TITAA Recs #62: Time & Memory & Magic
Special edition of December recs, because some were so very good. Books, tv, games.
Clearly it was rash to try to do a recs post for December on top of the end of year recs roundup, but there were some significant standouts that I wanted to say more about. Then I got trapped finishing a fantastic game, so this got delayed even more. I hope you aren’t sick of me in your inbox by now!
Books
All 4 of these are strong recs:
⭐️ The Lost Story, by Meg Shaffer (fantasy). A portal story (that’s LGBTQ)! Two boys disappeared and then reappeared in a West Virginia state forest years ago. They went their separate ways — one with no memory of what happened, the other with both memory and a strange ability to find missing things. A young woman asks the latter to find her missing half sister, who vanished in the same park years before they did. To do so, the young men have to get over their quarrel and work together to find the same door again. Honestly, I gobbled it down. Could be considered queer “romantasy.” (CW: child abuse, horror elements.) Samples:
“The crow sang another song full of secrets, for in this world, crows didn’t simply caw. They saw. They saw, and they sang of what they saw.”
“We’re a computer simulation. We’re characters in a storybook left on a train by a girl late for dinner. We’re a dream an ancient god is dreaming, and any minute now…he will wake.” [Don’t let this divert you, it’s fantasy not sf.]