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Mary reviews Gingerbread Hearts by Judy Underwood

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Gingerbread Hearts edited by Judy Underwood

Up until recently I’ve avoided short stories. I wanted a nice, full novel to sink my teeth into and take my time with. But now I have a full-time job with a long commute and reading full novels becomes a bit more challenging. So with that, now I love short stories, which brings me to Gingerbread Hearts by a multitude of authors.

“Holiday Outing by” Alison Grey

Susanne plans to come out to her family while they’re all together for the holidays. Her sister has her back, but saying a few simple words turns out to be harder than she thought. Plus, she has to navigate each family member and their quirks throughout the night leading up to the reveal.

This was a fun little snippet. I wish I had gone on longer, it felt like the ending was only the beginning. The family was realistic and each person had their own personality that was fun to get to know.

“It’s in the Pudding” by Emma Weimann

Ida’s family has a Christmas tradition that whoever finds the almond in the pudding gets to make a wish. Ida’s wish was to let go and find love by next Christmas, not to go to the dentist when the almond disagrees with her filling. But when the dentist turns out to be someone from Ida’s past, she thinks maybe the almond wasn’t so wrong.

This was a great meet-cute that I didn’t see coming. Ida and her family, especially her friendship with her sister-in-law, had a nice and fun dynamic that was engaging to read. There were also clear sparks between her and the dentist, Theresa, that leapt off the page.

However, this story had a few fatphobic comments that were not needed or entertaining.

“Devgo” by Corinna Behrens

Rebecca has rejected and isolated herself from her friends and family, broken up with her girlfriend, and surrounded herself in her wealth and power. Now, a being both from heaven and hell, Devgo, visits her on Christmas to give her a last chance.

This was another really short one that I thought could have been expanded more. It felt like an introduction to a longer story I would really like to have read. The introduction of Devgo was interesting and believable. Rebecca was clearly a horrible person, but the author does a good job of still making her engaging as a character despite that
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“A Magical Christmas” RJ Nolan

Erin’s ex-husband broke a promise to their kids right before Christmas, leading her girlfriend Kris to plan a surprise getaway for the family. But both Erin and Kris have things to work through and obstacles to work through together to make this Christmas theirs.

This was my favorite story! Erin and Kris, their relationship, and dynamics with the kids felt real and wonderful. I could really believe they had been together for a while, and that they had some real issues to work through. At the same time, it was still romantic and fun. I wish I could read more about them.

“The Christmas Grump” and “Kissing Ms. Santa Claus” by Jae

These two stories are in the same universe with the same characters, so I put them together.
In “The Christmas Grump”, Rachel is a mall security guard during the worst time of the year to be working at a mall. Last year she has a terrible Christmas, and now she’s anything but in the holly jolly spirit. Then she meets Tyler and his single mother, who has a reason to not be in the Christmas spirit.

In “Kissing Ms. Santa Claus” it’s been a year since their first Christmas together, and Rachel and Lillian are happy. But Rachel doesn’t know what to get Lillian, and she doesn’t know exactly what Lillian wants with her in the long term.

These two were my second favorite in the collection. Jae does a great job of slowly building the characters, the world and the relationships. I feel like I could have read a whole book about these people. Rachel and Lillian have a sweet and romance dynamic. Tyler is also a great child characters, which can be hard to do, especially in the length and time constraints of a short story.

Overall, I really enjoyed this Christmas short story collection and recommend it to anyone looking for a chance to get in the holiday spirit. You can download the e-book for free directly from Ylva’ Publishing’s website.

Sheila Laroque reviews Maiden, Mother Crone: Fantastical Trans Femmes by Gwen Benaway

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Maiden, Mother, Crone edited by Gwen Benaway

I became aware of Gwen Benaway this fall on twitter (@GwenBenaway) with the controversy that was happening in Toronto with the public library and a hateful speaker. More of Gwen’s writing on her experiences of these events can be found here. Also, this fall she won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry for her work Holy Wild. While I was on the waitlist at my library for her work of poetry, I decided to pick up this collection of short fantasy stories that feature trans characters. I’m really glad I did.

I’m trying to read outside of my usual genres, and fantasy stories fit that for me. I know there are many fans of fantasy; but for me this is a new genre. Knowing that all of the stories presented here would have trans heroines and queer elements; along with other tropes of fantasy writing. In a way, this was like having a twist on a classic comfort food. I had an idea of what I was getting, but was always pleasantly surprised. Having all of these stories feature trans characters so seamlessly highlighted the ways that fantasy writing can (and should) feature more diverse characters, without breaking genre conventions. After all, is it really that far of a stretch of the imagination to think that characters wouldn’t be able to use magic to change their gender? Or to live in worlds where there are different gender conventions and acceptance of this?

My favorite stories were “Mountain God” by Gwen Benaway, “Potions and Practices” by Gwynception and “Dreamborn” by Kylie Ariel Bemis. It’s hard for me to really narrow down exactly why, because all of these stories are different. But I think I just really enjoyed the characters and getting to have short glimpses into their fantastical worlds. Much like how Love Beyond Space and Time can serve as a guide to Indigenous writers and storytellers, this book can be a good introduction for those who are seeking more trans-inclusive reading in their fantasy collections. I enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more from these authors.

Danika reviews The (Other) F Word: A Celebration of the Fat & Fierce edited by Angie Manfredi

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The (Other) F Word edited by Angie Manfredi

This isn’t an entirely queer collection, but it refreshingly diverse. There are eleven queer contributors, which is about a third of the entries! LGBTQ Reads just put up a post that has notes from these contributors about their entries, so you can check that out if you want more details. There are also lots of indigenous authors and authors of colour, which offers a much more complex look at how being fat is experienced in different contexts by different bodies.

When I was a teenager, I read Fat!So? by Marilyn Wann, and it had a profound impact on me. It introduced me to the idea of fat positivity, and Wann exuded happiness and confidence and whimsy from the pages, which made it feel possible to accept my own body. It continues to be something I work on, but since that time, my relationship to my body has improved dramatically. I am so happy to see The (Other) F Word, because I know that this book will be able to serve that purpose for teens growing up now. And even better, this book can reach so many people because it represents a variety of perspectives.

Honestly, just the inclusion of photos of all the contributors is so nice to see even now, but it would have blown me away as a teenager. They show fat people looking proud, happy, fashionable, artistic, and confident. They are different sizes and races, with their own styles and personalities. A Korean American plus size fashion model poses sweetly in a bikini on the beach. A black fat femme journalist smiles from their professional head shot. A fat white artist and activist wearing a cat-patterned shirt smiles in her selfie. One of the things that helped me become more fat positive was following fat tumblrs and blogs, because just seeing people happy in their fat bodies is revolutionary.

I’ll be honest: this isn’t a book focused on queer content. Usually in collections like this, I will pull out the queer pieces and talk about them in depth, but although there are a lot of queer contributors, it’s usually mentioned in passing. I don’t think that’s a drawback, but it is a departure from what I usually review at the Lesbrary, so I wanted to be upfront about that.

I think this is an essential addition to any high school library, or any book collection teenagers have access to. Between the poetry, anecdotes, advice, and humour, there will be something here for anyone to connect to. This is really a book that could change lives, and I hope it gets into the hands that need it.

Susan reviews éclair

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Éclair: A Girls’ Love Anthology That Resonates in Your Heart

éclair is ostensibly an anthology of lesbian romance manga, collecting stories whose protagonists range from primary school children learning about trust to young adults trying to juggle relationships and work. It’s got a generally high quality of art. However. There are perhaps sixteen stories included in this volume, and there’s maybe two that I would count as a functional relationship, which is a bad ratio for something advertised as romance.

Here’s a quick overview of the stories:

1) “Happiness in the Shape of a Scar” by Nio Nakatera follows a girl who tries to befriend a solitary pianist, and grows increasingly frustrated and jealous of her focus on the piano – to the point of actively fantasising about her hands being broken because of the rejection. The relationship that grows out of it is kinda sweet, but the fact that it’s rooted so thoroughly in the protagonist’s guilt and the love interest’s pain means that I’m not sold on it.

2) “Tears in the Clean Room” by Shiori Nishio is about a school girl finding out that her best friend has a girlfriend, and becoming overwhelmingly jealous. And her jealousy manifests as homophobia, the belief that her love is “purer,” and relief that her feelings were “neatly cut off without ever becoming corrupted.” Yeah, no, this wasn’t for me; I don’t know about you, but I don’t expect an explicitly queer anthology to drop a story where the protagonist is actively homophobic the entire way through. [Caution warning: homophobia]

3) “Human Emotion” by Shuninta Amano finds the protagonist – a woman is so good at everything that people have described her as inhuman and bullied her – starting to work with a woman who struggles with almost everything and decides to keep her. Like, explicitly comparing her to a pet and setting her up to fail for the protagonist’s enjoyment levels of keeping her. This was one of the relationships that I was suspicious of because of how unhealthy it was, and the way the protagonist’s mental state actually seems to be deteriorating over the course of the story. [Caution warning: bullying]

4) “Intro” by Chihiro Harumi follows a girl who immediately gets a crush on her oblivious new tutor, who happens to not notice anything that isn’t history, and decides to make her notice. If you like teacher/student romances, this is probably fine? I liked the way that the protagonist started to wonder more about the history her tutor loves as the story goes on, but on the whole it wasn’t for me. [Caution warning: teacher/student relationship]

5) “The Unemployed Woman and the High School Girl” by Kanno has an unemployed woman who gets money by being a sugar baby tying to fend off the advances of a teenage girl from a wealthy family who has a crush on her. I maybe like this one for the fact that both of the characters have someone they can be entirely honest around, and the woman is clearly trying to be a decent person despite all of her worst instincts, but I think that I like it solely because I’m not reading it as a romance, so take that under advisement. [Caution warning: adult/teen relationship]

6) “The Hairdresser” by Uta Isuki is about a girl who loves styling hair as she finally gets a chance to work on the model of her dreams: one of her classmates with long, silky hair. I think this one is quite sweet and silly, and does read as a sweet beginning to a relationship! The art is funny, and I enjoy Chika’s enthusiasm and her poses, even if I disagree with her hairstyle choices. It’s not bad!

7) “Alice in the Miniature Garden” by Sakuya Amano follows a maid responsible for tutoring an unwanted illegitimate child, and I have mixed feelings about it. When it’s being sweet about two unwanted girls choosing each other over and over again, I like it! But to get to those bits, you have to get through them both being needlessly cruel to each other, and I’m not sure I can be bothered with it.

8) “Master for 1/365” by Mekimeki has one of the few functional relationships in this book! The protagonist’s best friend volunteers to be her servant for a day and do anything she asks to make up for forgetting her birthday. It’s actually pretty cute and simple, which I appreciated after some of the other stories in this collection.

9) “Two Years and Eleven Months” by Kabocha is a melancholy story about childhood friends making a last ditch attempt to stay together after they start growing apart. It’s a quiet story with a bittersweet ending and both girls disappointing each other throughout, but it’s pretty well-told and I enjoyed how clear it was that the two of them still cared for each other even though it was hard.

10) “Game Over” by Kagekichi Tadano is about two school girls searching for a bed at the end of the world, and it manages to be equal parts atmospheric and silly. I like the way the reveal was handled, and I enjoyed how much the two girls seemed to like each other. [Caution warning: jokes about suicide]

11) “My Cute Bitch” by Izumi Kawanami was possibly one of the most frustrating stories in éclair. The protagonist moves in with a friend who likes casual sex with men, who then decides that maybe she’d like to date the protagonist! But as the love interest has no female friends, the protagonist decides that they can’t sleep together because a platonic friendship would mean a lot more. I… Have no idea why that’s in a girl’s love anthology when it seems extremely counter to that premise, but go off I guess! [Caution warning: cheating, slut-shaming]

12) “A Tale of Weeds” by Kazuno Yuikawa is the story about primary school kids I mentioned; a girl who adores her best friend starts to realise that maybe her best friend isn’t actually the nicest person when the friend starts bullying a new girl in class. It’s cute! It has characters learning about trust and friendship! I don’t necessarily understand why it’s in a romance anthology, but it is cute. [Caution warning: bullying]

13) “The Two of Us and Apples” by Taki Kitao is another sweet and goofy story; the protagonist has a crush on her best friend, who keeps asking for help learning to cook for men! The art is cute and squishy, giving everything a comedic tone that I think went well with the story and helped to show the protagonist’s frustration and fondness clearly! I think this might have been one of my favourite stories in the collection.

14) “Belle the Rabbit and the Wolf” by Hachi Itou is the only fantasy story in éclair, which makes it feel out of place. It’s a cute story about a bunny girl who owns a café helping a wolf-girl track down a delicious food that she can’t remember, and the art is lovely? The story is fine, there’s not a lot of drama? But tonally it’s very different from the other stories so I’m not sure how well it fits in.

15) “Your Jinx” by Fumiko Takada is so ridiculous that I’m honestly tempted to skip over it. A schoolgirl approaches her crush (who she has never even spoken to), to announce that she’s pregnant with the crush’s baby. I would like to stress the fact that they never even spoke before this! It’s ridiculous, the punchline is kinda gross, and if you do get a copy of éclair I’d suggest just skipping over this.

16) “My Idol” by Auri Hirao is another frustrating one. Two idols use on-stage fan service as an excuse for physical contact, which obviously ends in tears. I didn’t like this one, mainly because I didn’t see the point of it, especially not in an anthology that’s supposed to be about love?

I think the problem might be in the way that I interpreted the marketing. It’s advertised as a girl’s love anthology, which I took to mean it would be an anthology of romances, with the attendant happy endings and relationships that go with it. What I got was an anthology that didn’t seem to have a unifying theme or tone beyond having two female leads, some of which have a romance/romantic feelings and several of which don’t. This isn’t necessarily a problem, because sometimes you do need stories about unhealthy disfunctional relationships, and sometimes you do need stories about friendships between queer women! But in a manga advertised as a girl’s love anthology, I expected the stories to be similar in tone or structure or level of romance, anything, and they’re not, so I came away feeling quite disappointed.

Megan G reviews Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color edited by Christopher Soto

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Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color edited by Christopher Soto

As soon as I came across this anthology and its haunting cover I knew I had to pick it up. As soon as I realized that the title of this anthology (and the journal it originated from) came from a quote from Gloria Anzaldúa, I knew I’d made the right choice.

The poems in this anthology cover quite literally every topic you can imagine. While this makes for quite a trigger-heavy piece of work, it also makes for incredibly raw and passionate art. Just as much anger and love spills from the page onto the reader, to the point where I often felt breathless after finishing a piece.

Poetry is, of course, deeply subjective, and relies just as much on the reader as it does on the poet. A big reason I felt these poems resonated with me were that they manage to draw the reader in and immerse them so deeply in the experience of the poem that the reader cannot help but want to invest their all into reading. After all, it’s beyond clear that each and every poet has put their everything into these poems. Reading these poems, I really felt it was necessary to respect them by doing the same.

Homophobia, transphobia, racism, police brutality, rape, murder, fatphobia, internalized racism, internalized misogyny, abuse. These are all issues dealt with within these poems, never sugar coated. They demand your attention, grip your arm and shake you until you understand the reality that the poet has faced. Because of this, I cannot recommend this anthology to anybody who may be triggered by these issues. This isn’t an anthology where you can just skip the poems you feel uncomfortable with. The poets don’t allow it.

Still, despite its heavy subject matter, I would go so far as to call Neplanta required reading for not only queer people, but anybody who will not be negatively affected by the triggers listed above. The stories told in this anthology are painful in their truth, gripping, and eye-opening. I felt different after reading it.

Too often we judge literature and poetry by our own ability to relate to the story being shared. Yet, Nepantla contains such a varied array of poets that it’s quite literally impossible to relate to every single one — and that’s kind of the point. We don’t have to see ourselves reflected in a piece of art to make it beautiful. It is beautiful because it is what it is, and even if it’s messy, or damaged, or hurt, it endures. It’s here to share it’s pain and mess with those of us who can relate and those of us who cannot, and to force us to see it’s worth despite everything the world has thrown at it. These poets deserve to be read by as many people as possible. I greatly encourage you to be one of those people.

Quinn Jean reviews All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens Throughout The Ages edited by Saundra Mitchell

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All Out: The No-Longer-Secret Stories of Queer Teens throughout the Ages by Saundra Mitchell cover

[This review contains very vague spoilers (no specific plot points, though) and mentions of violence]

This exceptional short story collection, edited by Saundra Mitchell, is a sterling addition to WLW fiction. The vast majority of the seventeen stories included involve major WLW characters and without fail, every tale is breathtakingly beautiful. The historical settings range from a convent in medieval Spain, to small-town USA in the 1950s, right through to grunge-soaked Seattle in the early 1990s. Similarly, the young women included in the WLW stories vary greatly in their personalities, identities, dreams and loves. The one thing all the stories have in common is that none of the protagonists have unhappy endings. The book has successfully set out to show queer teenagers have always existed and thrived, even in the most adverse circumstances.

The heroism inherent in merely existing as a queer person is captured brilliantly in every story in All Out, with some of the stories including magic and fantasy to further heighten this theme. Leprechauns and witches–as well as peasant girls, waitresses and nuns–all show themselves to be strong, generous and brave when their circumstances would have them give up on life and love. Too often fictional portrayals of WLW in historical settings show these women to be doomed, but these stories reward their characters with happiness and promising futures. And the long past times in foreign places portrayed by the authors never feel distant given the amount of detail and nuance each story is imbued with, so that the reader is transported completely each time.

It is to the reader’s benefit not to know too much about what each story will contain, with only the promise that none end in tragedy, so there’s no need to be anxious when reading. Inevitably certain historical settings mean there are depictions of violence at times, but this is not the over-riding theme of any story, with queer love stories and self-discovery always emerging victorious.

Do not miss this book, it is a glorious expression of the love and light that has always filled WLW.

11 Literally Perfect Sapphic Novels

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Here’s another one of my recent booktube videos, this time discussing the sapphic novels and short story collections that I’ve rated 5 stars!

Books mentioned:

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Alexa reviews Into the Mystic Volume 3 by NineStar Press

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Her ghost had once told Clotho that no proper ghost story has a happy ending, because ghosts don’t end. 

It’s no secret that I have a soft spot for fantasy, paranormal and fairytales, so of course I had to pick up an anthology that has nine F/F stories with paranormal elements. While the stories had the paranormal and the sapphic main characters in common, there was a great variety in paranormal creatures, writing style, and my feelings towards them as well.

Some of the stories were truly creative gems with unexpected and rarely seen ideas: the opening story, It Started Before Noon by Ava Kelly is in itself about ideas that are made into stories. The main character is a muse who grows story inspiration in a garden like flowers, but she just can’t get the romance buds right. I loved the little details, like how the different types of stories (comedy, angst, etc.) had different flowers and needed different kinds of care. Swoon by Artemis Savory had siren-like creatures acting like pirates whom I would have loved to learn more about. I loved the myth surrounding these sisters, but I still had so many questions – I would love to read a full length novel with them.

Other stories took more often used concepts or species, but still had the kind of magic that makes them an easy 5-star read. Home by K. Parr centers a wolf pack made up entirely of women, and a college student who is accepted into the pack (and the family) after getting close to the pack’s Alpha. I loved that this story had an older love interest, and I loved the description of the pack dynamics as well. The Hunt by M. Hollis is about a young vampire forever stuck as a teenager who has been adopted by a lesbian vampire couple. On her first hunt, she meets a human girl, and she finds herself wanting to meet her again. I felt like this story ended a little too soon, I would have loved to read more. And By Candlelight by Ziggy Schutz was one of my favourite stories in the anthology: I admit that I still don’t really understand the logic of it, and yet the two main characters and their relationship was so endearing that it absolutely stole my heart.

Vampires and werewolves seemed to be a popular choice for this anthology, and yet each story had some kind of unique spin on it. My Cup of O Pos by L. J. Hamlin has a disabled vampire with Ehlers-Danlos syndmore (ownvoices!) who goes out on a date with the cute human nurse from the ER who treats her with respect and compassion. This story also takes place in a world where vampires are common knowledge and there are laws about what they can and cannot do, and it uses this fictional/fantasy marginalisation to address real-life marginalisations and their intersections as well. Dance With Me by Michelle Frost is a romance between a werewolf and a vampire that left me with many burning questions about the backgrounds of the characters, wishing that there was a longer story to read.

Unfortunately, there were a couple of stories that caught me off guard and I didn’t end up enjoying them much. I am used to most non-YA lesfic I read having at least some kind of sexual content (My Cup Of O Pos has sex scenes as well, and yet I felt like I got to know the characters), but Heart’s Thaw by Bru Baker and Fire and Brine by Lis Valentine were both mostly erotica with very little plot or characterisation. While I liked the original idea in Heart’s Thaw and the twist in Fire and Brine, I felt like I barely got to know anything about the characters, other than the sex scene that takes up half of such a short story.

Overall, I really enjoyed this anthology and I found some true gems in it, but I do wish that the blurb or tags made the sexual content of books clearer. It was especially off-putting because most of the stories didn’t have any sex at all, so having two stories that were purely erotica just didn’t seem to fit in well with the others.

Rating: 4 stars

Alexa is a bi ace reviewer who loves books with queer protagonists, especially young adult and fantasy books. E also has a fascination with solarpunk, found families and hopeful futures, and plans to incorporate these in eir own writing. You can find more of eir reviews and bookish talk on WordPress and Twitter @greywardenblue.

Karoliina reviews Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism by Danielle Barnhart and Iris Mahan

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 This poetry collection, edited by Daniella Barnhart and Iris Mahan, opens with Denice Frohman’s poem ’a woman’s place’, and the first lines set the scene for the whole collection:

i heard a woman becomes herself
the first time she speaks
without permission

then, every word out of her mouth
a riot

The collection is huge in scope and has all in all 67 poems from 49 different contributors. This is the main strength of Women of Resistance: it collects together a large cast of diverse voices that all share something about their daily experiences. The collection includes poems by LGBTQ+ authors and writers of colour. The topics covered by the poems range from politics to personal, intimate moments, and the authors talk about sexism, racism, history, motherhood, and marriage, to name just a few. Although the poems differ from each other vastly in style and subject matter, they still form a unified whole. Each poem points out something that is wrong with our world, something that needs to change. As the backgrounds and life experiences of the poets are all different, what they pick up on and what they see in their lives are also different. When read side by side, the poems give you an in-depth look into what it means to exist in the margins of society.

Although the topics the poems cover are bleak, there is an overall feeling of hope, of resistance. It makes you feel connected, and it helps you believe that things can change. The collection reminds you that there is a lot of power in unity. That said, some of the poems can be painful to read, especially the ones that deal with assault and childhood sexual abuse. Therefore I would recommend this collection with a trigger warning for sexual violence.

The collection is split into four untitled sections, and to be honest I didn’t really understand what the connection between the poems in each section is. It’s very possible that I just missed it because I was focusing more on taking in each individual poem and didn’t actively look for overarching themes. However, what I did really like about the way the collection is laid out is that multiple poems by the same author are presented together one after another. It was nice to get a feel for each poet’s style and voice by reading multiple poems by them in a row. I had not heard of any of the poets who contributed to this collection before reading it, and it has definitely introduced me to some new favourites.

I think I found this collection so powerful partly because it is a collection of poetry, and it is difficult for me to imagine that a short story or an essay collection would be quite as effective. Poetry is special in the way it can make abstract concepts tangible and personal experiences universal. It also allows you to take in a lot of information and emotion in a short amount of time without exhausting you to the bone. I think that makes this collection more accessible than many other books on feminism, and I like the idea that the voice of a new feminism is poetry by a genuinely diverse mix of writers.

Danika reviews Meanwhile, Elsewhere edited by Cat Fitzpatrick and Casey Plett

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This is a huge book. Metaphorically, of course: it’s a big step in queer lit that we have a collection like this now, a collection of SFF stories all by and about trans people. We’re finally moving towards having stories that neither minimize queerness nor make it our only defining feature. But actually, I’m talking about it’s physical size. It’s 447 pages, and the book is taller and wider than your average paperback: more like a textbook than a novel. Although I really enjoyed reading this, it did take me a while to get through, because its physical size makes it awkward to hold and the length was intimidating.

It was well worth the time it took me to read it, though! I was happy to see that there are plenty of sapphic stories included: in fact, at least 10 of the 25 stories has a women-loving-women main character. Although this collection is sci fi and fantasy, and trans people in general, there’s definitely a stronger presence of science fiction and trans women.

As always in an anthology, some of these were bigger hits than others, but even the stories I didn’t personally enjoy I could see other people loving. (Like “It’s Called Fashion,” which I found difficult to follow, but I can see other readers really clicking with.) The stories vary a lot in their scope and premise. Some build a complex cyberpunk world in 20 pages, while others imagine a world only slightly different than ours. One story follows someone in space quietly ruminating about microaggressions, while another follows a woman whose brain-eating amoeba communicates through dreams and grows via orgasms.

A few stories I found so fascinating that I could easily write papers about them: “Satan, Are You There? It’s Me, Laura.” by Aesling Fae attempts to reclaim Satan as a trans woman, and as the protector of trans women. Outside of context, the devil and a trans woman sounds offensive, but Fae makes it an empowering thesis. Like Carmilla the series takes the monstrous lesbian and turns her into a hero, this story does the same thing with the devil.

The other story that really made me think was “Rent, Don’t Sell” by Calvin Gimpelevich. In this world, the technology for body-swapping had been made viable, but under capitalism, it’s used for things like: swapping your body with a trainer’s so they can do your exercise for you, hiring someone to detox for you, and, of course, having sex while inhabiting someone else’s body. This has a lot of interesting discussions about identity. The side character is a trans women who swapped bodies with a trans guy, but now regrets it and wants to transition with her own body, so she’s suing to try to get it back.

Some of my other favorites were “What Cheer” by RJ Edwards, where the main character spends a couple days with her alien close, and learns appreciation for herself and her life; “After the Big One” by Cooper Lee Bombardier, where a motley crew of queer argue about discourse and privilege, but have to come together to survive disaster; and “Gamers” by Imogen Binnie, which is about Zelda and time travel and being in an unhealthy relationship with a dependent girlfriend.

I do want to mention some serious trigger warnings for transphobia, transmisogyny, violence, gore, and rape in various stories. Specifically, the one story I had a problem with is “Delicate Bodies” by Bridget Liang, in which the main character is a zombie who rapes and then kills her ex-boyfriends/crushes. I get the zombie revenge fantasy, but I was getting nauseated reading about her brutally raping multiple people, and the text seems to suggest that they deserve it. They may have been jerks, but they didn’t do anything comparable. It soured the collection some for me. I also want to mention a trigger warning for suicide in “Visions” (though that’s not one of the sapphic stories).

I highly recommend this collection to just about everyone. It’s ambitious and necessary and has some fantastic stories. (And that sapphic story abundance doesn’t hurt!)