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enne📚 reviewed Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta

Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel—until Myung …

4 stars

Your job is not to know what it once was or what it will become. Your job is to simply enjoy it.

This book opened by describing itself as a circular tale, and as promised it truly did meander through various layers of stories to get back where it started. In some ways this reminded me of the Orphan's Tales books by Catherynne Valente, in its use of nested layers of stories that all interconnect a bit to tell something bigger in the whole. But Orphan's Tales is quite explicitly a story about stories, and here... I'm unable to quite put my finger on what this book is doing. It's definitely a story about sisterhood. It's a story about the grief of inevitable separation and change. It's a story about memory and creation.

I did enjoy this book, and especially enjoyed the stories of Magali and …

Your job is not to know what it once was or what it will become. Your job is to simply enjoy it.

This book opened by describing itself as a circular tale, and as promised it truly did meander through various layers of stories to get back where it started. In some ways this reminded me of the Orphan's Tales books by Catherynne Valente, in its use of nested layers of stories that all interconnect a bit to tell something bigger in the whole. But Orphan's Tales is quite explicitly a story about stories, and here... I'm unable to quite put my finger on what this book is doing. It's definitely a story about sisterhood. It's a story about the grief of inevitable separation and change. It's a story about memory and creation.

I did enjoy this book, and especially enjoyed the stories of Magali and Wisa. I was amused the academic interludes. I liked the weird worldbuilding: magic space whales, "sailing" through the black sea of the universe of island planets, a portal that only children can go through. But overall I also don't feel like any of these elements quite cohered for me (even as I also wonder how much that's just on me as a reader).

This was our book for the September 2026 #SFFBookClub.

Tak! reviewed Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta

Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel—until Myung …

No rating

Mad Sisters of Esi was an odyssey - in the sense that it was an epic adventure of mythic proportions, but also in the sense that it seemed to randomly wander along a chain of apparently unrelated events. Everything was tied together in the end, but basically in the way I'd been expecting for much of the story. Fully half of the book is a flashback.

It seems to be about the opposing desires to leave everything you know and explore the novel, and treasuring everything you already have, and the regrettable fact that they can't really be balanced against each other.

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Tak! quoted Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta

Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel—until Myung …

Everything is more powerful when you don’t understand it.

— Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta

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enne📚 quoted Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta

Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel—until Myung …

Once a craftsman offered six times to enchant the drawings for him so they would never decay. Kua refused. Things must end, his mother used to say. Even memories. Only then can they become something new.

— Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta

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Tak! quoted Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta

Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel—until Myung …

It is funny how the lessons you teach your children to protect them end up becoming a wall that separates you.

— Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta

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Tak! quoted Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta

Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel—until Myung …

Esi is turning into water. This is the only way Jinn knows how to describe it— like they are all floating on a lake that was once a pond and that will grow into a sea. Like nothing knows how to be solid anymore.

— Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta

I definitely feel this one

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Tak! quoted Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta

Myung and her sister Laleh are the sole inhabitants of the whale of babel—until Myung …

The first time I realize my sister wants to leave, we are in the White World.

— Mad Sisters of Esi by Tashan Mehta

#OpeningSentence #SFFBookClub

Tak! quoted Sunward by William Alexander

No rating

Preconscious algorithms periodically threaten to bury authors beneath an avalanche of debased language reduced to gray goo. Such regurgitating formulae are capable of churning out words like factory-baked slices of fungal bread, devoid of understanding or communion.

— Sunward by William Alexander

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Tak! quoted Sunward by William Alexander

No rating

Lately I’ve served as research assistant in a long-term study of Mercurial bugs.

— Sunward by William Alexander

oh yeah, I had that job once

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Tak! quoted Sunward by William Alexander

No rating

It was too easy to drift into my own haphazard time zone of unscheduled naps instead.

— Sunward by William Alexander

hell yeah

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Tak! quoted Sunward by William Alexander

No rating

There’s no such thing as an encrypted transmission.

— Sunward by William Alexander

that's … certainly a mechanic

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Tak! quoted Sunward by William Alexander

No rating

Agatha Panza von Sparkles settled into Needle’s pilot seat for the very first time.

— Sunward by William Alexander

#OpeningSentence #SFFBookClub

Tak! reviewed Hammajang Luck by Makana Yamamoto

Edie is done with crime. Eight years behind bars changes a person—costs them too much …

5 stars

Hammajang Luck was fun, a vault heist in space with strong themes of social justice and found family. There isn't a ton of gender discussion, but something like half the characters are just matter-of-factly trans. It wasn't super deep, but it was entertaining and engaging.

Tagging #SFFBookClub even though I'm extremely late to the party

Tak! commented on The Works of Vermin

Content warning the works of vermin review continued, full of spoilers

I feel like the ecdytoxin has to be an analogue for ai - it warps everything it touches into a grotesquerie of extra limbs and eyes and teeth; it has permeated the entire revivalist society so that the entire upper class is constantly drenched in its perfume, distorting their perceptions of reality; they don't quite know how to deal with someone who doesn't use / is immune to it; when something comes along that destroys it, everything they've built with it disintegrates into chaos.

The scenes where they're obtaining it by feeding artworks to the contriver worms feel almost too on the nose.

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Tak! reviewed The Works of Vermin

5 stars

The Works of Vermin is delightfully weird, a writhing tapestry of characters and plotlines that twist around each other and double back as the author gradually reveals the design.

I didn't know what to expect after Leech, and this certainly doesn't have many superficial similarities, except maybe for a certain focus on the inhuman.

It is fantastical and deranged and byzantine and wonderful.

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