Trans – Marked for Plot

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

Cemetery Boys

The Paranormal Romance trend of the mid 2010s may have died down, but it never quite went away. Cemetery Boys was a delightful recent addition to the genre, eschewing many of the more stickier parts of the subgenre in favor of something refreshing and heartfelt, instead of being another drop of water in the vast ocean of edgy immortal love interests.

The Premise:
Yadriel is a Brujo, or at least, he wants to be. He’s got the skills for it, but his family insists that he is in fact a she, and doesn’t belong in that part of the business. When he summons the ghost of Julian Diaz, he’s stuck with a more inconvenient companion than he could have hoped for, since Julian wants to get to the bottom of his own death. It doesn’t hurt that he’s cute, even as a ghost.

Read if Looking For: sweet romances, light mystery elements, transmasc latinx rep

Avoid if Looking For: surprising twists, action scenes, lots of magic