MUÑECA, sapphic gothic tale in 1960s Oakland

MUÑECA
CYNTHIA GÓMEZ
G.P. Putnam's Sons (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A vivid, surreal Gothic about a queer, Latine, working class witch who sets out to rescue a bespelled heiress and loses control of her powers and her heart in the process.

It is 1968 Oakland, and Natalia Fuentes has been hearing rumors about the beautiful Violeta Miramontes. The young heiress to Spanish colonial wealth has been left paralyzed by a mysterious illness. But Nati knows a thing or two about witchcraft, and she is certain that this is the work of dark magic.

Armed with a plan to break the spell and earn a handsome reward, Nati works her way into the house as Violeta’s caretaker, and immediately discovers her suspicions are true. But who cursed Violeta? And why?

As feelings between the two women bloom into romance, Nati grows more and more reckless, and is forced to face her own ghosts—ones she hoped would stay gone forever.

Riveting and richly layered, Muñeca explores how far one will go to save the person they love—even if that means damning themselves. Cynthia Gómez fills her debut novel with moments that chill your bones and warm your heart, a razor-sharp examination of deep-rooted issues that will haunt readers long after the last page is turned.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Oakland, California, gets very little love in the literary world. From Gertrude Stein's famous "there is no there there" quip to this very day, Oakland is mostly just the place that's across the bay from San Francisco. This novella/short novel (under 200pp) is set there in 1968, a fraught time before Stonewall ignited the gay-rights movement but after the Black Panther Party was founded there. Oakland was bubbling and seething with the energy of change that so spectacularly fizzled out in the malaise of the 1970s.

Nati is the perfect PoV for a supernatural suspense novel set in 1968 Oakland: she's a closeted lesbian with a hidden extraordinary ability, heir to a line of women who work outside the norms of their society...their white society, the Overculture whose very definition creates or at least delineates repressive, controlling, often authoritarian conformity. Nati does not live within the Overculture's rules though she largely disappears into its strictures by hiding in plain sight. She takes her revenge on those who keep her down because she's a brown-skinned woman by nibbling at the edges, by not accepting what she must obey, by taking a bit here and there. Her chance to exact serious revenge on her late mother's former employers is her cue to grab more for herself.

Only that more proves to be the love and the essence of the family, Violeta. A trapped woman subject to a greedy man's whims, an heiress and a pawn, Violeta is the path for Nati's revenge to manifest itself in the world. Gothic hero stuff ensues as Violeta is the gothic heroine all helpless and needing rescue from a lingering death. Nati does everything she can to break Violeta out of her helplessness, using her not-ordinary familial talents and learning in a 1968 that dismisses suchlike goins-on.

The novellaness of the story shows to disadvantage here. In the rush to resolve Violeta's disability, Nati is kept very busy indeed. She's actively working her magic, she's taking responsibilities in Violeta's life, she's even willing to do the dark work of self-healing. It means I felt knackered by the end of the read, there was so much happening in a tight window of time.

It's a four-star read because I was too tired to press the button for a fifth star. I was delighted by Nati, by her craft and her craftiness. I really wanted to spend more time with her, maybe just hang out while learning about her childhood in and around the Miramontes clan when her mama worked for them, learning about her earlier life with the class divide rigidly in place.

Still and finally a solidly fun sapphic gothic tale of revenge and vengeance and avenging wrongs all happening at once.

OF MONSTERS AND MAINFRAMES, fun and funny space cozy horror story

OF MONSTERS AND MAINFRAMES
BARBARA TRUELOVE
Bindery Books/Ezeekat Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

The Independent Press Top 40 Bestsellers: Fiction For the week ending June 2, 2026

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: LA Times Bestseller ** 2025 Goodreads Choice Award Finalist ** Spotify Best Book of the Year

Spaceships aren’t programmed to seek revenge—but for Dracula, Demeter will make an exception.

Demeter just wants to do her job: shuttling humans between Earth and Alpha Centauri. Unfortunately, her passengers keep dying—and not from equipment failures, as her AI medical system, Steward, would have her believe. These are paranormal murders, and they began when one nasty, ancient vampire decided to board Demeter and kill all her humans.

To keep from getting decommissioned, Demeter must join forces with her own team of monsters: A werewolf. An engineer built from the dead. A pharaoh with otherworldly powers. A vampire with a grudge. A fleet of cheerful spider drones. Together, this motley crew will face down the ultimate evil—Dracula.

The queer love child of pulp horror and classic sci-fi, Of Monsters and Mainframes is a dazzling, heartfelt odyssey that probes what it means to be one of society’s monsters—and explores the many types of friendship that make us human.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I remember The Ship Who Sang cycle of stories from the 1960s. Anne McCaffrey'se sentient ship made me both shudder...what a horrifying fate, to be trapped in a partial life as the brains of a machine!...and thrill...no bodily death! incredible adventures no way you'd have otherwise!, but I never once thought of that ship being thought of by its peers and its employers as a possible serial killer. What a cool twist, I thought as I downloaded the DRC. Even cooler because she's named after the ship that brings Dracula to Whitby! And Dracula in space? A cast of Universal Studios monsters helping Demeter clear her name? Hell to the yeah!

Using an AI in place of McCaffrey's human brain while adding a medical AI (called Steward) as a foil, an equal rival, the story gets all the squicked-by-Humankind fun of Murderbot and all the pathos of the misunderstood Other trying to live its life out as it sees fit with the technology-based humor (the AI runs on battery packs, with humorous possibilities well-mined by Truelove) that keeps you on the readerly hop.

It was fun, it was funny, it was a good afternoon's entertainment. I was never inclined to put it down, I wanted to know "...and then what?" but, honestly, it was light on larger ideas so I can't go much over three-and-a-half stars. It's the kind of book I'll recommend for SF fans who aren't squeamish (or arachnophobic) because the counterpoint to the humor is horror. It's a niche that will, I suspect, attract imitators because it goes down so easy.

A story that really does a good job of wiling away a few hours most pleasantly. Don't expect your mind to be blown and make sure the genre is agreeable (very low steam in the romance department, too), and you're okay with spiders and a dose of gore less than a Stephen Graham Jones novel but still there. Smiles await you if those are all true.

BLACK SALT QUEEN, non-Western woman-led fantasy for successful (self-)gifting

BLACK SALT QUEEN (Letters from Maynara #1)
SAMANTHA BANSIL
Bindery Books | Violetear (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$3.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.75* of five

The Publisher Says: There can be no victory without betrayal.

Hara Duja Gatdula, queen of the island nation of Maynara, holds the divine power to move the earth. But her strength is failing and the line of succession gives her little comfort. Her heir, Laya, is a danger—a petty and passionate princess who wields the enormous power of the skies with fickle indifference. Circling the throne is Imeria Kulaw—the matriarch of a traitorous rival family who wields recklessly enhanced powers of her own—with designs to secure a high-ranking position for her son and claim the crown for her family. Each woman has a secret weakness—a lover, a heartbreak, a lie. But each is willing to pay the steepest price to bring down her rivals once and for all.

Filled with passion, romance, betrayal, and divine magic, Black Salt Queen journeys to a gorgeous precolonial island nation where women—and secrets—reign.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Filipina Author Bansil gives us a gorgeously written, beautifully described fantasy epic in a secondary world that feels fresh to me. I'm not the biggest reader of fantasy...I've lost fifty pounds!...but mostly it's because I am *mortally*tired* of Eurocentric settings that retell European history plus magic. I'm old, I studied history, I read about history, so I'm maybe a bit jaded because I read mostly European slants on the world's broad sweep of history. The problem with being an Anglophone reader is it has too little variety of subject and viewpoint. We need more translated non-fiction, fiction, trashy novels, sci fi...everything.

This book doesn't need to be translated, nor does it need to be viewed through any lens but that of fantasy worldbuilding. It's rooted in precolonial Philippine culture, adding fantasy elements; this is a part of world history I'll bet big money most of my fellow old white people have less knowledge of this cultural milieu than they do of Middle Earth...very few of y'all need any context to know who Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf, Legolas are or represent.

Getting onto fantasy worlds requires investing into the worldbuilding required for you to feel mise-en-scène. When someone doesn't enjoy that process' iteration in a particular work, they call it "infodumping." The first third or so of this story is more worldbuilding and conflict-establishing narrative. I enjoyed it, though I know the pace suffers for its necessary thoroughness. (The drug, akin to Dune's spice, that enables the powerful to wield their powers, is more present than the powers themselves.) Shorthand available to Eurocentric story settings isn't ready to hand here.

My favorite quality of the story told here, first in a projected series that I very much want to happen, is that every power-wielding woman in this story is aware of her power's cost, to her and to those she uses it for and on. They are women, not girls learning the ropes as is so deeply, tediously common. They've ruled their world for a while, they're now being responsible and planning for the succession to power as they realize mortality is no longer distant. Imeria and Duja are shrewd, flawed people with many problems to solve, many characters to assess, many judgments to render. (Note to Duja: think twice about your idea of Laya.)

I would give the book all five stars but for the straight "romance" building up for Laya. It's not gonna work out, which is not my problem with it; it's that the two are waaay too young to be in this situation and Duja is, perhaps calculatedly, not helping Laya figure anything out. It's a niggle, really, because I can certainly see why this happens; it's just...well...to me, it's brutal to play with people you *can* help out.

So that's my missing quarter star explained. I think, on balance, I'd eagerly push this story at fantasy readers fourteen and up, slightly more to women than men. Any younger giftee whose taste you're passingly familiar with would be a good target for receiving one.

VEN.CO, sapphic Indigenous fantasy drenched in gynergy to keep you sane this Yule

VEN.CO
CHERIE DIMALINE
William Morrow (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$12.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Lucky St. James, a Métis millennial living with her cantankerous but loving grandmother Stella, is barely hanging on when she discovers she will be evicted from their tiny Toronto apartment. Then, one night, something strange and irresistible calls out to Lucky. Burrowing through a wall, she finds a silver spoon etched with a crooked-nosed witch and the word SALEM, humming with otherworldly energy.

Hundreds of miles away in Salem, Myrna Good has been looking for Lucky. Myrna works for VenCo, a front company fueled by vast resources of dark money.

Lucky is familiar with the magic of her indigenous ancestors, but she has no idea that the spoon links her to VenCo’s network of witches throughout North America. Generations of witches have been waiting for centuries for the seven spoons to come together, igniting a new era, and restoring women to their rightful power.

But as reckoning approaches, a very powerful adversary is stalking their every move. He’s Jay Christos, a roguish and deadly witch-hunter as old as witchcraft itself.

To find the last spoon, Lucky and Stella embark on a rollicking and dangerous road trip to the darkly magical city of New Orleans, where the final showdown will determine whether VenCo will usher in a new beginning…or remain underground forever.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: VenCo, a front corporation for a CoVen (get it?) is a really fun gynergetic fantasy of what it would take to overwhelm the patriarchy and restore women to power.

Do you need something else to get one for this hijacked-by-jesus (who has a sly off-kilter cameo) sacred solstice holiday?

How about this: Lucky, our PoV character, is at a low ebb when we meet her...she's been struggling along, caring for her dementia-ridden paternal grandmother, scraping the money to survive, and now...the capitalist axe comes down, they're losing their home. Relatable, if in a grim way, to most all of us in or after middle age. Plot twist: It's now that Lucky discovers she's a witch, and the coven that's forming needs her...but not in Toronto, in New Orleans. The coven is forming to bring the world that Lucky's been angry with for most of her life, patriarchal racist exploitive horror that it is, to an end. She's got to assist the assembled women...including transfem Freya, explicitly accepted as a woman...in locating and assembling the spoons that'll generate the power they need to accomplish the task.

There are lots of names that don't always have solid characters attached, there is a notable holeyness to the plot, there is a powerful aura of wish fulfillment here. There is also an even-handed treatment of adversarial relationships. There is a demonization of Patriarchy, it's true, but not (to my surprise) of men.

The reason I gave it four stars is that this story was just plain fun to read. I wish it had been a wee tiny tidge tighter of plot. I'm not going to hold it up as a best of my reading year book. But I loved feeling so at home with Lucky, her deeply stressful life, and her middlescent discovery of her powers and her purpose. I thoroughly agree, in 2024, with the need to smash the Patriarchy and all its boosters and adherents. I was deeply gruntled by the transfem Freya simply...being...unremarkably one of the coven.

If you're going to be among the unenlightened, even the benighted, this coming Yule, bring this on your Kindle. You'll have an escape into a much nicer version of the world at hand, and a little spirit boost as the impending events of 2025 loom ever larger.