When this book came out and I saw the promo for it, somehow I conflated it with another book people were talking about in the same timeframe. This other book was a retelling of The Great Gatsby, with, I think, disaster lesbians? (I need to go look for that book, if it even exists.) Turns out Siren Queen has little to nothing to do with The Great Gatsby. It does have disaster lesbians, though! The Old Hollywood kind.
I've never been a Hollywood person--I wasn't raised on movies or TV at all. Sometimes I joke that I was raised by science fiction novels, and it's sort of true. I've never watched Star Trek or Dr. Who, but I have formative memories of short stories I read in Years Best Science Fiction anthologies from the 70s and 80s that I checked out from the adult section when I was only about four feet tall. So I went into this with high hopes but low expectations for how much I would love it.
Fortunately, while the silver screen is a neutral ground for me, I LOVE disaster lesbians. So much. And I love the liminal spaces where magic comes through, and it turns out this book has convinced me that film is exactly that kind of liminal space. Movie execs sort of are the Wild Hunt. I buy it.
So: this book is really fun and great and you should read it. It's an epic adventure full of silver and bonfires and fae magic, fighting monsters and outwitting the devil. Also features complicated sibling relationships, queer friendships, and performers who literally pull their hearts out of their chests on stage.
I listened to this on audiobook while sewing and videogaming, and the narrator was solid. The prose is extremely vivid, and it held my attention even when I was mostly focusing on handsewing tiny, precise seams.
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