Badass women are running the political stage in a pre-colonial-Filipino-inspired universe. Let me tell you about Black Salt Queen, my summer read that got me back into reading contemporary fantasy. ⚠️ Contains spoilers! Let me first start off by saying that I am no fantasy genre expert. When I read for pleasure I tend to gravitate more towards family sagas, coming-of-age novels and classics. Yet, of course, my taste in books is an ever-changing mish-mash of genres, rivaled in its inconsistency only by my 2025 Spotify Wrapped. From John Steinbeck to Miranda July, and from books on eels to landscape architecture academia, the most important and unifying feature of my preferences as a reader is simple: I take recommendations seriously. IRL. From friends and foe, but not from Goodreads algorithms! ...