★★★★☆ What if the magic of the movies was magical?

Siren Queen

Nghi Vo

If you read a lot, you may have a "Take my money!" list. It lists the authors whose work you will buy, whenever and however it appears. I have a list like that, and Nghi Vo is on it. She understands the magic of stories and the magic of words and knows, as well as any author I can name, how to cast a spell. I haven't quite read everything that Vo has published, but I'm working on it.

Siren Queen was the first novel she ever wrote. It is not the first novel she published. That was The Chosen and the Beautiful, a darkly magical retelling of The Great Gatsby, and in my opinion an improvement on the original. To me, Siren Queen feels a lot like The Chosen and the Beautiful. Both are stories of queer young women from the Asian diaspora in a familiar setting made unfamiliar by dark and dangerous magic.

In Siren Queen the young woman in question is Chinese-American Luli Wei, and the setting is pre-code Hollywood. We all know of the magic of the movies. In Siren Queen that is more than just a metaphor. Movies are made in a kind of dark Unseelie faery, where the Wild Hunt and the story of Tam Lin are real.

I cannot say how accurately Siren Queen depicts Hollywood. It feels real. The magical parts feel even more real and terrifying than the mundane parts.

Siren Queen on Amazon

Goodreads review

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