Tag Archives: alternate history

A Dashing Lesbian Adventure in Fantasy Egypt: A Master of Djinn by P. Djéli Clark

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the cover of A Master of Djinn by P. Djéli Clark

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Sometimes when I’m reading/watching something, I think: what if this dashing, cavalier, risk-taking, slightly messy hero was a lesbian? Have you considered doing this exact story, literally nothing changed, except that instead of a vaguely scruffy man, this hero was a vaguely scruffy lesbian? I’m not the only one to think this, there’s plenty of art of Aragorn or Rick O’Connell as lesbians, but I had yet to come across a work of fiction where the lead adventurer was actually a lesbian…until now. In A Master of Djinn, Fatma el-Sha’arawi is the youngest woman at Cairo’s Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities, and yes: she’s gay (although she’s not a bit of a mess, she’s quite dapper, which is also acceptable).

I’ve always loved Egypt as a setting, especially if it’s slightly (or very) fantastical. Here, that fantastical element is central to the book, as it’s an alternate history where a mysterious man known only as al-Jahiz opened the door to the world of djinn and magic. I appreciated the timeline of this book, set around 40 years after this veil was pulled back. People have had a chance to get used to djinn and magic being part of the world, and there are understandably some changes with how life is lived, however there are still a lot of mysteries left to uncover about the various beings who now live among humans. It created a really interesting dynamic, where Fatma is simultaneously an expert (her job is to help understand and police all things magical, after all) and still learning about the magic that she encounters—meaning that the reader isn’t treated entirely to an exposition dump.

The setting and world building are not the only good things about this book, however! There are tons of interesting characters, both main ones and side ones, and their interactions are really the heart of this book. This is also a place where the narrator of the audiobook, Suehyla El-Attar, really shone, particularly with one character who was a teacher in Brooklyn and so speaks English with an American accent. I really enjoyed listening to this book, and definitely recommend it to anyone who likes audiobooks!

One downside, I will admit: this is much more of an action/adventure book than a mystery. I was able to figure out the big twist pretty early on, and I know some people don’t like that. It feels like a slight genre difference that threw some people off, so if you’re expecting a complicated Christie-like mystery, this isn’t the book for you. However, there was plenty of action to make up for the lack of mystery, and I thought it was a really fun read. And while this is the first full-length novel in this universe, there’s also a novella and two free short stories: “A Dead Djinn in Cairo” and “The Angel of Khan el-Khalili“. There’s plenty of world to explore and adventure to be had, and I can’t wait to see if he does anything else with the setting.

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.

Danika reviews That Inevitable Victorian Thing by E.K. Johnston

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Let me start this review at the end: The Author’s Note, which cleared up some things that I had been processing arguing with myself about the entire time I read reading it:

That Inevitable Victorian Thing is a smallish story that takes place in a very big world. I wanted to be sure to include that world, not the least because in real life, Victorian England was kind of the worst. It would be unfair to paint it over with a glossy sheen, undoing all the colonial wrongs, in the name of Alternate History. To that end, I attempted to make everything slightly better than it was in real life. Throughout history, there are always people who say “What if we did this instead?” before those in power do something awful. They are almost always ignored, but in my made-up world, those people were listened to.

Basically, this is a book that is set in a world where the British Empire went very differently. Queen Victoria married off her children to people around the world, ensuring that the whole royal line is mixed race. Indigenous nations are recognized. The U.S. as it is today is three different countries in this world: the U.S. (Northern states which are… not doing well), the South (an independent nation of mostly former slaves, who are doing quite well), and Mexico. And that’s just scratching the surface. The Victorian Era has stretched on, because it is adaptive. The Church is made up of many different beliefs. The empire is not anti-gay. But it’s also not perfect. You can’t make colonialism a good thing. And I was worried that this alternate version was trying to present this shiny, happier, multicultural version of colonialism. But the author’s note put me more at ease, and there are moments when characters mention the horror that is the history of the empire (colonizing North America and the slave revolts in Haiti in particular).

You may have noticed that I’m well into this review and haven’t mentioned the main characters. Well, that’s because the setting does loom larger than the plot or characters in this case. This is an interesting world, and we’re clearly only seeing snippets of it. It’s not that I didn’t like the characters or the plot, but I kept coming back to thinking about the world and its implications. There are three main characters: Margaret, the princess and next in line for the crown. She wants to experience life outside of the royal bubble, so she’s in disguise for the summer, to try to get a taste of what her life would be if she wasn’t a princess. Helena is a very practical character who has her life completely planned, and is reluctantly drawn into a celebrity/royal party (where she meets Margaret). And August, who… I was not as interested in. He wants to run his dad’s lumber company, and everyone expects Helena and August to get engaged any minute now.

The Helena/Margaret romance is sweet, but I wasn’t particularly invested, and August never piqued my interest. The plot mostly involves these three characters’ collective emotional lives getting more and more tangled. (Spoiler) Helena finds out she’s intersex, which is its own subplot, but isn’t dealt with in a lot of depth. I’d be interested about what an intersex reviewer thought about this story line.

One other point I kept getting caught on is that in this world, people enter their genetic make up into a computer, and it connects them with good “genetic matches.” This is optional, and it seems to encourage people to match with other ethnicities? But although this may not be discriminating by race, isn’t this inherently a form of eugenics? What make a good genetic match? Is it trying to screen out the possibility of having children with disabilities? The whole thing made me uneasy, and it’s only really addressed as being a ‘limited tool’–useful, but not able to make matches based on love.

As you can probably tell by this scattered mess of a review, this book left me with a lot to think about. I imagine that I didn’t enjoy it as much because my philosophical brain latched so hard on to these two ideas (is this supposed to be nonracist colonialism? eugenics by dating app?) that all I could see was what connected to those. Browsing the Goodreads reviews, I can see plenty of people really liked it, but personally, I was too up in my head to really connect with the characters enough to properly enjoy it.

Danika reviews Everfair by Nisi Shawl

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everfairIt’s rare for me to pick up a book and be surprised to see it has queer representation. That’s part of being so immersed in the LGBTQ book internet: I’ve usually heard about the representation before picking it up. I picked Everfair because I was intrigued by the premise: a steampunk alternate history of the Belgian Congo. I like steampunk, but I’m even more interested in steampunk that isn’t in a European context. I was happily surprised to see that in addition to that premise, this book also has several queer women main characters!

This is an incredible and complex story. I wouldn’t pick this up as a light or quick read: it definitely took me a while to get through. Each chapter switches perspectives, and there are tons of point of view characters (I actually lost count). This means that you get to see the story from so many angles: the well-meaning white supporters of Everfair, the existing king and queen of the region trying to regain control, the Chinese workers brought in by the Belgium king, mixed-race European Everfair inhabitants, etc.

The story spans decades, tackling politics, war, espionage, grief, love and betrayal. The alternate history of the Congo was fascinating, and although the steampunk element was more subtle than I was expecting, there was so much going on that I didn’t notice. There are a lot of nuanced political machinations taking place, including negotiations between the people who helped to found Everfair and the rulers of the area who preceded the existence of Everfair.

At least three of the points of view characters are queer women, along with more minor characters. I would argue that the relationship between two of them is at the core of the book. They definitely don’t have a simple, sweet romance. It’s complex and deeply flawed, but it’s also passionate, genuine, and loyal. I didn’t always like the characters (okay, one of the characters, but I won’t spoil it for you), but I always appreciated the layered, believable relationship they built between them, which spanned continents and many years.

This is an ambitious novel, tackling difficult and multi-faceted topics (including war, colonialism, and racism). It is thoughtful and unafraid to deal with uncomfortable conversations. I highly recommend this if you’re looking to dive into a book that is far-reaching and thought-provoking.

Audrey reviews My Real Children by Jo Walton

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myrealchildren

My Real Children is terrifically problematic in the best possible way. Patricia in 2015 is at the end of her life, relegated to a nursing home, left mostly alone by her family–but until she opens her eyes and sees the colors of the curtains and which side of the hallway the bathroom is on that day, she doesn’t know which family. Because after a certain specific point, Patricia’s life bifurcates, and she has two complete sets of memories. She’s lived two separate lives. In two separate worlds, with two separate histories (in one, JFK survived; in one, nuclear bombs have been dropped; in both, there are research bases on the moon).

Which one is real? Which one does she want to be real? Does want have anything to do with it? It’s not as simple as choosing the life in which she was happier. In one life, she had a miserable marriage to, and divorce from, Mark. They had four living children and number of babies who were stillborn. The world in general was a pretty open and accepting place, and Patricia (in this life, Trish) found a great deal of personal satisfaction in civic involvement and in enjoying the achievements of her children. Trish didn’t get the solid connection and commitment of the deep romantic love that so many people long for, but she contributed consistently to the betterment of the greater world. And it was a pretty good world.

In the other life, Patricia (Pat) found personal fulfillment in her career and in her loving relationship with Bee. They had three children, but had to be furtive about parenting, because this world moved into darker, less accepting times, and co-parenting lesbians were in constant danger of being reported to social services. Pat found great personal loves–she fell in love with Italy and found a way to make this soul-feeding appreciation the basis of her career. She found Bee, the love of a lifetime. Pat’s efforts contributed consistently to the betterment of her family’s world. The world at large–well, that wasn’t so great.

Trish’s focus was outward; Pat’s was insular. This is the most stark case of “What if it’s not all about you?” you may ever read: Patricia thinks, at one point, what if the salvation of the world comes at the expense of her own happiness? Well, what if? “What if?” is the jumping-off point of the best stories, and the most heartbreaking; and I’ve spent a good amount of time trying to work this out, trying to find crossover points, trying to make it work, but there are no easy answers. On the one hand, that makes this book great for book club meetings. Yes, you should sacrifice your own happiness for the sake of humanity! Or, no! Let humanity fend for itself, because love is a rare and beautiful thing, and when it’s found, it needs to be nurtured and cherished.

My Real Children is fascinating in a number of ways, but be warned, it will affect you. I spent the last chunk of it sobbing. (I am not the only one. Cory Doctorow apparently did the same thing, and couldn’t even face writing his review after he finished reading the book. He needed to take a breather.) One of the best things Jo Walton does with her main character is this: it’s clear that although Patricia makes a choice at one point that splits her world’s fate, both Pat and Trish behave in ways that are faithful to the core of the person Patricia. No matter what is thrown at her, the fundamental makeup of the character is the same. I loved that faith in the fundamental Patricia-ness of the main character, the vote of confidence in our basic nature being fixed, no matter the context. I also loved the “Please, we’re so past that” attitude toward homophobia in the latter part of Trish’s world’s 20th century.

What I didn’t love, because it wasn’t fun to think about, is Walton did a painfully effective job of pointing up the dangers of insularity. You don’t get to take a lifetime off. External engagement is necessary. Walton gives us extremes. Here are both sides of the spectrum: What can we do with that? Is there a balance? Unhelpfully, we get to see these stark examples, but not any ideas of how to…how to have it all. Can you? I think, yes. This is one of those books I read at the right time, while debating these things in my own life, wishing I could stay in my happy little enclave with my happy little family and my happy little job for the rest of my happy little existence.

Yeah, no. And don’t think that by being in a loving, supportive relationship you’re putting enough good karma out into the universe to let you off easy. According to My Real Children, you aren’t. So: engagement with your world, both your home world and the world at large. Get on it, please, because the universe could fall apart if you don’t get all that under control. Also, try this as a gateway drug on people who think they don’t like science fiction.

Audrey reviews The Story of Owen: Dragon Slayer of Trondheim by E.K. Johnston

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storyofowen

“It’s literally about corporate dragon slaying.” The book was put into my hands. Because I have sent many, many books home with this young person, I took this one home and began reading it. This is a wonderful YA fantasy/alternate history title that had great reviews and for good reason. It has an awesome premise. There have always been dragons, and the one thing they have in common with humans? Both are addicted to fossil fuels.

E.K. Johnston’s strong social message will be apparent even to the middle-school (or high-school) audience the book is targeted to. And then it becomes clear there’s not only one strong social message. Narrator Siobhan’s story is of Owen Thorskard, who is raised by his loving family–Dad Aodhan, Aunt Lottie (one of the most famous dragon slayers of all time, who had to retire early due to injury), and her wife, Aunt Hannah. There’s some overt discussion of marriage in/equality and discriminatory legislation. Allusions are made here and there throughout the book to past difficulties the couple faced. The family has moved to Trondheim so Aodhan can be its official dragon slayer, as rural Trondheim, not a bastion of manufacturing or natural resources, has long been left unprotected. (Note: The Story of Owen is set in Canada and almost everyone is very very white.)

Siobhan has a pair of happily married parents who show up occasionally to worry over her and demonstrate that they’ve done a great job raising a wonderful kid, and that they’re appropriately concerned, and they’re good parents and all that, but they’re cardboard characters. The healthy romantic relationship in the book is Lottie and Hannah’s. There are a few relationships that don’t quite get off the ground, and some that are complete non-starters. It’s a lovely thing to pick up a contemporary YA book with a high school narrator who isn’t utterly consumed by hormones.

The traditional slayer/bard relationship is dead, and Lottie and Co. think it needs to be resurrected. They scheme to enlist Siobhan, a musical prodigy, in their plan. It doesn’t take much scheming. They’re a really great family to spend time with. And she believes in their cause. Most slayers are now corporate employees with little-to-no incentive to protect rural areas, and even governments aren’t concerned with places where the money isn’t. How can this trend be reversed, and dragon slaying again become a noble tradition? Oh, we’ll do a lot for fame, or to be near it (more social commentary, but deftly done).

This is a great, well-written, wry, socially aware (environmentally and politically) book you should read if you have any interest in fantasy literature or alternate history. And if you have any younger people (or fantasy readers) on your gift lists, really, don’t pass this one up. Siobhan frequently thinks in musical terms, which works very strongly towards her already well-developed character. And the book is nicely plotted. The ending caught me completely unprepared and occasioned an out-loud reaction, partially out of plain old respect. I deeply adore Siobhan as a character, if that wasn’t clear.

I am glad to have a title to add to my mental canon of YA books that involve same-sex marriages as 1. nothing unusual and 2. not the point of the book, but that do involve a lesbian couple as an integral part of the plot as part of the strong central family unit. And initially I thought the book was handed to me by the dragon-crazy teen because “there’s a happy gay couple in it, and my librarian is gay,” but I think it was really really on the strength of the book, which is something that would not have happened even just a few years ago. This in itself makes me happy. If you work with young people and/or do readers’ advisory, go get it. It is so much cooler than I could ever make it sound.