Shira Glassman reviews Mistress Moderately Fair by Katherine Sturtevant

The English Restoration, i.e. when Charles Stuart II returned to England to take his father’s throne back from the Puritans, fascinates me for being a renaissance of both art and hedonism. Theaters opened again after being banned, and all kinds of sexual openness flourished. I purposely sought out queer lit set in this time period–not that there’s much, given that historical LGBT romance skews heavily Regency–and was rewarded with Mistress Moderately Fair by Katherine Sturtevant. I think it’s out of print, but WorldCat has it at these libraries and Amazon has used copies.

Mistress is about a woman who comes to London to become an actress, and in the course of doing so falls for the lady playwright who’s been helping her hone her skills. It delivers most generously on lesbian romance, on plot twists and turns, and on evocative language. The author’s also done a remarkably good job at bringing a time period to life pretty vividly without falling prey to “look at meeee, I’m so well researched!” I felt the exciting earthiness of the time.

The actress, who is going by Amy but that isn’t her real name–she’s the Beauty with a Mysterious Secret Tragic Past trope–is scarred across her face, prompting the line: “I know I have a garden in my face–the roses and the thorns.” How it got that way, and what she’s hiding from, comprise the main conflicts of the book. She’s never heard of queerness before she came to London, not understanding why she’s so immensely, irrevocably drawn to her playwright friend Margaret, until one of her fellow actors gossips to her about their gay boss. Wait, that’s a thing people can do? Is that why I–

And straightaway, beautiful sensual sapphic prose starts gushing out all over the reader:

“I have deceived you,” [Margaret] said. “I have no poetry to share with you.”

“You are deceiving me now,” Amy said in a shaking voice, “For you are yourself a poem, and I have been hungering for you to share yourself with me.”

Their sex scenes glorify in sensuality, with that enthusiastic appreciation of breasts that validates my own impulses so soothingly. Amy is “my type”–a buxom, squishy, gorgeous brunette with luxurious hair and a tragic past. Margaret is one of those independent, outspoken, able to live slightly outside of society’s rules widow characters. They have chemistry from their very first encounter, and are totally believable as a couple.

“MARGARET AND I HAVE BECOME FRIENDS!” Amy gushes into her diary, too cautious to write what she really means. She goes on to add “I will say that we wrote poetry together, and whenever I read those words, I will know what they mean. And they are true indeed, for we have writ such poetry as I never dreamed of!” The metaphor doesn’t stop here, so the book is almost worth it for the “cunnilingus = poetry” jokes alone.

I love the way this book talks about writing inspiration and the way we create idealized and alternative versions of the people in our lives to interact with on the page. So very relatable.

The liveliness of the time period is evident in the snappy dialogue:

“I heard you had returned from the dead,” says the gay theater owner to someone recovering from violence. The man’s reply is “I did not like being dead, for the plays in heaven were quite dull and not the least bawdy.”

In one scene the two leading ladies recognize and mourn how it was easier for a man to be accepted for sleeping with men than a woman with other women, mainly because of misogyny. Incidentally this is a book that recognizes bisexuality as a phenomenon (without actually anachronizing by using the word), which was a nice touch.

My one quibble, and it’s a major one that’s the reason for the missing star, is the treatment of the book’s minor characters of color. Since it’s out of print, it would satisfy me deeply if this book were to return to print with those parts reexamined especially since they could be tweaked with zero impact on the actual story itself. I like the fact that the enslaved cook from next door insists right away that the main character call her by her real African name instead of the English name her own captor gave her–and that Margaret immediately does so–and I like the fact that the main character buys her and frees her at the end. But both she and her friend, another African captive, speak in broken English that felt awkwardly executed to me, and there are passages exoticizing her religious beliefs without actually adding anything to the story itself. I’m glad she was freed at the end but it would have been even more satisfying if she’d left England with the main character’s blessing after being freed instead of being asked to stay on as a servant and sneak out.

Trigger warnings: sexual assault in a flashback, and also for a brutal attack sustained by the gay supporting character from his lover’s brother’s henchmen. I found the lesbian positivity in the book so overwhelmingly affirming that it didn’t bother me as it ordinarily might have, but it’s there all the same.

Thank you for taking the time to read my review! I write more of them at http://shiraglassman.wordpress.com and on Goodreads, or check out my latest book, The Olive Conspiracy, Jewish fantasy about a young lesbian queen who must work together with her found-family, including her wife, a dragon, a witch, and a warrior woman, to save their country from an international sabotage plot.


Shira Glassman reviews Flowers of Luna by Jennifer Linsky

My recs pitch for this book is: fashion college on the moon, with femme on femme Asian diaspora lesbian romance. Yes, I said on the moon.

Flowers of Luna, by biracial Japanese-American author Jennifer Linsky, has a very familiar structure and feel if you’ve been reading a lot of young adult and new adult contemporary f/f. Ran has just started college in fashion design, and the story is mainly about how she falls for a sexy, adventurous engineering student. Hana shows her a great time on the weekends but holds back a little too much of herself otherwise, which eventually causes problems. There are plenty of B-plots about group projects with Ran’s classmates, creating new clothing designs, and in staying in touch with her sister at another school far away.

Except, this one takes place on the freaking moon. So there’s an extra layer of fun and sparkle on top of the familiarity. The main character is biracial, and fairly in touch with her Japanese roots thanks to the moon’s culture having a lot of Japanese influence as a result of some postapocalyptic stuff that happened in Japan, driving everyone to seek homes elsewhere. She’s also a second-generation lesbian (or “mirror-biased”, in the slang of this imagined future; bisexual is “parallel-biased”) raised by two moms on a mining ship. Her parents were big heroes in some kind of major event that happened when she was too little to be involved, so she’s a little bit celebrity-adjacent and every once in a while it influences her interactions with the world and with strangers/new people.

But she’s on the moon to study fashion design, and on the moon you can socially get away with wearing clothing from different time periods or cultures to suit your whim, PLUS machines replicate whatever you design, so there’s basically no limit to what she can invent. (She does like doing some hand work, if she has the time for it.)

Hana, who Ran meets as a result of some weird posturing and playacting involving an insult in cosplay and the subsequent duel, is a Japanese diaspora engineering student who has to play it drab during the week so her being a cute lesbian doesn’t make her male classmates not take her seriously. But on the weekend, with Ran, she’s pretty sexually adventurous–for example, there’s a running gag about her not wearing underwear, even in public.

It’s hard to maintain true intimacy when one of you is holding back, so that’s the main conflict of the book, and there was a point in my reading where I kind of expected them to stay broken up and the MC to wind up with the nonbinary character she’d flirted with near the beginning. But the book’s main couple do work things out. I think I just wanted to be more convinced. Ran does acknowledge in the postlude that she has no idea what the future holds, but they’re enjoying themselves right now.

The moon environment itself is a very appealing place to spend your imaginary time, as a reader. There are cities, mostly Japanese and Russian influenced, with fake day and night, where you can visit cozy restaurants carpeted in tatami mats and floor cushions. “Shoes,” Hana reminds Ran. “The Moon is not a foreign country.” After the Japanese dinner they pop into Mr. Chung’s ice cream shop, where he does his best to balance heat and coolness with flavors like curry ice cream. “You must be careful to avoid an excess of yin; we live on the moon!”

They take a weekend date trip to Heinleinburg–many places in the moon civilization honor real historical figures in science and science fiction. Linsky writes, “Heinleinburg was settled by corporate pioneers who came to get wealthy from the moon. Set in Shoemaker Crater to be near the south polar ice fields, it had attracted everyone who dreamed of the moon; everyone who dreamed of riches; everyone who dreamed.” Love that kind of prose.

I want to specifically note that I initially overlooked this book because I thought, from the sample, that it was a different type of book, much weightier (the sample is from the insult scene in the beginning and I didn’t realize that was only cosplay playacting.) Had I known it was “lesbian college fluff on the moon”, I would have picked it up a lot sooner. Also, for a book that truly and thoroughly celebrates visual beauty, both of clothing and of women’s glorious, exquisite bodies, I think it would be better served by a different cover — just one woman’s opinion, of course!

In summary, Flowers of Luna is remarkably contemporary-feeling for sci-fi, a good gateway for SFF-intimidated f/f fans especially because the conflicts aren’t SFF-specific, while also including enough cool details to keep sci-fi fans happy.

Thank you for taking the time to read my review! I write more of them at http://shiraglassman.wordpress.com and on Goodreads, or check out my latest book, The Olive Conspiracy, Jewish fantasy about a young lesbian queen who must work together with her found-family, including her wife, a dragon, a witch, and a warrior woman, to save their country from an international sabotage plot.

Shira Glassman reviews The Dyke and the Dybbuk by Ellen Galford

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Ellen Galford’s The Dyke and the Dybbuk is, for only being eighteen years old, fairly iconic and hallowed in the tiny subgenre in which I spend most of my writing time. In other words, it may very well be the first great piece of sapphic Jewish fantasy. If I’m wrong, I’d love to know about more! In any case, it was a pleasure to read–sarcastic, sardonic, hopeful, enthusiastic, both a love story to our culture and a sharp criticism of some of its more tiresome features.

The initial premise stems from a trope some people may find painful, but is all too realistic thanks to the way society overwhelmingly pressures cis women to marry cis men. Namely, two young women in historical Jewish Eastern Europe are in love, until one of them leaves to marry a man. The jilted woman (herself somewhat of an outcast for her mixed parentage) responds by cursing the bride with demon possession. Thus enter our “what if Loki was a lesbian” demon, the hilarious–and also sapphic–dybbuk of the title. But she winds up imprisoned in a tree instead of being able to haunt the married woman and her daughters and granddaughters per the curse’s instructions, so it isn’t until the ninth generation of offspring that she gets a chance to escape and begin her assignment.

And this ninth generation is a British lesbian film critic who drives a taxi for her day job.

Rainbow Rosenbloom’s more at odds with her Judaism than I am, but, firstly, the book was written in an earlier generation, and secondly, there are pretty much twice as many ways to be Jewish as there are actual Jews in the world. I am confident that her experiences accurately reflect many other people’s relationship with their Jewishness. She’s surrounded by paternal aunts and she’s over-aware of the ways her preference for women—as well as her self-chosen first name, and also eating treyf–puts her in direct opposition to the way they want her to live.

The dybbuk decides that Rainbow’s already weird enough and has already maxed out ‘acting out’, so she can’t possibly make her look any weirder by ordinary possession. Therefore, she decides as her project she’s going to give Rainbow a massive crush on–Riva, a married Orthodox woman with six children! So suddenly, she’s super interested in her faith in a way she never was before (the irony being that it’s only because of a demon’s influence.) In comes an intense crush that I totally recognized from various straight girls I’ve crushed on.

Now, I have a soft spot for pious women, so like the sucker I am, I did fall hook line and sinker for the Rainbow/Riva ‘ship in this book. Spoiler warning: the author went somewhere else, but that’s okay. The book does deliver happy f/f endings, and even the demon herself gets to have some fun.

As far as the issue of how the book made me feel as a bisexual woman — the line “trendy bisexual” was used at one point in dialogue, but I do feel like any criticism of bi women’s choices was intended as unreliable narrator because from what I can remember it’s followed up with a reminder that they don’t actually know if the olden-days bride was bi or if she just married a man to appease cultural traditions which is extremely possible, given the circumstances. I beg of those reading this review to please be gentle with me if your experiences lead you to feel differently, because the week after I read the book my spouse ended our thirteen year relationship and so 1. I am not particularly able to hold my own in discourse at the moment and 2. I am writing this a month after reading the book and after a considerable amount of pain, so my memory isn’t perfect.

Either way, if you’re a Jewish woman who likes women, it’s worth checking out even if you aren’t a fan of spec fic. The speculative elements are lighthearted and easy to process–among themselves, the demons’ society is a parody of modern corporate culture and office politics. It’s out of print right now but worldcat.org has it listed in libraries all over the place, and I had no trouble getting a hold of it through interlibrary loan, so if you don’t mind using the system—and plenty of librarians told me that using a library actually helps libraries and isn’t a strain on them at all—it should be relatively easy. Besides, used copies are not hard to find.

Content warning: I have vague memories of there being the g-slur (for Rromani) in there someplace.

olive-conspiracyThank you for taking the time to read my review! I write more of them at http://shiraglassman.wordpress.com and on Goodreads, or check out my latest book, The Olive Conspiracy, Jewish fantasy about a young lesbian queen who must work together with her found-family, including her wife, a dragon, a witch, and a warrior woman, to save their country from an international sabotage plot.

Lauren reviews Fearless by Shira Glassman

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Lana is a divorcee and mother of two who has been out of the closet for less than a year. Although her lesbian social circle and dating life are dry as a desert, she finds purpose in other areas of life, including her role as a supportive band mom.

The story opens at her teenage daughter’s (Robin) All-State rehearsal, which takes place at a large convention hotel. Robin is a talented clarinetist whose affinity for music was clearly inspired by her mom. Lana loves the violin but hasn’t played in many years. She has limited herself to the vicarious excitement of her daughter’s talent and fellow band mates.

Though the atmosphere inside is swarming with students and the sounds of instruments, the weather is relentless. It seems like a typical, snowed-in day until Mel Feinberg steps into the picture. Ms. Feinberg is an orchestra director that immediately piques Lana’s attention.

Mel is attractive and self-assured, and she stealthy leads Lana to address her desires and fears. After all, Mel may be the oasis that Lana has been waiting for.

My only issue with the story is the relationship between Lana and her ex-husband. Though the reasons behind their marriage and behaviors are completely understandable (I’m avoiding a spoiler here), the fact that both Lana and Steve parted for the same reason seems a little far reaching. Lana acknowledged that he was doing much better with his new social life than her. Though this hints at male privilege, it wasn’t addressed in the story.

Fearless will transport you to a world of high school bands and tireless teenagers. I especially enjoyed the mini adventure between Lana and Mel near the closing. In the end, Fearless reminds us that dashes of courage and new tides often come at the most unexpected moments.

Lauren Cherelle uses her time and talents to traverse imaginary and professional worlds. She recently penned her sophomore novel, The Dawn of Nia (Resolute Publishing, 2016). Outside of reading and writing, she enjoys new adventures with her partner of thirteen years. You can find Lauren online at Twitter, www.lcherelle.com, and Goodreads.

Shira Glassman reviews Roller Girl by Vanessa North

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To me, Roller Girl by Vanessa North is a roller derby book that includes a lesbian romance, rather than being a roller derby romance; there was a lot more going on in the book besides the relationship between Tina and her girlfriend–a lot that in my opinion enhanced the book and broadened its appeal. I’m no derby girl, but the game shines through the book–its appeal to Tina in the beginning, her anticipation as she auditions, the friendships she forms during practice–and I think that this element would please anyone who wants to read a women’s sports book, romance fan or no. In fact, I learned a lot about the game from the book, and I can understand a little more of the conversation–and starry-eyed face–of my college roommate who joined her local team just around the time the book came out.

My favorite relationship in the book was actually between Tina and her straight, married “derby wife” Lauren, an affirming platonic friendship that I truly felt and radiated off the page, but the romance between Tina and Joe was at least believable and hot. The sex scenes between them were definitely sizzling.
There are a ton of other awesome platonic interactions between LGBT folks in the book. Tina has a bunch of close male friends (from her former career in wakeboarding, which she used to fund her transition) who are all paired off with each other — they’re apparently main characters in North’s previous books, but I haven’t read them and never felt like I had missed essential details. And of course there are other f/f couples and women-attracted women both in Tina’s derby team and in the teams they play. Also, what would a sports book be without one of those “the not-sports part of televised Olympics coverage” heartwarming moments? Tina winds up getting to be a trans role model for a trans kid in one scene, and that was beautiful. So if you are specifically looking for this, especially given how important a part of our real lives our intra-umbrella friendships are and how if we reflect that in our literature it gets accused of being unrealistic, this book is a perfect fit.
I’m not sure how plausible it is for there to be turmoil over the idea of a player dating the coach in a situation made of 100% adults and it’s not a matter of employment, but by the time the relationship was revealed, North sort of fixed my skepticism by making it more about friend drama than “I can’t date one of my players”, which is totally understandable and realistic and made a lot more sense to me. Never believe that friend drama ends at high school, folks. My mom is a boomer and recently navigated some drama over where to have the bluegrass jam.
I am pleased to report that I have no idea what Tina’s deadname is, and that the team tells her from the beginning that if anyone tries to be transmisogynist — it’s a women’s team, so she was concerned — they’ll shut it down.
Since it takes place in Central Florida, I would have appreciated something that felt like home–I’ve read books that reference Publix subs, for example–but I’m at least happy that North didn’t get anything wrong about the region.
 ~
Thank you for taking the time to read my review! I write more of them at http://shiraglassman.wordpress.com and on Goodreads, or check out my latest book, The Olive Conspiracy, about a young lesbian queen who must work together with her found-family, including her wife, a dragon, a witch, and a warrior woman, to save their country from an international sabotage plot.

Shira Glassman reviews Not Your Sidekick by CB Lee

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I’m surprised by how slowly the indie SFF world seems to be responding to fandom’s current preference for superheroes. Maybe that’s because superheroes originated in print to begin with, so anyone wanting to write them goes for graphic novels rather than prose. But CB Lee’s Not Your Sidekick is a much-needed contribution for those of us who for whatever reason just don’t tend to read comics very often and want superhero stories anyway.

When you read a book where the protagonist has both the same heritage and sexuality as the author (bisexual and mixed Chinese-Vietnamese), the whole thing shines with authenticity and verisimilitude. All the details that white cis/straight authors tend to shove in like political campaign fliers left wedged behind a doorknob are instead seamlessly woven into the text, as her default, whether they’re Vietnamese swear words, shame over how her former friends from Chinese school have become the “cool girls” and don’t talk to her anymore, or how she’s bi in the same awkward “I have crushes on the Talented Overachieving Femmes at my high school but I’m just gonna sit in a corner” way that I was at that age.
But the book isn’t about any of those things. It’s that kind of SFF so many people crave, where these marginalized kids get to battle evil forces and root out conspiracies as if–gasp–kids from marginalized cultures or sexualities have other enemies besides racism and queerphobia.
The book is really easy to read; CB Lee manages to explain a totally unfamiliar future following wars and radiation events without once losing me under a blanket of worldbuilding. Jess’s world of self-driving cars, electronic wrist devices, and three-dimensional holographic (I think) television seems completely normal and at times I almost felt like I was reading YA contemporary that happened to take place in a world with robots and superheroes, especially when she and the love interest, Abby, were flirting through school projects together.
But then the plot picks up, and the layers of twists begin to unpeel. There’s a really obvious twist that I saw coming because I have a similar one in my first book, but for me it almost served as camouflage and kept me from seeing all the other twists yet to come. For me, anyway, this didn’t turn out to be a predictable, simple book, and it had a lot of good things to say about the way we define heroes and villains in the public eye. Lee also came up with some pretty creative powers and super-identities that didn’t seem like the same old same old.
What I appreciated about the book is that even when things are Not Great, it never feels bogged down with that hopelessness and overwhelmingly dystopian feeling that it easily could have, given the subject matter. I mean, some people could plop you down as a reader in the middle of the desert in a future where there isn’t really enough good food to eat and various old forms of entertainment are forbidden, and it would seem depressing, but this just seems normal and even chirpy. I mean, it’s Jess’s normal. She just thinks she’s a regular kid, with a friend group and kids at school she feels weird around and homework and insecurities and crushes both on classmates and celebrities.
The ending isn’t really an ending at all, which is frustrating, but at least it’s not a cliffhanger, just the first book in the kind of trilogy where all three books tell one complete story. And yes, the girls end up together and alive. Behold the low bar television has set for SFF–the bar is on the ground. But this is, happily, more than just a book where Girl A gets with Girl B and fight some bad guys.

More of Shira Glassman’s reviews here.

Shira’s fluffy f/f fantasy series about a lesbian queen with a bi partner and a warrior/wizard sidekick couple here.

Shira Glassman reviews Swan's Braid and Other Tales of Terizan by Tanya Huff

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Fantasy literature is rife with ‘clever thief’ protagonists for the vicarious entertainment of the virtuous, like Bilbo Baggins, but most of them are not even female, let alone lesbians. Swan’s Braid and other Tales of Terizan gives us the wily but honorable Terizan, who waltzes away from the first story in her collection with the affection of a female mercenary with whom she maintains a casual romance for the remainder of the book. Most of Terizan’s adventures aren’t love stories, but “capers”–she gets assignments from the Thieves’ Guild, which she joined pretty much for their health insurance plan (“the guild takes care of its own,” and she’s worried about what would happen if she ever got more seriously hurt during one of her falls from a mark’s window. It’s that kind of book.)

The plots themselves are pretty clever, with inflection points and twists and rising action and punch lines, reminding me of Maurice Leblanc’s dashing gentleman burglar Arsène Lupin, only in a fantasy setting with a lesbian heroine. Whether Terizan’s adversary is a ghost, a wizard, a prince, or the cult of an upstart goddess, reading about her besting them was satisfying and not stressful at all because they’re written in that “good old fashioned fun” way, not grimdark.

The prose is easy to follow, with the occasional evocative bit like “[…]sales pitches as wilted as the vegetables[…]” Huff’s worldbuilding is unobtrusive and “generic fantasy” enough to be pretty easy to understand, yet with enough originality that I didn’t feel like I was reading homage or parody. And I really can’t say enough good things about how relaxing it is to read a story about a woman Doing Things in a shady underworld without having to fear gendered violence. The villains in this book are mostly men, but their offensives and defenses against Terizan never include a sexual element.

I love so much about what Terizan’s stories have and don’t have. Her best friend is a bisexual male sex worker, her adventures aren’t gendered (in other words, she gets to interact with her fictional universe pretty much the way male characters usually get to), and her three bosses at the Guild are a man, a woman, and someone who “could be either or neither” whose gender is never further discussed. These days things like this are becoming easier to find in SFF, at least if you’re like me and play Heimdahl with indie LGBT publishing, but this particular story was written in the NINETIES. So I quietly hold this up to those who go around leaving skeptical, ossified reviews on fiction with nonbinary characters.

I would love to see these done in graphic novel form.

(Warning for the word ‘whore’ used a few times; I think it was only said by the sex worker character but I can’t actually remember and I returned my eBook to the library already.)

Find more of my reviews here.

Find my f/f fantasy books here.

Marthese reviews Climbing the Date Palm by Shira Glassman

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“Bravery isn’t all swordfighting and  riding dragons”

Climbing the Date Palm is the second book in the Mangoverse series by Shira Glassman. This series is a fantasy series with Jewish traditions and has a diverse cast with the main characters being Queen Shulamit and her girlfriend Aviva and Rivka, Shula’s head guard and Isaac, her companion.

The book picks up a little while after the first book ends and starts with Aviva encountering a near-to-death horse rider who turns out to been Prince Kaveh from the city of red clay who came to Riv- who is mistaken by most as a man, who has a male companion- to ask for help as his sweetheart Farzin was imprisoned by his father.

Our group of intrepid heroes, or well Shula’s group of close friends work to save Kaveh’s life. Rivka’s mother also joins the palace while Shulamit, who more than ever has her whole country on her shoulder comes up with a plan to sire and heir with the bisexual prince.

The plot follows the casts’ trials as they try to save Farzin’s life. Farzin, an engineer and old friend of Kaveh’s was imprisoned for siding with his  workers when they were not paid as they should; as well as for ‘corrupting’ Kaveh.

More than the plot, the story offers interesting conversations between the characters that allow the readers to think about life and its lessons in a very simplified way. The way that Glassman put things into perspective may sometimes be too simplistic but still very thoughtful. Things like bisexuality- and not being interesting in everyone, stereotypes on women and gay and bisexual people, parenting, being responsibility and insecurity and discussed in a mature but not complex way. Isaac provides very good pointers on how to strike up a conversation, if you ever need to gather intel!

I felt that this book, as mentioned, deals with heavy and exhausting topics – most of which many of us have to repeat over and over- in an interesting, sometimes metaphorical and simple way that almost everyone would be able to get. I felt it was more complex than the first book and the characters are growing into themselves. As it’s the second book, I cannot give much spoilers but the answer to problems in this world is answered with geekery from everyone, charm, persistence, team-work and effort.

The relationships in this book are very mature for the most part. Although there was a lesbian couple, and Shula is the protagonist; the story was more than that and included a lot of flashbacks from Farzin and Kaveh’s time together. The diverse characters work well together and are like a puzzle that fits with the story.

Climbing the Date Palm was a highly enjoyable read and as it’s part of a fantasy series, we get to immerse ourselves in the world for the duration of other books as well! I’ll definitely continue with this series.

Shira Glassman reviews Date with Destiny by Mason Dixon

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Date with Destiny is a Black lesbian thriller–written by a Black woman, prolific author Yolanda Wallace writing under the name Mason Dixon–set in the banking industry of Savannah, Georgia. Rashida, the lead, is a driven, frugal Black bank executive who has risen to the top of the bank her grandmother once cleaned as a janitor. Her work-oriented but lonely life is headed for a collision course with the unemployed, blue-collar Destiny, who she meets at a coffeeshop one morning. Is finding Destiny a job at her bank a worthy act of kindness or a dangerous temptation? After all, the bank has strict policies against workplace dating–but Destiny’s sexuality is practically a force of nature.

There’s a lot more going on here than I can even describe without spoiling the plot, so this is a good bet for you if you like twists, suspense, and intrigue. I’d even say it’s reminiscent of movies like Memento and The Usual Suspects, including the way Dixon employs the device of showing the same scene through different character’s eyes. (Some readers may find some of the repetition tedious, so feel free to skim through it looking for the new information.)

As a beautiful old city, Savannah makes a wonderful backdrop for the story’s dramatics. This obviously won’t apply to readers outside the coastal South but it’s fun getting to read an adventure and recognize all the places from real life instead of from other works of fiction–Richmond Hill? I can picture the highway exit. I know what I-16 is.

I found the prose well-paced and easy to breeze through; I read the book pretty rapidly over a weekend and never got bogged down or bored. There’s some negative messaging about closeted vs. non-closeted queer people that I didn’t agree with — we still live in a world that sometimes necessitates closets, sadly — but it wasn’t a loud enough message to significantly tarnish my reading experience. There’s representation of lesbians who have endured family rejection and moved on, recognizing the event without wallowing in it as tragedy porn.

I’m not sure how I feel about the ultimate ending of the book; I do want the ending the author gave us, but I would have preferred being more convinced about it. That scene in particular I think would have been more effective on film. However, I do like the fact that Rashida was finally enjoying herself after a lifetime of workworkwork and having to overachieve to overcome misogynoir. She deserves it after working so hard and what the plot put her through.

Date with Destiny is full of sensuality between women and eventually love but it’s not entirely a romance; it’s a thriller that will be more fun for the reader if they go in expecting a wild ride.

Shira Glassman reviews Marian by Ella Lyons

marian ella lyons

One way to describe Marian by Ella Lyons is that it’s a kiddie version of Heather Rose Jones’s Daughter of Mystery — both are costume dramas featuring a traditionally feminine lesbian with a nurturing personality and a lesbian swordfighter living in a world where it’s not customary for women to participate in combat, both feature father figures who a main character is both attached to and in opposition to, and both feature court intrigue — just to name a few similarities. So if you like the Alpennia books, rejoice because now there’s a young adult novel with a similar flavor.

The pitch for Marian is that it’s a f/f Robin Hood retelling, but I feel that does the book a disservice. The actual story is entirely new and original, only using the Robin Hood names as a springboard and small elements of the legend as landmarks that pop up in unexpected places. What we get is Marian, a teenaged girl who moves to the “big city” (for medieval, rural definitions of big) when her knighted father starts to rise in political power. She’s a bit of a fish out of water and bewildered about how to deal with snobby noblewomen and the king noticing her beauty, and the only person she feels truly comfortable around is the farm girl Robin. They eventually get separated by fate but come together again once Marian is eighteen and the stakes are higher.

I really enjoy when I can feel the chemistry between characters who are an endgame romance, and Marian delivers there, mostly because of dialogue between Marian and Robin that felt lifelike and natural to me (other than the repeated use of ‘cracking’ as a slang term by too many characters in too short of a span of pages, although that might just be my American-ness showing–forgive me.) I liked how subtle the girls’ connection is–it almost made me feel like I was just a femslash fan rather than someone purposely reading a f/f novel, which made the inevitable “it’s canon” scene even more satisfying. In other words if you are one of those people who wanted Anne Shirley and Diana Blythe or Jane Eyre and Helen Burns to be in love, this book will put you back in that place and then give you what you want.

I thought it was really good writing that the author establishes Marian — and her father and their changing life situations — as a fully rounded character before ever introducing Robin as a love interest. By the time Robin shows up I was totally invested in Marian and her hopes and her traumas. Incidentally, I was puzzled as to why there was a pound and a half of foreshadowing about everyone in town coming down with fever but then Marian’s father’s died a different way.

I never noticed Little John and King John having the same name before because the original legend doesn’t really make it relevant. But in this story, they interact and are in the same scene enough times that I noticed and I wanted to say that it was neat to see that in historical fiction of any kind–two people with the same common name. One doesn’t often run into that in fiction for the obvious reason that it might confuse the reader, but I think it’s neat because it’s super realistic.

A quote I liked, discussing the villain of the piece — King John, of course:

“His Majesty is always paying attention to you.”

“His Majesty is always paying attention to himself.”

To be honest the reason I’m giving this four stars instead of five is that I feel like the romantic resolution was a bit abrupt. I feel like the book’s climax was the climax of Marian’s story rather than the climax of the Marian/Robin romance. Also, there’s a moment when Marian assumes some bottles which could have been a lot of very scary things are the medicine she needs for someone, and she’s right, and that part made me smirk a little.

But other than that, it’s a totally captivating read with a well-rounded cast and evocative scenes, and definitely worth checking out.

Trigger warning for attempted but foiled sexual assault — another similarity with Daughter of Mystery, actually.

[Editor’s note: Also check out Danika’s review of Marian!]