queer books?

okay, so. i have acquired an amazon giftcard and wish to acquire gay lit. but not like the entry level stuff that's all about the character's queerness?? i want, like, gay superheroes and shit. extra points if it's scifi. extra extra points if it has transpeople featured prominently, though i doubt i'll find anything like that.

 

A friend of mine wrote a post about Every Heart a Doorway - seems like you might like it? Not gay lit exactly but the protagonist is asexual and another main character is trans. (Unfortunately it's not on sale anymore but it sounds like a fun read.)

 

naw, ace ppl totally count as queer 2 me! thanks, i'll check it out 8)

 

Tipping the Velvet is about a girl in Victorian London who falls head over heels for a male impersonator on stage and runs off to London with her. It's a very, very gay book, plus she spends some time actively living as a guy.

Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence is super enjoyable and basically about necromancer lawyers. I don't think the first book has any explicitly lgbtq characters, but the second book includes a lesbian couple and one of the protagonists of the third is a trans woman whose difficulties have nothing to do with being trans.

I've gotten some people to read The Steel Seraglio by describing it as Mad Max meets the Arabian Nights, and there are two stated lesbian couples in it, including two protagonists.

 

carry on by rainbow rowell

 

A is for Alien by Caitlin Kiernan has a few short stories with lesbians in them. Her books The Red Tree and The Drowning Girl also deal with lesbians. The Drowning Girl also has a transwoman. Kiernan writes horror. And sci-fi. While the queerness of the characters is important it is not the main thing. So the transness of one of The Drowning Girl's characters is tied into the themes of the story.

 

see, i don't mind that. i just hate reading books that are centered entirely around coming out. i've come out, i know how it feels, i don't need every gay book i read to be centered around it anymore.

thanks to everyone for your awesome suggestions! i'll def check all these out! (tho i already have carry on, which i love)

 

two boys kissing by david levithiam

this book owns my soul honestly... it's a story of 5 gay boys (one of them is trans!!) but it's told by a ghost chorus of the generation that died from AIDS. it's painful and sobering and wonderful and afirming and beautifully written and i just love this book so much. highly recomend.

gayness is a central part of the story but only 1 kid isn't out yet, coming out isn't a big part of the story. it feels like a book written explicitly for queer teens. like the narrators are narrating the story, yes, but they are also aware of the audience they have and it feels like they're telling me a story too

 

Inda, Sherwood Smith, has casual non angsty gay
...not the main main character, but it is really refreshing to read

 

@kmoss

Spoiler

Evred more than makes up for that though. Oh Evred, you poor waffle.

I headcannoned Tdor as demi, personally. And yeah, the way characters were casually mentioned to be gay or pan or whatever and a fuss was never made about it was a+.

 

And it was all politicky and tactics and yssss
.....if you like that series, Lies of Locke Lamora is for you. no gay that I've seen yet, but it is Twisty in the same way. (LE Modesitt had similar character voice too)

 

http://www.amazon.com/Chuck-Tingle/e/B00SF2MTYK

*runs*

 

i made a noise irl, damn you.

 

don't really have energy to give specifics but

http://www.autostraddle.com/tag/book-list/

good resource for a lot of books.

 

Fantasy and some sf
General book recs, but most of the posts are about queer lit
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is... probably in the entry-level category, but it's also so good.
If you're interested in comics, in The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys and Nimona everyone is gay and there's zero gay angst.

 

Beauty Queens by Libba Bray has a bunch of super diverse ladies, queerness is definitely present and there's a trans girl, and it's generally a pretty good book :D

 

Oh! I forgot about beauty queens, I loved that book

 

the captive prince trilogy is historical fantasy not sci-fi, but it's also gay as shit & not rlly about Gayness so much as Ridiculous Court Intrigue. tho fair warning it's a story about one of the main characters owning another & has some triggery abuse themes (not between the main characters tho), and it's a reeeeeeeaaaaaally slow burn till the actual gay shit happens, until then there's a lot of ridiculous pining.

 

I'll always rec Hero by Perry Moore which is about superheroes and murder mysteries.

The Nightrunner series is fantasy spy thriller with some slow burn, but pretty good overall. The last few books get Weird.

 

funfact this was the first gay book i ever read