"Siren Queen" by Nghi Vo (2022)

 **Asian-American, feminist, queer, but more than anything else just a badass dark fantasy about what you can do when they refuse to let you into your club.  You can make them let you in**

If you're friends with me, you probably already know how much I love this author.  I will read any- and everything that Nghi Vo writes, and you can count on more of her books showing up on this blog in the future.  Every world she creates, she imbues with magic--not the hard-and-fast system of magic that a Sanderson writes, but a magic that permeates the entire story.  Her books rarely have people throwing fireballs or summoning eldritch horrors.  Instead, the magic of her stories flickers on the edge of sight and disappears when you turn your head; it's a hum, constant and quiet, that you quickly forget is there until you put the book down and realize its absence in this boring, mundane world.  She never loredumps the system of magic, because for her, magic isn't something that she needs to explain any more than a fish needs to explain water.  It simply exists

And this book in particular.  To be clear, “Siren Queen” is literally one of the best works of fiction I've ever read. I don't really know how else to put it, I can steal from what I've written about it previously: It takes something so American, pre-Code Hollywood in all its glory, and makes it queer and feminist and very very much Asian-American lit. And it infuses it all with magic: The dark magic of those willing to make deals and the shining bright magic of those whose conviction let them become something bigger than a mere human. Some of this magic is "real" magic, fires that shoot up into the sky; some of it is the metaphor of any industry this large warping the world around it; and some of it it's hard to tell which, because hasn't Hollywood always tried to blur those lines?

Into this world of shining stars and demonic deals enters our main character, a young Asian-American woman with dreams of seeing her name in lights.  She's an outsider thrice-over, as a woman, Asian, and lesbian.  And she has no illusions about how the world views her and treats her:

"I daresay that there are a dozen girls prettier than you walking around on Ord Street.” [said the talent scout]

It hurt less than you might think. “Pretty” was a word that could come before “chink bitch” just as easily as anything else.

This could have been a very different book.  It could have been a book about her destroying the system, and I have no doubt that Vo could have pulled it off.  But instead, she chooses to have her main character (known to the world as Luli Wei, although that is not her name.  We never learn her name, sometimes a true name needs to be sacrificed:  "Of course I had a name.  I still do.  It's mine, and now I keep it in a carnelian box, hinged and clasped with gold [ . . . ] I take it out and look at it sometimes") join the system, try to become a star and get her name in the sky.  And that makes this a very different book

I loved this book because of the way she forces them to let her be a star--by embracing her inner monster. Because when our main character gets her break, finally has a hand to negotiate with the studio, she gives them her demands:

“What do you want?” he asked, his voice dry and papery.

Everything, I could have said, but I only smiled. 

“Let’s start with what you’re never, ever going to do to me.” No maids, no accents, no sham marriage, no more attempts to replace me with imitations, and then I paused. 

Su Tong Lin had never gotten to ride off in the sunset with a handsome hero, and now that I had the chance, I wasn’t sure I wanted to. 

“Monsters, however, are just fine,” I said finally. “I’d like to see more monsters.”

What an unbelievably good book.  This is a book about a woman who doesn't belong, who walks into a world of men who have sold their souls (perhaps literally) to create a system that is designed to take her and people like her and drain them dry (again, perhaps literally) for power.  And she refuses to let them:  "I would much rather be a monster than a victim"

If they won’t let you into their club as a heroine, then become a monster and make room for yourself that way.

I loved this book

I thumbed through the script cautiously, waiting for the moment the siren fell in love with the grizzled captain, but I found nothing. She was a monster straight through. She never stopped trying to kill the man who had destroyed her world and killed her family, not until a stray bullet aimed at her enormous sea serpent caught her in the chest. She died hissing with hate, and I smiled.

"She died hissing with hate, and I smiled" is maybe my favorite single line I’ve read in years