Siren Queen

[psocoptera]

Siren Queen, Nghi Vo, 2022 novel. This was so good. Fantasy Golden Age Hollywood - a young Chinese girl in Los Angeles falls in love with the movies and tries to make it as an actress while avoiding evil magic, the Wild Hunt, etc. Everything else might count as spoilers. Interesting parallels to Babel - Chinese main characters whose original names we never get to know, navigating a power structure in which they will always be an outsider - but very different takes on the ultimate possibility of making a place and finding happiness. (Or maybe just different settings, the inertia of the British Empire vs the innovation of Hollywood.) Also parallels to Even Though I Knew the End, the glimpse of lesbian culture, the repression, the glamor of the clubs, silk dresses, butches in suits. (But about a decade earlier here, I think.) I really liked the way Vo handled the worldbuilding, nothing is ever over-explained, just exactly enough to let us get an idea, and some really nice use of familiar fairy-tale elements. I didn't really know where I thought the book might be going, and I loved the climax so much - that her moment of becoming a star, her immortality, was in this first filmed lesbian kiss (I liked that Vo was vague about what *exactly* which first it was, so as to not take it away from the real-life people, I suppose, but that's definitely how I read it). And the way it takes the three of them, Luli and Emmaline to do it and Tara to have written it (but I also like that none of them have to be her final partner, I always appreciate stories where people get to have multiple loves and I liked getting the various hints about Jane and finally getting to meet Jane a little bit at the end). Anyways, it was just so good, I was getting all teary at the end. (On the playground of course. Inevitably.)