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greaseonmymouth · 11 months

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Sooo, regarding your tags on that last post, do you have recs for old gay books, by any chance?

yes and no - as a teenager I read what I could get my hands on in the library and it was all in Danish and some of those books I don't know if were translated or not, and by that I mean translated from another language into Danish, or vice versa. One of those books I'm pretty sure was actually translated from Swedish because I remember the author name sounding Swedish and the characters were Swedish and Danish... lots of formative old gay books that had been sitting on the shelves since the 70s, 80s, 90s, that I can't find again.

anyway, one of the books I read as a teenager that was very formative for me was an Irish novel, When Love Comes to Town by Tom Lennon. the main character is a teenager, gay and struggling to come to terms with it, gets a boyfriend (bisexual, he fucks off to Belfast and cheats on him with a girl, classy - there's a fair amount of biphobia in the book, which I remember because I remember thinking it was weird how so many of the characters were warning him off bi guys when it was just this one guy being an asshole) but he also has a girlfriend because he's trying to keep up appearances and it's all a huge mess. he makes other queer friends. some of those queer friends he makes are transvestites, and there was a HIV positive guy who passed away. this book was formative for me for many many reason but the stand out elements were the found family and queer community, how they stood together and supported each other in the face of a lot of hate and discrimination and rocky family relationships and friendships. they found joy together. also I might be misremembering but the main character was like, really good in English class and was friends with his teacher and I could relate, lmao.

I read these two a bit later, in my early twenties, but Faggots by Larry Kramer and Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg. I actually need to read Stone Butch Blues again because I remember very little about it, but Faggots made a huge impact on me, it was written in the late 70s or early 80s and takes place in new york and while much of it is satire, satire is built on truth, you know? and it showcases such a range of queer experiences and characters, exaggerated and over the top, but with a very real core of human emotion and struggles. it is also a criticism and I've since read that this book was very controversial within the queer community at the time

Dream Boy by Jim Grimsley also comes to mind, it's a 90s novel but fuck me if I can remember the plot

I also want to briefly mention the Astreiant series by Melissa Scott and Lisa A. Barnett - written in the 90s by queer couple Melissa and Lisa, this is a fantasy series where the world-building has queerness built in and while I love it just for what it is, I also think it's fascinating from a sociological point of view because you can infer a lot about their priorities but also what (American) society was like at the time. for instance this is a matriarchal society and it has queer relationships nobody bats an eye at, but yet there isn't marriage equality?

for recent books (er, say published in the last ten years ish? or let's just say in this century) written by people older than me, I want to recommend:

Less by Andrew Sean Greer - this is a love letter

Mr. Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo - this is a beautiful book and love story but it will also show you what it's like to be somebody who's been a closeted gay and black man since his early teen years in Antigua and move to the UK and now as an old man in London still in a relationship with the same man

Closet Case by Robert Rodi - this is one of those general fiction novels where the main character gets themselves into absurd situations and if it were heterosexual, it would've been a comedy, a romcom even, and adapted for screen. but it's gay. this author has written many more gay novels (and also! a very gay graphic novel about Loki for marvel, illustrated by Esad Ribic) but this is the only novel I've read by him

A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif I also read in my early twenties and it's one of those books I Think About A Lot because it's kind of an absurd book but the plot entirely falls apart without the gay relationship at the core. I didn't know it was gay when I picked this up (in a secondhand bookstore in Edinburgh, in 2011), I just read it and the plot unfolded and unfolded and then the revelation? I Think About It Often.

#queer books

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astreiants-archive · 1 year

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just a little reminder i’m over @astreiants now & will be deleting shit from this blog (recs & edits aside for now) before i delete entirely at some point, so if u still wanna follow, that’s where you’ll find me!

#.txt

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ofliterarynature · 10 months

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Responding to your request for LGBTQ+ recs, some of my favourite 90s adult fantasies - hope these will be niche enough!

The Fire's Stone (Tanya Huff) - fantasy quest but with a MM romance and an ace main character

The Stone Prince (Fiona Patton, Huff's wife) - classic Anglo-Saxon medieval fantasy but with a wholly queernorm world and a central established MM couple

Astreiant (Melissa Scott) - series starting with The Point of Hopes, mysteries in a super interesting fantasy city with a very low-key MM romance

Ahh, thank you so much! We’ve mostly read newer books so far and I’d love to fit in some older titles, I’ll just have to see if the library has enough copies.

We did read one of Huff’s urban fantasy books last year (which was declared not objectively good but a good read nonetheless lol) so now you have me curious about her high fantasy!

#asks #lost-hitsu #if there’s not copies *i* might still read them #hmm I need a tag for these recs don’t I #book club restock

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profiterole-reads · 2 years

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Just needed to drop you a thank-you ask for your recommendation of the Astreiant series; it seems to be EXACTLY what I was looking for!!! Queer main characters but their identity is not a major focus point but just casual, normal? They have adventures and/or save the world? ELABORATE PROSE???? I think I can bite into this for a while, thank youuuu~

Also Melissa Scott’s bibliography is insane! I could never have discovered this gem of an author without you. 🤩

I hope you'll love these books. Melissa Scott is part of these authors who were well-known because they were writing queer fantasy at a time when there wasn't much of it. Now we've got so many LGBT SF/F books, it's wonderful for readers, but tougher for authors.

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rhetoricandlogic · 2 years

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A Glittering Caper: The Mask of Mirrors by M.A. Carrick

Liz Bourke Tue Jan 19, 2021 1:00pm 2 Favorites [+]

M.A. Carrick is an open pseudonym for writing team Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms. Brennan’s track record needs scant introduction, with twelve books to her name—including, mostly recently, the acclaimed Memoirs of Lady Trent series and its spin-off sequel Turning Darkness into Light. Helms is perhaps less well known, though they have previously published two solo novels, 2015’s The Dragons of Heaven and 2016’s The Conclave of Shadows.

The Mask of Mirrors is the first novel to come jointly from their pens, and it reminds me strikingly of the Astreiant novels of Melissa Scott and the late Lisa A. Barnett’s Astreiant novels, albeit more in worldbuilding and tone than in characters and concerns.

Nadežra is a divided city. Once the sacred capital of the Vraszenian people, it’s now ruled by the descendents of Liganti conquerors in the form of the great houses and the delta gentry: a mercantile nobility that operates by contract and charter, and that charges the Vraszenians for access to the site of their sacred mystery. Ethnic and cultural Vraszenians form an underclass in the city, one with very restricted social mobility.

Ren is a con artist. She grew up in Nadežra, a street thief raised by a brutally manipulative con artist, and escaped with her sworn-sister Tess after believing her gang boss had killed their sworn-brother. Calling herself Renata Viraudax, she and Tess have returned to the city after years of absence, because Ren has a scheme to get herself enrolled as Nadežran nobility, with access to all the wealth and safety that class presumably has to offer: pass herself off as the daughter of House Traemontis’s long-lost and deeply unlikeable sister, seeking a reconciliation. Ren is an expert at getting people to like and believe her, and she has details of that long-lost sister at her fingertips, so she believes she has a good shot. Buy it Now

But what Ren doesn’t know is that House Traemontis’s fortunes are on the wane. There are only three members of the family left alive: matriarch Donaia, who’s holding things together by sheer force of will and effort, golden boy Leato, with a good heart and a remarkable friendship with a Vraszenian who’s reached the rank of captain in the Vigil (the city police), and Giuna, Leato’s socially-isolated younger sister. Traemontis has no allies, and powerful enemies, including Mettore Indestor—wealthy, militarily powerful, in charge of the Vigil, and holding one of the seats on the five-person council that governs the city. Ren’s attempts to con her way to safety, with Tess as her loyal maid, catapult her into the middle of intrigue, especially when she comes to feel real affection and sympathy for the Traemontis family.

As Ren is framing herself as another player on the city’s social stage, she finds herself of in the orbits of both wealthy crime-boss-turning-legitimate-businessman Derossi Vargo, who has a hidden agenda of his own—and speaks with a being that might only exist in his head, unless it’s actually a spirit in the form of his pet spider—and of Grey Serrado, the only Vraszenian captain in the Vigil, and a man who’s desperate to discover why children are dying, unable to sleep, in the poorest sections of the city. Intrigue, manoeuvring, lies, drugs, riots, and magical disasters combine in an explosive mix that may change the balance of power in Nadežra for good—and destroy Ren and Tess without a second thought.

The Mask of Mirrors gives us a rich world—a compellingly-drawn city—with a depth of history and layers of competing agendas. It has multiple different kinds of magic, from the more upper-class science of numinat and the more artisanal imbuing, to the influence of astrology and of patterning—card-reading that can reveal a person’s future, or fate. And it gives us layered, compelling characters, who’re sympathetic and understandable, and a plot that mounts with carefully-measured tension and nested capers and revelations to an explosive climax.

Spoilers ahead.

It also has a number of unanswered questions, a handful of unexplained coincidences, and some secrets and mysteries that aren’t resolved—or are not resolved satisfactorily within its pages. What’s Vargo’s real agenda? Why is he talking in his head to an invisible spirit, and how? What’s behind the Rook? Did Mettore Indestor really have a complicated, expensive, magic-based plot to carry out a form of genocide? How is it that Ren’s old gang boss is at the heart of things? How does the curse on House Traemontis also come to involve Ren herself? Though the main plot of The Mask of Mirrors reaches a resolution—this is a self-contained volume, ending with a point of equilibrium and stability, rather than with a cliffhanger—these questions linger. There’s more than enough meat for a sequel in these alone. And I hope to see one.

The Mask of Mirrors is engaging and entertaining. It’s the first novel in what feels like months (and might be mere weeks, or even days: what is time, in this age of our pandemic?) that I’ve read with an increasingly sense of delight and looked forward to being able to talk about. It’s great. I loved it. You should give it a try.

#M.A. Carrick #The Mask of Mirrors #mahreviews #long post

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arinmoss · 4 months

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bought 2 new books since forever lol. not the biggest reader but i want to get back into it, so i bought Point of Hopes: A Novel of Astreiant which some random trans gay guy i follow on insta recommended on one if his insta stories lol and then All Systems Red since people i follow on here keep talking about murderbot and it made me Intrigued >:3c

#also bought some tea and spices cause im an old man #idk thot i would treat myself hehe :3 #also cause lately ive been feeling terrible and need enrichment or whatever the fuck #anyways want to get some ursula k le guin books next and maybe even terry pratchett caust i keep hearing about him #so if you guys have any recs #or even just books by trans and gay authors #not ya tho i dont care about ya rn sorry almost any tim ei look up recs its all ya #nothing wrong with that some of them look good itsjust most recs are ya so i already have an idea for that #OH OR if you have any free pdf versions of books u love lol #love not having to spend money lol

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ellcrys · 2 years

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new banner because two weeks later and the gbs brain rot is still very real

thanks @astreiants for letting me use their edit~~ ^^

#credit page also updated o/#simone gets to stay as my icon for now but i'm itching to change that too afsadsd

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egelantier · 3 years

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Yuletide Recs

Having had two days of more or less nothing but reading fics, I come bearing recs!

First of all, my amazing gifts:

The Goblin Emperor

For Thy Principles

The nohecharei of Edrehasivar VII were unparalleled in their defense of his person, but there were limits to even their prowess. When Maia first developed the fever, Cala quickly determined that it was not the end result of a magically-based assassination attempt – and from there it had to be left to the court physicians.

Maia falls ill, and Csethiro protects him as best she can.

Beautifully gentle Maia sickfic, with Csethiro holding him together. For me all for meeee.

Benjamin January Mysteries

Dry as a Bone

“Oh. Well, I’ve been better, maestro, been a hell of a lot better to tell truth.” Shaw stared at him for a long moment, and he was stunned to see honest to God grief in his eyes. Even when Shaw had just lost his brother he had been so much more himself than this lost man currently standing before him. “Not that I mean to put anything extra on your shoulders, I’m sure you’ve got enough of your own shit going on at present moment, but it seems like I’ve just lost my job.”

Shaw loses his job, and finally confronts Ben about trust (and lack thereof) between them. It’s GREAT.

The Tarot Sequence - K.D. Edwards

A Distraction Worth Losing

They may never be together, but the gods would have to move heaven and earth to split Rune and Brand apart.

Brand, Rune and The Kiss incident. (Poor messed up babies, somebody save them.)

And fics of the collection:

17776, Astreiant, Raksura, Frederica, The Gentlemen, The Goblin Emperor, Hades, Innkeeper Chronicles, Jeeves, Kate Daniels, King Arthur the movie, My Next Life as a Villainess, Nirvana in Fire, No. 6, Psmith, The Secret Garden, The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty, Swordspoint, The Tarot Sequence, Teixcalaan Series, The Temple of the White Rat verse

17776: What Football Will Look Like in the Future

so far, so fast

When Manny gets a craving for some fancy meal he had once, over ten thousand years ago, Nick decides he’s gonna fulfill that craving, no matter how hard it is. Because real romance is about making the impossible happen for his husband.

Goddamn transcendental.

Go Get It

Sometimes you start out just planning to get some groceries with your husband, and next thing you know, you’re committing to join the most hopeless team in college football.

Nick and Manny decide to play. It’s perfect.

Afterlife

A young man dies six months before the end of human death; his loss saves five lives, which end up much longer than anyone expects. (A series of worldbuilding vignettes about original characters in the 17776 setting.)

Made me cry, in a very cathartic way.

Astreiant Series - Melissa Scott & Lisa A. Barnett

April dressed in all his trim

A quiet evening in spring.

Sweet little slice-of-life with lovely sensory details.

Books of the Raksura

The Second Consort

“When Glow arrives, be friendly and welcoming,” Ember said. “Not scary.”

“Why does everyone think I’m going to scare him?”

Chime said, “They can see your face when you look at him.” He paused, glancing over at Moon. “That face, that’s the one.”

Ember sighed. “I remember being in his position. It’s pretty nerve-wracking coming to a new court and not knowing what’s going to happen to you there - whether they’re going to welcome you or shun you, whether you’ll make new friends, whether a queen is going to claim you…” He came and put a sympathetic hand on Moon’s shoulder. “Glow is probably worried about all of those things, and missing his home and clutchmates, and it’s our job to try and help him relax.” For a moment Moon thought he was just being soft-hearted, until Ember added, “He won’t open up and tell us what’s really going on unless he’s relaxed.”

Jade takes in a new consort, on Moon’s permission, and everybody is delightfully adult about it.

Frederica

Lady Alverstoke

Frederica commences her first Season as a married woman by planning a ball, promising most straitly that her husband will have nothing whatsoever to do …

Sweet and funny slice-of-life post-happy-ending for canon.

**The Gentlemen (2019) **

Even

The week after he intercepts Fletcher, that squirrelly little cunt, outside the London Miramax office, Raymond reluctantly ventures down to Brixton.

Under normal circumstances, Raymond tends to give this part of Brixton a wide berth, but he has unfinished business that needs attending to. Of course, that doesn’t mean he has to like being accosted by the overwhelming smell of greasy fish and chips when he pushes the car door open, doesn’t mean he has to be pleased about stepping into a piece of chewed-up gum the moment he sets a foot on the kerb.

But then, he can always take a shower after an errand in Brixton. The deep-seated discomfort of unfinished business doesn’t wash off that easily.

Raymond tries to pay Coach back for saving his life, and it doesn’t quite go as planned :D

The Goblin Emperor

The Archduke’s Discovery

Prince Nemolis goes on a journey, and learns a bit more than he wanted to know.

Really great point of canon divergence, and true and precise character voices.

Hades

all the spaces between us

For a place full of the dead, crammed with ghostly shades and nothing but the endless lull of eternity unchanging, gossip sure travelled fast in the Underworld.

Or, Zagreus mulls over his relationship with Thanatos while the rest of the Underworld get overly invested.

Slow, slow, slowest of burns.

Innkeeper Chronicles - Ilona Andrews

A Quick Trip

“It’ll be a quick trip,” Maud said, more to herself than to Arland. “No one will even notice we’re gone.”

Pirates are plaguing an ally, just outside of vampire space. Maud and Arland don some aesthetically beat-up armor and try to get more information from the pirates themselves. Of course, plans only last until you meet your enemy. Or your enemy’s giant alien attack boar.

Excellent canon voice, action/adventure sprinkled with badassery and hilarity.

Jeeves & Wooster

August Thirteenth

Discovering that this is not the first August thirteenth that he’s lived through, that certainly was a head scratcher. Luckily Bertie has the stalwart presence of his man’s man, Jeeves.

Very, very great and satisfying use of the time loop.

Kate Daniels - Ilona Andrews

lookin’ like a snack (cake)

It took Barabas a while to figure it out, because he wasn’t used to not being taken seriously.

Barabas considered several ways to phrase it, and finally settled upon, “Do you have a thing for twinks?” Christopher knocked his head back against the headrest: once, then again. “Is that a yes?”

King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017)

When Goosefat Bill finds himself in a difficult situation, the last thing he wants is the King to show up and “help”, in his own unique and unexpected way.

Goosefat Bill does not need to be rescued by his King. But he might just enjoy it a little.

My Next Life as a Villainess (Anime)

All I Have To Bring Today

Catarina and Sophia had been discussing the latest in the Devilish Count series, and Sophia had mentioned how romantic the surprise picnic the count had planned for his lover was and how she wished for someone to surprise her like that.

“What about you, Catarina? Have you ever wished for someone to sweep you off your feet?” Sophia had asked.

Catarina makes a choice! As sweet and as hilarious as the canon.

Nirvana in Fire

Adverse Event

What a pitiful man must he have become, if the only thing he could provoke in bed was a monologue on his character flaws.

: or, the famous strategist mei changsu plays xanatos speed chess against truth serum: the fic.

Mei Changsu gets hit with an accidental truth serum; it doesn’t stop him from lying to himself, but it does buy Jingyan a clue.

Records of the Land of Xiang

There was something of Xiao Jingyan there, in the firmness of his jaw, the unforgiving slash of his brows, and most clearly in the eyes that neither saw nor conveyed deception. But Long Zhan was not Jingyan, could never be, no matter how much Changsu might wish otherwise, because Jingyan was dead.

In service to a very-much-alive Prince Qi, Jingyan dons a Jianghu-typical disguise and infiltrates the Jiangzuo Alliance to suss out this Mei Changsu fellow and see if he might be useful in helping them re-open the Chiyan conspiracy case. Basically, a slightly ridiculous premise where everyone is running around the Jianghu with masks, multiple identities, and secret agendas.

Fascinating and fun AU scenario that delves, among other things, into Mei Changsu the jianghu chef, not Sir Su the court schemer.

suffering as I suffer you

The first time Jingyan stays the night at Su Manor, he discovers an uncomfortable truth about Mei Changsu.

Excellent extrapolation of Mei Changsu’s illness into his nightly routine - with Jingyan watching…

Here, In Our Arms

With the world put to rights, however briefly, Xiao Jingyan and Mu Nihuang take the opportunity to make a fuss over their beloved Lin Shu, and will not take no for an answer.

Sweet moment of comfort.

Find the Coals Amid the Ashes

Despite Changsu’s assertions, Lin Chen is a well brought up person. He would never violate his host’s privacy during a social call. It would be inexcusable, for example, to break into a marquis’s private alchemy lab in the middle of said marquis’s birthday party, in order to search said alchemy lab for certain hard to find medicinal herbs, which one has reason to believe can be found therein. These would be the actions of a man without honour, of a man who has only desperation to his name.

Lin Chen crashes a party and makes a new friend.

The best team up ever :D

Dead Letters

Mei Changsu isn’t the only schemer in Da Liang.

Fei Liu fixes things, in the most Fei Liu way imaginable, and it’s great.

No. 6

All Good Things

In the midst of a crisis for No. 6, Nezumi returns to Shion’s side.

A reunion! And cuddling.

Psmith

The Psky Is The Limit

“As this ship’s Orator, my mission is still as it was in the beginning and shall ever be, world without end. It is to hail any message sent by comrades from outer space and pass it on to you verbatim. Well! The hour, I say, has come. The Word has come into being. Here comes Psmith, bearing news of great mirth: the intercom has spoken.”

(A Mike and Psmith Space AU)

Psmith in space! Hysterically funny Psmith in Pspace, at that.

Psmith Pops In

Psmith reached over and solicitously loosened Mike’s scarf, his fingers brushing the skin of Mike’s neck, and that young man, to his horror, felt heat creeping up from where gloved fingers brushed his bare skin. Really, this blushing nonsense was getting out of hand. Ever since Psmith had tried to take the blame in the case of the painted dog, Mike had developed an inexplicable habit of turning hot and cold around him, and these odd responses had become more and more frequent.

Very funny! And then very tragique! And then jussssst right.

The Secret Garden

The Space Garden

When Meri La Nix was sent from the Mars colony to live with her aunt at Missiles Wait Manor, nobody said she was the most disagreeable-looking child ever seen. But some of them thought it.

Beautifully inventive space retelling - with gardens, still.

The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty

The sky spinning above him

In which there’s a jewellery thief on the loose, Tang Fan plays dress up, gets a mild concussion and also a boyfriend.

Frothy, sweet, well-grounded and hot. Also hilarious (check the end note!)

truth in fiction

Three days after Wang Zhi leaves the capital, bits and pieces of his extensive library begin arriving at Sui Zhou’s house.

Sui Zhou is really committed to research and accuracy in Tang Fan’s porn. It’s delightful.

Time don’t fool me no more

“The electrician is a Tang dynasty spy,” he says, dumping some of his eggs in Tang Fan’s bowl.

Tang Fan nods, shovels more food in his mouth, and starts talking again.

Past or future, Tang Fan has Priorities. And Sui Zhou is weak.

Meeting at the End

Sui Zhou knew he never should have let Tang Fan go alone. He knew he should have gone with him.

Really, really great and desperate whump. Super satisfying.

clever boy

Tang Fan never spares a smile for any of the girls at Wang Zhi’s establishment, he’s noticed. That’s alright, though. It means Wang Zhi gets his attention for himself.

Wang Zhi falling, falling hard; it’s delightful.

a bold and brilliant sun

“You’re sure you didn’t do something to it? They don’t usually stall out,” Sui Zhou says. He looks away from Tang Fan, out the windshield at the endless rust-red of the planet.

Tang Fan pouts at this, and slumps down on the edge of the console, feet propped up at an absurd angle against the pilot’s seat. “You think I’d fake a mechanical issue just so that they’d send a sexy Fleet crewman out here to rescue me?” As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he giggles. “Okay, I would do that, but I promise that this time the problem is real.”

Space AU! Most excellent space AU condensing all there is to love about the canon in one perfect package.

Blind Taste Test

Wang Zhi invites Tang Fan to evaluate Joyous Brothel’s chefs — but it’s Tang Fan and Sui Zhou who are really being tested.

Wang Zhi, ever helpful :)

Authorial Intent

Sui Zhou and Tang Fan end up in hot water yet again. Kinky sex ensues.

Hilarious, kinky, heartfelt, and in character.

Swordspoint Series - Ellen Kushner

Chrysopoeia

It struck Alec that this would have been much easier if their positions were reversed. Richard would have known what to do if he’d been dragged back here with a hole in his gut. He was quite simply not supposed to be the one on this end of the equation. In fact, it was possible he had done something very bad to deserve this.

Richard is wounded, and Alex is coping. Excellent h/c and excellent bloodplay and sharp, painful slice of Alex’ POV, excellently rendered.

At first — this was just like him — he thought he was hearing god. But it was only the man in the bed, whose face had turned toward him on the ragged pillow.

The Tarot Sequence - K.D. Edwards

Third’s a Charm

Addam asks a favor of Brand.

Addam asks Brand for help, which ends up being exactly what Brand and Rune need.

Pretty good

Five times Brand crawls into Rune’s bed and one time Rune crawls into Brand’s.

Brand and Rune, through the years.

Teixcalaan Series - Arkady Martine

Also in the Act of Reaching

When Three Seagrass arrived at Lsel Station, she was, officially at least, traveling as a private personage. She had missed Mahit and the possibilities they’d both chosen to turn away from. She also had– would always have– a gaping hole in her life where Petal had once stood.

It was simply that, left on her own, Three Seagrass wouldn’t have let either absence drag her to the ass-end of beyond.

Reunion, metaphors and realigment. Subtle and clever and just right.

The (concept of the) World Was Wide Enough

Yskandr Aghavn comes to the world like a drowning man comes to shore, but he is living on borrowed time. Teixcalaan has so many wonderful things to choke on.

Teixcalaan has had his heart for all of his life, has elevated him, corrupted him, and discarded him.

It is Lsel that he thinks of as he dies.

Temple of the White Rat Universe - T. Kingfisher

If Grace Is Too Much

Zale is given a case by Bishop Beartongue which turns out to be more complicated and personal than a holy advocate-priest would prefer.

Clever and sweet and carefully shocking, but in a very right way.

Outreach

“We don’t generally assess the… cursédness… of objects, trees or otherwise,” Beartongue said.

Utterly delightful.

#17776 #astreiant #books of the raksura #sleuth of the ming dynasty #nirvana in fire #white rat universe #telxcalaan series #the tarot sequence #swordspoint #the goblin emperor #psmith #the secret garden #benjamin january mysteries #yuletide recs

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wiltking · 7 months

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the fact that everyone refers to Eslingen, the pretty gentleman ex-soldier with lace at his hems and fashionably dyed fingertips, as Rathe's dog. When Rathe is the wiry southriver rat who dresses like a rolled up wad of scrapped leather. peak peak peak.

#love them so fucking much. grrrrrr #book thoughts #astreiant #the implications........

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bookbaran · 3 years

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I don't know if there's a name for this genre, but I have discovered another favorite type of story: dry historical fantasy detective stories with crunchy world building and low or subtle magic.

#favorites #the witness for the dead #astreiant

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faejilly · 7 years

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you know

it’s a recurring thing for me that a lot of my favorite books are ones where the setting is basically a character with-in the narrative as well

see: the City of Astreiant, everything by Martha Wells, the just-mentioned-and-flailed-about Confederation of Valor, most of anything by Seanan McGuire/Mira Grant, how Heyer basically created the Regency genre as it is now... how you can’t have Wonder Woman without Themyscira, or Superman without that dichotomy between Krypton/Kansas. (No Batman without Gotham?)

Honestly it’s part of why that No Shepard Without Vakarian line is so powerful for so many people. You can’t have Shepard without the Alliance, without the world ME built around her. I mean, it’s more you can’t have Shepard without the people around her in ME’s case, but there’s a glimmer of that same sentiment in the set-up of the games as a whole, in the importance of the Citadel and the Mass Relays, in the way the galaxy as it is created the people as they are.

#jilly spam #jilly reads #maybe I'll re-read astreiant #once I'm done with confederation?#idk #maybe I'll actually look for something new at some point #but sometimes the new #just doesn't quite pull its weight #you know?#also oh look #my dc problem is showing again #I am still so mad about the dumb-ass movies #jumping into doomsday and darkseid #without the necessary background to give them the right impact #but whatever #I LIKE THEM ANYWAYS #but damn they're dumb

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portmanteaurian · 3 years

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June 2021 Books

Iiii hit a rut with reading this month, I’m not gonna lie. I got caught up in a bunch of music-related stuff (read my good post!) and work and the general existential stress of being an Indigenous person in “Canada” right now. But I did read sixteen things, even if a lot of them were either rereads or short. The highlights below

Cheating a bit to shout out Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett’s Astreiant series -- only one truly hits that 4-star mark for me that is my normal cut-off, but they’re fun queer procedural mysteries in a super-detailed fantasy setting. I’ve read them before but revisiting them earlier this month was nice.

The Last Dragon by Jane Yolen and illustrated by Rebecca Guay was just an absolutely beautiful book artistically, I love Guay’s style. The story was...played significantly straighter than I expected, subversions I was anticipating did not come. But it was a solid story.

Cat Sebastian’s The Queer Principles of Kit Webb was cute. Not my favourite thing of hers I’ve read but a good light read and enjoyably pointed in its “rich landowners are bad” thesis.

Drastically different, Angie Schmitt’s Right of Way: Race, Class, and the Silent Epidemic of Pedestrian Deaths in America was an excellent look at urban design and the people urban policymakers consider “disposable”. Entirely US-centric, but there’s lessons that are applicable here in Canada as well, and if you’re in the states I recommend it very highly.

Cabaret: The Illustrated Book and Lyrics by Joe Masteroff, John Kander, and Fred Ebb is just...Cabaret is one of my very favourite musicals, this revival was really well concepted, and this book presents the text of the show in a really slick and visually appealing format. I owned it previously but lost it years ago; replaced my copy by shopping from used bookstores online and am glad to have done so.

Black Water Sister by Zen Cho is a contemporary fantasy set in Malaysia, which is a significant departure from her previous work that I’ve read and loved. I was super curious how it would turn out and I’m pleased to report I really liked it! Fantastic character dynamics, which I expected, and a good story about cultural traditions, relating to family, and cycles of abuse.

And finally for this one, P. Djeli Clark’s Master of Djinn was just a lot of fun. Supernatural detective adventure in an alternate early-20th-century Cairo. He’s written two previous novellas in this universe, with this being the first full-length novel in the setting. Great worldbuilding and a fabulous dapper butch heroine.

#dorian reads 2k21

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sineala · 4 years

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Queer novel recs

[A repost from my Patreon.]

By request of the one person who is pledging at a Patreon tier that lets them make meta/review requests of me, some recommendations for queer novels. Fiction-wise, I read pretty much exclusively science fiction and fantasy, with the occasional excursus into historical fiction, so that's what you're getting.

SF/F these days is, happily, getting queerer and queerer. As a general recommendation, a good place to start is the lists of winners and nominees of the Otherwise Award (formerly the Tiptree Award), which, according to their website, "encourages the exploration and expansion of gender." There's also the Lambda Literary Awards, which are awarded to both fiction and non-fiction LGBT books across various categories, including genre (mystery, romance, SF/F & horror). It's obviously not going to be a guarantee that you'll like any particular one of these books, but at least it means that somebody did.

A whole lot of the Hugo award nominees and winners this year coincidentally happened to be queer fiction, especially in the longer categories. The Best Novel winner, Arkady Martine's The Memory of Empire, is a sprawling space opera starring a diplomat who incidentally (very incidentally) happens to have some Feelings for her cultural liaison, and it's a really good book, anyway. I actually voted for Tamsyn Muir's Gideon the Ninth, which is billed as "lesbian necromancers in space," and it is pretty much exactly that. It's a murder mystery, which you'd think would be less mysterious in a book where half the characters are necromancers, but this doesn't actually help them much. I thought it was delightful and I have the sequel sitting here on my Kindle waiting for me to read it. But had Gideon not stolen my heart, I would have voted for Kameron Hurley's The Light Brigade. Everything else I have read by Hurley -- well, okay, that's just the Bel-Dame Apocrypha series, actually -- has starred kickass queer people, and this one's no exception. It's military SF in the vein of Starship Troopers or The Forever War with a really well-done time travel plot, in which the twists just keep coming. The narrator's gender is intentionally obscured for about 95% of the novel, and for added fun, they're bisexual. (Charlie Jane Anders' The City in the Middle of the Night also had queer characters but it didn't really grab me.)

(I have to admit I bounced off a lot of the Hugo novella nominees this year, including most of the queer ones, but Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone's This Is How You Lose The Time War (lesbian time-travel agents) did win, although it wasn't really my thing, and Rivers Solomon's The Deep (lesbian mermaids) appears to have gone on to win this year's Lambda instead, although that one wasn't really my thing either. Becky Chambers's To Be Taught, If Fortunate also had some lesbians and I liked that a bit better, but none of those got my #1 vote.)

I have not read it yet and cannot vouch for it but my wife is reading N. K. Jemisin's new short story collection and she says they're very good and a lot of them are queer.

Okay. So. What about less recent queer SF/F, you ask?

I started reading SF/F in the mid-90s, and there wasn't a whole lot of queer SF/F out there in the mainstream SF market, so I imprinted pretty heavily on what there was that I could find, which was basically, at first, the blink-and-you'll-miss-it gay dragonriders of Anne McCaffrey's Pern series. Pern is what The Youth these days would probably call problematic in several ways, but there wasn't much else out there. I also then read Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar series, which is basically iddy iddy whump fic with magic telepathic animals who love you, so I'm not saying it's a complete literary masterpiece but Confused Baby Lesbian Sineala sure spent a lot of time wondering why she was identifying so very hard with Vanyel from the Last Herald-Mage trilogy. (I also really enjoyed Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books, especially the ones about the Renunciates (the lesbian ones), Heritage of Hastur (the gay one), and The Forbidden Tower (the one where a telepathic orgy solves everyone's problems) but owing to the, uh, terrible things we all found out about MZB after she died, I don't think I can recommend them. Or read them ever again.

Other older queer SF/F that was beloved among my friend group: Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint and its sequels are about a duelist and his boyfriend and a lot of people liked this one, but I never liked it enough to keep up with all the sequels. The first few of Lynn Flewelling's Nightrunner books, however, punched me straight in the id; the protagonists are a pair of spies and thieves who are, more or less, this fantasy world's version of elves. There are a whole lot of grätúìtôūs dīåcrìtïcs and after the third book everything gets a little too horrific for me, but I really loved the first three.

But if I had to pick a top three list of authors who have written queer SF/F, this would be my list:

(1) Diane Duane. She is pretty much my favorite author ever, so I am biased here. I first discovered her work with her Star Trek tie-in novels (which, if you like Vulcans and Romulans, are amazing) and then her YA series Young Wizards, which is about teenagers who can do magic and use it to make the universe a better place and it's about ten thousand times more meaningful to me than Harry Potter ever was. But, anyway. She also has a fantasy series called The Tale of the Five, which is an everyone-is-bi-and-poly series started back before that kind of thing was even cool. Also there's a group marriage involving, like, six people, one of whom is a fire elemental. There are three books out in that series, she's still writing novellas set in it, and she swears that she's going to write the fourth and final book that we've been waiting about 25 years for.

(2) Melissa Scott. Everything I have ever read by Melissa Scott, either as a solo author or with her late partner Lisa Barnett, is queer as hell and has amazing worldbuilding. I first encountered her work when I randomly picked up Trouble and Her Friends (lesbian cyberpunk) at a used bookstore and ended up adoring it. Her other works include Shadow Man (set in a future where humanity has a whole lot more intersex people), The Kindly Ones (which has a protagonist whose gender is never specified), and The Armor of Light (alt-history involving Kit Marlowe and a demon). But my favorite series of hers is the Astreiant series, which is a Professionals AU with the serial numbers filed off, but they're filed off really well. It's a series of police procedural mysteries set in Fantasy Matriarchal Renaissance Netherlands, starring a m/m couple, and the fantasy gimmick here is that astrology is really real and really works. They're a lot of fun.

(3) Nicola Griffith. All of her books are about queer women. She has a few that are modern-day thrillers that I didn't so much care for, but I really love her SF. The first book of hers I read was Ammonite, about an anthropologist who gets sent to a planet of only women to try to figure out how they reproduce and ends up going native instead. I really adored it. I also remember really liking Slow River although I no longer remember the actual plot, except that the main character worked at a sewage facility. And it's historical fiction rather than SF, but she's probably most famous for Hild, a novel about Hilda of Whitby. I liked it a lot except for the part where it annoyed me that Griffith invented out of whole cloth the idea that women would have a special female companion and made up a name for it in Old English and everything, and most people who read the book probably believed it was a real thing. But, uh. I did really love Ammonite. I am so weak for planet-of-women books. (This is why I am so sad that I can't ever read the Renunciates of Darkover books again.)

That's about all I can think of right now. I hope some of those recs are, at the very least, new!

#posts i actually wrote

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