I read about Laura J. Mixon’s “Glass Houses” in K. Cadora’s article “Feminist Cyberpunk.” Cadora, author of the novella “Stardust Bound” (which I recommend), argued that, in “Glass Houses,” Mixon translates the tropes of cyberpunk out of a male-only worldview into a wider, more equitable worldview. As a sometimes cyberpunk and noir fan, I wasRead More
Jasper reviews Steam-Powered II: Lesbian Steampunk Stories
Bottom line: A collection of steampunk stories starring lesbians that deliberately tries to stretch beyond the Anglo-centric, but still operates within a Western-Europe-dominated colonial world. Many stories are good; only one is terrible; none except perhaps the final two pieces challenge steampunk conventions quite as hard as they might mean to. Content warnings (may containRead More
Jasper reviews Silver Moon by Catherine Lundoff
I’m not usually a werewolf (or vampire) novel reader, because I’m not usually a paranormal romance reader, and it’s rare I don’t see the one being synonymous for the other. Alphas falling for mortals, mortals falling for alphas, vampires falling for werewolves, new wolves learning to run a pack and being courted by multiple stunninglyRead More
Jasper reviews Beyond Binary by
Read Beyond Binary. It fails, as an anthology, to go very far beyond male/female straight/gay conceptions of gender identity and sexual orientation. It fails to showcase worlds and characters that universally accept identities and orientations that lie beyond expected binary norms. Some of its stories are weak and ambiguous; some end with characters in situationsRead More
Jasper reviews Shadow Swans
“Den’s azure eyes betrayed unfathomable tombs of fury and sadness.” “They feared the rogue warrior they perceived to be growing inside me.” “Anxious to coddle her kinetic sweetness, I submitted to the secrecy…” “We were all, by now, wet like kittens tossed in the ocean.” I’m surprised I made it through Laura Thomas’s Shadow Swans,Read More