SIREN QUEEN IS OUT SIREN QUEEN IS OUT SIREN QUEEN IS OUT.
Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, let me just say —with more eloquence than a klaxon, at last— that Siren Queen is my top contender for favorite book of the year. (And I say this with Golden Enclaves burning a hole in my TBR list, and Nona bubbling away in my subconscious.)
In a nutshell, Siren Queen re-imagines the Golden Age of Hollywood as a place haunted with fae and horrors, feverish with young starlets hoping for a place in the night sky. Luli Wong, our narrator, wants nothing more than to see her name up in lights, but she’s going to do it her way:
No maids, no funny talking, no fainting flowers.
If you have any familiarity with that time period, you’ll know that time period wasn’t kind to Asians. They were told there wasn’t really any place for them on the big screen save as prostitutes and villains, laborers and servants. And to add insult to injury, these meagre roles sometimes went to white people instead.
(Has this improved since then? A little. A hundred years later, Hollywood is starting to warm up to the idea that Asians can play lead roles.)
Luli, my darling Luli, my fierce and indomitable Luli, of course refuses that fate. She won’t be someone else’s help (although the book takes the time to emphasize there is no shame in taking those roles when you have a family to feed, to protect from the world, something I appreciated greatly), and she won’t be a joke. She wants what she wants, even if it’ll cost her everything.
I loved Siren Queen for so many reasons. For its queerness (how loudly the book reminds us that queer people have always been here, always beautiful, always feral). For the luster of its prose, the lean poetry of Vo’s writing. For the way it marries history to the fantastical. For the way it allows Luli her ambition, how it refuses to succumb to that old trope of, “And because our heroine found love, she realizes that her career isn’t everything.”
I just — please buy it so we can be guaranteed an endless stream of Nghi Vo’s work, thanks.
On an equally queer note, I just finished reading Kelly Robson’s frothy High Times in Low Parliament, which features the irascible Lana Baker, a scribe and a flirt and an absolute raconteur. Baker finds herself being sent to Low Parliament because she didn’t care enough about the price of kisses, and discovers a galling quandary: the Parliament is hung and if it doesn’t come unhung, the fairies will drown everyone there.
It’s a lesbian stoner comedy and a fun satire of our modern political landscape, but also unsettling in how accurately it captures the idea we’re all going to die horribly because those in power can’t do the intelligent and simple thing of making the decision to save our lives. (More specifically, it’s about Brexit, but climate change has been on my mind as of late so I suspect my lens is colored with the dust of our environmental apocalypse.)
Sigh.
I’m in constant awe of Robson, and the emotional breadth of her work. High Times in the Low Parliament is cheerful and sly and provocative, Water of Versailles is mischievous and heartrending and delightful, and A Human Stain is a work of elegant terror that I reread and reread like clockwork because every read seems to reveal something new and unsettling. Some people are just sublime at what they do. Gah.
On a personal note, I’m down with a lightly sprained ankle, which might not even have been a sprained ankle had I went home after slipping on a pinecone. I remember deciding I’d hobble around for a bit to see if the pain would go away, which it did, then ran for 30 minutes with great delight, clocked three miles, and came home to the realization I had a swollen joint. Whoopsy daisy.
Fortunately, the swelling has gone down significantly, and I have full range of motion even if walking around is slightly unpleasant right now. The cats are very determined to keep me lying in bed with them, howling at me whenever I make the mistake of toddling out into the living room. They keep trying to lie against my ankle and purr, which I’m going to take as an attempt to heal me.
Speaking of which, I’m crawling back to bed.
As always, a cat photo:
Wishing the cats all luck in helping you heal. :) And I'm so jealous you got Kelly's book so early! :)
Wishing you a swift recovery! You have the best nurses you can get!