transcendent 2 presumably the first one is also good but i haven't read it. they're both anthologies of speculative fiction stories with a trans focus it's been mentioned here before but max gladstone's craft sequence books apparently have a decent number of queer characters
@Aondeug I'm fine with dark as fuck! I actually kind of love dark as fuck. Cool. Trans vibes are also great @sirsparklepants I love fantasy politics, sounds like fun. I don't get to read a ton of cyberpunk in general, so Bone Dance piques my interest. Also I didn't even know what the term mannerpunk meant until just now but I love it, I'm all about the concept of mannerpunk. (and no magic isn't a dealbreaker, I'm more just looking for 'outside the scope of our typical day to day world' kinds of queer stories. broad and unfocused)
It belatedly occurs to me- you might already know this one, but the Imperial Radch books (Ancillary Justice and sequels). They're sci-fi set in a civilization where the dominant language doesn't distinguish gender at all (and culturally it's an occasional footnote at most; it's a high-tech space society, so reproduction can be arranged regardless of the plumbing of the participants), so every single character is referred to as "she" by the narrator. The author has said she doesn't know if there's any canonical gay couples for the same reason she doesn't know if it passes the Bechdel Test. :::PPP The narrator, incidentally, is an angry spaceship AI stranded in a cyborg body and out for revenge. It's a good time.
@Charlie When you say "a good abuse narrative" do you mean "a realistic and tasteful depiction" or "really gets down and wallows in the misery"?
The author’s actually written a new book called the raven tower. It’s set in a fantasy universe and there’s no romance, but the main character is a trans man. The narrator is spoilers.
i'm always looking for books (and comics and etc) involving m/m relationships and adventurey heroics. i started writing them because i wanted to read them, and i still have not come across much of anything else aside from fanfic that provides what i want. but i mean. it's 2019. surely there are some badass boyfriends out there by now.
There's the Nightrunner series by Lynn Flennwelling; it takes a good two books to really get into the meat of the relationship, and the later books go some odd places, but they're politically oriented fantasy with an m/m main pairing.
yeah, i read those a long time ago, like long enough that maybe i should reread them bc i remember basically nothing about them. :D have also read swordspoint, the old mercedes lackey stuff (which was one of my major 'inspirations' for making kastor a big ol trope subverting dorkus), and that more recent space series with the stabby kid which i am absolutely blanking on but it had bird themed titles? i could just walk downstairs and look but i am laaaaazy.
@Silver Sheep I suppose on that scale I lean towards something more tasteful. I don't mind stories that wallow either, precisely, but I feel like I run into a lot of stories that have wallowing and then death. I don't want to preclude tragedy entirely because there's some abuse narratives I like that kind of do land there... But ideally, something a bit more optimistic. It doesn't have to shy away from the content either. I know that's a kind of narrow and precise range but that's kind of what I'm looking for. @Morgan Jae Cool, I'll add it to my list. @LadyNighteyes I don't know that one! Feel free to throw some 'obvious' titles at me because I feel like I've missed out on some tbqh. The narrator sounds amazing, and like the kind of character I'd read the book for alone, but with all that on top of it... sounds great.
I have been wanting to try reading more horror books. Ghost stories in particular. I like angry and vengeful ghosts or ghosts with unfinished business. Or monsters, monsters are pretty great. Also have a v strong preference for whatever horrors happen to be "real" within the universe of the story and for some sense of closure and understanding of why things happened by the end tho monsters require little justification, monsters do as monsters do.
I went on a big Stephen King kick in high school and I remember particularly liking Pet Sematary, though it does have that signature Stephen King thing going on where it heavily evokes a character's very personal childhood fears in a way that walks right on the line between "surreal" and "silly."
i seem to recall the girl from the well by rin chupeco being good, altho i read it years ago i'm not sure the undrowned child is horror per se, but i was certainly pretty creeped out by it, and it was very good
tim powers is filed under urban fantasy rather than horror, but his stuff can get incredibly creepy. for instance, 'declare' may be mostly about cold war spies, but more than a decade after i first read it, the thought of concentric circles randomly appearing on surfaces still makes my hair stand up. the 'last call' trilogy has ghosts. weird ghosts. weird ghost cosmology. predatory millionaires smoking ghosts to get high on their memories. are we scared OF ghosts or scared FOR ghosts? yes. yes we are.
Who else can’t get enough historical nonfiction about the Vietnam War? All of you, right? Right. Here are my top two recommendations: 1. Fire in the Lake, by Frances Fitzgerald The only book you’ll ever need to read in your entire life. A deep-dive into the impacts of French colonialism and US warfare on the fiber of Vietnamese culture, spanning from ~1940 to ~1970, plus some context for the preceding centuries of Vietnamese history. Explains the tragedy in the clearest and most beautiful manner possible, and from every level (economic, military, psychological, etc.) of the Vietnamese perspective. Very little focus on the American side of things. 2. The Best and the Brightest, by David Halberstam The American side of things. Specifically, the story of how the so-called brightest minds in the country (Kennedy, McNamara, etc.) crafted a foreign policy as thoroughly, fatally stupid as the one that got us into the Vietnam War. It’s character-driven — Halberstam captures the personality of each figure, makes you understand them — and so it reads like a novel. A great novel, if you like bursting into tears because you’re over-identifying with LBJ. I know I do! Both authors won the Pulitzer Prize for either their book (Fitzgerald) or the journalism that produced their book (Halberstam). If you’re at all curious about this period in history, read them. Reeeeaaad theeeeem.
Haven't finished it yet but I'm very much enjoying Ferrett Steinmetz's "The Sol Majestic". Molecular gastronomy, gay interracial romance, strongly varied characters, political philosophy, and a time-capsule kitchen named the Escargone.
Writers ought to read How To Write A Novel Using The Snowflake Method. Even if the method doesn't work for you, it's interesting! I'm using it to analyse a lot of my fave books now for inspo purposes, and I've noticed myself checking the percentage marks on my Kindle whenever there's a big happening in a book - almost invariably they're on the dot.
I have a butt ton of amazon giftcard money from this xmas, and im trying to figure out if I want to spend money on books I haven't read, or books I used to own/read and dearly miss. what I wouldn't give for my old bookshelf. or a library card once corona has calmed down im getting a library card.
