Permanent Objects

A collection of miscellany

Archives for November 2025

52 IN 52, Book #48: Hinterland by Logan Spurgeon

As much as I really wanted to like this, for me this was a book that had crazy vibes but didn’t fully deliver on them in a way that satisfied me as a reader.

I want to start by saying that the premise is fascinating—we have an amnesiac protagonist who wakes up in some unknown woods with a cultlike group of cannibalistic individuals he doesn’t seem to know, and is immediately drawn into their plot to reach the top of a sacred mountain and resurrect the old gods of the world. The language and word choices that create setting are gorgeous, and they paint a vivid picture of the stark, claustrophobic, unfamiliar landscape through which the characters are moving. The way the cannibalism scenes (of which there are many) are described in a way that genuinely turned my stomach a couple of times, and I’m a pretty unflinching reader in general.

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52 IN 52, Book #44: Cry, Voidbringer by Elaine Ho

I admit I’m kind of struggling to figure out how to rate this book, because while it was beautifully written and experimental in very fun and engaging ways, it was also fucking devastating and I don’t think I’m likely to reread again because my heart can only handle so much! 

I feel like the best word I can use to describe this book is “messy.” I don’t mean that in a negative way, in fact quite the opposite — the messiness of the interpersonal relationships, the politics of the world, and the characters’ internal motivations is actually really compelling, and I think that messiness does a lot to drive the story forward. Hammer is so jaded that she’s completely unable to be optimistic or hopeful about the world or her place in it; Naias is so blinded by her ambition that she doesn’t realize that it’s not possible for the oppressed to gain their liberation by convincing the oppressor to like them. And in the end, none of them are able to escape the yoke of empire.

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52 IN 52, Book #43: Dionysus in Wisconsin by E.H. Lupton

I picked this book up genuinely at random off the recommendation of a stranger in a TikTok comment section and then I read the whole thing in 4 hours. This book was genuinely so much fun? Once again, I love a concept that really makes me go “How did you even think of this?” and in this case, an iteration of 1969 Madison, WI but with magic and demigods really made me ask that question. 

My likes: The magic in this world was interesting and complex but also not fully explained, which somehow just made it feel even more realistic, like the characters have no need to mull on how magic works because it’s just such a normal part of their lives. 

I also was a little worried, based on the time period, that there would be quite a bit more overt homophobia, and I was pleased to be wrong about that—there are some oblique intimations that maybe someone else out there might care about two men in a relationship, but none of that ever shows up from a key character, not even the ones with whom the MCs have tense relationships. As someone who generally prefers not to run into much homophobia in my fantasy (because there’s enough of it in the real world) that was really refreshing for me. 

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52 IN 52, Book #42: Queen of Faces by Petra Lord

I want to start with the things I liked about this book, beginning with the magic system. This review does contain spoilers so please read cautiously! Thank you to Netgalley and Macmillan for the ARC, which I received in exchange for an honest review.

I was talking to my roommate about how much we struggle with manga like My Hero Academia and Bleach (walk with me, I swear it’s relevant) because it seems that the creator’s solution for writing themselves into a corner is to give the protagonist a new skill out of nowhere that will somehow miraculously aid them in escaping their current circumstances. Aside from the classifications of magic, which were already interesting enough, the thing I liked the most about the magic system is how the skill tree is sort of built in, so there’s an in-world mechanism for leveling up existing skills through practice and circumstance–which in turn makes it much less jarring when those skills do develop! I also like that the magic school isn’t set up as some kind of egalitarian paradise, but rather that it’s acknowledged and wrestled with in the text that there’s privilege in being able to attend Paragon, and that not everyone has an equal shot at acceptance. 

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