brilliant, profoundly traumatized, can destroy you (literally and/or figuratively)

I do think Jay hit all the notes that I would; also, characters with a certain degree of genre savviness about reality (ie they understand the rules by which people and narrative structures around them function and can manipulate that to their own ends)

sluts (affectionate)

I think you would enjoy Phillippe from Aliette de Bodard's House of Shattered Wings series

Maniette I played so many romantics and virgins before Jedao One and now I'm just like. but this is so fun

tinwateringcan WHERE DOES ONE START WITH THOSE

de Bodard's been on my list forever

House of Shattered Wings is the first, then House of Binding Thorns and House of Sundering Flame!

there are a few novellas that can be read after the main trilogy

but I think they are right up your alley, post-apocalyptic colonial powers and mythologies from different parts of the world crashing into each other and graphic body horror all combined

oooooh

the first book starts with our protagonists trying to butcher and eat a fallen angel for the power in her blood and bone!

lol

do I already have a sample on my kindle? yes

do I have to update everything to be able to access it? also yes :|

oh noooo

the most frustrating

shaped by existential horror entirely beyond their control but still fights to forge a path of their own

and it's littered with impossible decisions where they've just got to do the best they can

/gently dusts Marsh off and puts him back on the shelf

AND IN THAT VEIN i rec Kissen from the Fallen Gods trilogy (two of which out now, one coming in 2025)

Blunt, loyal, ruthless, stubborn, traumatised, disaster bisexual

hmmmmm :>

“Fate was a fairy story and a bullshit one at that; fate could get fucked and go bother someone else.”

“Funerals are for the living," said Kissen as she noticed Inara looking. "The dead don't mind what the world does to them.”

(Inara is the oprhaned child Kissen basically adopts)