I first want to give a shout-out to the Asian Readathon, which Cindy Pham (@WithCindy on Youtube) hosts during May. While we’re near the end of the month, the associated Directory of Asian Books is an incredible resource year-round, and both it and this year’s challenge contain an LGBT category. With that in mind, I’veRead More
A Brutal and Brilliant Space Opera: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! I thought about reviewing Emily Tesh’s Some Desperate Glory on here last month, right after I finished reading it, but I decided against it because I couldn’t figure out how to talk about in any sort of coherent way. My initial Goodreads review was mostly swearingRead More
A Blood-Drenched Queer Space Opera for the Ages: Redsight by Meredith Mooring
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! Better buckle up your buttered biscuits, because you’re in for one hell of a ride. Meredith Mooring’s debut novel Redsight, freshly published February 27, 2024, arrived studded with blurbs. The two that ultimately pulled me were: “The heretical, genre-defying daughter of Killing Eve and Dune,” (Kemi Ashing-Giwa) andRead More
An Ode to Burning it All Down: The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! Have you ever been seized with the inexplicable urge to destroy an intricate and beautiful object? But you don’t; you just sit with that strange, uncomfortable urge twisting in your chest and gnawing away at your heart. That’s a bit like what reading The GenesisRead More
A Sapphic Space Opera of Smoldering Obsession: These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs
Buy this from Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! If you’re looking for a queer space opera chock full of complex politics, smoldering obsession, and ever escalating revenge, These Burning Stars by Bethany Jacobs is a worthy entry into the field. Renowned hacker Jun “Sunstep” Ironway has gotten her hands on a piece ofRead More
A Fast-Paced Space Opera: The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa
Buy this through Bookshop.org to support local bookstores and the Lesbrary! Enitan is a scribe focused mostly on figuring out how to grow her tea business on the side, but when her sibling Xiang is kidnapped and the Imperial forces decree that they need a political hostage, she volunteers so that she can go toRead More
Empire for Beginners: The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link The Splinter in the Sky by Kemi Ashing-Giwa is a debut science fiction story about Enitan, a teamaker and scribe who finds herself thrust into the heart of the empire that controls the moon village Koriko after her sibling Xiang disappears. Her on-again-off-again girlfriend, the governor of Koriko, turns up dead while attemptingRead More
Court Intrigue at the Heart of an Interstellar Empire: A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine is an elegant space opera that artfully ties together themes of empire, identity, and cultural dominance. It makes you consider all of these while drawing you into the characters and the complex political intrigues. The book follows Mahit Dzmare, a newly appointed ambassador to theRead More
An Anti-Fascist Queer Space Opera: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
Bookshop.org Affiliate Link Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh is one of the most powerful science fiction books I have ever read. I have not been able to read another book because I keep wondering where the main character Kyr has gone. I look for her in everything. She is such a well-rounded, complicated character (the best kind),Read More
Queer Political Sci-Fi with a Gender Trinary: Provenance by Ann Leckie
Amazon Affiliate Link | Bookshop.org Affiliate Link Ann Leckie is probably my favorite author. She writes excellent science fiction and fantasy, and her books are jam packed with incredible world building, a mixture of politics and action, and a heavy dose of gender fuckery. I cannot be normal about her books, and almost always goRead More