Fiction
KJ Charles, The Magpie Lord: Lord Crane keeps trying to kill himself, but he doesn’t want to. When it turns out that a curse on his odious family has also ensnared him, he enlists a magical practitioner to help. Stephen has reason to hate the lord’s family, but he sure likes the look of the lord. They fall in lust (maybe love) and fight magical crime! Exactly what I wanted.
KJ Charles, A Case of Possession: The further adventures of Crane and Stephen, in which they team up to fight a menace that appears to threaten the lives of many of Crane’s friends and non-friends from his past in China. There’s magic, injustice, sex and banter-I enjoyed it.
Mira Grant, Kingdom of Needle and Bone: Short enough that it doesn’t have the problem with repeated phrases that has started to bother me in Grant’s writing, but characteristically uses quotes from in-universe documents to introduce everything in rather heavy-handed ways. This is consistent with the heavy-handed nature of the story itself, which is about an outbreak of a variant of measles that doesn’t just wipe your immune system (did you know that catching regular measles often also removes prior immunities to other diseases? That’s some freaky shit) but prevents it from learning new immunities in the future-meaning that a huge percentage of the world is permanently immunocompromised. Vaccinate your kids (and get your flu shot), people, but this story is skippable except for hardcore Grant fans.
Ginn Hale, Wicked Gentlemen: A Prodigal (descendant of a fallen angel) and an Inquisitor (a group known for torturing Prodigals) team up in what’s sort of 19th century London to investigate a woman’s disappearance, and find a darker conspiracy against Prodigals. Nice enough fantasy m/m.
Britta Lundin, Ship It: Many years ago now, a friend commented about the film Ginger Snaps that it felt directly addressed to her interests and concerns, and that this must be what many cis white guys felt all the time. Now I too am hailed by a mass market production that feels like it was made just for me (and the hundreds of thousands of fangirls just like me in this way). Claire, the primary narrator, is a passionate fan of the show Demon Heart, and specifically of SmokeHeart-Smokey and Heart, the demon hunter and titular demon and the only two recurring characters on the show. Forest, the other narrator, plays Smokey; he is basically Jensen Ackles (’s public persona) after libel review/serial number file-off. When Claire prompts an anti-SmokeHeart outburst from Forest on a con panel, the show promoters’ damage control includes taking Claire along on the rest of their con tour as they wait to see whether the show will be renewed. Now Claire’s got 440,000 followers and a mission to make SmokeHeart canon. Also, Claire met a really cute girl, but she’s not sure she’s attracted to girls, or to anyone really; her love interest is totally out and proud about being queer, but ashamed of her fandom and fanart.
Claire is a junior in high school, so she makes some dumb, dick moves, but she’s also the best of young activism-passionate, articulate, and willing to learn from her fuckups. Forest is only eight years older, and he’s got a different interior life but also some of the same questions about who he is and how people see him, and whether he can exercise any control over either. His journey learning about who his fans really are (girls; more importantly, people) and what he really wants from his acting might actually be more affecting to me because his insecurities are tangled up, professional and personal, in a more adult way. Both Claire and Forest screw up because they haven’t thought enough about others’ own interests and plans, and they’re both understandable and ultimately likeable people, as is almost everyone else in the story (the showrunner plays the real villain, with a director in a secondary villain role). The actors’ perspectives on people writing porn about them/the characters they play, and the industry pressures that fans don’t often think about, get clear airing, though the book comes down firmly on the “the story belongs to anyone who cares about it” side of things.
Virginia Bergin, The XY: River is a girl who’s grown up in a generation without men-the few survivors of the gender specific plague live in protected enclaves. When she encounters a sick, violent XY, she has to challenge her assumptions, and a lot of the time she doesn’t want to, while the grandmothers who remember day to day interactions with men insist on getting justice for him. I don’t know how I feel about the story-YA could have more nuance than this, though there was interesting stuff going on in the background about how the men had been raised as stereotypes and accepted or fought it to varying extents.
K.J. Charles, Unfit to Print: Gil, a pornographer and black sheep of his wealthy family because he’s mixed-race, seeks out Vikram, a lawyer who helps others of Indian descent living in London, to track down a young man in some porn Gil’s recently deceased uncle owned. They fall in love (again; they knew each other as kids but were torn apart) and fight crime! It’s a good Edwardian romp.
Steven Brust, Vallista: Ah, Vlad, why can’t I quit you? Maybe it’s the puns. This is essentially a bottle episode, in which Vlad is stuck in a mysterious mansion trying to figure out why the halls don’t go to the right places and why he (and Devera, who brought him) can’t leave. Some larger pieces of the Dragaeran puzzle are also hinted at. I enjoyed it.
JY Yang, The Black Tides of Heaven: Twin fantasy novellas about twins Mokoya and Akeha, children of the Protector who are given over to the Monastery as payback for the head monk’s assistance in beating back a rebellion, then snatched back when it turns out that Mokoya can see the future. Magic is energy available to the talented, but technology is increasingly offering the untalented the same kinds of powers, destabilizing the rule of the Protector. Also, because magic allows it, children are ungendered until they decide on a gender and the doctors evoke and stabilize their genitalia/secondary sex characteristics. This is part of what creates tension between the twins, when Mokoya wants to enter gender while Akeha wants to keep their childhood vow never to do so. Akeha becomes a rebel, but Mokoya is still vulnerable to their mother’s manipulations. It’s a fragmentary tale; I might have liked a full on novel set in this world better.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.
KJ Charles, A Case of Possession: The further adventures of Crane and Stephen, in which they team up to fight a menace that appears to threaten the lives of many of Crane’s friends and non-friends from his past in China. There’s magic, injustice, sex and banter-I enjoyed it.
Mira Grant, Kingdom of Needle and Bone: Short enough that it doesn’t have the problem with repeated phrases that has started to bother me in Grant’s writing, but characteristically uses quotes from in-universe documents to introduce everything in rather heavy-handed ways. This is consistent with the heavy-handed nature of the story itself, which is about an outbreak of a variant of measles that doesn’t just wipe your immune system (did you know that catching regular measles often also removes prior immunities to other diseases? That’s some freaky shit) but prevents it from learning new immunities in the future-meaning that a huge percentage of the world is permanently immunocompromised. Vaccinate your kids (and get your flu shot), people, but this story is skippable except for hardcore Grant fans.
Ginn Hale, Wicked Gentlemen: A Prodigal (descendant of a fallen angel) and an Inquisitor (a group known for torturing Prodigals) team up in what’s sort of 19th century London to investigate a woman’s disappearance, and find a darker conspiracy against Prodigals. Nice enough fantasy m/m.
Britta Lundin, Ship It: Many years ago now, a friend commented about the film Ginger Snaps that it felt directly addressed to her interests and concerns, and that this must be what many cis white guys felt all the time. Now I too am hailed by a mass market production that feels like it was made just for me (and the hundreds of thousands of fangirls just like me in this way). Claire, the primary narrator, is a passionate fan of the show Demon Heart, and specifically of SmokeHeart-Smokey and Heart, the demon hunter and titular demon and the only two recurring characters on the show. Forest, the other narrator, plays Smokey; he is basically Jensen Ackles (’s public persona) after libel review/serial number file-off. When Claire prompts an anti-SmokeHeart outburst from Forest on a con panel, the show promoters’ damage control includes taking Claire along on the rest of their con tour as they wait to see whether the show will be renewed. Now Claire’s got 440,000 followers and a mission to make SmokeHeart canon. Also, Claire met a really cute girl, but she’s not sure she’s attracted to girls, or to anyone really; her love interest is totally out and proud about being queer, but ashamed of her fandom and fanart.
Claire is a junior in high school, so she makes some dumb, dick moves, but she’s also the best of young activism-passionate, articulate, and willing to learn from her fuckups. Forest is only eight years older, and he’s got a different interior life but also some of the same questions about who he is and how people see him, and whether he can exercise any control over either. His journey learning about who his fans really are (girls; more importantly, people) and what he really wants from his acting might actually be more affecting to me because his insecurities are tangled up, professional and personal, in a more adult way. Both Claire and Forest screw up because they haven’t thought enough about others’ own interests and plans, and they’re both understandable and ultimately likeable people, as is almost everyone else in the story (the showrunner plays the real villain, with a director in a secondary villain role). The actors’ perspectives on people writing porn about them/the characters they play, and the industry pressures that fans don’t often think about, get clear airing, though the book comes down firmly on the “the story belongs to anyone who cares about it” side of things.
Virginia Bergin, The XY: River is a girl who’s grown up in a generation without men-the few survivors of the gender specific plague live in protected enclaves. When she encounters a sick, violent XY, she has to challenge her assumptions, and a lot of the time she doesn’t want to, while the grandmothers who remember day to day interactions with men insist on getting justice for him. I don’t know how I feel about the story-YA could have more nuance than this, though there was interesting stuff going on in the background about how the men had been raised as stereotypes and accepted or fought it to varying extents.
K.J. Charles, Unfit to Print: Gil, a pornographer and black sheep of his wealthy family because he’s mixed-race, seeks out Vikram, a lawyer who helps others of Indian descent living in London, to track down a young man in some porn Gil’s recently deceased uncle owned. They fall in love (again; they knew each other as kids but were torn apart) and fight crime! It’s a good Edwardian romp.
Steven Brust, Vallista: Ah, Vlad, why can’t I quit you? Maybe it’s the puns. This is essentially a bottle episode, in which Vlad is stuck in a mysterious mansion trying to figure out why the halls don’t go to the right places and why he (and Devera, who brought him) can’t leave. Some larger pieces of the Dragaeran puzzle are also hinted at. I enjoyed it.
JY Yang, The Black Tides of Heaven: Twin fantasy novellas about twins Mokoya and Akeha, children of the Protector who are given over to the Monastery as payback for the head monk’s assistance in beating back a rebellion, then snatched back when it turns out that Mokoya can see the future. Magic is energy available to the talented, but technology is increasingly offering the untalented the same kinds of powers, destabilizing the rule of the Protector. Also, because magic allows it, children are ungendered until they decide on a gender and the doctors evoke and stabilize their genitalia/secondary sex characteristics. This is part of what creates tension between the twins, when Mokoya wants to enter gender while Akeha wants to keep their childhood vow never to do so. Akeha becomes a rebel, but Mokoya is still vulnerable to their mother’s manipulations. It’s a fragmentary tale; I might have liked a full on novel set in this world better.
comments on DW | reply there. I have invites or you can use OpenID.