Sunday, February 26, 2023

Reviewing the Mail: Week of February 25, 2023

One book this week - a debut novel from Tachyon, hitting in paperback on March 14. I haven't said this explicitly in a while, so maybe I should: a "Reviewing the Mail" post is about books I haven't read yet, and, particularly when they do come in the mail, about books I know very little about.

Mia Tsai's Bitter Medicine is a contemporary fantasy with at least a strong romance strand, set in what seems to be a somewhat more magical version of our world - I'm not sure if this is openly more magical, or more of a secret history. (The latter is more traditional and common, but every writer gets to pick whether and how to follow tradition.)

Our two main characters are Elle, descended from the Chinese god of medicine but working as a magical calligrapher for a temp agency, and Luc, a half-elf security expert. From the description on the back, their interactions with each other and their complicated families are the story - not to say that Tsai doesn't weave in anything else, but there's no sign of saving the world or anything like that. And I am 100% on board with more fantasy books that don't require the world to be saved, so that makes this immediately more intriguing.

1 comment:

Mike Reeves-McMillan said...

I read it last year, and it's a solid piece of writing, with capable prose. The protagonists' goals and decisions drive the plot, and they feel things deeply but don't (to me) come across as whiny.

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