One of the reasons I anxiously anticipate every new Aliette de Bodard release is because I can just assume there will be casual queerness somewhere in every story. (Note: I’m not entirely fond of the wording “incidental lesbians” that has become popular in lesfic circles because I’m not interested in either the characters or their orientations being “incidental”--I want them to be essential to the story, just not in a way that makes orientation or identity itself the essence of the story. For me “casual queerness” better evokes the thing that makes me happy.)
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There is nothing quite so frustrating to me as coming late to a wonderful book because the cover synopsis deliberately concealed the information that would lead me to put it on my TBR list. And given my reading habits, that usually happens when the publisher has decided to erase all but the vaguest hint of queer content.
It’s funny what reputation can do: if you’d handed me A Study in Honor knowing nothing except what’s in the blurb, I’d probably have told you that I’m not really into near-future dystopian political thrillers, even one that’s re-visioning of Holmes and Watson featuring two queer black women. But tell me that [author I love] is coming out with a new series under a new nom de plume and I’ll give anything she writes a try. I would have missed out on a great book if I’d gone just by my usual genre and setting preferences.
Two young women in turn-of-the-century San Francisco come of age, struggle to find their feet, and find each other. Kerry had a rough beginning, often on the far side of the law, and more comfortable taken for a boy in trousers than playing the girl. Only a chance alliance between her father and an up-and-coming doctor gave her a chance at a way out of the rough Barbary Coast neighborhood. Beth’s strict middle-class upbringing gave her a surer future, but one where she struggled to make her own choices even as a brilliant nursing student.
Clockwork Boys by T. Kingfisher (Red Wombat Tea Company, 2018)
T. Kingfisher has enough cred as an author with me that I will give anything she writes a try. But it’s not reasonable to expect that any one author will hit your target every single time. This is a perfectly good story, excellently written, with engaging characters. It just didn’t hit my personal sweet spots in terms of story and characters. Your experience will most likely be different.
Set in classical Greece, the plot of this novella is fairly straightforward: upper class woman who is Not Like The Other Girls is intrigued by the beauty and defiance of an exotic (in this case, Norse) slave and purchases her in order to tame her and (as we eventually find out) with the goal of some sort of interpersonal relationship. After a period of power play, assorted hurt-comfort scenes, and jealous pining, the slave runs away because...well, because, and her retrieval results in a rescue, a joyous reunion, and her being freed, concluded by a HEA with her former owner.
I'm trying to make a push to get caught up with some casual reviewing as well as my review commitments. Since I'm currently still dazed from having dental work (new crown) I'll go for the casual side and more recently consumed.
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Still catching up on my review backlog.
Agnes Moor’s Wild Knight by Alyssa Cole (self published?, 2014)
As I hope it will become apparent, I'm trying to get caught up on a bunch of reviews that are on my to-do list. ("Hope" because I haven't actually gotten caught up on writing them all.) The hardest part (other than getting the "round to-it") is trying to make up plausible reading dates to insert in the Goodreads version of the reviews. I know the general period in which I read these things, but specific dates are non-recoverable.
Hamilton’s Battalion by Rose Lerner, Courtney Milan, and Alyssa Cole (self-published, 2018)
Murder on the Titania by Alex Acks (Queen of Swords Press, 2018)
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