Queer – Page 13 – Marked for Plot

Silver in the Wood (Greenhollow Duology #1)

Silver in the Wood has been sitting on my bookshelf for a long time. Too long, to be honest. It has a sterling (and I think, well earned) reputation as an excellent novella featuring a gay lead, can be read in 1-2 sittings, and has immaculate vibes. It’s not a perfect book, but it was incredibly satisfying for the length of time I spent with it. Also, some of the best cover art I’ve seen in a good long while.

Elevator Pitch
Tobias is a woodsman. Or rather, he is a man of the woods, and has been for 400 years. He’s got some magic, but not as much as his Dryad friends, and mostly just tries to keep things quiet. Silver has purchased the woods and a bit more, and quickly sets to asking Tobias (and everyone else) far too many questions about local history. He particularly enjoys spending time with Tobias, but the weight of history presses down on Tobias, keeping him from accepting Silver’s overtures. In Greenhollow though, summer is dangerous, especially for pretty young men who are new to town.

Read if You’re Looking For: stories invoking folklore, redemption, bossy mothers, romantic subplots

Avoid if You’re Looking For: flirting with chemistry, tightly plotted books, satisfying explanations

Swordspoint (Riverside #1)

In terms of queer Fantasy, Swordspoint is one of those titles that gets thrown out a lot in terms of early representation. It’s also a seminal work in the Fantasy of Manners genre, and has a sequel following different characters decades later which I adored (you absolutely can read Privilege of the Sword first, though I anticipate most readers would prefer to start here). In the end I had more reservations about Swordspoint than Privilege, but I’m happy I read it and think there’s a lot to love here.

The Premise
Richard and Alex live in Riverside, a den of thieves and vice. Alex’s past is a mystery, but the former university student has a particular talent for cutting comments. Richard is a duelist, the best in town at the moment, hired by nobles to settle disputes and defend honor. They end up dragged into the plots of nobility, each of whom has an agenda of their own to try and gather as much possible without caring much who gets hurt.

Read If Looking For: dining room intrigue scenes, strict codes of honor, queer rep from the 80s,

Avoid if Looking For: lead characters with agency, conversations where the subtext is explained, romance plot structures

Liar City (Sugar & Vice #1)

Liar City should have had the perfect ingredients to make this an excellent book for me. It’s a thriller with a queer male lead, with romantic tension that doesn’t dominate the story. Unfortunately, I found this book to be rather underwhelming. I don’t regret reading it, and think it will be a great fit for some, but it isn’t going to stick with me for any appreciable length of time.

The Premise
Reece is an Empath, one of only two in Seattle. He can sense the emotions of others, though he wears special gloves to avoid physical contact and protect both himself and others. Recently, he started developing the ability to read emotions from a distance, and to tell truth from lies. Plant that with a backdrop of a law pushing for increasing regulation of Empath’s lives and job opportunities, throw in the murder of the sponsoring senator, and Reece’s part time job as a police consultant got a lot more interesting. Only this case is joined by the mysterious Dead Man, an urban legend said to hunt rogue empaths with almost unlimited government clearance. The two spend a rather eventful day together to try and stop a series of events that could lead to the change of Empath’s everyday lives forever.

Read if Looking For: brooding men with southern accents, unethical corporate machinations, running jokes about texting while driving, extremely slow burn romance series

Avoid if Looking For: adrenaline inducing reads, romances resolved in a single book, deeply realized characters

The Tomb of Dragons (Cemetaries of Amalo #3)

The ghost of a dead dragon; a tragic backstabbing in an opera; a man finally beginning to summon the will to move past condemning his own love to death. The Tomb of Dragons finishes the trilogy that Witness for the Dead started. In the end, I thought this was the weakest entry of the series, but it was well worth the read, and Addison continues to stand out as an author who staunchly refuses to adhere to modern conventions of how fantasy books ‘should’ read.

The Premise:
Book 2 of this series ended with Thara’s magic destroyed after a traumatic incident. It picks up with a death in an opera house, the disappearance of a noble in danger of fomenting rebellion, and a completely dysfunctional cemetery that Thara has been set by the Archprelate to get back on track. As with the other books in this series, it floats between plotlines smoothly, but the central one concerns a graveyard of dragons, and a ghost that seeks justice for its death hundreds of years ago.

Read If Looking For: slice of life following a death priest with depression, comically evil corporations, gay leads in non-romance books

Avoid if Looking For: books without cross-series references, mysteries, fast pacing

The Bright Sword

Lev Grossman hasn’t been my favorite author. The Magicians Trilogy didn’t resonate with me, and I found myself in a constant cycle of interest in the ideas he pursues but finding myself disengaged while reading. The Bright Sword generally continues that trend, where I can recognize that there’s lots to love in this interesting take on Arthurian myth, but one that I found myself skimming through. Full disclosure however, I read this book in the middle of packing to move, and probably would have benefitted from something lighter/more popcorny at that point in my life.

The Premise:
Collum is an aspiring Knight of the Round Table. He’s only got a stolen suit of armor to his name and a backful of scars from an abusive guardian. When he arrives, he finds Arthur is dead, Merlin is buried, and most of the accomplished knights missing, murdered, or maimed. He, Merlin’s traitor apprentice, and some of the lesser-known knights of the round table go on a quest (well, quests) to secure the future of their great country. Throughout this, we get quite a few backstory chapters for various characters, slipping back and forth between Collum’s present and his companions’ pasts.

Read if Looking For: queer(ish) Arthurian tales, self-insert protagonists, sassy muslim immigrants, unknowable magic

Avoid if Looking For: consistent prose style, historically consistent worldbuilding, Arthurian writing featuring the classic characters

Compound Fracture

Andrew Joseph White is an author who has done a great job of pushing the YA space in the last few years. Hell Follows With Us was good, but The Spirit Bares Its Teeth is a real masterpiece of a historical fiction horror. He has a habit of breaking away from the typical prose stylings and plot progression that has begun to feel very repetitive in modern YA Fantasy, feeling more akin to something we’d have seen in the early 2000s content wise, but with a lot more representation and modern sensibilities.

Compound Fracture is much more realistic than White’s other works (barely any speculative elements at all) and is heavily inspired by his own life and family. You’ll find most of his trademark elements (body horror, trans & autistic lead, religious queerphobia), and generally speaking if you like his other books you’ll enjoy Compound Fracture. In the end, I found this the weakest of White’s novels so far, but still very much enjoyed it.

The Premise
The Abernathys have a long and violent history with the Davis family. Going all the way back to union vs mining company wars, their history is a bloody one. Miles Abernathy has just come out to his parents as trans when he gets nearly killed via beating by sheriff’s son after showing a friend evidence of the Sheriff Davis’ corruption. Miles needs to navigate healing, his family’s poverty, and a desire for justice with the threat of more violence looming over his, and his family’s head. And all the while the ghost of his ancestor, Saint Abernathy, is haunting Miles, railroad spike piercing his mouth in death as it did at the end of his life.

Read if Looking For: gruesome descriptions of wounds, Appalachian culture, realistic queerphobia descriptions

Avoid if Looking For: lots of fantasy/supernatural elements, nuanced villains

The City that Would Eat the World

2025 has not been my best year of reading (yet). There’s been quite a few disappointments, a decent number of ‘good, but not great’ books, and one or two that will stay with me. I’m happy to say that I finally found something addictive in The City that Would Eat the World. It was a raucously fun adventure in an alien world that is both utterly unlike our own, while mirroring it deeply.

The Premise
The City of Wall is … a bunch of interconnected walls. A lot of them. They currently cover about a third of Ishevos, with the age-extending god Cambrias driving its relentless expansion. Thea is a mimic exterminator who hosts a flagstone-counting god inside her soul, and Aven is a traveling adventurer visiting Wall looking for the next great thrill. They end up meeting after a god-killing artifact falls into Thea’s lap, and drawing a lot of attention that Thea very much doesn’t want, and Aven very much does. The resulting events will take them across the vast city, bring them into contact with heroes and monsters, and challenge their beliefs about the goodness of Wall (for Thea) or whether toppling it is even possible (for Aven).

Read if Looking For: easy reading, weird megastructures, batshit crazy plans, anticapitalist themes

Avoid if Looking For: themes you have to dig for, gritty and dark books, romantic subplots

A Fractured Infinity

If I had to pick a single book from last year that I fell in love with, it would be Welcome to Forever, by Nathan Tavares. It was ambitious, unabashedly queer, and wasn’t afraid to have characters make toxic (but realistic) decisions. A Fractured Infinity is Tavares’ only other published long form work (though I highly recommend his short story Missed Calls if you want to spend some time crying into the night). I saved this book specifically for my first read of r/Fantasy’s 2025 bingo challenge, and it was a great start. This book didn’t place Tavares as my all-time favorite author, but he has made the ‘must read’ list.

The Premise
Hayes is an indie documentary filmmaker who is grappling with the suicide of his only real friend, when he gets summoned to a secretive research facility. Yusuf is the assistant director of that facility, in charge of research into a device that can tell the future, and the past, and comes from another universe where alternate versions of Hayes and Yusuf are married. This book follows Hayes’s growing entanglement in the research project, his actions when everything goes sideways, and balancing the value of Yusuf’s life against the fate of billions of others.

Read if You’re Looking For: captivating and unlikable protagonists, blunt depictions of queerness, android drag queens

Avoid if you’re Looking For: grounded Sci Fi, traditional romance tropes

The Diviner (Journals of Evander Tailor #2)

The Journals of Evander Tailor series has been a guilty pleasure favorite of mine for a while. It’s the type of fantasy I wish I would have had as a kid: fun fight scenes with a nerdy gay lead. Life has been pretty hectic recently, so I went in on the audiobooks to listen to as I rip up carpets and contemplate whether I have the skill to try and refinish the floors with my pitiful DIY skills (the answer is definitely not, at least right now).

The Premise:
Evan is in his second year of magic school. After killing the king with the help of a Fae Queen, he finds himself with lots of eyes on him as he scrambles for power that will keep him safe. However, the year will bring a lot more than schoolwork after a visit to a neighboring country clues him in that there’s a lot more going on than meets the eye with the kingdom. Something is terribly wrong, and, let’s be honest, it’s probably the nobility’s fault.

Read if Looking For: fun enchanting, asshat nobility, drama-free relationships

Avoid if Looking For: careful prose, confident characters, books free from tropes

Sorcery and Small Magics

In my constant hunt for the perfect romance and the perfect Gay Fantasy book, I’ve read a lot of good books and a small mountain of bad ones. I’d initially brushed off Sorcery and Small magics based on the pitch, but after a series of glowing reviews, I decided to give it a try. And what I found was an enjoyable (if not revolutionary) story that was a great book to listen to while packing up boxes for my upcoming move.

The Premise
Leo is in school to develop his skills as a Scriver, someone who writes magic for Sorcerers to cast. Only he doesn’t want to be a magician, or at school, or paired up with his arch-nemiss Grimm, a prodigal talent who matches Leo’s personality about as well as personal responsibility does. When a magical control spell gets cast accidentally on Leo, however, he finds himself unable tied to Grimm far more tightly than he ever wanted to be.

Read if Looking For: wholesome and casual writing, casual bickering, violins

Avoid if Looking For: traditional Romantasy, books that develop theme rigorously