The New York Times: I’ve saved the sweetest book for last. BITTER MEDICINE by Mia Tsai, centers on Elle, a descendant of the Chinese god of healing who makes magical glyphs for a fairy bureaucracy and secretly pines for Lucien, a handsome, half-elf agent. When the glyphs work too well, saving Luc’s life but revealing Elle’s existence to the dangerous family members she’s running from, she and Luc will have to atone for the sins of their pasts while working out what they truly mean to each other.
There are so many joys in this paranormal. The wealth of languages, mythologies, religions and magicks are a weight that balances the emotional tenderness. Healing magic, rather than fighting magic, takes center stage — and without spoiling things too much, it’s also one of the rare paranormals to feature a heroine who loses rather than gains power. Tsai does not flinch from this grief: “The overhead lights cast her shadow, faint and watery, across her threshold, and that’s how she imagines she looks: magic-less and broken, a ghostly husk of herself.” In a subgenre that so often makes supernatural power the answer to problems, how refreshing to find one that says being mortal — being human, and happy, and safe — is purpose enough.
Library Journal: Rachel Morgan knew that taking the position of demon subrosa—protector of Cincinnati’s supernatural residents—would be another way to get into trouble. When she discovers that a group of werewolves are after the focus that her friend David holds, it is just the beginning of the problems headed her way. From coven grumblings about a witch-born demon still walking, a vampire-turned-mouse causing havoc in her home, and a mysterious mage framing Rachel and her friends for various crimes, it may take more than a few twisted charms to get out of these predicaments. Harrison leads readers further into the logistics of human and paranormal races coexisting together, and Rachel’s emotional arc continues to grow as she lets others in, but she is still a delightfully defensive heroine. An interesting revelation at the end will have long-term readers excited for the next book.
Booklist: Though the scale of Burke’s latest (after Immunity Index, 2021) is limited to the small island of Thule in the Arctic Circle, the conflict faced by the islanders takes on a large-scale feel. Antonio Moro is injured while firing missiles at war boats of the Leviathan League, recruited by mercenaries to be on the lookout for LL agents, and hired to create art for the chamber of commerce. He takes possession of the control cube of Par Augustus, an AI that has become independent, as a reward for his contest-winning sculpture. Because Moro is always polite to the various machine systems he encounters, Par Augustus introduces itself to him. Gradually this leads to befriending Chatelaine, the system that runs his employers’ home, and Prior Edifice, which runs the hospital. When the raiders threaten again, the merchants, who do a lot of trading of ExtraTs stored at the Xenological Gardens, and the Thules, pacifistic doctors who are the main government of the isle, differ on how to deal with them. Par Augustus has other ideas too, and Moro becomes his willing human accomplice. If Ursula LeGuin had written about AI machines, it would have looked a lot like this marvelous fable.
