IT’S MY BIRTHDAYYYYY!!! This tag is from Antonia @ Always Books, and I actually did it last year on my birthday (find it here). I figured, why not do it again and see how my answers differ this year! So let’s get started!

Although I missed the first day of Lunar New Year, I know that at least in Chinese tradition the new year celebration lasts for 15 days. So really, I’m only a little bit late to the festivities, as today (Feb. 26) is the last day (Lantern Festival). I originally wanted to make a post about books that take place during LNY, but ummmm I didn’t know of any haha. SO you get to have a good smattering of my favorite Asian authors (and a few authors I need to read)! Lunar New Year is celebrated in many different Asian cultures, so I wanted to include authors of many different Asian heritages.

Gene-edited human clans have scattered throughout the galaxy, adapting themselves to environments as severe as the desert and the sea. Atuale, the daughter of a Sea-Clan lord, sparked a war by choosing her land-dwelling love and rejecting her place among her people. Now her husband and his clan are dying of an incurable plague, and Atuale’s sole hope for finding a cure is to travel off-planet. The one person she can turn to for help is the black-market mercenary known as the World Witch—and Atuale’s former lover. Time, politics, bureaucracy, and her own conflicted desires stand between Atuale and the hope for her adopted clan.
Sun-Daughters, Sea-Daughters has all the wonder and romance of a classic sci-fi novel, with the timelessness of a beloved fairy tale.

Thank you Tor.com and NetGalley for the eARC for review!

Happy book birthday to this wonderful little novella!! I really enjoyed this one. I honestly feel like a broken record at this point, because I truly have enjoyed every single book I’ve read that they’ve published. That’s why I made a whole blog post about them haha. But ANYway, back to the book at hand.

Somehow I didn’t realize that this was a (very) loose retelling of The Little Mermaid!!!!! You know me and retellings. While reading, I picked up on the little nods to the fairytale and it made me love the book even more.

Reading this book was kind of like having a dream. Not in that it was super fantastical (though there are very cool sci-fi elements), but in the sense of like. If you had been thinking about love and what you would do for love all day, and then you go to sleep and have this dream. It’s like a dream in that it feels so much like deep feelings that everyone has but can’t quite vocalize. I don’t know if this makes any sense, but it was wonderful.

The world is so creative and blends so many ideas of different types of civilizations (space, land, sea) together. It is also very queernormative in a quiet way, and I love that so much.

I’m sorry for the short review I don’t want to say too much more, because I don’t want to ruin the experience for anyone. The bottom line is I definitely recommend this novella, and am eagerly awaiting more books from this author. Go get this one from your local indie bookstore (safely), an ebook retailer, your library, or wherever else you get books!

I think I may have mentioned before that my whole family are readers. My parents are basically the reason that I became a reader! When my brother and I were very young, they started by reading all sorts of books to us. Eventually once I started to learn to read, I stopped wanting my parents to read to me because they were too slow hahaha.

My mom reads a lot of similar things to me (science fiction and fantasy), and more!! She likes pretty much all genres haha. But mostly I would say historical fiction, mystery, action/thrillers, and nonfiction in addition to SFF. Dad on the other hand mostly reads action/thrillers, mystery, and nonfiction. Occasionally he reads some science fiction, but it’s not that often. So I guess my mom is a mix of my dad and me haha. My brother likes mostly science fiction and fantasy, like me, but reads a lot more manga and graphic novels than I do.

I obviously discuss books frequently with my family, so I thought it would fun to share with all of you what my family’s favorite books/series/authors are! My parents both wanted to put like 100 books on this list, but I had to limit them hahaha.

I just couldn’t get enough of retellings hahaha. So here is my list of retelling recommendations, part two! A lot of you seemed excited by the last post, so I hope you will enjoy this one as well. And if you have any other suggestions, please do let me know so I can further expand my TBR lol.