: walk me home, we’ll make it out alive (Witchmark, All Ages)
I finished a thing! I mostly wrote it a while ago, but I wrote the last missing bits in the spirit of "write at least some things in November" (which has always been my own personal approach to Nano lolol)
I am legit only the fourth fic on this tag on AO3. Tiny fandom is tiny.
Title: walk me home, we’ll make it out alive
Fandom: Witchmark (The Kingston Cycle)
Rating: All Ages
Characters/Pairing: Miles/Tristan, Grace, Cormac
Timeline: Post-novel
Summary: “I will have joy in every moment we have together. I insist on that.” A little tag to Witchmark, starting right after the end of the book. Cormac is bossy, Miles recuperates, and Tristan is Tristan.
“It was as good as magic. It was magic. I let it seep from my fingertips when I touched him, and Tristan gripped me tight even as he shuddered. I did it again, again. I’d never touched a lover with magic. I had never been myself, even in those most private moments. Always hiding, never free. Freed, I dragged him down for another kiss.”
― C.L. Polk, Witchmark
“You were at Bywell on the first of Frostmonth. The day the lights went out all over Aeland. The day the Great Haunting started. The day when our soldiers were cured of a madness that tormented them. The day the Amaranthines came to Bywell. I know you know what happened that day. You were a witness. Or maybe you were a participant.” - from the ARC of Stormsong
I seem to be reviewing naught but sequels lately, so, as you might be aware, when reviewing a sequel, there will inevitably be spoilers for the first book. So. You’ve been warned.
Oh my god oh my god oh my God oh my God oh my God OH MY GOD.
The wait is over! It’s STORMSONG! By C.L. Polk! The second book of The Kingston Cycle is here!
So. Witchmark is one of my favorite books that I’ve ever read, like, ever. C.L. Polk’s debut novel not only knocked it out of the park, she knocked it out of Earth’s atmosphere. Somewhere, out there, a baseball is going to pass by the International Space Station and the astronauts are going to be like “hey, who tossed a baseball out of the airlock? Damn it, Sergei, we talked about this!”
I think my metaphor has strayed a bit. My point is, I really liked Witchmark. My copy is up on that special shelf I have reserved for my All Time Favorite Books. Witchmark is one of those books that, once I started reading, I literally could not stop. I’m a slow and easily distracted reader, so finishing a book as fast as I finished Witchmark is a rare thing.
Needless to say, I might just have been a wee little bit hyped for Stormsong.
Just a little bit.
I mean, I did pre-order my copy the minute it was announced to be on sale on Amazon back in November of 2018. I may have taken to Twitter to beg Tor to send me an ARC (they didn’t, I do not blame them). I may have let out a fangirlish cry loud enough to break the sound barrier the moment an eARC became available on NetGalley. I may have obsessively refreshed my kindle app for, uh, several minutes waiting for the file to transfer.
And then I opened the file.
And I couldn’t read it. Some sort of glitch rendered the format of the eARC practically illegible.
You know that episode of The Twilight Zone where Burgess Meredith just wants to be able to read his books in peace, but can’t? But then the nuclear apocalypse happens but he’s stuck in a bank vault and when he comes out, he’s the only dude left alive and he finally - FINALLY - has the time to read and...he immediately breaks his glasses?
Opening that illegible file felt just like that. It broke my poor little fangirl soul. So I complained. A lot. To an embarrassing extent. I think I must have re-downloaded that file at least fifty times, hoping each time that the file would magically reformat itself to legibility. When it didn’t, I gave up and moved on to other things because that’s how my attention span works. Brief flares of outrage followed by “meh.” The wheel in the sky kept on turning and then, it became 2020 and I was like, “fuck it, I want to read Stormsong.” So I went to NetGalley and downloaded the book...again.
And, what do you know, it had magically reformatted itself to legibility.
(Well, not magically, I’m sure some poor tech person at Macmillan/Tor-Forge spent a great deal of time finding the glitch and fixing it. I really hope they didn’t get yelled at because some insane fangirl complained a great deal on the internet... yeah, I’m a shitbird).
Anyway! After all of that, I finally got to read the book. I forced myself to take it slow - I couldn’t just swallow it whole like I did Witchmark and then be left with the agony of waiting for another book. Nope. I made myself savor Stormsong.
Told from Grace’s POV, Stormsong begins right where Witchmark left off: Miles, Grace and Tristan have destroyed the Aether network (Aeland’s power grid) after learning the truth of where all that clean energy came from, namely, human souls, harvested from those killed during the war with Laneer. In fact, that’s the whole reason for the war - gotta keep the lights on, so just start a war to produce more dead, then force imprisoned witches in the asylums to process the souls of the dead into energy so you can flick your light switch on and off at night for fun. And, you know, have heat and power factories and such. The public has no idea where aether came from, they only know that it seems to be gone and now they have no heat in the middle of winter.
Only, its worse than that. Grace, as a Stormsinger with the power to manipulate the weather, senses a massive, hurricane-sized storm just off the coast of Aeland. The storm, when it hits, will bring subzero temperatures and tons upon tons of snow onto a country that now has no heat or electricity. Thousands risk freezing to death and, with the last harvest ruined by a snowstorm, even more risk starvation.
Then there’s the Amaranthines - the immortal, God-like people who are kind of like this world’s Interpol. They want Aeland to answer for their atrocities. Queen Constantina, however, doesn’t believe she’s done anything wrong. So Grace is thrown headfirst into a political maelstrom, between the Queen, the crown prince Severin, the Amaranthines, and an increasingly outraged public. Then there’s the beguiling Avia Jessup. Avia abandoned a life as a wealthy heiress to pursue her dream career as a photojournalist, and she’s damn good at it. So good, she’s close to discovering exactly what it was that kept Aeland’s lights on. A secret Grace knows could destroy the nation.
But maybe exposing the truth wouldn’t be so bad?
When I finished Witchmark, I bemoaned the fact that it would be a very long wait for the next book. But holy shit is the wait worth it. Stormsong is absolutely phenomenal. It is a worthy follow-up to Witchmark and a magnificent continuation to The Kingston Cycle. The whole book is beautiful, magical, and romantic - it’s everything you’d want in a sequel - the story is carried forward with a fresh perspective, but not all the loose ends are tied up, and there’s some great setup for a third book which I am now dying to read. I loved getting to see thing’s from Grace’s perspective. As much as I love Miles, he lives in a world of very black-and-white morality, whereas Grace lives in a world of gray. Miles doesn’t have to deal with the political ramifications of his actions, but Grace does. She has to deal with the Queen and the Crown Prince and the Amaranthine Grand Duchess Aife...oh, and her and Miles’s awful father, Sir Christopher Leland Hensley, who, despite being in prison, still seeks to exert control over Grace.
The romance between Grace and Avia is absolutely lovely - it’s not the slow burn that was Miles and Tristan in Witchmark. Tristan and Miles were strangers who met and then fell in love. Avia and Grace have known each other for a long time, they ran in the same circles their whole lives, and it wasn’t until Avia was tossed out by her father that the two of them lost touch. The mutual attraction was there, but neither ever acted on it. It’s the events of Stormsong that that turn the spark into a flame, and it’s absolutely delightful to watch. Seriously, every time Avia and Grace are together you just want to:
My only complaint is that the ending is a bit abrupt - it ends in the middle of the action, and you just want to scream “no, it can’t end there, there has to be more, right? RIGHT?”
Hopefully there will be more. I absolutely need more. Witchmark ended in almost the same way - the main action has ended, but there is still a lot left to wrap up. For now, though, I’m going to dig in my heels and prepare myself for another wait. Waiting is hard, but the payoff is often oh, so sweet.
Still:
RECOMMENDED FOR: Anyone who loved Witchmark, who wants a fantastic F/F romance, or who just loves Edwardian-style steampunk-y worlds with magic.
NOT RECOMMENDED FOR: Homophobes, people who dislike fantasy/fun/romance, people who are just the worst in general.
