Month: December 2014

Danika reviews Will of the Empress by Tamora Pierce

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TheWilloftheEmpress

A little bit of background on my experience of this book, first. I have always heard positive things about Tamora Pierce’s writing, but I hadn’t picked up any of her books before this year. I did, however, have a copy of Will of the Empress, because I heard this was a lesbian young adult book, which is probably my favourite genre. I was also going to see Mark of Mark Reads at Leakycon in 2014, so I decided that I would try to catch up one of the series he was reading. He was reading Tamora Pierce, so I binge-read her books to catch up, in the order that Mark was reading them, which was mostly publication order. But because I was reading them in the order Mark is, it meant that Will of the Empress was the twenty-sixth Tamora Pierce book I read this year. And the entire time, though I loved the other books, I was also eager to get to The Lesbian Book, so I had some expectations.

Will of the Empress is listed as the first book in a series (The Circle Reforged), but the main characters are written about in The Circle of Magic quartet and The Circle Opens quartet first. I’m sure you could technically read this as a standalone, but it’s a lot more effective knowing the main characters’ backstory.

I was already in love with the main characters before going into Will of the Empress. The funny thing is, I knew that in this book, one of the characters was going to be a lesbian, but I wasn’t sure which of the three girls it was. Which meant that in the previous eight books, I was guessing. It was fun, actually, even though I picked the wrong horse. My favourite thing about Tamora Pierce’s books (aside from the feminism) is that the main characters in all of her novels are totally realistic, well-rounded, and completely distinct from each other. I loved that in the Tortall books, and it carries into the Circle universe as well. I also really appreciated that the Circle universe is a lot more diverse. While most of the Tortall protagonists are young, female, white, straight, and noble, the four Circle main characters include two people of colour, a lesbian, and a range of financial statuses/ranks. This book also reveals that their teachers (also about half people of colour) included two women in a relationship, something which was only hinted in the previous books.

This book focuses on how the four have drifted apart from each other, and their attempts to return to their former closeness. It’s uncomfortable, after the celebration of friendship that was the original Circle quartet, but it’s realistic and necessary. They all have grown, and their relationships all shift and evolve throughout the story to reflect that. The plot itself is pretty minimal, because it’s really about this emotional growth, and also about their beginning of their individual recoveries from the trauma each has gone through in the last few years. Between them, they’ve experienced arson, mass murder, war, and been dragged into these situations in ways they never intended.

So there is this aspect to the subdued plot next to the other books–that the characters have suffered enough at this point–but I think there’s also the element that they are just too powerful by this time, especially together, for there to be any real threat to them. Each not only has an incredible amount of personal power, but also has threads of each other’s magic, and now has mastered this magic. When the central conflict of the book does happen, it’s over with pretty quickly. They’ve become pretty much invincible as a unit, which I think sort of writes Tamora Pierce into a corner. Anything that could actually pose as a threat to them would be comically over the top. And though I do primarily enjoy her books for the characters and their interaction, it did make this one seem a little slower, because there was no dramatic conflict in the last quarter of the book, at least not one comparable to most of hers.

As for the lesbian content of the book, it is a pretty minor subplot, but I loved it. I won’t tell you who it was, in case you also want to guess, but it felt perfectly organic both for that character to be a lesbian and for it not to have come up until now. After all, the other books take place when they are children, often in life-threatening danger, so it makes sense that she didn’t really start thinking about romance until she was an older teenager. The little romance in this book was adorable. [mild spoilers, highlight to read] I was worried that her partner was going to be a spy, or somehow involved in the plot against them, but luckily I was wrong. [end spoilers] It’s also significant that this romance is probably the most serious one in the series for any of the characters. The descriptions of her realizing that she’s falling in love and what that means as well her friends’ reactions are all fantastic to read and exactly what I would expect from Tamora Pierce. I really hope that she continues to write more queer main characters.

This isn’t my favourite of her books, though I honestly expected it to be, but it’s still solid, and one that I would recommend. Read all of her books and know that you can look forward to a lesbian main character. I can’t believe that I’ve read almost all of Tamora Pierce’s books (thirty years of work read in one year! oops!), but I’ve enjoyed myself so much. I can’t wait to read the last collections of short stories and audio books that are left, and I look forward to her next ones!

Link Round Up: December 22 – 28

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tippingthevelvet   sistahoodonthemic   Ash

Afterwritten posted Keep It Queer: How My Love Affair with LGBTQ YA Started.

Autostraddle posted Liberty Lit #62: Snowing Pages.

Sarah Waters was interviewed at the hairpin.

The Sista Hood on the Mic by E-Fierce Twinja Book Reviews.

junemageernfestivenurse   underafallingstar   lieswetellourselves

Under a Falling Star by Jae was reviewed at Lesbian Reading Room.

June Magee, R.N. Festival Nurse by Anne McMan, with Salem West and Barrett was reviewed at Lesbian Reading Room.

Lies We Tell Ourselves by Robin Talley was reviewed at Afterwritten.

Fighting Kudzu by Mystic Thompson was reviewed at Gay YA.

Katelyn reviews Silhouette of a Sparrow by Molly Beth Griffin

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Silhouette of a Sparrow

Growing up, I could not get enough of historical fiction and books set in a time past. Any book that featured two girls falling in love was also irresistible to me. So when I heard about Silhouette of a Sparrow by Molly Beth Griffin, a young adult lesbian coming-of-age story set in the 1920s, the eager, history-loving 15-year-old in me just had to read it.

Silhouette of a Sparrow is Griffin’s first young adult novel, which might be why the narration has a more mature tone unlike many books for young adults in which authors tend to talk down to their audience or follow a more predictable pattern in fear of readers losing interest. Set in Excelsior, Minnesota, a real lakeside resort town, the novel follows 16-year-old Garnet Richardson who is feeling trapped by her life back home when she is sent off to Excelsior to stay with her father’s cousin, the uptight, snooty Mrs. Harrington and her rude, disinterested daughter, Hannah. While there, Garnet pushes the limitations set by her strict aunt, getting a job in a hat shop and befriending a free-spirited flapper named Isabella.

Although the relationship between Garnet and Isabella is at the heart of the novel, there is so much more going on; it isn’t just a love story. From the beginning, it is clear that the main character’s life is full of forced deception when her mother claims that she is sending her away so she won’t catch polio. There is a telling bit of narration at that point in the first chapter where Garnet tells the readers,

“At sixteen, I was hardly at risk for polio, but the real reasons for my going were among the many things unsaid between us…”

Between her father’s strange behavior and aloofness to her mother’s insistence on pushing lady-like behavior onto Garnet and planning her future wedding to a boy from school, it is clear that everyone in the Richardson is living by a sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

One of the most intriguing elements that comes from this life draped in secrecy and unspoken rules is Garnet’s obsession with birds. They represent the freedom she longs for, and she is completely obsessed with them, constantly researching and observing them. Each chapter of the book is named after a different bird, and each bird represents a new stage of Garnet’s journey to find herself behind the wall of deception built by her family, her society, and even herself.

My favorite thing about this book is that Griffin manages to convey the stress so many teenagers feel when they realize that the lives they want for themselves do not match up with the lives their parents want for them and that they will have to find their own way. This experience is especially familiar to teenagers who experience same sex attraction. It is stressful and feels like the hardest thing in the world, and when you have gotten over that hump, things aren’t the same, and sometimes they’re a little bit broken, but there is a feeling of freedom and hope and the idea that in time, what is broken can be rebuilt into something better. And of course, nothing is certain, which makes it seem like anything is possible.

With all of the complicated conventions and messes of real life, Griffin manages to make the world seem a bit more poetic and beautifully synchronized for her main character. Her style has a sense of ease that makes the novel easy to get lost in without falling into the formulaic predictability of so many young adult novels. I finished the book in a two hour sitting and felt a sense of closure and satisfaction that comes with the delightful combination of an intriguing plot and solid writing.

 

Rachel reviews The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin by Colette Moody

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Readers who like an entertaining and witty read about female pirates and swashbuckling adventures will find The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin by Colette Moody as a good starting point. With two lesbian leads, this book will appeal to some who, like me, can’t get enough of lesbian/pirate fiction.

In 1702, Gayle Malvern, a pirate captain’s daughter, must take command of the ship, Original Sin, when her father is wounded in a battle. She orders her men to go into town and kidnap a doctor to help heal the injured. The doctor’s fiancée, Celia Pierce, is kidnapped instead for her skills as a seamstress while her spineless betrothed cowers in the next room. After Celia tends to the wounded, she and Gayle become better acquainted. Both are drawn to the other, though they playfully banter and play hard to get. When Gayle is asked to rescue a woman kidnapped by slave traders, Celia decides to come along for the adventure. Both women, besides meeting colorful people, experience a storm at sea, sword fights and ship battles. All the while, their love for each other becomes more evident.

Original Sin is purely a fun adventure novel. Some things are a bit unrealistic, like most characters being accepting of homosexuals when at that period, their attitudes would have been harsher. And the language in the book sounds more like 21st century talk than the early 1700s. But those things aside, Gayle and Celia’s story keeps the pages turning.

Colette Moody does an excellent job describing the females who broke society’s rules for women, and how they, whether they were gay, bisexual, or straight, moved on to captain their own ships or disguise as male sailors. Each woman is fleshed out as human and they have their own stories to tell. One of my favorite characters was Molly McCarthy, a young woman who had disguised as a man on two different ships, and then served on Gayle’s ship openly as a female. She was not only tough and strong-willed; she was handy with a sword and managed to get herself out of messes without assistance. She was no damsel in distress, which was refreshing.

Gayle and Celia held their own, too. The action sequences in Original Sin were different each time. One would be a daring rescue in a tavern, and another would be a skirmish on an abandoned island. Each one was engaging, and though gory in detail, the storyline had just the right amount of suspense.

There were sweet moments too, when Gayle and Celia’s love and faith in each other helped them keep going. Each woman did noble deeds and helped others in some way. Though they were technically pirates, they didn’t fit the stereotype, as they were saving lives and defending those who needed it. That made the story even more entertaining.

The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin is definitely a good book to read on a pleasant afternoon if there is time to spare. But be prepared to be unable to put it down! With the well-fleshed out characters and intriguing story, Colette Moody adds another novel to lesbian and pirate literature.

Marthese reviews Stir-fry by Emma Donoghue

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stirfry“In what day in what month of this queue of years would she find that she had become a rootless stranger, a speck in the urban sprawl?”

– Stir-fry page 13

If there was one book that I read and I thought ‘this book is me’, this book is it. It is a book that stayed with me and even if I someday forget what the story was about, I will never forget how much I enjoyed reading it and relating to the story.

Stir-fry was Donoghue’s debut novel and is set in Dublin, Ireland. It is about Maria, a university student, who goes to live with Ruth and Jael who at first she does not realize they are a couple. Maria is very innocent and always  tries to help but you see her develop and mature, in a way, this novel is also a coming-of-age novel.

It is interesting to see how Maria interacts differently with Ruth who is really sweet  and just needs someone to talk to and Jael who has a more rebellious streak and usually tries to rope Maria into fun activities and how she interacts with them as a couple. To an extent, they become so familiar with one another that they become a trio.

Maria stays with the couple and she grows up in a short period of time. We see her force herself to have relationships with people but in the end, in a plot twist that you realize made sense at the end, she ends up with someone really lightly and in a relationship I imagine full of respect.

I like how the book is divided. Ruth likes cooking and cooking brings all three together so the chapters are divided in the steps required to make a stir-fry and it makes sense! Especially because a stir-fry is the first meal that Ruth cooks for them when Maria goes to see the flat.  The story is set in the past so not contemporary and the physical space is both cozy in the flat but also big in the city and you see her attitude change more even how she feels about returning to her small home, so in a way there is psychological distance to who she used to be.

I definitely would have liked a sentence or two about what happened to characters after Maria stopped interacting with them. The book also has a bit of an open ending, but I definitely recommend this book to people that like psychological elements in books, to people that love Ireland and coming of age stories. Emma Donoghue is probably one of my favourite authors for the reason that she writes so brilliantly but also relatable.

Link Round Up: December 16 – 21

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MandOForever  dyke-the-halls   lieswetellourselves

AfterEllen posted How to Have a Very Lesbian Christmas.

Babbling About Books posted Announcing the 2015 Lesbian Fiction Appreciation Event! (#LFAE2015).

GayYA posted

primarystein  missedher   badfeminist

Women and Words has been celebrating their holiday hootenanny! (Giveaways every day!)

Ivan Coyote was written about at ZY.

Catherine Lundoff posted On LGBT Science Fiction and Fantasy 2000-2010 (Part 2).

Bad Feminist: Essays by Roxane Gay was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

Primary Stein: Returning to the Writings of Gertrude Stein edited by Janet Boyd and Sharon J. Kirsch was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

This post, and all posts at the Lesbrary, have the covers linked to their Amazon pages. If you click through and buy something, I might get a small referral fee. For even more links, check out the Lesbrary’s twitter! We’re also on Facebook, Goodreads, Youtube and Tumblr.

Krait reviews Into the Darkness by Marlie Harris

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Ridge Falls is an unusual town. A mining community created in the late 1800’s, after the construction of a hydroelectric dam, the town was moved. Old timers said the dam was a bad idea. Bad things would happen.

They were right. Now, evil seems to haunt the reservoir. It manifests itself to different people in different ways. Come with us. Sit down. Visit. Have a glass of sweet tea at the local diner. We have some stories to tell you.

So, this book. First, I have to be honest. This book doesn’t have any lesbian (or any other permutation of ladies-into-ladies) content. There’s about a paragraph of a monster in a woman’s body killing another woman and I really don’t think that counts.

Warning: the book opens– on the first page – with the sexual abuse of a child, and sexual and physical abuse occur in quite a few of the stories.

Into the Dark is otherwise a series of very short stories, theoretically connected by the setting, about terrible things happening to people. Most of the people are terrible, too. There’s no framing device inside the book itself – the stories don’t occur at the same time or feature the same people (with one reoccurring character).

I like horror, particularly the psychological terror-in-the-dark flavor. But the over-the-top grotesquerie in this book pulled me out of the story every time. There were no characters to connect to, so the violence and gore didn’t have any emotional impact. The biggest problem was that I kept finding myself asking “What was the point of that?” There are so many disparate elements within the stories that I just wound up bored and vaguely lost.

There is one story in this that I enjoyed – “The Wilsons” – about a woman dealing with germaphobia and the loss of her husband. That story had atmosphere and a character I liked. It also doesn’t fit in at all with the rest of the book, so take that as you will.

The author is apparently writing a novel set in this universe, and perhaps that will work better. This book felt like an experiment, the sort of thing that winds up in your notes for a story but never published. And again, I’m disappointed that the author submitted it to the Lesbrary, because it really doesn’t count.

Link Round Up: December 8 – 14

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NoStraightLines   dogsofwar   SpitandPassion

Autostraddle posted Lez Liberty Lit #61: Snowing Pages.

Elisa posted 2014 Rainbow Award Winners.

GLBT Reviews posted

acupofwaterundermybed   zami   lieswetellourselves

Lambda Literary posted

Malinda Lo posted 2014 LGBT YA by the Numbers and A Holiday Gift Guide to My Books.

Robin Talley was interviewed at R U Coming Out.

“Outhouse library: a new home in Dublin for LGBT literature” was posted at Irish Times.

seasonsmeetings   mara   justgirls

Love Enough by Dionne Brand was reviewed at Lindy Reads and Reviews.

Season’s Meetings by Amy Dunne was reviewed at Far Nerdy and Lesbian Reading Room.

Just Girls by Rachel Gold was reviewed at I’m With Geek.

Somewhere To Run by Anna Goldman was reviewed at The Rainbow Hub.

Under a Falling Star by Jae was reviewed at Lambda Literary.

An American Queer: The Amazon Trail by Lee Lynch was posted at GLBT Reviews.

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters was reviewed at Lindy Reads and Reviews.

Year of the Monsoon by Caren Werlinger was reviewed at C-Spot Reviews.

Mara by Brian Wood was reviewed at crunchings & munchings.

This post, and all posts at the Lesbrary, have the covers linked to their Amazon pages. If you click through and buy something, I might get a small referral fee. For even more links, check out the Lesbrary’s twitter! We’re also on Facebook, Goodreads, Youtube and Tumblr.

Audrey reviews Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld

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It clocks in at literally just under 600 pages. It’s two books in one. It’s a heck of a new young adult experiment for Scott Westerfeld, whose previous YA series have done well. And they’ve all been very different–steampunk (Leviathan), dystopian (Uglies), and apocalyptic (Peeps), to name a few. (Also, he is married to Justine Larbalestier, which is neither here nor there, but her Magic or Madness trilogy is excellent.) “Afterworlds” is a doorstop of a book that takes on first love, the publishing world, the co-opting of cultures for the creation of art, the nature of ghosts, dreams, obligations, New York City, and a host of other things. It is, in a word rather than in a list, ambitious. And it mostly works. Which is great, because it’s a Commitment; I only picked it up because I was processing it for my library and noticed that one of the subject headings was Lesbians–Fiction.

Darcy’s barely a high school graduate, but back in the fall she gritted her teeth and committed herself to NaNoWriMo (seenanowrimo.org). She triumphed. The novel she completed is called “Afterworlds,” and not only has she sold it, she’s managed to get a two-book contract for an obscene amount of money. And she’s moved to New York to be a writer, to do the revisions of “Afterworlds,” and to come up with the elusive second novel she’s now contractually obligated to deliver.

Darcy’s protagonist is Lizzie, and no, Darcy doesn’t pick up on the Darcy-and-Lizzie thing until well after she’s completed the novel, and once it’s pointed out, it doesn’t really go anywhere; it’s just acknowledged for the Janeites. Darcy’s tale and Lizzie’s tale (that is, Darcy’s novel) are told in alternating chapters, so quite seriously, this is two full books. There’s the story of a young girl moving to New York City to test out the possibilities of what might be a charmed life, and the story of a young girl dealing with the challenges of her own new life in the aftermath of a horrible tragedy.

One of the great things about Darcy is that she has a little sister who’s smart and plucky. Another great thing about Darcy is that she’s clueless and doesn’t know it. She’s from a Hindu family, but has written a book about a white girl who survives a terrorist attack by slipping into the spirit world, becoming a spirit guide, and falling in love with a Hindu death god. There’s some good stuff going on in the book, but the leads are a bit vanilla. Darcy wanted her protagonist to be relatable, though, and she based the death god on a Bollywood actor she thought was hot. That’s her model for love. Until she moves to New York. Until she meets Imogen.

And then New York gives her an experience she hadn’t anticipated. Darcy and Imogen are both writers, both Word Girls who appreciate language and its nuances. Their relationship isn’t entirely transparent, though. Darcy has maybe skipped class once or twice. But Imogen has a past. Emotionally, Imogen is more complex than the people Darcy’s used to. From the beginning there’s a sense of something being off-kilter, and that sense only grows until things come to a head–I was disappointed with Westerfeld’s resolution here. There’s lots of attention given to how Darcy deals with the ending of Lizzie’s story, but that ending was fine. It’s the ending of Darcy’s story that disappoints. It feels as if Westerfeld lacked the conviction to carry through the momentum he built throughout an entire novel, because the original ending perhaps didn’t test well. Maybe it’s a meta-statement on publishing?

The genre story is riproaring and page-turning. The frame story offers a little wish-fulfillment peek into YA heaven, and a mostly lovely and restrained look at the amazingness of awakening feelings, and first love, and finally understanding what everyone else has been obsessing about for years. There’s no graphic sexual content, but lots of F-bombs, which is necessary to know if you’re a YA librarian. Nobody cares about murder (there’s some of that) or terrorism (yup), but is there sex (not described)? Bad language (all over the place)?

Where this book will find its readership is up for debate. Usually, the teenage girls (or “new adults”) to whom it seems to be marketed are lots more self-aware than Darcy. Her naivete may turn them off. Adults may find this to be wish fulfillment all around. Not only does Darcy fall into her publishing contract and a lovely apartment and her first relationship, she’s in an extremely accepting community. There’s only one uncomfortable moment, when she admits that she doesn’t want to go home and tell her parents she’s dating Imogen. Imogen has to point out that not everyone has it so easy, and “Not all of us make it, you know.” This is no one’s publishing story; maybe it’s no one’s coming-out story, either.

What’s the verdict? I loved the parts about the publishing world and the beginning (and pieces of the middle) of Lizzie’s story. But there’s a lot going on here. This wouldn’t be something to recommend to someone just looking for a good lesbian romance.

Ashley reviews Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel by Sara Farizan

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Sara Farizan’s second novel, Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel, is a genuinely sweet story of high school queerness. It can definitely be categorized as a “quick read” – but perhaps that is just because once I started reading, I never wanted to put it down.

The story revolves around Leila, an Iranian American teenager attending a small private high school in Massachusetts. Leila has been with the same group of classmates for as long as she can remember, so when a new girl named Saskia arrives with some international flair and a whole lot of personality, Leila can’t help but be attracted to her.

Leila discovered her attraction to women at summer camp, but she is definitely not ready to share this fact with anyone at home. When Saskia seems to be interested in her as more than just a friend, Leila is thrilled, but extremely nervous about what could happen if her classmates and her traditional Persian family discovered her secret. What follows is an absorbing story of Leila’s pursuit of love and acceptance, where she learns more about herself and her peers than she could have ever predicted.

I loved the plot and pacing of this book – it was accessible, quick, and much funnier than I expected it to be. Farizan also creates a fantastic cast of characters, developing the voices of various high schoolers to bring Leila’s story to life. Many of these characters are modeled on teenage archetypes – from the vampire techie who works backstage at the school play to the brilliant but hopelessly innocent faculty brat – but Farizan is skilled at manipulating their quirks in order to counter the stereotypes.

Leila (and the reader, by extension) really get to know the personalities behind the facades of those students who are on the fringes of the high school social scene. This sets up some great parallels between Leila’s hidden gayness and the other characters’ concealed true selves; Farizan’s story ultimately sends the message that we all have our secrets, that people are not always as they seem, and that sometimes you are rewarded when you decide to trust another person with your story.

In this way, Tell Me Again How A Crush Should Feel is as much about friendship as it is about crushes. In questioning what it means to truly be friends with someone, Farizan reveals how friends and allies often exist in unexpected places. One of my favorite examples is Leila’s adorable relationship with her English teacher, Ms. Taylor.

It was also really refreshing to see that Leila’s best friend is a guy. Although this was a complicated relationship at times, it was really nice to read a story that depicts a deep, sibling-like bond between a female and a male character that [spoiler alert] doesn’t end in romance. Even in the realm of queer YA novels, I’ve found that these bonds between male and female characters are sorely underrepresented.

Recently, I saw Farizan speak on the Tough Topics in YA Literature panel at the Boston Book Festival, where she explained that Leila was definitely more like she was as a teenager than the leading ladies of her debut novel, If You Could Be Mine. This became clear as I read Tell Me Again How a Crush Should Feel – Leila’s genuine voice and sarcastic humor read very naturally, and seem to reflect Farizan’s personality. I could not be more thankful that Farizan has decided to contribute her unique voice to young lesbian literature, and can’t wait to see what she writes next.