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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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I Am Legend by Richard Matheson

Robert Neville is the last living man on Earth...but he is not alone. Every other man, woman, and child on Earth has become a vampire, and they are all hungry for Neville's blood.

By day, he is the hunter, stalking the sleeping undead through the abandoned ruins of civilization. By night, he barricades himself in his home and prays for dawn.

How long can one man survive in a world of vampires?

CONTRIBUTOR(S): Robertson Dean
PUBLISHER: Blackstone Publishing
YEAR: 1954
LENGTH: 317 pages (11 hours)
AGE: Adult
GENRE: Classics, Horror, Science Fiction
RECOMMENDED: N/A

General Vibe: What if the end of the world sucked because there are no more non-deadly women to fuck?

DNF 3% in.

Having heard for years that the book "I Am Legend" is much better than the movie (which I liked), I tried the book.

Holy crap, that was a quick DNF. The (cis, white, male) protagonist's main complaint about maybe being the last human is how it made him involuntarily celibate. Written in the 1950's, this has not aged well. Also, his reaction to vampire babes moaning sexily outside his window is to be upset about how much he wants to but can't/shouldn't fuck them. I like sexy vampires. I like unsexy vampires. I do not care for man complaining that sexy vampires are a trap.  I stopped after the weird thought exercise about whether vampires are worse than the mothers of politicians and arms manufacturers, distillers, and pornographers. 

The one thing I will grant it is that the audiobook narrator did a great job, their narration reinforced the trapped feeling of his perspective, how much he focuses his thoughts on emotionally safe pathways (for him), and tries to avoid his distress. Unfortunately those pathways are sexist as fuck. 

Moderate CW for sexism, misogyny, cursing, grief, alcohol, drug use, medical content, injury detail, child death, death.

Minor CW for war.

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A slightly blurry image of vampires with bared fangs, standing in columns stretching into the distance.


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