Tag Archives: Sarah Gailey

Rebel Lesbrarians in a Dystopian Western: Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

Posted on by
Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey cover

Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

I’m not sure when I bought the ebook for Upright Women Wanted. It was probably on sale, and when I heard that there were lesbians and rebel librarians in a western-themed dystopian setting, I guess I thought it was too good to pass up. Like most of my ebook purchases, it sat on my Kindle for an indeterminate amount of time, passed up by groups of library ebooks (that mostly also go unread), until I finally decided that I’d dallied long enough. I’d recently learned that Sarah Gailey is an excellent horror writer in Just Like Home, so it was stupid to keep procrastinating on a novella that so clearly fits my niche. My friends and gays, it is everything I could have wanted.

Our main character, Esther, has decided to escape the horrible fate that just befell her best friend: engaged to a man just as horrible and controlling as her father, hanged for possession of Unapproved Materials, the only relief being approved novels about queer women who die—and seeing that tragic ending made reality spurs her to hide in the back of the first wagon out of town: the librarians’ store wagon. Of course, the librarians are more than just meek women distributing state propaganda. Shockingly, people who dedicate their lives to the spread of information don’t like being told what information is and isn’t acceptable, and any profession that’s limited to one gender will attract plenty of queers.

One thing I appreciated about this novella is that Gailey uses a light touch with their worldbuilding, letting us fill in all the details. Despite the fact that the book opens on a hanging, there’s no real dwelling on excessive cruelty and pain. We know that Esther’s father was abusive and controlling, and the man he picked out to be her fiancé is probably just as bad. We know that there are strict gender roles, which is why Cye takes the time to put on a skirt any time they get close to town or approached by any potentially dangerous travelers. We don’t really need to know what the war is or what the state’s justifications are for it; it’s enough that there’s an excuse to ration supplies and set up checkpoints. We don’t need to see the minutiae of the world, because the details don’t really matter. Is the State run by an emperor? A president? What kind of history do they teach about how democracy fell and they got caught up in a seemingly endless war? I don’t really care. Considering how our politics are going, it’s believable enough that I don’t need elaboration. Besides, it doesn’t really matter to Esther anyway. She’s just trying to survive the next week and maybe get her life into a place that allows for some form of happiness.

I’d also be remiss not to mention the characters, because again, they felt perfectly crafted to my specific tastes. Bet and Leda are really my ideal couple dynamic—small hard angry lesbian with her big, soft wife who wears her heart on her sleeve (but who will still kill a man, like, don’t get me wrong: she will absolutely kill someone). I could collect them forever. And I appreciated that Cye was the right mix of gruff without being rude or unlikable. They won’t take any shit, but they aren’t unnecessarily mean, even when they think Esther is just going to be a waste of water in the desert. I also appreciated Esther herself and her emotional journey with self-acceptance. Much in the way that the narrative doesn’t dwell on society’s cruelty, Esther doesn’t dwell on self-hatred, even when she firmly believes that there’s something wrong with her. She’s very matter-of-fact, and manages to be a people pleaser without being self-detrimental. There are the perfect number of characters for this little novella, and they’re all given a chance to shine.

All in all, this is a perfect bite sized story that manages to blend the classic Western aesthetics with a queer speculative twist, and I only wish it was longer. There’s nothing in this story that feels stunted or left out, but I could easily see the characters and situation being worked into a larger story. Esther’s involvement feels like a piece of a larger narrative, one that she could easily be either an active, driving force in, or a side character offering support. I do love a good novella tie-in where side characters are given center stage, so I wouldn’t complain if we got a novel focused on new characters. However, it’s great for what it is, and I think a novella is really what I needed to read right now. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a quick, satisfying story with just the right amount of everything.

Danika reviews Eat the Rich by Sarah Gailey, Pius Bak, and Roman Titov

Posted on by
the cover of Eat the Rich, showing a skewer with meat, an eyeball, and a finger on it

Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link

It’s Halloween, and I know exactly which book you should read cover to cover today.

Joey is meeting her boyfriend’s family, and it’s understandably stressful. They’re wealthy; she’s not. He’s worried about trying to stay sober back there. She wants to impress them. But she’s on her way to becoming a lawyer, so she’ll be joining the elites soon. She’s up to the challenge of learning how to blend in.

It goes about as well as you’d expect at first. Joey feels judged and out of place. She becomes friends with the family’s nanny, Petal, even as Petal advises her that being seen with the help will not be good for her standing in this society. As she explains this to Joey, the baby picks up what appears to be a human jawbone on the beach and begins playing with it…

This is a short graphic novel, so I don’t want to spoil anything, but I think you can probably guess that this rich community is eating people; it’s revealed pretty quickly. The twist (mid-story spoiler) is that it’s not a secret. It’s in their contracts. You retire, and you get hunted for sport and eaten. But in the meantime, you get paid well, you get good health benefits, etc. For some people, it’s the best option on the table. That’s capitalism for you. (end of spoilers)

This an over-the-top, gruesome, funny, anti-capitalism, queer graphic novel that I enjoyed from beginning to end. In just a few pages, I completely fell for Petal, who wears a “Loud and Queer” t-shirt and assures Joey that yes, she knows how awesome she is. I think I can safely say that if you like the title and cover, you’ll love this book, and it’s such a fun one-sitting Halloween read.

Maggie reviews Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

Posted on by

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey is a western dystopian novella set in the American Southwest at a point when almost all food, gasoline, medical supplies, and other necessities have been rationed by the army, and the only books around have to be pre-approved by the government. Normally I think novellas have a tendency to fall flat for me, but I’m very intrigued by the spat of western-themed dystopian fiction that’s been put out recently, so I wanted to give it a try.

CONTENT WARNING: The story opens with a hanging. The main character, Esther, has just watched her friend Beatriz be hanged for possessing unapproved materials, and she knows she has to get out of town before a similar fate befalls her. So she hides away with the traveling Librarians, women who travel between small towns in the Southwest distributing approved books. It’s a place for women to exist without being married, and it’s away from her small town. Although initially unhappy with her presence, the Head Librarians Bet and Leda allow her to stay and set their assistant Cye to teaching her the ropes as they continue to deliver books to towns and carry out their secret mission of helping move contraband packages and people who need to leave. As Esther learns more about what it takes to be a Librarian and about her companions, it becomes clear that the Librarians are also a home to many sorts of people that would get run out of the small towns they go through, or worse, and as Esther learns more about their true mission, she’s left with more questions about herself and what she wants to do with her life.

As the main character, it is through Esther’s viewpoint that we see the Librarians, and at first I was frustrated by what seemed to be Esther’s willful obliviousness to what was right in front of her. She had had a whole relationship with Beatriz – not just an unrequited crush – and I couldn’t understand why she refused to acknowledge what was clear about the people she had fallen in with, even when they were right in front of her. But the more Esther revealed to Cye and later Amity, a fugitive that’s moving with them, the more I realized that this was a story about the trauma of having to live in fear of who you are and the consequences of being found out. A common enough theme in LGBT literature, but the rebellious queer western pastiche this was sold to me under obscured it from me to start with, and I think it is well done here in how it unfolds and how Esther herself has to realize the full extent of her trauma and how to navigate around it, especially for a novella. As things progressed, it was less the Librarian’s hidden duties that drew me on, but instead Esther’s progression of grappling with her past, present, and future.

I also thought it was interesting that Bet and Leda are present as queer elders, but it isn’t them that are Esther’s main mentors in coming into herself. Cye may mock her at first, but it is them and the outlaw Amity that end up helping Esther the most. Amity was also an interesting character to me, as an outlaw with competing streaks of deep pragmatism and compassion. I thought it was really interesting who here was most helpful to Esther and who had broader concerns than one timid girl.

As in all frontier or wilderness survival stories, I was super interested in the segments about Esther gaining the skills she needed to survive. Not only were there the expected segments about learning how to ride a horse or shoot a gun, there was a delightful segment where Esther tries her hand at learning bookbinding. What I found charming about Esther was that, even laboring under her own personal trauma and confusion, she tried hard to learn or do the practical things that life in the southwest on the road demanded.

In conclusion, Upright Women Wanted is an interesting and entertaining novella, and worth your time if you’re interested in westerns. In my opinion it succeeds better than a lot of novellas do at fleshing out interesting characters within a condensed plot, and it hits the grim but somewhat hopeful dystopia notes without hammering them too hard.

Mary reviews Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

Posted on by

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

I’ve been thinking a lot about the future and trying to figure out what it will look like. Will this blow over in a couple of months and will things steadily return to normal? Or is the future forever changed and doomed? I guess it’s nice to think that even if it is the worst-case scenario we’re heading towards, there’s still hope for the LGBTQ+ community.

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey takes place in a future southwest where society is under the control of a fascist, religious, and patriarchal regime. The protagonist, Esther watches her best friend and lover Beatriz hang for deviant behavior and having “unapproved materials”. She runs away in the back a wagon owned by a couple of librarians, planning to join their group and somehow find a way to get rid of what she believes is a horrible part of her. She wants to become what the posters proclaim them to be, upright women.

What she instead finds is an underground LGBTQ+ community, bandits, violence, many secrets, and women that are leagues better than what the posters described.

Esther is a very real character in that she has a lot of issues and internal confusion to work through. It was interesting getting to see a character work through that in real time with the story and see her gradually overcome with it the help of people around her.

The characters were just as real. There was Bet and Leda, the couple’s whose wagon she initially snuck onto. Bet is gruff and tough, but has a heart of gold and genuinely cares for everyone in her crew. Leda is just as tough, but also shows more of her compassion externally than her partner. Finally, there’s Cye, who goes by they, is an apprentice to Bet, and doesn’t initially like Esther too much, but the two of them eventually grow to like each other and more.

The world building was wonderful. Every inch of struggle that would come with such a harsh environment is included here, no short cuts taken. This really is a post-apocalyptic future where our current comforts are not to be found. The author clearly did a lot of research and this comes through beautifully.

My one complaint is that the plot felt a bit rushed. There were a few beats and character developments that could have taken more time and build up. The characters, concept, and world building is great, and I just wish the plot had taken the time to give them to time they needed.

Overall, I genuinely enjoyed this, and if you’re looking for a western story with adventure and romance, this is just for you