My Favorite Things: Emmy Wins, Fairy Tale Novellas, and Renegade Urban Fantasy

They might not be raindrops on roses or whiskers on kittens, but that doesn’t mean that we love them any less. Welcome back to My Favorite Things, a weekly column where we gab about the greatest in geek. This week includes a long awaited Emmy win for one of Speculative Chic’s favorite actresses, a novella where fairy tales meet reality, and a genre bending urban fantasy book. Read on for more!

Shara’s Favorite Thing is… Tatiana Maslany’s Emmy Win!

It should come as no surprise to anyone who’s reading my Orphan Black rewatch, but my absolute favorite thing was Tatiana Maslany finally winning the Emmy for Best Actress this year. I spent the whole day assuming there was no way the Academy would recognize such a small science fiction show with a cult following, but I started getting really hopeful during the broadcast. I can’t put my finger on what it was, exactly: the gorgeous dress she was wearing (compared to last year’s interesting but underwhelming white suit) or the fact that the Academy chose to also recognize first-time nominee and now Best Actor winner Rami Malek for his work on Mr. Robot. But after he won, I suddenly just knew this had to be Maslany’s year. I know I’ve sung her praises over and over on this blog, but consider the number of roles she played on Orphan Black in season four alone, let alone the whole series. Tatiana Maslany is putting in a lifetime’s worth of work into a single show, and she makes each character as true and vivid and effortless as breathing.

And my favorite part of this favorite thing? Maslany’s excitement and shock at winning. There was no smoothly prepared acceptance speech for her, but once she got her wits about her, she said the best, best thing: “I feel so lucky to be on a show that puts women at the center.”

Janicu’s Favorite Thing is… Every Heart a Doorway!

Last week I went by my local library and stumbled on Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. Seanan McGuire is one of my favorite authors, but nowadays I’m very behind on all things bookish, so I had no idea that this new release existed. The back blurb begins, “Together, they walked across the property: the girl, the boy, and the dancing skeleton wrapped in rainbows.” It then goes on to describe a mysterious woman named Eleanor West who refuses to sell any of the land around her school. If you guessed this story was about the weird boarding school run by Eleanor, you’d be right. I don’t really want to go into what types of children are admitted into this school because I think it’s better to go in blind, but I will say that yet again McGuire manages to combine fairy tales with reality and created something that is simultaneously wondrous and tragic. The consequences for ordinary people when they’re involved with the otherworldly is a repeating theme in McGuire’s work, but there was something about how this was paired with a collection of misfits finding a place to belong that hit me with all of the feels. I highly recommend picking this one up. At 176 pages (Hardcover), this is a short read, but oh so powerful.

P.S. While this works well as a standalone, it is part of the Wayward Children series. The second book, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, will be published June 2017, and is set prior to Every Heart a Doorway.

Tez’s Favorite Thing is… Renegade!

I’d become a bit disenchanted with urban fantasy in the past few months…which is a problem when you write for Speculative Chic. Thankfully, a book came around to restore my interest in the sub-genre.

Donna Boyd’s Renegade is the third novel in the Devoncroix saga. I read the first two about fifteen years ago. My recall is not great at the best of times, so of course I remembered nothing from what I’d read as a teenager.

Not to worry, as Renegade works perfectly as a stand-alone. I had trouble getting into it at first, but then got sucked into the tale of werewolves, wealth, rituals, genetic experiments…and the Global Financial Crisis.

Bet you didn’t expect that – neither did I!

What was your favorite thing of the week? Let us know in the comments.