aquila1nz, 1 year ago

The first book I read this year: Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri 🌸 🗡️ Very much the middle book of a trilogy, so Malini and Priya start the book separated and things get dark, but there's great story along the way. https://www.librarything.com/work/26977261/

#SwordLesbians #SapphicTrifecta
#QueerSFF2023

aquila1nz, 1 year ago

Final Strife by Saara El-Arifi 🩸 A dark dystopia with a damaged but surprisingly hopeful bisexual protagonist who messes with the Chosen One trope. https://www.librarything.com/work/27103004/
#QueerSFF2023

aquila1nz, 1 year ago

The Red Scholar's Wake 🏴‍☠️ by Aliette de Bodard. Pirate morality may be less cruel than that of the society they prey on. Brain ships and a marriage of convenience in the Xuya Universe. Highly recommended.
https://www.librarything.com/work/29385133/ #QueerSFF2023
#LesbianBooks #BookRecs @sapphicbooks

A partial page of text: The Red Scholar had been Rice Fish's wife, and she was dead now. Why would Rice Fish want another wife? "Consider it ... a business proposal. There's no love involved. This is a matter of contracts." There was a flicker of something Xích Si couldn't read, changing the colour of her eyes to indigo blue for a moment. "Of ... protection." "Protection." Xích Si's voice was flat. "O said I wouldn't torture you or harm you. It'll hold true within the Red Banner - which is my fleet, now the Red Scholar is dead -" again, that flicker of colour. Grief? No, that didn't seem right. "- but not everyone here will be so considerate. There are four other banners in the pirate alliance." "I don't want to get married! She ... Oh, ancestors, she wanted to go home. She wanted to hold her daughter Khanh in her arms, hug the small wriggling body of her six-year-old, hear her peals of laughter - what she wouldn't have given for even one of Khanh's tantrums. "I have a family." Rice Fish didn't move. "You did." And, not unkindly, "You know the process."

aquila1nz, 1 year ago

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske 🚢 A deft magical mystery aboard a steamship. I hadn't read the first m/m book in the series and didn't feel the lack.
https://www.librarything.com/work/27454047/ #QueerSFF2023
#QueerBooks @lesfic

aquila1nz, 1 year ago

How to Get a Girlfriend When You're a Terrifying Monster by Marie Cardno 👾 A magic researcher ventures into the Endless, a bit of the Endless follows her back. Short and sweet.
https://www.librarything.com/work/28568460/ #QueerSFF2023
#WLWFiction #NZBooks @sapphicbooks

Part of a page of text: Not something. Her edges sparked. A ... a someone. A someone with a flattish, paleish face, one blunt nose, two lidded eyes and a crest of dark hair. The bottom half of her face split, but not like aspects of the Endless split, forming and reforming along seams that changed position from moment to moment. This was an existing hole in the face, stretching wide as she stepped through the portal. Stepped through on legs. A body! A living body that moved through the world without changing its form! She was suddenly, horribly self-conscious. She manifested another eyeball on the end of her tentacle and used it to look down at herself. Her body was ... not like the newcomer's. It had too many limbs, to start with. Small skittery limbs. She'd made a lot for practice, but now they were too many. And her body had too many eyes, too, if the two the newcomer had were the number people were meant to have. And a tentacle. The newcomer didn't have any tentacles.

aquila1nz, 1 year ago

Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Tsai 👩‍🔬 Frankenstein and made families, from a non-binary SE Asian-American perspective.
https://www.librarything.com/work/28626545/ #QueerSFF2023
#QueerBooks #NonBinaryStories @lgbtqbookstodon

aquila1nz, 1 year ago

The Valkyrie's Daughter by Tiana Warner 🐎 YA. Sigrid is a stable hand who yearns to be a valkyrie, when she captures Mariam during a raid on Vanaheim she starts to find out about her origins.
https://www.librarything.com/work/27704005/ #QueerSFF2023
#LesbianBooks #YABooks @sapphicbooks

aquila1nz, 1 year ago

A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys 👽👶 Judy takes her wife and baby along to check out pollutants in the Potomac and finds herself in a First Contact with aliens who consider children an indispensable element of diplomatic talks.
https://www.librarything.com/work/26944302/ #QueerSFF2023
#LesbianFiction #SolarPunk #Hopepunk @bookstodon

a partial page of text: ...new height, and Carol joined me. "Welcome to Earth. What's your name?" The alien brought two pairs of limbs together. Drawing one across the other like a bow. Pitched oddly, but clearly comprehensible, I heard: "These are Diamond and Chlorophyll. I am Cytosine. What's your name?" Kids first, apparently. "This is Dori. I'm Judy Wallach-Stevens, and this is my wife, Carol." Music spilled from Cytosine's limbs, that same five-note series from the initial transmission. "We understand each other!" "Yes. You've been listening to us?" But of course they had:watching our movies, picking up our broadcasts, well over a centuries worth of stories and school videos and documentaries and news. What were they like, to follow all that and still want to meet us? ''Yes. That's how we learn. You haven't heard our songs yet, but you are far advanced and we didn't dare wait. It's reassuring to know you're civilized like us."

aquila1nz, 11 months ago

Last Exit by Max Gladstone 🛣️ Ten years ago Zelda, Sal and their friends played with alternate realities and Sal was lost. Zelda has travelled the highways since, fighting the rot that still seeps in cracks to our reality.
https://www.librarything.com/work/26638159/ #QueerSFF2023
#AlternateRealities @bookstodon

Partial page of text: "Two women sat on a bed, in this room, by the window. Back then June's own bed had been shoved in the far corner. In the picture there was a dark girl, hair in braids, high cheekbones and fierce, eager eyes, leaning in, leaning forward, toward another girl, shorter, rounder, and, in the artist's imagination, more beautiful than anyone Zelda had ever seen in the mirror. Her mouth half open. Their hands propped them up on the bed, their arms crossing like bridge cables, the shorter girl's knee up, the other's hand resting on her thigh. Just a moment, abandoned, of two women in love, at ease, in the late afternoon, as June had seen them or remembered them. Had it really looked like this, from outside? It must have. Might have. Moments vanished into the past like stones, into a pool, and while their passage left ripples behind, even the ripples someday stilled and left the surface unchanged, placid and glassy as if there had never been a stone in all the universe."

aquila1nz, 11 months ago

Godmother Night by Rachel Pollack (1996) ♀️ political lesbian witchy mythology fiction: Mother Night (Death) is there when Jaqe and Laurie meet, and becomes their daughter's godparent.
https://www.librarything.com/work/308844/book/237610385 #QueerSFF2023
#LesbianBooks #QueerFantasy @sapphicbooks

aquila1nz, 11 months ago

Persephone Station by Stina Leicht 👽 A nonbinary crime boss hires a ragtag band of mostly queer mercenaries to protect hidden indigenous aliens on a backwater planet. https://www.librarything.com/work/25042615/ #QueerSFF2023
#QueerBooks @lgbtqbookstodon

An excerpt of text "Enid Crowe was a native of Persephone. Born in Brynner, she was the third daughter of the infamous Crowe crime family. Trained as an assassin from birth, she rebelled after an unsanctioned affair with Isabel Ferguson was brought to an abrupt but temporary end by Ferguson's parents. The two families had been powerful rivals in Brynner's North End for fifty years. Crowe left Persephone and joined the URWMC, becoming an expert sniper. Isabel Ferguson left Persephone to join her a year later. The couple broke up after six months.

aquila1nz, 11 months ago

Tell Me An Ending by Jo Harkin 💊 Noor, who works at a memory removal clinic where the treatments aren't as permanent as promised, gets involved with a client, Elena. One of five viewpoint characters.
https://www.librarything.com/work/27143927/ #QueerSFF2023
#LesbianBooks

aquila1nz, 11 months ago

I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself by Maria Crane 🦞 In a dystopia where wrongdoers are given extra shadows, Kris's wife dies in childbirth and the newborn receives a shadow.
https://www.librarything.com/work/28406205/ #QueerSFF2023
#LesbianBooks @lesfic

aquila1nz, 11 months ago

We All Fall Down by Rose Szabo 🐙 In a magical city in the Mississippi Basin, Jack finds herself entangled in prophecy, along with a newcomer to town and the children of the previous king.
https://www.librarything.com/work/26911768/ #QueerSFF2023
#TransBooks #QueerFiction @lgbtqbookstodon

A screencap of text "It was the woman from that morning on the riverbank. Not the one who had left the body, but the one who had found it. She'd taken off her jacket now and was wearing a white undershirt and a gun in a shoulder holster, the muscles of her shoulders straining hard against the weight of the water as she pushed it away behind her. She was rowing badly, but it didn't matter, because she was stronger than the river. Bending it to her will. Turing thought, once again, of the picture of the knight she'd gone looking for. But a different image came to mind as the woman got close enough for her face to be visible. She looked like a statue of a young Apollo, with a sloping nose and soft lips."

aquila1nz, 10 months ago

The Stars Undying by Emery Robin 🦻 A Cleopatra and Julius Caesar retelling in space - with a genderbent Mark Anthony, and an uploaded Alexander the Great.
https://www.librarything.com/work/28265954/ #QueerSFF2023
#QueerBooks @lgbtqbookstodon

A section of text: "There was a lithe, muscled woman in the center of the crowd. I noticed her first for the way she moved - in all that fumbling mass, it took no practiced eye to see her comfort in her own body, her shoulders and ankles and hands, how her hips moved against those of the young woman in front of her. She was wearing sandals whose straps laced up to her knees, and a little pleated cotton skirt barely covering her thighs, and a bright pink feathered coat of such enormity that it was impossible to tell if she was wearing a shirt underneath. Her dark head was flung back in pleasure, and though I could not see her face, I could see a thin trickle of glitter running down the edge of her neck."

aquila1nz, 10 months ago

Tahou by Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall 🐟 These past, present and future stories of Aotearoa and Coastal Salish lands made proximate include several lesbian couples.
https://www.librarything.com/work/29414884/ #QueerSFF2023
#LesbianBooks #NZBooks #AlternateGeography #IndigiQueer #Takatāpui @sapphicbooks

aquila1nz, 10 months ago

Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree ☕ A DnD coffeeshop AU - Mercenary orc Viv leaves the business to start a cafe and hires succubus Tandri to work in it. Gentle adventures ensue.
https://www.librarything.com/work/27661802/book/238624301 #QueerSFF2023
#SapphicBooks @lesfic

aquila1nz, 10 months ago

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older 🚝 Mossa goes to her ex, Pleiti, at Valdegeld University for help investigating a fall off a rail platform in Jupiter's upper atmosphere.
https://www.librarything.com/work/28380827/ #QueerSFF2023
#LesbianBooks #Mystery #BookRecs @sapphicbooks

Photo of text ""They will make lovely scars," I said, for lack of anything better, and immediately berated myself for a statement so simultaneously banal - the worst sin, for Mossa - and over-personal -probably the second worst. To my surprise she didn't seem annoyed. "You think so?" She stretched and twisted her back as if to look at them, her muscles supple and rippling under her skin. "Oh yes, " I managed, making foolish gestures in the air as though to paint them. "The not quite symmetry, the animal resonance with our epigenetic fears...that is, there's a mirror in my room if you would like to look." I had not placed the mirror in my room (for the thought struck me, as I followed her in, that it could be seen as vain); the rooms had come furnished and it had never occurred to me to move it. Mossa didn't seem to mind, although she found it difficult to get a full view of her back in any case. In another person I would have thought it flirting, but if Mossa had wanted me again she would have said so, or acted on it, reaching out to me as she turned from the mirror and asking license only just before her mouth met mine... Instead she shrugged after a mere moment of over-the-shoulder efforts with the mirror, and walked past me towards the door."

aquila1nz, 7 months ago

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher 🍄 This fungi threaded retelling of the Fall of the House of Usher has a narrator who comes from a culture where soldiers have their own pronouns, and ka chose that life.
https://www.librarything.com/work/27123359/ #QueerSFF2023 #NonBinaryBook

Text from the book: "And then there's ka and kan. I mentioned that we were a fierce warrior people, right? Even though we were bad at it? But we were proud of our warriors. Someone had to be, I guess, and this recognition extends to the linguistic fact that when you're a warrior you get to use ka and kan instead of ta and tan. You show up to basic training and they hand you a sword and a new set of pronouns. (It's extremely rude to address a soldier as ta. It won't get you labelled as a pervert but it might get you punched in the mouth.)"

aquila1nz, 7 months ago

Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse 🌟 In book 2 of this mesoamerican secondary world epic fantasy we start to see more of the all female Teek society that bisexual captain Xiala comes from.
https://www.librarything.com/work/26752244/ #QueerSFF2023 #QueerBooks

aquila1nz, 6 months ago

The Traitor Baru Comorant by Seth Dickinson (2015) 🎭 Baru rises from a colonial school to Imperial Accountant but is trapped between her birth society's mores and those of her Masquerade masters even as she betrays them.
https://www.librarything.com/work/15636204/
#QueerSFF2023 @lgbtqbookstodon

aquila1nz, 6 months ago

Nothing to See by Pip Adam 👯‍♀️ Peggy and Greta are navigating day to day life while staying sober, in a world that would prefer not to admit they exist.
https://www.librarything.com/work/25307607/
#QueerSFF2023
#NZBooks

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling 0️⃣ Parallel stories of groups of women surviving the arctic north in a dystopic future include some f/f couples.
https://www.librarything.com/work/29007558/ #QueerSFF2023 #Dystopia

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

The Faithless by CL Clark 👑 Luca has returned to Balladaire to try and wrest the crown from her uncle, and then Touraine is sent as ambassador to the court. Surely they are too much at cross purposes to trust each other?
https://www.librarything.com/work/29558836/
#QueerSFF2023 @sapphicbooks

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

To Shape a Dragon's Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose 🐉
Anequs is paired with the first baby dragon her people have seen in a long time, to keep Kasaqua safe she will need to go to a dragon school run by the Anglish, people who do not value Anequs' way of life. https://www.librarything.com/work/28680201/book/242215337
#QueerSFF2023 #QueerBooks #Polyamory #IndigenousFiction #Dragons

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

The Witches of Vardø by Anya Bergman 🐯 The second book I've read based on the real life Norwegian witch trials in the far north. Includes a secondary character in a lesbian relationship.
https://www.librarything.com/work/29600516/book/243024627
#QueerSFF2023 #Witches

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling 🔦
Gyre embarks on a high tech, high risk caving expedition, her only company the voice in her ear of a stranger monitoring her from above. https://www.librarything.com/work/22424036/
#QueerSFF2023 #Thriller

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

If Tomorrow Doesn't Come by Jen St Jude ☄️ 19 years old and feeling like she is failing at college, soccer and life; estranged from the best friend she is in love with, Avery is about to kill herself when a planet destroying asteroid is announced.
https://www.librarything.com/work/29693674/
#QueerSFF2023 #YoungAdult

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

Bitterthorn by Kat Dunn 🏰 A Beauty and the Beast like fantasy about a young woman choosing to be the periodic sacrifice taken by a local witch in 19th Century Germany. Bonus timey wimey curse. https://www.librarything.com/work/29239984/
#QueerSFF2023 @lgbtqbookstodon

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

Furious Heaven by Kate Elliott 🔆 Book 2 of the genderswapped Alexander the Great in space trilogy has more Sun/Hetty, and a whole lot of plot as Sun strikes into the heart of the Phene Empire. https://www.librarything.com/work/25888378/
#QueerSFF2023

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

Audition by Pip Adam 🚀 Three giants are crammed in a spaceship, having to choose between staying silent and growing, or talking and moving towards a possible destination. Can they confirm their shared past by talking it?
https://www.librarything.com/work/30310518/
#QueerSFF2023 #Polyamory #Incarceration

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo 🐺 A researcher chooses to ride the mind of one of the last wild wolves, despite her wife's ethical qualms. Novella.
https://www.librarything.com/work/28514951/
#QueerSFF2023 #LesbianFiction #Wolves

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang 🌠 Misery is a reluctant messiah in the space religon they have grown up repudiating.
https://www.librarything.com/work/27624657/
#QueerSFF2023

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

The First Bright Thing by J R Dawson 🎪 In an alternate history where magic sparks have altered the mid 20th century, three women take a young sister and brother into their circus.
https://www.librarything.com/work/28727116/
#QueerSFF2023

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

Misrule by Heather Walter 🧚 This sequel to Malice is set 100 years later, as Alyce rules a Dark Court in the former Briar land while Aurora still sleeps.
https://www.librarything.com/work/27380154/
#QueerSFF2023 #YoungAdult #FairytaleReimagining

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa 🍵 After her lover is killed Enitan heads into the heart of the Empire to recue her sibling - and finds herself working with the new Empress.
https://www.librarything.com/work/29343478/
#QueerSFF2023 #LesbianFiction

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

Sister Maiden Monster by Lucy A. Snyder 🐙 In this pandemic-initiated horror the before is heterosexual fantasy and the after reveals the characters as lesbian, bisexual, asexual and trans even as it drops into eldritch apocalypse. All the trigger warnings.
https://www.librarything.com/work/28589925/
#QueerSFF2023 #Horror

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

He Who Drowned the World by Shelley Parker-Chan 🌊 The sequel to She Who Became The Sun is just as queer and just as epic, as Zhu fights multiple factions for the role of Emperor.
https://www.librarything.com/work/29468771/
#QueerSFF2023 #Genderqueer

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh 🛰️ Raised on a secret space station as a perfectly engineered soldier intent on vengeance for the destruction of Earth, Kyr is the most committed of her agemates, until she is selected for the nursery instead of a fighting cohort on graduation, and her view of her world starts to unravel.
https://www.librarything.com/work/26911573/
#QueerSFF2023

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

Sweet & Bitter Magic by Adrienne Tooley 🧙‍♀️ 🤷‍♀️ Two teens, one an exiled witch and one who has always hidden her magic, are forced to work together when a magical plague threatens.
https://www.librarything.com/work/24621678/
#QueerSFF2023 #Witches #YoungAdult

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

She is a Haunting by Trang Thanh Tran 👻 A ghost story about a Vietnamese-American teen spending a summer helping her estranged father renovate a colonial mansion and the local girl who helps her.
https://www.librarything.com/work/28282249/
#QueerSFF2023 #GhostStories

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

A Fire Born of Exile By Aliette de Bodard 🎏 Mysterious scholar Quỳnh returns to get revenge but then she meets Hoà, an old friend's sister, and Minh, the daughter of her nemeses, and her plans are undone by her compassion. Another Xuya universe story. https://www.librarything.com/work/book/253458925
#QueerSFF2023 #MindShips

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs 📚 🩸 Joanna is trapped in the family home protecting a secret library of magical books, while her sister Esther, fleeing endlessly, hopes she can stay another season with her girlfriend in Antarctica until she recognises the signs that someone is casting spells.
https://www.librarything.com/work/29117107/
#QueerSFF2023 #MagicBooks

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs 🪐 Choni survived the harsh Kindom schooling, Jun ran from the slaughter of her family to become a virtuoso hacker, both lives were shaped by murderous Esek and the teasing shadow that was once Six, descendant of a traitor.
https://www.librarything.com/work/29555559/
#QueerSFF2023

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

Saint Death's Daughter by CS Cooney 💀 Lainey is a necromancer with an allergy to violence, raised outside society by an undead servant and her grandfather's ravening ghost. f/nb
https://www.librarything.com/work/26860973/
#QueerSFF2023 #Necromancy

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

How To Get A Date With An Evil Queen by Marie Cardno 👑 Sian and Trillin get trapped in a fairytale world that is determined to force them into very particular archetypes. Novella.
https://www.librarything.com/work/29495799/
#QueerSFF2023 #NZFiction #FairytaleReimagining

aquila1nz, 4 months ago

And here's my round up post with everything from the thread. 49 Queer Female Speculative Fiction Books read in 2023. https://aquila1nz.dreamwidth.org/39765.html Thanks you to those who replied, I think it'll be the last time I try posting it like this. #QueerSFF2023

aquila1nz, 3 months ago

Since I never followed up with my favorites, here's the five I enjoyed the most this year: #QueerSFF2023

aquila1nz, 3 months ago

And the epic sapphic second books, these are all books I was very much looking forward to that did not disappoint and would all also fit in my top five. #QueerSFF2023

aquila1nz, 3 months ago

For more satisfying romances, I absolutely adored The Red Scholar’s Wake with it’s marriage of convenience plot, but these are all great. Sci-fi, fantasy, sci-fi, fantasy, sci-fi. #QueerSFF2023

aquila1nz, 3 months ago

And my favourite novellas. Wolves, fungi, shadows, tentacles and medical magic #QueerSFF2023

aquila1nz, 3 months ago

And not sff, but these are my favorite regular sapphic romances that I listened to last year. One per author because these are all authors where I’m going to be reading everything wlw they’ve written. 🌈📚
#LesbianBooks @sapphicbooks