Check the end for promos, free books, and special sales.
For updates on my own books delivered to your inbox, sign up for your newsletter of choice.
Queer Fantasy :: Sci-Fi Romance
We Have Always Been Here
Lena Nguyen
Science Fiction (2021)
From Storygraph:
Misanthropic psychologist Dr. Grace Park is placed on the Deucalion, a survey ship headed to an icy planet in an unexplored galaxy. Her purpose is to observe the thirteen human crew members aboard the ship—all specialists in their own fields—as they assess the colonization potential of the planet, Eos. But frictions develop as Park befriends the androids of the ship, preferring their company over the baffling complexity of humans, while the rest of the crew treats them with suspicion and even outright hostility.
Shortly after landing, the crew finds themselves trapped on the ship by a radiation storm, with no means of communication or escape until it passes—and that’s when things begin to fall apart. Park’s patients are falling prey to waking nightmares of helpless, tongueless insanity. The androids are behaving strangely. There are no windows aboard the ship. Paranoia is closing in, and soon Park is forced to confront the fact that nothing—neither her crew, nor their mission, nor the mysterious Eos itself—is as it seems.
In this tense mystery/thriller on an alien planet, psychologist Grace Park finds herself in a mixed crew of humans and synthetics where no one is acting as they should. The humans are losing themselves to nightmares one by one. The androids are behaving in ways that contradict their protocols. At the center of it all, a bureaucratic conspiracy, interstellar indentured servitude…and whatever’s down in the cargo bay.
One of the more difficult parts of writing a science fiction mystery/thriller is how satisfying the Answer is to the presented Question. A lot of sci-fi mysteries make the mistake, I think, of going simply too big. Too mysterious. This book happens to strike that balance extremely well. It does this by creating two avenues of uncanniness: that which the reader experiences and that with character experiences.
As a reader, you don’t really know the full story, and you know you don’t know the full story. The world is unfolding in front of you. Grace Park, our main character, does know the world, but she also knows that things are being kept from her. So the mystery happens where those two elements meet, when we sort of catch up to where Park is.
There are a few moments that come across a little “well, let me tell you the answer,” but they’re balanced by the fact that even in story, they don’t have all the information. You’re even treated to some very interesting video transcripts.
There is, however, some background provided about the current state of Earth that I kept sort of waiting to touch the main story in a more significant way. It wasn’t uninteresting by, any means, but it almost felt like a red herring when trying to put together all the pieces.
Day of the Triffids
John Wyndham
Science Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic (1951)
From Storygraph:
Bill Masen, bandages over his wounded eyes, misses the most spectacular meteorite shower England has ever seen. Removing his bandages the next morning, he finds masses of sightless people wandering the city. He soon meets Josella, another lucky person who has retained her sight, and together they leave the city, aware that the safe, familiar world they knew a mere twenty-four hours before is gone forever.
But to survive in this post-apocalyptic world, one must survive the Triffids, strange plants that years before began appearing all over the world. The Triffids can grow to over seven feet tall, pull their roots from the ground to walk, and kill a man with one quick lash of their poisonous stingers. With society in shambles, they are now poised to prey on humankind. Wyndham chillingly anticipates bio-warfare and mass destruction, fifty years before their realization, in this prescient account of Cold War paranoia.
This book is typically pitched as a plant-based disaster story. The world is blind and the carnivorous triffids are hear to kill us all!
But the thing is Wyndham is more subtle than that.
While this is a story that features world-wide blindness and carnivorous plants, it’s also not really about either of those things.
First, it’s a story about disability and our relationship with it. On one side we see the individual responses to suddenly being blind ranging from suicide to stubbornness. In comparison, we have the actions and reactions of the people who retained their sight, like our main character, Bill. They’re faced with the question: how much do they owe their fellow man? What is their social responsibility to this new world of the blind?
More importantly, though, what does stepping up actually look like? Is it militaristic organization? Small groups? New community structures? The one-eyed king and his subjects? In this post-WWII UK, they’re quite a few people convinced that the Americans will come and save them. While that hope dwindles down, we’re looking at a group of people who have to come to terms with the fact that this is the new normal. This is what their world looks like, now.
And in Wyndham style, we don’t get full explanations for everything. Because our characters simply don’t know. They only know that they have to move forward.
All while plants are trying to kill them.
Door Into Flame
Diane Duane
2nd World Fantasy (1979)
From Storygraph:
A sorcerous swordsmith desperate to achieve true power. His stubbornly nonmagical sword. His princely runaway lover. His hungry new fire elemental. Put them all together, and what can possibly go wrong?Herewiss is the only man in centuries to possess the Power of the blue Flame, but he can’t use or control it – not even to help his friend and lover Freelorn, prince of Arlen, exiled from his native land and pursued across the Middle Kingdoms by the usurpers’ allies. Invoking perilous sorceries and the even more dangerous assistance of the fire elemental Sunspark, Herewiss manages to rout the armies besieging Freelorn and his little band of followers, and free his loved. Together they flee east to seek temporary refuge in the mysterious lands near the edge of the world they know.But now Herewiss faces a devastating choice. His time to master the blue Fire is running out. Should he abandon his fruitless search and join Freelorn in his fight to regain his kingdom? Or should he seek out the ancient keep in the Waste where doors lead into other worlds-perhaps even the door whose use will teach him to control the Power that he must master or die?…The Door Into Fire, first novel set in Diane Duane’s award-winning Middle Kingdoms universe, opens a fantastic saga of power, magic and friendship that has become a cult classic for its uniquely inclusive take on epic fantasy and its unforgettable characters.
What we have here is a pretty straight-forward fantasy book in a lot of ways. We have mysterious portals, elemental entities, ancient magic, with just a touch of Chosen One in that our main character is one of the only men that can perform the sort of magic that he does. I’m not overly fond of the “special member of gender in opposite-gender based field” thing, but, honestly, I’m more willing to give it a shot with a woman writer.
However, our main character, Herewiss, doesn’t overly linger in his maleness. The narrative doesn’t really pivot around his specialness. Merely acknowledges it and moves on. Its focus is more his own personal angst and anger that he can’t perform this special sorcery. That makes the premise not quite so cloying or eyeroll inducing.
Where this book really shines is in its approach to gender politics and how that intersects with sexual politics. We have this society built on the premise of the divine feminine with a lot of very standard mythological chicanery. This tripartite goddess figure is both Mother and Bride, Death and Life, and everything in between. It speaks to the very real way that we build out mythology in terms of psychosexual expression.
And then everything is sort of built up from there to create this queer normative society not overly confined by gendered roles and expectations while still having a hint of them (mostly in the rod vs sword dichotomy of a magic focus). Being a book from the 70’s, it’s both very forward thinking but also a direct response to changing sensibilities of the era.
Comic Roundup
Venom
I’m still in the Flash Thompson era of my Venom chronological reread. Currently almost done with Thunderbolts Red. Thunderbolts Red is a lot of fun, for one. It’s basically just a bunch of people who don’t normally do teams…on a team. Deadpool always has a weird fit on any given group, but I think this is one of the better ones. That kind of middle ground between totally unhinged and surprisingly competent.
But, to this day, I don’t know how I feel about Agent Venom.
I like Flash as a character. The way the symbiote is typically used as an addiction allegory, I find his additional layer of pre-existing alcoholism to be a compelling narrative component. I just don’t know that I prefer him as Venom during this era of his tenure, in particular. They have the symbiote “lobotomized” for large chunks of the story, so they’ve stripped away a lot of what I think makes Venom most interesting. For large parts of the story, Flash!Venom is just a standard anti-hero with minor shapeshifting abilities. A jacked-up Spider-Man/Punisher hybrid. All the stories during his era are objectively great, but there’s something missing in the front half.
And man, you don’t really notice it until you’re physically looking at the books on the shelf, but Flash takes up a LOT of space in the Venom canon. Just interesting that he’s not a higher association than Eddie.
Deadpool
I also wanted to get caught up, via MU, with the current Deadpool run, so I started that. Then I realized: I have no idea where Princess came from. She showed up in Venom War, and I just sort of accepted it. But now I thought I should maybe read her origin. Catch up with all the symbiotes. That sent be back to the short 2022 Wong/Coccolo run. Holy SHIT what an EXCELLENT run. I absolutely loved every element, and I’m heartbroken that things didn’t work out with Valentine. They were perfect for each other, and I’m a little mad about it. But I also now love Princess with every fiber of my being.
Rascal
Speaking of symbiotes, I also started keeping up with Marvel Academy Infinity Comic, and I’m having an absolute hell of a time. It started because I learned that Rascal/Normie Osborn and Moon Girl were in it, and I absolutely love those two. I’m sticking around because the rest of the cast is absolute chef’s kiss. If you’re not already reading it, I highly recommend it.
I had the realization, though, that I was missing a bit of a gap in Rascal’s story between his first appearance in Venom and Marvel Academy. That made me roll up the Red Goblin mini-series. It wasn’t as strong as the Toxin mini-series, but still a fun read that filled everything in.
New Releases This month
In terms of new comics I’ve been enjoying Cable: Love and Chrome, Deadpool/Wolverine, and falling more and more in love with Ultimate Spider-Man with every issue. All-New Venom has got me on edge for the issue 5 final reveal in a few months. I also love the way Ewing has paid attention to the linguistic growth of the character.
The first issues of One World Under Doom and Weapon X-Men also gave an excellent show, and I expect them to at least be fun if a bit silly.
The first issue of Bug Wars absolutely blew me away, and I’m so excited to see it continue.
Silverhawks also set up some really cool stuff and made me want to go back and rewatch the show after a million years. Now the theme song is stuck in my head.
Free Books and Special Sales!
From the Bookfunnel community of indie authors. Affiliate links to free stories and special sales, just one newsletter signup away.
Fantasy
Free/On Sale
Sapphic Sensations on Smashwords!
Check These Out!
| Check it Out No Spice Fantasy etc. Novellas and Novelletes |
Sci-Fi Romance
Free
Fantasy/Sci-Fi Romance Giveaway
Pixels and Pins Studio 