“An American Marriage” is multiple stories wrapped together, and I don’t say that because there are three POV characters. You have the messy relationships of Celestial and Roy, Andre and Celestial, and then the relationships between them and their parents all under a magnifying lens highlighting every flaw. Then you have the story of the gross injustice in our justice system that incarcerates a disproportionate amount of Black and Brown men, and how that incarceration upends not just their lives, but the lives of their families and disrupts a whole community. Sometimes, these two stories came together, and other times they didn’t, which made this book hard for me to put my finger on if I liked it in its entirety, or just certain parts. So, let’s talk about the characters first and the “romance” aspect. Beware, this is a long one!

Rarely do I think reading a book synopsis is all that necessary before I start a book, but for “Gearteeth” I highly recommend you do so. The western feeling steampunk world starts off already deep in the lore, the “after” of the event that forced people into the skies, following lightning storms in order to keep their floating cities sky bound and away from the deadly beasts below. We follow Elijah, a brakeman on one of these massive trains used to collect lightning. He’s very much a southern gentleman, which is partially why this book had such a south western vibe to it. The world was fascinating with a heavy dose of conspiracy theories that fit really well with the Edison vs Tesla alternate history, so I enjoyed the twist this story took with that. Tesla is the the lesser of two evils here with his ability to harness lightning which both gave rise to these cities, and birthed a cult as well. But for as much as I liked Elijah and the uniqueness of the werewolves in this setting, the pacing did not always match the story.

The elements that I loved about the first Emily Wilde book are still present in this story and I couldn’t be happier. Emily is still a delightfully grumpy scholar, which is still the perfect foil to Wendell’s lackadaisical sunshine viewpoint of the world. Their banter is still adorable and so fun. Emily is still single minded with her research, for the most part, but in the “Map of the Otherlands” we finally see Emily grow more emotionally, occasionally. Our girl still has work to do. But in this book, Emily, Wendell, and her niece all embark to Austria in search of Wendell’s Faerie door, which will finally lead him back to his home kingdom. But before they get very far in their search, assassin’s sent by his step-mother, and a threat from Emily’s professorial supervisor immediately complicate things and make the journey all the more urgent.

I still love this series even if I didn’t fall head over heels for the second book in the Fallen Gods Trilogy as much as the first. In “Sunbringer” we see just how quickly Elo and Inara crumble without Kissen there to be their guiding backbone, and we see Skedi learn to resist the irresistible: offerings made to the gods. Each character battles more with their own betrayal and grief (except Kissen, who actually just battles fanatics most of the time) and just how destructive blind rage can be even with good intentions. We also get the added POV of Arren, which didn’t always feel that necessary to me, to show that while, yes some gods are actually good, there was still a good reason why the humans went to war with them to begin with. Namely, a lot of the remaining gods continue to manipulate and destroy those that follow them. It truly does show, mainly through the gods as the perfect embodiment, of how absolute power always corrupts absolutely. And while I genuinely loved that, I still didn’t love this as much as “Godkiller”.

It’s taken me a minute to really organize my thoughts when it comes to “Godkiller”. And even then, they don’t seem very organized… Anyway, with a book with 4 (yes, four) POV characters, I wasn’t really expecting the story to be as good as the gorgeous cover suggested. Especially when one of the main characters is a very angry woman. I love angry women! But it’s so rare for an author to write an angry woman without her being unlikable as a character, or for them to have no morals when it comes to their vengeance and are therefore kind of the villain. Not so in this book! Kissen’s anger is righteous and beautiful and so constant that she’s learned to power through the trauma while not ignoring the atrocities she survived. I instantly loved her! But she’s only part of the reason why this is probably my favorite read of the year. Coming in at just under the wire for 2024, too.