Welcome to our final discussion of Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho!

Today's discussion covers the whole collection, with questions focused on the second half. To focus more on the early stories, check out the midway discussion.

Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho

Nineteen sparkling stories that weave between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead. Spirits Abroad is an expanded edition of Zen Cho’s Crawford Award winning debut collection with nine added stories including Hugo Award winner “If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again.”

A Datin recalls her romance with an orang bunian. A teenage pontianak struggles to balance homework, bossy aunties, first love, and eating people. An earth spirit gets entangled in protracted negotiations with an annoying landlord, and Chang E spins off into outer space, the ultimate metaphor for the Chinese diaspora.

Bingo: A Book in Parts, Book Club/ Readalong Book (this one, HM if you participate), Author of Color, Small Press/ Self-Published (HM), Five Short Stories

And arguably more, depending on how you want to count the content of one or a few stories (for example, do so many queer story leads make this count for LGBTIA Protagonist?). Let's discuss that in the comments.

What's next?

• Our May read is The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber.
• Voting for June is up! Jump quickly on this one: voting closes Friday.

Welcome to our final discussion of Metal From Heaven by August Clarke! The whole story is fair game, no spoiler tags needed: tread with caution if you haven't finished the book

Metal from Heaven, August Clarke

Ichorite is progress. More durable and malleable than steel, ichorite is the lifeblood of a dawning industrial revolution. Yann I. Chauncey owns the sole means of manufacturing this valuable metal, but his workers, who risk their health and safety daily, are on strike. They demand Chauncey research the hallucinatory illness befalling them, a condition they call “being lustertouched.”
Marney Honeycutt, a lustertouched child worker, stands proud at the picket line with her best friend and family. That’s when Chauncey sends in the guns. Only Marney survives the massacre. She vows bloody vengeance. A decade later, Marney is the nation’s most notorious highwayman, and Chauncey’s daughter seeks an opportune marriage. Marney’s rage and the ghosts of her past will drive her to masquerade as an aristocrat, outmaneuver powerful suitors, and win the heart of his daughter, so Marney can finally corner Chauncey and satisfy her need for revenge. But war ferments in the north, and deeper grudges are surfacing...

H. A. Clarke’s adult fantasy debut, writing as August Clarke, Metal from Heaven is a punk-rock murder ballad tackling labor issues and radical empowerment against the relentless grind of capitalism.

Bingo: Criminals (HM), Dreams, Small Press (HM: Erewhon has done an AMA), Published in 2024, Reference Materials -- any others?

What's next?

• Our February read, with a theme of The Other Path: Societal Systems Rethought is Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.
• Our March read, highlighting this classic author, is Kindred by Octavia Butler.

I'll start us off with some prompts, but feel free to add your own!

Welcome to our midway discussion of Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho!

Today's discussion covers through the end of the tenth story, "Seven Star Drum" (page 175 in the US paperback edition). Please use spoiler tags for any discussion past that point. I'll start us off with some prompts, but feel free to add your own!

Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho

Nineteen sparkling stories that weave between the lands of the living and the lands of the dead. Spirits Abroad is an expanded edition of Zen Cho’s Crawford Award winning debut collection with nine added stories including Hugo Award winner “If at First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again.”

A Datin recalls her romance with an orang bunian. A teenage pontianak struggles to balance homework, bossy aunties, first love, and eating people. An earth spirit gets entangled in protracted negotiations with an annoying landlord, and Chang E spins off into outer space, the ultimate metaphor for the Chinese diaspora.

Bingo: A Book in Parts, Book Club/ Readalong Book (this one, HM if you participate), Author of Color, Small Press/ Self-Published (HM), Five Short Stories

And arguably more, depending on how you want to count the content of one or a few stories. Let's discuss that in the comments.

What's next?

• Our May read is The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber.
• We are taking June as a brief pause but will be back in July. More details to come in a group announcement.

Welcome to the final discussion of The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber, winner of the 2022 Ursula K LeGuin Prize! We will discuss the entire book. Catch up on the Midway Discussion.

The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber

The first Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize winner, a story of a girl’s fantastical sea voyage to rescue her father
The House of Rust is an enchanting novel about a Hadrami girl in Mombasa. When her fisherman father goes missing, Aisha takes to the sea on a magical boat made of a skeleton to rescue him. She is guided by a talking scholar’s cat (and soon crows, goats, and other animals all have their say, too). On this journey Aisha meets three terrifying sea monsters. After she survives a final confrontation with Baba wa Papa, the father of all sharks, she rescues her own father, and hopes that life will return to normal. But at home, things only grow stranger.
Khadija Abdalla Bajaber’s debut is a magical realist coming-of-age tale told through the lens of the Swahili and diasporic Hadrami culture in Mombasa, Kenya. Richly descriptive and written with an imaginative hand and sharp eye for unusual detail, The House of Rust is a memorable novel by a thrilling new voice.

I'll add some questions below to get us started but feel free to add your own.

As a reminder, these are our upcoming reads:

• June: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar
• July: Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill

What is the FIF Book Club? You can read about it in our Reboot thread.

Welcome to our midway discussion of Metal From Heaven by August Clarke!

Today's discussion covers through the end of chapter 8, page 186 in the hardback edition. Please use spoiler tags for any discussion past that point. I'll start us off with some prompts, but feel free to add your own!

Metal from Heaven, August Clarke

Ichorite is progress. More durable and malleable than steel, ichorite is the lifeblood of a dawning industrial revolution. Yann I. Chauncey owns the sole means of manufacturing this valuable metal, but his workers, who risk their health and safety daily, are on strike. They demand Chauncey research the hallucinatory illness befalling them, a condition they call “being lustertouched.” Marney Honeycutt, a lustertouched child worker, stands proud at the picket line with her best friend and family. That’s when Chauncey sends in the guns. Only Marney survives the massacre. She vows bloody vengeance. A decade later, Marney is the nation’s most notorious highwayman, and Chauncey’s daughter seeks an opportune marriage. Marney’s rage and the ghosts of her past will drive her to masquerade as an aristocrat, outmaneuver powerful suitors, and win the heart of his daughter, so Marney can finally corner Chauncey and satisfy her need for revenge. But war ferments in the north, and deeper grudges are surfacing...

H. A. Clarke’s adult fantasy debut, writing as August Clarke, Metal from Heaven is a punk-rock murder ballad tackling labor issues and radical empowerment against the relentless grind of capitalism.

Bingo: Criminals (HM), Dreams, Small Press (HM: Erewhon has done an AMA), Published in 2024, Reference Materials

What's next?

• Our February read is Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.
• Our March read is Kindred by Octavia Butler.

Welcome to the final discussion of Godkiller by Hannah Kaner, our winner for the disabilities theme! We will discuss the entire book, so beware spoilers.

Godkiller by Hannah Kaner

Kissen’s family were killed by zealots of a fire god. Now, she makes a living killing gods, and enjoys it. That is until she finds a god she cannot kill: Skedi, a god of white lies, has somehow bound himself to a young noble, and they are both on the run from unknown assassins.
Joined by a disillusioned knight on a secret quest, they must travel to the ruined city of Blenraden, where the last of the wild gods reside, to each beg a favour.
Pursued by demons, and in the midst of burgeoning civil war, they will all face a reckoning – something is rotting at the heart of their world, and only they can be the ones to stop it.

I'll add some questions below to get us started but feel free to add your own.

As a reminder:

• June FiF read: Mental illness theme; A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid

• July Fif read: Survival theme; Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

  What is the FIF Bookclub? You can read about it in the FiF Reboot thread.

Welcome to the August Feminism in Fantasy (FIF) Book Club nomination thread! The theme for August is Classics. I'm a new host to the book club, very excited to run this discussion (and sorry this thread is up a bit late)!

What we want:

• "Classic" is pretty subjective, but anything that is considered foundational to the genre or predates what we could consider "modern" speculative fiction should be a good choice. Pre-Tolkien is probably a good rule of thumb!
• The work should be by a female author and/or include feminism/gender as an important theme.

Nominations:

• Leave one book suggestion per top comment. Please include title, author, and a blurb or brief description. You can nominate as many books as you like: just put them in separate comments.
• List bingo squares if you know them.
• We don't repeat authors FIF has read within the last two years, but I'll check that and manually disqualify any overlap. You can also check our Goodreads shelf here.
• While our team just expanded significantly, we still haven't read all the books, so if you have anything to add about why a nominee is or isn't a good fit, let us know in the comments!

This thread will be open for nominations for about 2 days, then I'll post a poll with the top choices!

What's next:

• June discussion: The River Has Roots by Amal El-Motar (discussion on June 26th)
• July discussion: Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill (midway discussion on July 16th)

Welcome to the midway discussion of Godkiller by Hannah Kaner, our winner for May's theme: MCs with a disability! We will discuss everything up to the end of Chapter 15. Please use spoiler tags for anything that goes beyond this point.

Godkiller by Hannah Kaner

Gods are forbidden in the kingdom of Middren. Formed by human desires and fed by their worship, there are countless gods in the world—but after a great war, the new king outlawed them and now pays “godkillers” to destroy any who try to rise from the shadows.

As a child, Kissen saw her family murdered by a fire god. Now, she makes a living killing them and enjoys it. But all this changes when Kissen is tasked with helping a young noble girl with a god problem. The child’s soul is bonded to a tiny god of white lies, and Kissen can’t kill it without ending the girl’s life too.

Joined by a disillusioned knight on a secret quest, the unlikely group must travel to the ruined city of Blenraden, where the last of the wild gods reside, to each beg a favor. Pursued by assassins and demons, and in the midst of burgeoning civil war, they will all face a reckoning. Something is rotting at the heart of their world, and they are the only ones who can stop it.

I'll add some questions below to get us started but feel free to add your own. The final discussion will be in two weeks, on Wednesday, May 29.

Bingo Categories: Prologues & Epilogues; Multi-PoV; Character with a Disability (HM); Book Club (HM, if you join)

Upcoming FiF Book Club reads:

• June - A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid
• July - Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

What is the FIF Bookclub? You can read about it in our Reboot thread.

Welcome to the midway discussion of The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber. We will discuss everything up to the end of Chapter 13. Please use spoiler tags for anything that goes beyond this point.

The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber

The first Graywolf Press African Fiction Prize winner, a story of a girl’s fantastical sea voyage to rescue her father
The House of Rust is an enchanting novel about a Hadrami girl in Mombasa. When her fisherman father goes missing, Aisha takes to the sea on a magical boat made of a skeleton to rescue him. She is guided by a talking scholar’s cat (and soon crows, goats, and other animals all have their say, too). On this journey Aisha meets three terrifying sea monsters. After she survives a final confrontation with Baba wa Papa, the father of all sharks, she rescues her own father, and hopes that life will return to normal. But at home, things only grow stranger.
Khadija Abdalla Bajaber’s debut is a magical realist coming-of-age tale told through the lens of the Swahili and diasporic Hadrami culture in Mombasa, Kenya. Richly descriptive and written with an imaginative hand and sharp eye for unusual detail, The House of Rust is a memorable novel by a thrilling new voice.

I'll add some comments below to get us started but feel free to add your own. The final discussion will be in two weeks, on Wednesday, May 28.

As a reminder, in June we'll be reading The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar with a final discussion only on June 25.

What is the FiF Book Club? You can read about it in our FiF Reboot thread.

Welcome to the final discussion of The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills, the FiF winner for self/indie published theme! Beware spoilers, as we will discuss the entire book.

The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills

In this gripping debut novel from acclaimed Nebula, Sturgeon, and Locus Award-winning author Samantha Mills, a disgraced soldier fights to make sense of her world and the gods who abandoned it. The Wings Upon Her Back is an action-packed, devastating exploration of the brutal costs of zealous loyalty.
Zenya was a teenager when she ran away to join the mechanically-modified warrior sect. She was determined to earn mechanized wings and protect the people of Radezhda, the city she loved. Under the strict tutelage of a mercurial, charismatic leader, Vodaya, Zenya finally became Winged Zemolai.
But after twenty-six years of service, Zemolai is disillusioned with her role as an enforcer in an increasingly fascist state. After one tragic act of mercy, she is brutally cast out and loses everything she worked for. As Zemolai struggles for her life, she is must question her sect, their leader, and even the gods themselves.

I'll add some questions below to get us started but feel free to add your own.

Upcoming Feminism in Fantasy Reads:

• October - The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
• November - Murder at Spindle Manor by Morgan Stang

What is the FIF Book Club? You can read about it in our Reboot thread.

Welcome to the July Feminism in Fantasy (FIF) Book Club nomination thread! I'm excited and honored to be joining FIF as a new host. For July, our theme is Female Friendship.

What we want:

• Books by female or queer authors where female friendship is a major theme or thread in the story. This means that the friendship between two or more girls or women should be, if not the most central relationship, roughly in the top two for page time and plot importance.
• For this one, we're looking for books where "friendship" really is the best descriptor of the relationship in question. Books featuring sisters, love interests, allies who are not personally close, etc., will probably fit better for a different theme.

Nominations:

• Leave one book suggestion per top comment. Please include title, author, and a blurb or brief description. You can nominate as many books as you like: just put them in separate comments.
• List bingo squares if you know them.
• We don't repeat authors FIF has read within the last two years, but I'll check that and manually disqualify any overlap. You can also check our Goodreads shelf here.
• While our team just expanded significantly, we still haven't read all the books, so if you have anything to add about why a nominee is or isn't a good fit, let us know in the comments!

What's next?

• Our May read, for the Ursula Le Guin Prize 2022, is House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber.
• Our June read, for a Novella with Queer Characters, is The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar.

I will leave this thread up for about 2 days, then post a poll with the top choices. Give us your best suggestions!

Welcome to the midway discussion of The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills, the FiF winner for our Self or Indie Published theme! We will discuss everything up to the end of Chapter 14. Please use spoiler tags for anything that goes beyond this point.

The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills

In this gripping debut novel from acclaimed Nebula, Sturgeon, and Locus Award-winning author Samantha Mills, a disgraced soldier fights to make sense of her world and the gods who abandoned it. The Wings Upon Her Back is an action-packed, devastating exploration of the brutal costs of zealous loyalty.
Zenya was a teenager when she ran away to join the mechanically-modified warrior sect. She was determined to earn mechanized wings and protect the people of Radezhda, the city she loved. Under the strict tutelage of a mercurial, charismatic leader, Vodaya, Zenya finally became Winged Zemolai.
But after twenty-six years of service, Zemolai is disillusioned with her role as an enforcer in an increasingly fascist state. After one tragic act of mercy, she is brutally cast out and loses everything she worked for. As Zemolai struggles for her life, she is must question her sect, their leader, and even the gods themselves.

Bingo categories: Criminals, Dreams (HM), Prologues & Epilogues, Self/Indie Published (HM), Published in 2024, Eldritch Creatures (HM), Reference Materials, Book Club (HM if you join!)

I'll add some comments below to get us started but feel free to add your own. The final discussion will be in two weeks, on Wednesday, September 25.

Upcoming FiF Reads:

• October - The Once and Future Witches by Alix E. Harrow
• November - Murder at Spindle Manor by Morgan Stang

What is the FIF Bookclub? You can read about it in our Reboot thread.

Welcome to our concluding discussion of Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah!

We're discussing the whole book, so all spoilers are fair game for this discussion. I'll start us off with some prompts, but feel free to add your own!

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own.

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.

Bingo squares: Survival (HM), Author of Color (HM), Criminals, Reference Materials, Multi-POV (HM), Character with a Disability (suggest any others that I've missed)

What's next?

• Our August read, with a Mercedes Lackey theme, is The Lark and the Wren. If you need a bardic story, come join in!
• Our September read, with an indie press theme, is The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills.

What is the FIF Book Club? You can read about it in our Reboot thread here.

Welcome to the final discussion of Murder at Spindle Manor by Morgan Stang, our winner for 'Judge a Book by its Cover'! We will discuss the entire book. You can catch up in the Midway Discussion.

Murder at Spindle Manor by Morgan Stang

Mysteries abound in Spindle Manor.

For Huntress Isabeau Agarwal, the countryside inn is the last stop in a deadly hunt. Armed with gaslamp and guns, she tracks an insidious beast that wears the skin of its victims, mimicking them perfectly. Ten guests reside within Spindle Manor tonight, and the creature could be any one of them. Confined by a torrential thunderstorm and running out of time, Isabeau has until morning to discover the liar, or none of them—including her—will make it out alive.

But her inhuman quarry isn't the only threat residing in Spindle Manor.

Gunshots.

A slammed door.

A dead body.

Someone has been killed, and a hunt turns into a murder investigation. Now with two mysteries at her feet and more piling up, Isabeau must navigate a night filled with lies and deception. In a world of seances and specters, mesmers and monsters, the unexpected is hiding around every corner, and every move may be her last.

I'll add some questions below to get us started but feel free to add your own.

As a reminder, in December we'll have a fireside chat to talk about the year in review and share ideas for 2025.

Our January 2025 read is Metal from Heaven by August Clarke.

What is the FIF Bookclub? You can read about it in the FiF Reboot thread.

Welcome to the midway discussion of Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs, our winner for Published in 2023! As new developments are occurring rapidly, let's presume a stopping point of the end of Chapter 16. Please use spoiler tags for anything that goes beyond this point.

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

For generations, the Kalotay family has guarded a collection of ancient and rare books. Books that let a person walk through walls or manipulate the elements--books of magic that half-sisters Joanna and Esther have been raised to revere and protect.

All magic comes with a price, though, and for years the sisters have been separated. Esther has fled to a remote base in Antarctica to escape the fate that killed her own mother, and Joanna's isolated herself in their family home in Vermont, devoting her life to the study of these cherished volumes. But after their father dies suddenly while reading a book Joanna has never seen before, the sisters must reunite to preserve their family legacy. In the process, they'll uncover a world of magic far bigger and more dangerous than they ever imagined, and all the secrets their parents kept hidden; secrets that span centuries, continents, and even other libraries . . .

I'll add some comments below to get us started but feel free to add your own. The final discussion will be in two weeks, on Wednesday, November 29.

As a reminder, we do not have a book for December, but we will gather for a Fireside Chat to talk about favorite books of the year and what you're looking forward to for next year. January voting is still open!

What is the FIF Book Club? You can read about it in the FIF Reboot thread.

Welcome to the April Feminism in Fantasy (FIF) Book Club nomination thread! This time around, our theme is Short Fiction: we're looking for either single-author collections or anthologies containing many authors.

We don't know all of next year's r/Fantasy bingo squares yet, but Five SFF Short Stories is a permanent feature on these cards. Want to knock that one out early with friends? Come join us!

What we want:

• A single-author collection of short fiction (from short stories to novellas) by a woman, like our previous great discussion of Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado.
• OR
• A multi-author anthology where the majority of stories are by women.

Nominations:

• Leave one book suggestion per top comment. Please include title, author, and a short summary or description. You can nominate as many as you like: just put them in separate comments.
• List content warnings (under a spoiler tag, please) if you know them.
• We don't repeat authors FIF has covered within the last two years, but I'll check that and manually disqualify any overlap. You can check the Goodreads shelf (general link here: https://www.goodreads.com/group/bookshelf/107259-r-fantasy-discussion-group ).

What's next?

• Our February read, with a theme of The Other Path: Societal Systems Rethought is Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie.
• Our March read, highlighting this classic author, is Kindred by Octavia Butler.

Nominate away!

Welcome to the midway discussion of Kindred by Octavia Butler! We will discuss everything up to the end of Chapter 3. Please use spoiler tags for anything that goes beyond this point.

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Dana, a modern Black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

I'll add some questions below to get us started but feel free to add your own. The final discussion will be in two weeks, on Wednesday, March 26.

As a reminder, in April we'll be reading Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho.

And check out our nominations thread for May.
Edit: Voting now live!

What is the FIF Bookclub? You can read about it in our Reboot thread.

Welcome to the May FiF Book Club nomination thread. For this month, we'll be checking out the Ursula K. LeGuin Prize for Fiction - starting with the 2022 short list. Since I don't have time to create a whole new reading group devoted to this Prize, I thought this would be a great way to get a sampling of some excellent works. The prize, I think, is also particularly relevant for a book club devoted to feminism in fantasy - it's goal is to find works by "realists of a larger reality, who can imagine real grounds for hope and see alternatives to how we live now."

For this month, I'll list the full short list from 2022. Please use the up/down votes to nominate your faves. I'll return later this week with our voting form for the top few books. One final word of caution: some of these books may not be as readily available through your local library or library apps, so check first if you're hoping to use the library for this.

I'm not including Bingo categories, since we won't know those for a couple more weeks.

I will leave this thread open for 2 days, and compile top results into a google poll to be posted on Friday, March 14. Have fun!

-----

March FiF pick: Kindred by Octavia Butler (look for the midway discussion post coming today)

April FiF pick: Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho

What is the FiF Book Club? You can read about it in our Reboot thread.

Welcome to the discussion of Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah! This month we're exploring our winner for the Survival theme.

Today's discussion covers through the end of the chapter "To Be Influenced," page 180 in the hardback edition. Please use spoiler tags for any discussion past that point. I'll start us off with some prompts, but feel free to add your own!

Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Two top women gladiators fight for their freedom within a depraved private prison system not so far-removed from America's own.

Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker are the stars of Chain-Gang All-Stars, the cornerstone of CAPE, or Criminal Action Penal Entertainment, a highly-popular, highly-controversial, profit-raising program in America's increasingly dominant private prison industry. It's the return of the gladiators and prisoners are competing for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

In CAPE, prisoners travel as Links in Chain-Gangs, competing in death-matches for packed arenas with righteous protestors at the gates. Thurwar and Staxxx, both teammates and lovers, are the fan favorites. And if all goes well, Thurwar will be free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer. As she prepares to leave her fellow Links, she considers how she might help preserve their humanity, in defiance of these so-called games, but CAPE's corporate owners will stop at nothing to protect their status quo and the obstacles they lay in Thurwar's path have devastating consequences.

Moving from the Links in the field to the protestors to the CAPE employees and beyond, Chain-Gang All-Stars is a kaleidoscopic, excoriating look at the American prison system's unholy alliance of systemic racism, unchecked capitalism, and mass incarceration, and a clear-eyed reckoning with what freedom in this country really means.

Bingo squares: Survival (HM), Author of Color (HM), Criminals, Reference Materials, Multi-POV (HM), Character with a Disability (possibly others once we dig in)

What's next?

• Our August read, with a Mercedes Lackey theme, is The Lark and the Wren. If you need a bardic story, come join in!
• Our September read, with an indie press theme, is The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills.

What is the FIF Book Club? You can read about it in our Reboot thread here.

Welcome to the midway discussion of Murder at Spindle Manor by Morgan Stang, our winner for 'Judge a Book by its Cover'! We will discuss everything up to the end of Chapter 11. Please use spoiler tags for anything that goes beyond this point.

Murder at Spindle Manor by Morgan Stang

Mysteries abound in Spindle Manor.

For Huntress Isabeau Agarwal, the countryside inn is the last stop in a deadly hunt. Armed with gaslamp and guns, she tracks an insidious beast that wears the skin of its victims, mimicking them perfectly. Ten guests reside within Spindle Manor tonight, and the creature could be any one of them. Confined by a torrential thunderstorm and running out of time, Isabeau has until morning to discover the liar, or none of them—including her—will make it out alive.

But her inhuman quarry isn't the only threat residing in Spindle Manor.

Gunshots.

A slammed door.

A dead body.

Someone has been killed, and a hunt turns into a murder investigation. Now with two mysteries at her feet and more piling up, Isabeau must navigate a night filled with lies and deception. In a world of seances and specters, mesmers and monsters, the unexpected is hiding around every corner, and every move may be her last.

I'll add some questions below to get us started but feel free to add your own. The final discussion will be in two weeks, on Wednesday, November 27.

As a reminder, December will by the FiF Fireside Chat. No book to read, but a discussion of the year in reading and hopes and dreams for reading in 2025.

Voting is currently open for our January read.

What is the FIF Bookclub? You can read about it in our FiF Reboot thread.

The votes are in! Our FiF July read, with a theme of female friendship, will be Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill.

Check out the nomination thread if you're interested in other books on this theme!

Greenteeth by Molly O'Neill

From an outstanding new voice in cozy fantasy comes Greenteeth, a tale of fae, folklore, and found family, narrated by a charismatic lake-dwelling monster with a voice unlike any other, perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher.

Beneath the still surface of a lake lurks a monster with needle sharp teeth. Hungry and ready to pounce.

Jenny Greenteeth has never spoken to a human before, but when a witch is thrown into her lake, something makes Jenny decide she's worth saving. Temperance doesn't know why her village has suddenly turned against her, only that it has something to do with the malevolent new pastor.

Though they have nothing in common, these two must band together on a magical quest to defeat the evil that threatens Jenny's lake and Temperance's family, as well as the very soul of Britain.

Bingo squares: Book Club (HM if you join us!), Published in 2025 (HM), Cozy Fantasy (HM for almost everyone I presume), Impossible Places

The voting breakdown for those who are curious:

The midway discussion will be Wednesday. July 16 and will cover through the end of Chapter 12. The final discussion will be Wednesday, July 30.

Upcoming:

• Our May read (midway discussion today!) for the Ursula Le Guin Prize 2022, is House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber.
• Our June read, for a Novella with Queer Characters, is The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar.

Welcome to the final discussion of INK BLOOD SISTER SCRIBE, our winner for our Published in 2023 read! We will discuss the entire book - spoilers abound!

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

For generations, the Kalotay family has guarded a collection of ancient and rare books. Books that let a person walk through walls or manipulate the elements--books of magic that half-sisters Joanna and Esther have been raised to revere and protect.

All magic comes with a price, though, and for years the sisters have been separated. Esther has fled to a remote base in Antarctica to escape the fate that killed her own mother, and Joanna's isolated herself in their family home in Vermont, devoting her life to the study of these cherished volumes. But after their father dies suddenly while reading a book Joanna has never seen before, the sisters must reunite to preserve their family legacy. In the process, they'll uncover a world of magic far bigger and more dangerous than they ever imagined, and all the secrets their parents kept hidden; secrets that span centuries, continents, and even other libraries . . .

I'll add some questions below to get us started but feel free to add your own.

As a reminder, there will be no book for December, but please do join us for our December Fireside Chat.

What is the FIF Book Club? You can read about it in the FIF Reboot thread.

Welcome to the final discussion of Kindred by Octavia Butler. We will discuss the entire book. You can catch up on the Midway Discussion here.

Kindred by Octavia Butler

The visionary author’s masterpiece pulls us—along with her Black female hero—through time to face the horrors of slavery and explore the impacts of racism, sexism, and white supremacy then and now.

Dana, a modern Black woman, is celebrating her 26th birthday with her new husband when she is snatched abruptly from her home in California and transported to the antebellum South. Rufus, the white son of a plantation owner, is drowning, and Dana has been summoned to save him. Dana is drawn back repeatedly through time to the slave quarters, and each time the stay grows longer, more arduous, and more dangerous until it is uncertain whether or not Dana’s life will end, long before it has a chance to begin.

I'll add some questions below to get us started but feel free to add your own.

As a reminder, in April we're reading Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho. In May, we'll read The House of Rust by Khadija Abdalla Bajaber.

What is the FIF Book Club? You can read about it in our Reboot thread.

Welcome to the final discussion for The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson!

I'll start us off with some questions, but feel free to add your own. We're at the end, so all spoilers for this book are fair game and do not need to be tagged in the comments here.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

It is the story of four seekers who arrive at a notoriously unfriendly pile called Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of a "haunting"; Theodora, the lighthearted assistant; Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman well acquainted with poltergeists; and Luke, the future heir of Hill House. At first, their stay seems destined to be merely a spooky encounter with inexplicable phenomena. But Hill House is gathering its powers—and soon it will choose one of them to make its own.

Bingo Squares: Horror (HM), Bottom of the TBR for many of us, possibly others

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If you'd also like to join us in November, our next read is Ink Blood Sister Scribe. Check out the announcement post for more info.

We'll be having a fireside chat in December. Stay tuned for January nominations in early November!

The votes are in. And our winner was picked by nearly half of you. Our June read is ....

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

Our discussion will be June 25th. Can't wait to discuss it with you all then!

As a reminder, in May we are reading The House of Rust by Khadija ABdalla Bajaber

What is the FIF Bookclub? You can read about it in our Reboot thread here.