Every Speculative Fiction Book I Read This Year Featuring Queer Women, A List - 2021
Year two of the pandemic.
Shorter than last year because my reading was uneven, but still longer than 2019, because the available books continue to increase. I saw someone say recently that this is a new Golden Age of Skiffy and it really is, there's a lot of good books I didn't get to, and others that fit the parameters but aren't for me, and isn't it lovely to have the choice!
I created this as a tweet thread throughout the year.
Seven of Infinities. A mind ship with a swashbuckling past cannot resist helping the poor scholar she has been wooing when a visitor drops dead. This is Aliette de Bodard's second lesbian mystery of manners set in her Xuya Universe - a Việt descended space station society.
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. I think Alex is bi? This is a tough thriller set among secret magic societies at Yale, Alex goes from drug dealing dropout to Yale student because she has a particular magic talent they can use.
Dealbreaker by LX Beckett - 20 years post-Gamechanger Franky & Maud help develop tech to prevent Earth's indenture to aliens. Cryptid AIs, no privacy, instavoting consensus culture, living online to conserve physical resources. Like Gamechanger, Dealbreaker is both cyberpunk and hopepunk, brimming with ideas and clever world building.
Across the Green Grass Fields the latest of Seanen McGuire's Wayward Children portal fantasy series, has a young intersex girl falling into a world made to delight the heart of every pony mad child.
Soulstar by CL Polk. The final chapter of the Kingston Cycle has another queer romance at its heart, as those who brought down aether slavery try to usher in meaningful change. Soulstar more than sticks the landing, it elevates the previous books.
The Scapegracers by Hannah Abigail Clarke. Loner lesbian witch Sideways parleys her way into building a coven with her high school's coolest clique, this immersive YA is hella readable, part two coming soon.
Fireheart Tiger by Aliette De Bodard
Thanh, sent as a hostage to a strange court as a child, feels alienated in her homeland. When Princess Eldris arrives on a diplomatic mission Thanh recalls the fire that first brought her to Eldris' attention.
Mother of Souls by Heather Rose Jones (pub. 2016) Historical Ruritanian fantasy. Uberesque, more magic, more queer women, more politics, more Alpennia. I adore these books.
The Art of Saving the World by Corrine Duyvis. Hazel was selected at birth to be A Chosen One, but when she doesn't try to escape the hemmed in life having a rift on her doorstep gave her, Hazel, Hazel, Hazel and Hazel are sent from parallel worlds to help her. YA, ace/aro, lesbian. Agents. Dragons. Trolls.
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine reunites Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass as they attempt communication with a perplexing alien species making war on the Teixcalaanli Empire's edge. A follow up to the award winning A Memory Called Empire that doesn't disappoint
Lady Hotspur. A fully genderswapped Prince Hal story plays out across two countries whose magic was sundered a millennium ago. Tessa Graton's ornate longform storytelling won't be for everyone, but lady knights Hal and Hotspur are glorious. Set 100 years after the events of Queens of Innis Lear but you don't really need to have read that.
My next book technically doesn't belong in this thread, because there are no queer women in it. Instead Sistersong by Lucy Holland has a very effective transmasc storyline. I picked it up because it gave me Rosemary Sutcliff vibes - 6thC Dummonia in Essex - Gildas, Myrdhin, Cedric and Tristan appear and Cador's three children are the point of view characters. There's more magic and horror even than in Sword at Sunset, and it doesn't have her sense of place but it's a good read.
Outlawed by Anna North is an unusual alternate history where the Sundance Kid's gang are women, a change caused by extreme reproductive reproductive control after a severe epidemic.
We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker
This is a near future responding to technology change book, from the point of view of a lesbian couple and their two children. I didn't love it quite as much as Song For A New Day, but it's very readable. Very Pacific North West.
Unbroken by CL Clark. Touraine, captured as a child and raised in fantasy France returns to fantasy Egypt as an occupying soldier, finding herself torn between her comrades, her people, and her would be Queen, this gets to grips with the colonial ramifications. I'm really looking forward to the sequel.
Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders - Fast paced YA space opera about the clone of a great space captain raised secretly on earth and the group of earth geniuses who go to be space cadets with her. Lots of fun
The Chosen and the Beautiful by Nghi Vo. A beautiful retelling of The Great Gatsby from the point of view of a Vietnamese adoptee with added magic and lots of bisexuality. It's just so good.
Star Eater, Kerstin Hall. Elfreda belongs to the Sisterhood, whose magics control & maintains their low tech society, power with horrific underpinnings. It's an almost everyone is bisexual society with accepted polyamory, although the sisterhood may only have f/f relationships (so the central relationship is transgressively m/f, something the story doesn't play up).
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri. Which of you is the Emperor's sister fomenting rebellion and which is the magic-wielding temple-raised handmaiden?
Hell is Empty by Melanie Harding-Shaw. This third novellette about censorship of what "vulnerable" people can read has journalist Deanna reluctantly teaming up with a woman working for the politician enabling the censorship.
Black Water Sister by Zen Cho. Jessamyn moves back to Malaysia with her parents and finds herself missing her girlfriend and caught up in her dead grandmother's machinations which bring her to the attention of a vengeful goddess.
Hard Reboot by Django Wexler. An academic visits Old Earth where the malware is so bad she has to turn all her implants off, she gets involved with a plucky mecha pilot. Novella.
Going into lockdown again in August shattered my will to read, I finished one short book and didn't manage another until November. But the book that got me back into immersive reading was worth it.
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan. A peasant girl survives famine and takes her dead brother's place to try and realise the grand destiny he was promised, in the dying days of the Yuan dynasty. This is just so good!
Here's a list of everything I read in 2021, not just the queer sff. Ask me if you want to know about anything. This entry was originally posted at https://aquila1nz.dreamwidth.org/12890.html.