Tag Archives: Susan

Susan reviews The Scorpion by Gerri Hill

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The Scorpion by Gerri Hill cover

The Scorpion is a standalone mystery from Gerri Hill. It follows an investigative reporter, Marty Edwards, who is looking into a suspicious cold case, and Kristen Bailey, the detective assigned to “help” her – or at least, to spy on her for the department. Cue every possible attempt to drive Marty off the case, multiple murders, going on the run…

I did not like this one, which is odd because it is basically the sort of ridiculous action-thriller you can find a thousand of on Netflix, but queer, and I love those. A highly-qualified and under-utilised detective (thanks misogyny) going on the run with an out-of-her-depth reporter sounds exactly up my alley. But there’s just something about the execution. Part of it is that the first third of the book feels like make-work before the real story begins, part of it is that some of the developments feel completely pulled out of nowhere (like Kristen just happening to know a guy with the exact skill-set she needs to solve her problems, who isn’t mentioned at all until she calls him for help! Or the fact that the villain is obvious, because they’re the only named character who hasn’t been accounted for by the end of the book!) Part of it is probably that the romance takes two people who are bad at forming attachments to people, and isolates them even further from literally anyone who isn’t in their romance, which I find deeply unnerving.

But what my main problem with this book is, is that about a quarter of the way through the book, Marty comes out as asexual (in a very cringe-worthy, allo-centric mess of a scene, that includes an allo character asking if she was abused as a child, and how many orgasms she’s ever had, because apparently those are appropriate questions to ask someone you met three days ago). I was tentatively excited about this – except that her arc becomes one of “perhaps she’s not asexual, perhaps it’s just her trust issues.” If it had been portrayed as someone who thought they were asexual realising they were demisexual, this could have been an interesting storyline, but it never mentions that as an option! Much as Gerri Hill’s Hunter series never even mentions bisexuality as a concept, in fact. Plus, it feels very allo-centric in the way that it’s handled, such as the way that it talks about asexuality as perhaps a medical problem rather than an orientation, and the way that it seems to be conflating “doesn’t feel sexual attraction or enjoy kissing and sex” with “has no interest in relationships” feels really weird to me. I don’t know if this was written before the split model of attraction was popularised, but I feel like this book promised me representation that it then went back on. Marty’s confusion and disbelief at discovering sexual attraction was fine, but the way it was presented as natural and finally feeling “normal” was a bit beyond the pale for me.

Basically, it’s reasonably action-filled, but that doesn’t make up for the somewhat weak plot and poor handling of an ace character. I’d give it a miss.

[Caution warning: murder, corruption, references to torture, misogyny]

Susan is a library assistant who uses her insider access to keep her shelves and to-read list permanently overflowing. She can usually be found writing for Hugo-winning media blog Lady Business or bringing the tweets and shouting on twitter.

Susan reviews Space Battle Lunchtime by Natalie Reiss

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Space Battle Lunchtime is a two-volume graphic novel by Natalie Reiss, about Peony, a baker who accidentally ends up being an emergency replacement for a cooking show… In space?! Cue sabotage, drama, rival shows with distinctly more cannibalism, and trying to work space ovens.

This is super charming and funny. Peony is both competent and confident in her baking skills, and I loved getting to see her do well even though she was in completely unfamiliar territory. I was so invested in her doing well, which meant that the first couple of issues where she was floundering while surrounded people who just assumed she knew what was going on were very frustrating for me. I know, I know, it’s a trope, but it’s a trope that I hate. But “winning over the cast and crew so they help you” is also a trope and I was so happy to see it here, especially because of the way that the relationships build. Peony is so nice and so confident and just wants to beat everyone fair and square, yay! The way that her relationship with Neptunia comes together works perfectly with that – there’s awkwardness and rivalry and Peony putting her foot down to make sure they can work together, but also sweetness and daring rescues and both of them being supportive of each other and each other’s feelings!

The art is really, really cute and bright and colourful, and the designs of all of the aliens are distinctive and interesting. I especially love the way the Natalie Reiss contrasts appearances and personalities (such as the cute magical girl fox, who is sure a character), and the way that it introduces background details that further the plot and the world building, I thought that was really clever and well-handled. (… I’m sure it’s fine that Cannibal Coliseum, the rival cooking show where contestants literally cook and eat each other, keeps showing up in the background. That’s probably not relevant.)

But of course, what is a cooking comic if there isn’t rampant sabotage, and the ways that the sabotage is revealed is really cool. The reactions especially are great and fun, and the way that Peony and Neptunia deal with the end of the story is great. It was cool and believable and I enjoyed it. … Although I got to the epilogue stories and was suddenly REALLY CONCERNED for the side characters! My only real complaint is that the first volume ends on a massive cliffhanger, so it is worth getting both volumes together if you’re going to get them!

I really genuinely enjoyed this. It’s cute, it’s funny, and seeing Peony rising to her challenges is great. If you like cooking shows, bright and happy graphic novels, and/or ridiculous space drama, this is absolutely your thing.

Susan is a library assistant who uses her insider access to keep her shelves and to-read list permanently overflowing. She can usually be found writing for Hugo-winning media blog Lady Business or bringing the tweets and shouting on twitter.

Susan reviews My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness by Nagata Kabi

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Nagata Kabi’s My Lesbian Experience With Loneliness is an autobiographical manga about the creator’s life as a young queer Japanese woman with depression, who decides that the best way to resolve her difficulties connecting with people and her understanding of her own sexuality is to hire an escort.

My Lesbian Experience With Loneless is a a really fascinating look at the creator’s life, especially because the way she talks about her depression is extremely relatable. Some of the mental loops she describes and her resolutions (She talks about how she always treated herself and her accomplishments like crap because she couldn’t love herself, but once she started actually looking after herself the people around her started treating her better! And there is a panel of her yelling “If this is how it is, I’ve got nothing to lose! I’ll claw my way out of bed with my last dying breath!” which is how I feel about my mental health too!) are extremely familiar, but presented in a way that softens the blow. She makes me laugh even as I’m nodding along. She doesn’t shy away from talking about the problems she’s had, or how awkward she is, and it’s impressive.

(I found the sections where she spoke about her mother to be very strange, but in much the same way that I found the way Alison Bechdel spoke about hers in Are You My Mother? to be strange, so I don’t think that part of the book was ever going to work for me. Your mileage may vary!)

The art style is very minimal and sketchy, which works for the narrative of the book. It does so much of the heavy lifting to keep things on this side of funny and bearable, even when she’s talking about serious matters like her eating disorder. I found it especially effective for the scenes at the love hotel, because it’s not presented in a titillating way! I’m a fan of story about sex workers than manages to not centre the male gaze, and the fact that this story focuses on how awkward Nagata Kabi felt herself to be really works. I especially loved the follow-up comic where she talks to another escort from the agency, and the authorial comment that it’s much easier to speak to people who know her from her manga, because “it was like I’d submitted material about my personality in advance.”

Basically, this was an entertaining manga that speaks frankly about Nagata Kabi’s depression and recovery, and the way that hiring a sex worker changed how she thought about herself. It was really cool, and I enjoyed it a lot!

(The follow-up manga, My Solo Exchange Diary, has also been licensed and should be out this month!)

[Caution warning: depression, eating disorders]

Susan is a library assistant who uses her insider access to keep her shelves and to-read list permanently overflowing. She can usually be found writing for Hugo-winning media blog Lady Business or bringing the tweets and shouting on twitter.

Susan reviews Princess Princess Ever After by Katie O’Neill

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Princess Princess Ever After is an all-ages graphic novel by Katie O’Neill about two princesses joining forces to rescue people and save the kingdom from an angry sorceress, and it’s really cute.

Sadie and Amira are very different styles of princess; Sadie is a traditionally feminine princess with an adorable pudgy dragon, who’s been locked in a tower by a wicked queen, and Amira is an action princess with very cool hair and a cookie-loving unicorn. It’s fun to see their different styles work together for solving problems, and I enjoyed seeing them work together to solve problems like dancing ogres and grumpy princes and wicked queens, and rescue each other!

They also solve problems without violence, and by gathering friends and supportive acquaintances! I don’t know if it’s supposed to be commentary on stereotypically feminine methods of resolving conflict or the tropes of magical girls and princess stories – but also I want stories that have all of the tropes of magical girls and princess stories, but with queer leads, so it worked for me. Plus: the drama is based on sibling relationships, rather than wicked mothers or stepmothers, and that’s a very welcome change. (Especially for me; complicated sibling relationships are my kryptonite.)

The art is very cute (and impressively different from her other all-ages graphic novel, The Tea-Dragon Society). Sometimes it’s maybe a little too simple, but it does work for the story being told, and the last page makes up for it.

It’s a light and fluffy story that reads very quickly, but it feels like a fairytale, and to be honest: that’s all I wanted. If you’re in the mood for a fluffy queer fairytale, this is a good place to start.

Susan is a library assistant who uses her insider access to keep her shelves and to-read list permanently overflowing. She can usually be found writing for Hugo-winning media blog Lady Business or bringing the tweets and shouting on twitter.

Susan reviews Stone Mad by Elizabeth Bear

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Stone Mad is the sequel to Elizabeth Bear’s Karen Memory (which I reviewed here last month!), so there might be some unavoidable spoilers for Karen Memory from here on out!

In Stone Mad, Karen and Priya are settling into their life together and celebrating their new ranch with a night out for dinner and a magic show – except that their dinner companions happen to be a widowed sceptic and illusionist, a pair of Spiritualists who might be sisters and are almost certainly con women, and whatever is haunting the hotel’s dining room. It as dramatic as you would expect.

Stone Mad is really different in scale to Karen Memory. The first book covered schemes and murders that stretched across North America at least, even though the majority of the action took place in Rapid City. In this, the action is very local and personal, and the drama is mainly interpersonal instead of conspiracy, which makes for a somewhat different tone to the action and consequences. The steampunk elements are quite toned down, presumably because of the space, but the bits that we do get are well set up and dramatic, and I enjoyed them a lot! Instead, we get a little more folklore, which is great when the characters can acknowledge that tommy-knockers and jackalopes are probably real, but ghosts and Spiritualism might be a step too far.

I really like Karen’s narrative voice. She is very frank and matter-of-fact in her narration, especially about her past as a sex worker; I really liked that she could recognise the tricks that the Arcade sisters were using on her from that, and had professional respect for it, as well as the way she talked about things she’d learned from clients. The narration has a really conversational tone, which works well for when Karen digresses onto a different topic – the digressions seem to go a little further afield before they loop back to the actual narrative than they did in Karen Memory</em, but that could be a trick of my memory. Her voice also has great descriptions, especially for the tommy-knocker – Karen has a great eye for people and details, as a character, and those really come through in the narrative.

But I did read great swathes of this book from behind my hands because one of the central dramas in Stone Mad is that relationships are not easy, as evidenced by Karen and Priya’s first real fight in their relationship. And it’s one of those fights where the actual problem and the thing that the fight’s about are two separate things, so solving it is not a simple matter. For those who spend books going “Why can’t you solve this relationship drama by talking to each other like adults?!” this might be worth checking out – I found the way they reckoned with each other and the way they helped each other with problems to be quite realistic, especially the way they talk about family.

Aside from that: I found the scenes with the tommy-knocker to be effective and unnerving, the magic show was really vivid, and I really appreciated that Elizabeth Bear actually kept and used the repercussions she set up in Karen Memory; not just the social aspect of them being heroes of the town, but also Karen’s tinnitus and chronic hip pain, and Priya’s PTSD (which in particular I thought was really well-done – the details of her being embarrassed by her own reactions rang really true for me).

Plus, I always love historical stories where every female character is explicitly Done with men, and Stone Mad goes in on the perception that the greatest woman will never be taken as seriously as the most mediocre man, How to Suppress Women’s Writing style.

Basically, this is a fun sequel to Karen Memory, and it was great to go back to that world and see how the characters were doing, even if the answer made my clutch my face in my hands! I really enjoyed it, and if you liked Karen Memory it’s worth checking this out too.

[Caution warnings: mentions of historical racism, sex trafficking, and abuse]

[This review is based on an ARC provided by the publisher.]

Susan is a library assistant who uses her insider access to keep her shelves and to-read list permanently overflowing. She can usually be found writing for Hugo-winning media blog Lady Business or bringing the tweets and shouting on twitter.

Susan reviews Karen Memory by Elizabeth Bear

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Elizabeth Bear’s Karen Memory is a steampunk alternate universe set in Seattle during the Gold Rush, following a prostitute named Karen Memery (“like memory but with an e”) as she and her colleagues investigate the murders of streetwalkers, attempt to help rescue of women who have been trafficked, and also have to deal with a rival brothel owner trying to drive them out of business using mad science and mind control. I feel like everyone I know has read and recommended this book at least once to me since it came out, and they were exactly right because it falls squarely in the middle of my interest in both queer mysteries and genre-crossing SFF!

Karen’s narration is written in a really strong voice – it felt quite natural and dialectic to me, although knowing that every “should of” or non-standard grammar choice was a deliberate choice from the author really helped me to shut off my inner grammar snob. Some of the descriptions were hard for me to follow, though – I could not for the life of me parse what was going on with the street levels of this city, and learning that they’re real has honestly actually clarified everything magnificently; and I honestly had no idea what to picture for the Singer sewing machine at all until Karen started using it in ways that definitely were not intended by the manufacturers and I went “OH, IT’S A MECH!” – but it worked out.

(The mix of real history with the alternate universe and steampunk elements are really cool by the way – the man who comes looking for the murderer, Marshall Bass Reeves, was a real person, and Rapid City’s raised streets are based on the actual Seattle Underground (which I didn’t know was a thing until I started reading around for this review!)

And the characters! I adored Karen and her friends; Karen in particular is very well drawn, and her awkwardness in trying to show her interest and regard for Priya warmed my heart, especially because it’s such a slow-moving romance and it’s really sweet – and her admiration for Priya is so sincere! I love that completely. Plus, the friendships are lovely between all of the women, and the way that everyone goes out of their way to help each other in the face of racism and stigma against their profession, I also like that despite the majority of characters in this book being sex workers, there’s no actual onscreen sex – it’s very much depicted as a boring job that people have different preferences about. It’s refreshing!

But yes, Karen Memory is fun and action-filled, with a sweet romance running through it and some really cool ideas and inventions – see also, sewing machine machine mech – and all of the social commentary that you’d hope for in a steampunk story. My only real complaint about the book is that the pace and scale of the last quarter or so of the book escalated really suddenly. It makes sense, considering that its supposed to read like a dime novel (Was I delighted by that aspect of the story? Of course I was.).

I did think that this was a standalone book, but it turns out that there’s a a sequel called Stone Mad due out on the 20th of March, and I am really excited, so that might be worth keeping an eye out for! But in the mean time: hello, this is a book about sex workers investigating murder and using a sewing machine as a mech, it’s great.

[Caution warnings: misgendering, historical racism, human trafficking, mostly off-screen torture and abuse, off-screen murder of sex workers]

Susan is a library assistant who uses her insider access to keep her shelves and to-read list permanently overflowing. She can usually be found writing for Hugo-winning media blog Lady Business or bringing the tweets and shouting on twitter.

Susan reviews Piper Deez and the Case of the Winter Planet by M. Fenn

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Piper Deez and the Case of the Winter Planet is a hardboiled scifi mystery by M. Fenn; Piper Deez is sent to investigate thefts on a mining planet owned by the clan that she serves, where there are definitely no factions, no bubbling undercurrents of resentment, and only a few murders.

Hello, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before, lesbian detective fiction is where I live. Piper Deez and the Case of the Winter Planet was always going to be my jam.

The world building is quite cool, and has some interesting imagery – I felt a bit blinded with science at first, but once the story finds its stride it’s easier to enjoy the imagery of a tiny town huddling beneath a permanent ice storm and unpick the politics at play. I also find it a cool distinction in the world building that there is a specific difference between being married and being monogamous, as the default appears to be polyamory in this setting.

Plus, I did like that it tried to talk about class privilege in this universe – there are multiple clans, which have a definite hierarchy, and I enjoyed the discussions of smaller clans unionising to gain more bargaining power. Making Piper Deez a member of a more prestigious clan is an interesting choice however, as it gives her more privilege (and ability to get her job done, or protect people) than I expected from a hardboiled investigator. It does engage with it a little, but it mostly seems to be “Piper hates using the power of her clan but does when it would help her,” which is appropriate for the setting… And kinda nice to see for a queer woman of colour, actually. (And yes, people without clans are treated exactly as well as you expect from all this.)

I found this to be part of the interesting spins on the hardboiled detective tropes – Piper Deez is a newly-wed who is very upfront that she used to be into casual sex before she got married, but is now monogamous, and she actually (tries to) stick to that even in the face of the classic femme fatale, which is honestly more than I expected of a pulp detective. (Her wife doesn’t show up in the story, but is mentioned a lot and with genuine fondness.) And as I said, she’s not only gainfully employed, but she’s actually coming into this story from a position of (relative) privilege, which is fascinating.

The mystery itself is a lot of fun, and it was honestly nice to see a story where the protagonist did reach out to others for help and received it without immediate betrayal. There were aspects that didn’t feel quite built up enough, but they were close enough to genre conventions that I could roll with it – police corruption and harassment are a staple of the genre, so the scenes of look closer, not everything is as it seems weren’t exactly a surprise. On the other hand, the last third felt quite rushed in terms of reveals, consequences, and how the actual ending went down; I had my suspicions about who was behind everything but even with that I was left going “Wait, no, slow down, shouldn’t you talk to someone about this reveal —?”

But it worked! Piper Deez and the Case of the Winter Planet was a short and pulpy mystery, and while the ending didn’t quite gel together for me, I really enjoyed it rolling familiar tropes into a sci fi setting.

This review was based on a copy provided by the author.

[Caution warnings: partner abuse, abuse of power, police harassment, oppression]

Susan is a library assistant who uses her insider access to keep her shelves and to-read list permanently overflowing. She can usually be found writing for Hugo-winning media blog Lady Business or bringing the tweets and shouting on twitter.

Susan reviews Fearless by Shira Glassman

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Fearless by Shira Glassman is a short and sweet romance about a newly-out divorced woman, her crush on a music teacher at her daughter’s school, and falling back in love with music.

I quite liked this one! The story takes place over two days of rehearsals for a high-school music event, where Lana’s daughter is playing, and they get snowed into the hotel. Lana was very sweet, and the story’s depiction of her struggle to work out how to meet people as a middle-aged newly-out queer woman felt very realistic to me as a queer woman who has also struggled to find community. Plus, her kindness and obvious pride in her daughter’s accomplishments really touched me; Fearless is a story of such lovely affection, both familial and romantic, and I found it so warm and lovely.

The romance itself was slow-building in a realistic way – it’s very much about a crush and the flustering rush of feelings at the start of a new relationship! Mel is depicted as talented and kind, and it is very easy to see how Lana found her attractive! Especially because a lot of the story is spent on establishing common ground between them and talking about their shared love of music, which is something I always appreciate. But I especially liked the arc running through it of Lana coming back to music herself after twenty years; the fear and longing felt very believable, and Mel’s understanding of it despite her own confidence was really good to read.

Honestly my only complaint is that some of the descriptions of people felt a little clunky to me, but it wasn’t distractingly so, so your mileage may vary! If you want a peaceful story without much conflict, but with a well of kindness and warmth running through it, Fearless is worth checking out!

Susan is a library assistant who uses her insider access to keep her shelves and to-read list permanently overflowing. She can usually be found writing for Hugo-winning media blog Lady Business or bringing the tweets and shouting on twitter.


Susan reviews The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher

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The Raven and the Reindeer is T. Kingfisher’s retelling of The Snow Queen. For those who aren’t familiar with the basic story of the Snow Queen: Greta and Kay are childhood friends, and when the Snow Queen carries Kay off in the middle of the winter, Greta sets off to find him and bring him home.

It’s really good. Gerta feels young and believable as a character, and her confused relationships sound about right for a girl of sixteen – Kay is a jerk and I’m so glad that it’s established up front that her crush is unreciprocated, because the way she tries to convince herself about their relationship is familiar but also very much oh honey, no, you can do better. In this case, better is Janna, a bandit princess who is delightful; Gerta is aggressively sensible, as are many of T. Kingfisher’s protagonists, but appears to understand that she’s in a fairytale world where ravens talk and witches are a hazard, so seeing Janna’s reactions to all of the strange things that happen is excellent. I truly enjoy how much strength they draw from each other; the Snow Queen has the ability to make you only see the worst in yourself and everything around you, and the difference in Gerta’s reactions when it is turned on her and when it is turned on Janna is beautiful. (Especially in contrast to Gerta’s relationship with Kay, who manages to be a worse person than the literal bandit.)

Also the animal characters in this are excellent, especially because they have such great personalities and recognisably not-human perspectives! And they’re fun! Mousebones, the titular raven, is funny and an excellent force for moving the plot forward when it might otherwise slow. The flying otters (DID I MENTION THE FLYING OTTERS) are adorable, and I love the way that the author manages to weave in the differences even between species! (I’m just saying, a raven arguing with otters about names is quite good.) The worldbuilding is woven in in all sorts of ways as well – there are stories woven in, and the secondary characters fit into the story so well. Plus, the details of the landscape are really well drawn, including the practicalities and dangers of it, and the descriptions are great. The road Janna, Gerta and Mousebones take to the Snow Queen’s palace, and what happens once they get there, is brilliantly done.

In conclusion: I really loved this, so if you like fairy tale retellings and/or flying otters (!!!), I absolutely recommend it.

Susan is a library assistant who uses her insider access to keep her shelves and to-read list permanently overflowing. She can usually be found writing for Hugo-winning media blog Lady Business or bringing the tweets and shouting on twitter.

Susan reviews Bearly A Lady by Cassandra Khaw

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Bearly a Lady by Cassandra Khaw is the romantic (mis)adventures of Zelda McCartney, a fat bisexual fashionista woman of colour who works for Vogue’s London office… Who also happens to be a werebear with a vampire flatmate, a date with the hot werewolf next door, a fae prince to babysit, and a crush on her coworker, Janine, that she is desperately trying to ignore.

She’s got a busy week, okay.

I was expecting something like The Devil Wears Prada with werebears, which isn’t quite right (there is a lot of fashion, but not as much about running a magazine as I dreamed, woe), but Bearly A Lady is absolutely funny and witty, with Zelda creating as many problems for herself as she finds foisted upon her.

I think that the only real problem I had with it was that I never understood what the problem was with Janine – all of the potential love interests I liked her best, but I never quite understood what had happened to make this relationship unviable in Zelda’s mind? The closest we get is “Oh, I didn’t realise you were seeing someone,” which is apparently resolved by the time Bearly a Lady starts. Plus the book spends much more time dwelling on the two male love interests than it does on Janine, I guess because Janine is established as lovely and having a friendship in her own right with Zelda from the outset and the other two love interests are… Well, they sure are people that I could believe I’ve met and loathed.

(A thing I did appreciate is that Zelda’s sexual feelings for Janine are presented in the same way as her feelings for Benedict and Jake; I have read a surprising about of fiction with bisexual women in that treats attraction for women as a pure, chaste thing even when the attraction for men is written as sexual.)

The secondary characters are really well-drawn and Zelda’s relationships with them are different and great. In particular, the friendship between Zelda and her roommate, Zora, felt believable and fun; they bicker and bring out the best and worst in each other as best friends do. And the world building squeezed into the space of this novella is interesting – especially things like the enmity between vampires and fae, and the restrictions for shapeshifters.

The story is quite short – it’s novella length – and moves along very quickly, so if you’re looking for something fun to pass the time and you’re in the mood for supernatural romantic drama, Bearly A Lady is for you!

Caution warning: magical coercion.

Susan is a library assistant who uses her insider access to keep her shelves and to-read list permanently overflowing. She can usually be found writing for Hugo-winning media blog Lady Business or bringing the tweets and shouting on twitter.