A Jungle of Tales

  Recommended for those whose favorite parts of ‘Game of Thrones’ was the political intrigue, but who wished it had more lesbians and bi girls 1 ! This Chinese web novel isn’t perfect – some bits could have been tightened up if it wasn't released in serialized format, while the lack of an official translation probably contributed to the English prose feeling a bit clunky in places. However, the central story about the princess of a nomadic tribe (posing as a man), going undercover to seek revenge for her people only to fall in love with her enemy’s daughter had me on the edge of my seat the whole way through, and the political and economic worldbuilding that largely creates that tension was really good.   1. There’s 2 main F/F pairs, and several minor Sapphic side-plots. I did have a moment where I thought: “Wait, does EVERY daughter in both these families like women?” – but that’s not actually as statistically improbable as some might think (there is so...

                I was excited to pick this book up because as a kid I’d learned about the pink river dolphins of the Amazon and the legends of them being seductive shapeshifters and was interested to find out more. And I did…sort of. Botos are, it turns out, quite hard to study because the waters where they live are often murky and they don’t tend to leap spectacularly out of it like other dolphins do. There is a lot that even scientists who have spent their whole lives studying them don’t know. So much of this book is the author’s own fish-out-of-water story of traveling around the Amazon basin trying to see dolphins – and eventually succeeding – and, in the meantime, having various tropical travel mishaps and learning about other animals and about the mythology surrounding botos. The writing style is beautiful, evocative, and sensual…which suits the primary subject of the book, but does get a little...