Queer – Page 5 – Marked for Plot

Asunder – An Episodic Eldritch Fantasy

I think I’ve taken Asunder off my TBR about three times as I try to keep it at manageable levels. Invariably, I see a review that piques my interest enough for it to go back onto the pile. If I’m honest, the cover art put me off. It’s unfair, I know (don’t judge a book by its cover and all that), but Asunder’s cover is as beautiful as it is misleading. When I opened the pages, I assumed I’d be walking into a well-written romance with a teenage year old lead. Instead I walked through the dreams of dead gods as a 29 year old woman scrabbles to retain her personhood in the face of uncaring worlds. It will make you feel small and wonder and disgust and hopeless. If you’re willing to give it the space to breathe, it will take your breath away.

Elevator Pitch:
Karys is a Deathspeaker. In exchange for the ability to peer through the Veneer to see magic and talk to the recently deceased, she has sold her soul to an eldritch abomination with three faces and a body made of wings. During a job that’s gone horribly wrong, she stumbles across Ferain, an ambassador from her country’s former occupiers, who was attacked while returning home. To save his life and make a massive amount of money, she anchors his soul to her shadow. Getting him out proves to be much more difficult than getting him in, however, and the Saints of the eldritch gods she serves have taken an interest in this man. Her journey forces her into contact with a variety of haunted landscapes, uncaring gods, and ruthless criminals.

Read if: you like eldritch beings who bend reality to their will, episodic horror/fantasy hybrids, you want to feel the weight of selling your soul

Avoid if: you want a quick moving plot or dynamic action scenes, agreeable protagonists, straightforward romantasy

Comparable Media: The City of Stairs, Spirited Away, Wizard of the Pigeons

Kalyna the Soothsayer – Political Fantasy with a Sense of Humor

One of my favorite things to do is read books nobody is talking about other than a few people who relentlessly hype it. Kalyna the Soothsayer was brought to my attention by u/RheingoldRiver over on the Fantasy subreddit. I’m a bit sad that it took me so long to finally pick this book up, but I really enjoyed it! It’s got a good amount of political intrigue, a delightfully unreliable narrator, and a setting that feels just weird enough to be noticed without distracting from the corruptive nature of power or xenophobic social orders. It’s not a comedy, but it’s got a relentlessly dry sense of humor. It isn’t epic fantasy, but the stakes are high. It’s not a crime novel, but our protagonist’s string of cons and lies were entertaining and filled with tension. It doesn’t quite hit my ‘all time favorites’ list, but it’s good enough that I’ve already put in an order for the sequel.

Elevator Pitch
Kalyna is from everywhere, but belongs nowhere. She is powerless in a family of soothsayers. Her ‘prophecies’ rely on guesswork and rigging the odds. She’s catches the attention of the Prince of Rotfelsen, an underground nation. She and her family find themselves kidnapped and forcibly placed in the Prince’s service right when assassination plots against the King are on the rise. She must figure out how to escape without killing herself, her loving father, or her viper of a grandmother. Until then, she’s got to fake some fortunes for a paranoid prince and hope things don’t go too sideways in the meantime.

Read if Looking for: long cons, a bucket of assassination attempts, characters using nontypical weapons, Jewish-coded protagonists, chaotic bisexuals

Avoid if Looking For: kind and sympathetic nobility, fight scenes with consequences, supportive grandparents, long chapters

Comparable Reads: The Justice of Kings, A Mask of Mirrors, The Blacktongue Thief

Queer Books Not About Falling in Love

Valentine’s Day has never particularly interested me. I like anniversaries much more to celebrate a relationship. When I was single it felt stupid and corny, and when partnered I found that anniversaries felt more meaningful. It helps that anniversaries (usually) don’t involve fighting with a bunch of other couples for a restaurant reservation. As I started reading more Fantasy and Science Fiction, I quickly discovered that most books with Queer protagonists tended to focus on romance plotlines, Achillean books even moreso. As an avid Genre-Romance reader, I’m a big fan of love stories, but I also love seeing books about Queer folks living life, tackling evil dictators, and doing grand acts of magic.

This is a list of Queer books I love that don’t feature major romance plotlines. Some of these might feature established relationships, others may have romantic elements that don’t have a traditional happy ending (or are so minor to be unremarked on), or are unconcerned with romantic bonds altogether. You’ll find everything from popcorn action stories to thematically ambitious literature here, so hopefully you find something interesting if you’re looking to scratch your anti-Valentine’s day itch!

Lifelode – A Domestic Fantasy to Chew On

I am so happy that I read Lifelode. It isn’t a perfect book, but I love how it defies easy comparisons and pushed boundaries of fantasy in the 2000s structurally and thematically. It’s got delightfully weird worldbuilding and, if pressed, would use One Hundred Years of Solitude as the closest comparison I’ve read (though even that isn’t right). More selfishly, it’s also probably one of the best books I’ve read for a book club, simply because I think Lifelode makes so many bold choices that will spark interesting discussion. Certainly my views here on how Walton handled theme don’t seem to be universally shared amongst those who, like me, ended up reading far ahead for our midway discussion. Lifelode isn’t necessarily a dense book, but there’s a lot of interesting choices here which set a great foundation for discussion whether you loved or hated the directions the story took.

The Premise:
Applekirk is a rural farming town run by a lord and his family, who live in a large manor. Taveth is one of the four adults of the marriage, committed to maintaining the house. One of her husbands is Lord, another manages the sheep and farms. Meanwhile Chayra, the other wife of the house, has found joy in throwing pots. Their lives are thrown out of routine with the arrival of a flirtatious travelling scholar, a meanspirited ancestor to one of Taveth’s husbands, and a priestess of the goddess of marriage who has been sent to bring said ancestor to the goddess’ justice. Just as important, however, is the harvest and all preparations it requires.

Read if Looking For: books without easy comparisons, celebration of traditionally feminine work, Gods as hiveminds, reimagined family structures

Avoid if you Dislike: pastoral settings, relationship drama, complex family trees, peas, petty characters

The Warden

If I’m being blunt, there wasn’t much drawing me to The Warden when I saw the audiobook in my public library’s catalog. It seemed like fairly traditional fantasy fare, but with a queer necromancer that wasn’t The Locked Tomb. The thing that actually hooked me? The anticipated wait for a hold to come up was over a year long. Surely something that in-demand is worth the wait? This book didn’t reinvent my reading life, won’t make my favorites list, but it absolutely was a fun farmtown fantasy filled with plenty of things to love in a 300 page package.

The Premise:
Aelis is a new Warden. She’s a prodigy able to manipulate magic from three fields of magic and the son of one of the country’s richest men. That didn’t stop her from getting placed at the very edge of the Country, near the frontier that serves as no-man’s land between Aelis’ people and the Orcs. Turns out everyone is terrified of a necromancer walking amongst them, there’s a few dangers and mysteries she didn’t expect, and a crumbling wizard’s tower in desperate need of a roof and a door. Before she can tackle any of those problems, she’s got to earn the trust of the locals.

Read if Looking For: classic D&D fantasy trappings, slow pacing, city-slicker arrogance, small towns with more secrets than one could reasonably expect

Avoid if Looking For: dynamic sapphic romances, skeletons everywhere, action galore, corny D&D humor

Striker V: Elements of Change

This was meant to be a book I read when I was on the treadmill, taking a break from curriculum writing, or when I couldn’t fall asleep. The type of story it didn’t matter much if I drifted in and out of. I was reading it on my cell phone, not even a damned e-reader. Striker V gripped me in the early chapters and didn’t let me go for a good long while. This novel examines Superheroes from a more person-first perspective than the standard, caring just as much about how humans would react to the constant violence of superhero activity as the fights themselves. It didn’t quite stick the landing, and I have some issues with the resolution of the story. However, it did things I haven’t seen much in superhero stories, and those bits felt just as interesting as The Watchmen.

Elevator Pitch:
Striker is the fifth superhero with his name. He’s got seven years until retirement and two years until he reaches his heroic lineage’s average age of death (none have survived to retire). He’s got big muscles, a massive healing factor, and some touch-based mind syncing. He’s been worn down by the constant pain of his existence, the fear that no matter what he does his bones will be ground to dust over and over while the public excitedly waits for him to fall from a skyscraper one more time so that Subway will give away free promotional sandwiches. The shifts have been longer recently with increased villain activity, and the book opens with him in a desperate battle against his best friend in the world, who has just now gone rogue.

Read if Looking For: mental health struggles, governmental bureaucracy (and sometimes humor), dystopian superheroes, happy endings

Avoid if Looking For: nuanced climaxes to nuanced conflicts, creative superhero powers, villains that make sense, tonal consistency

Stalking Darkness (Nightrunner #2)

If you’d like to see my review for book 1 in this gay epic(ish) Fantasy series from the 90s, see Luck in the Shadows.

It’s been a long time since I read a Mass Market Paperback, or enjoyed the smell of an old book. While my hand suffered some cramps during the final 100 pages, it was a nice hit of nostalgia for what reading used to be like. I enjoy reading on e-readers well enough, but the larger-sized paperbacks and hardbacks of our modern printing era are definitely more comfortable to curl up with. That said, I miss how inexpensive books used to be!

Anyways, this was a great sequel to a great opening of a series. As with book 1, be prepared for elements that feel dated and gross in our modern era. This book was a lot less of that than the original though, especially since I’d accepted and and compartmentalized from my significant qualms about how Flewelling set up the relationship between Alec and Seregil in book 1.

The Premise:
This book is a hodgepodge of Alec and Seregil’s adventures as the growing threat of war with Pleminar develops. Seregil goes hunting for more dangerous necromantic relics, Alec starts to do spy jobs solo, and they both keep feeling like people are following them. Alec learns about his past, we get a cryptic prophecy, and the villains make their move. Lots of classic fantasy elements, though this book continues to place a heavier focus on political or urban exploration elements than extended travel across fantastic terrains or grand battles you see in other epic fantasy works of the time like The Wheel of Time.

Read if Looking For: political intrigue, brewing wars, so many dreams, angsty pining, a sudden awareness of breasts and pectorals

Avoid if Looking For: books without rape or torture, lots of female characters, moral ambiguity

Shadow Life

We so rarely get to see older protagonists in fantasy and science fiction. Those we do get to see tend to be retired adventurers, war generals, or all-powerful magicians. Not old ladies who are struggling with bladder control and nosy children. Shadow Life was a breath of fresh air. It’s a moody and atmospheric graphic novel, and a slice of life very much outside the norm for genre fiction. As a novel, I think it would be unremarkable but enjoyable. In comic format however, I found it rather entrancing.

The Premise
After sensing evil spirits in the retirement home her children arranged for her, Kumiko has struck out on her own. She’s got her own apartment, a friendly neighbor, and a nagging sense that something is following her. As Death’s Shadow haunts her every step, Kumiko seeks independence in a world that wants to control her. Her journey even brings her back into contact with an old lover, a new vacuum salesperson, and away from her daughter’s nagging phone calls.

Read if Looking For: dark cozy, bisexual old ladies, shadow cats, characters with selective hearing, slice of life stories

Avoid if Looking For: plot-focused books, strong horror or fantasy elements, clear thematic takeaways

Local Heavens

I came excited for a queer Gatsby retelling, and left disappointed by how it was handled. I’m not a diehard Gatsby fan, but it’s definitely on the higher end of ‘proper English’ books I was forced to read in high school. I think it’s a story with rich potential for reimaginings considering how little the original plot of Gatsby actually matters. However, I left this book wishing almost every choice Fajardo made was a different one. Should I have DNF’d it? Probably, and it’s a lesson for me to learn as I start 2026. Building good habits in the new year and all that.

I won’t give my usual Elevator Pitch here. If you’re familiar with The Great Gatsby, and can imagine it in a fairly typical Cyberpunk setting, you’ve got the gist. If you haven’t read Gatsby, I’d recommend reading that over this in almost every case. If queer characters in cyberpunk worlds is your interest, try Welcome to Forever, and if you want early 1900s Queer Asian leads, try Siren Queen.

Read if Looking For: extremely faithful retellings, casually bisexual protagonists, thieves with bird aliases, Mech-Jazz lounges

Avoid if Looking For: thematic inversions or commentary on The Great Gatsby, lavish Cyberpunk parties

Shirewode

December this year has, apparently, been the month of mildly disappointing sequels. If you’d like to see my review of book 1 in this take on gay Robin Hood, see Greenwode. It lost a lot of the things that made it interesting, rehashed old ground, and didn’t succeed in raising the stakes of book 1 in a satisfying way. Just frustrating all-around. I think it’s a good recommendation for people who want fantasy gay yearning, but I needed the series to move past that.

You would think from this cover art that archery and action were going to be at least a little more prominent in this book? Too bad! Think again!

If you loved and wanted more of the ‘enemies by fate and religion’ vibes in book 1, you may like this one a lot more than I did. It remains the focal point of the series.

The Premise:
Book 1 ended pretty tragically. Gamelyn thinks his first love is dead. Rob thinks his first love betrayed him and is responsible for the death’s of his parents and sister. The Abbess and Sherriff are just generally horrible people. Book 2 picks up several years later as Gamelyn returns from his time in the Crusades as a Templar. Meanwhile Rob is finally the bandit we all knew he’d become. Gamelyn is assigned to hunt down the false pretender to the pagan god’s power by the Templars, not realizing the love of his life is actually alive and the very man he’s hunting. Meanwhile, Rob’s sister Marion is also alive, has amnesia, and is the kept pet of the evil Abbess.