Title: The Black Coast (The God-King Chronicles #1)
Author: Mike Brooks (no relation to me; though in addition to sharing the same last name, he identifies as queer and partially deaf, while I am gay and hard of hearing. I promise you we are not the same person.)
Rating: 4/5

Are there LGBTQ+ characters? Several, but none are (at this point in the series) point of view characters. There is also a fair amount of playing with pronouns.

Brief summary / book review: One of the first things I like to do when I get a book, especially if it’s been out for a while, is to look at the year it was published. Context matters a whole lot. Let’s take two examples: “The Forever War” was written in the 1970s, while “The City We Became” came out in 2020. Why does that matter? “The Forever War” is about the sense of alienation the main character feels in experiencing how his home has changed while he was fighting a pointless, distant war; its potency lies in the fact that it is a clear analogy for the Vietnam war. When “The City We Became” hits a certain age, readers will have to place the context in which Jemisin was writing the book to better understand the crystalline rage that’s threaded throughout, and her sharp critiques of racism, capitalism, police brutality, and more. Her book was written in response to a very specific moment.

So what does this have to do with “The Black Coast”?

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