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The Empress of All Seasons by Emiko Jean

Each generation, a competition is held to find the next empress of Honoku. The rules are simple. Survive the palace's enchanted seasonal rooms. Conquer Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall. Marry the prince. All are eligible to compete--all except yokai, supernatural monsters and spirits whom the human emperor is determined to enslave and destroy. Mari has spent a lifetime training to become empress. Winning should be easy. And it would be, if she weren't hiding a dangerous secret. Mari is a yokai with the ability to transform into a terrifying monster. If discovered, her life will be forfeit. As she struggles to keep her true identity hidden, Mari's fate collides with that of Taro, the prince who has no desire to inherit the imperial throne, and Akira, a half-human, half-yokai outcast. Torn between duty and love, loyalty and betrayal, vengeance and forgiveness, the choices of Mari, Taro, and Akira will decide the fate of Honoku in this beautifully written, edge-of-your-seat YA...
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The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin (Inheritance, #1)

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms plays with the shape of power, winding it like a strand of hair on one finger with a slowly widening grin, esui; terrifying and sensual. The stuff of gods, crammed and cramped until they creak and groan as pages turn: Read this.

I loved this book. I tend to be positive about the books I read, but I truly loved this book. The gods have qualities I normally see in depictions of the fae, while also being sufficiently different and complex as to be their own kinds of entities. They are essences, understandable in some ways but inscrutable in some very important ways. Sieh, in particular, is handled very well, his behavior has consistency, but the way in which we are led to interpret it as part of a whole is shaped by Yeine's slowly shifting understanding of life in Sky. The interstitial narration is really good, it makes sense even before you learn (or figure out) why it's happening.

This book is very good and I'm very excited to see what happens in the next one. It ended so well that if it were a stand-alone book I could be content, but I want to spend more time in this world, preferable with these characters.

CW for incest, enslavement, torture, discussion of sexual assault, body horror, gore, death, major character death.

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