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Happy new year all! One of my last reads of 2023 was the English translation of the first volume of this cozy manga, starring an office lady who loves to cook and the tall, taciturn neighbor she meets who -- you guessed it -- loves to eat. Initially, their meeting is just a fortuitous bit of serendipity, but as they spend more time together, they start to grow fond of each other's company beyond the sharing of food.

While the story is a very mild slice-of-life, there's plenty of food porn, and even though our main character hasn't yet realized her feelings by the end of vol. 1, she's already head over heels (and indignantly defensive of her new friend). I finished it thinking it was way gayer than I expected and was delighted to see online that this was indeed followed up in future volumes -- which I will be acquiring posthaste!

(There's also apparently a live-action drama? I'm so pleased it was successful!)

chestnut_pod

Back copy:

"On a remote, gas-wreathed outpost of a human colony on Jupiter, a man goes missing. The enigmatic Investigator Mossa follows his trail to Valdegeld, home to the colony’s erudite university—and Mossa’s former girlfriend, a scholar of Earth’s pre-collapse ecosystems.

Pleiti has dedicated her research and her career to aiding the larger effort towards a possible return to Earth. When Mossa unexpectedly arrives and requests Pleiti’s assistance in her latest investigation, the two of them embark on a twisting path in which the future of life on Earth is at stake—and, perhaps, their futures, together."

This has a great first sentence: “The man had disappeared from an isolated platform; the furthest platform eastward, in fact, on the 4°63' line, never a very popular ring.”

I like all the material culture: the recognizable but alien description of the “train station and station pub” equivalents, the clothes, the food. The prose is simple, doing the slightest bit of offbeat classic sci-fi pastiche with a quiet competence that makes me appreciate it all the more. There’s some fun inclusion of non-English languages that don’t seem forced, but rather like quite natural loanwords or calques that would crop up in the far future on a planet populated by the remnants of all Earth. Plot-relevant catnip. The characters were lightly sketched, but fun, familiar types. It’s a little bleak, both because the premise of Earthly destruction and the eventual end of the mystery plot hit rather close to home, but it’s also a little cozy and a little funny and a lovely way to spend an evening.

chestnut_pod

Annick Trent is providing a free historical f/f novelette (really, it's short enough to be a short story) called Harvest Season for all e-readers!

Set in 1790s Gloucestershire, here's the provided summary:

"Lowri has spent the past month bringing in the harvest and daydreaming about her one-night stand with Eliza, barmaid at the Blue Boar. When the two women meet again, the spark between them is as strong as ever, but they cannot immediately act upon it: they must race against time to warn a group of weavers who face arrest for organising a strike."

For all it is very short, this has a great sense of place. The circumstances of the POV character are ones that I have not read about before, which makes it feel fresh and interesting. There's a little suspense, union organizing, some kissing, and a leap into the great unknown -- what's more to want!

slashmarks

Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield is a 2022 debut novel, partly cosmic horror and partly a book about grief. In one timeline, Leah, a deep sea researcher, is trapped under the ocean in a submarine for months in a bizarre accident, increasingly suspicious that she and her team were set up. In the other, Miri, Leah's wife, struggles to understand Leah's strange behavior after her return, while navigating bizarre interactions with Leah's employers - and, at the same time, to mask her own resentment over a delay she was repeatedly told was routine and intentional. But it becomes increasingly clear that Leah may have returned without being saved.

Read more at my journal!

hebethen

Set in a magical alternate history where "film star" is more than a bit of metaphorical language, Nghi Vo's Siren Queen is a ghostly, bittersweet tale about the razor edge of recognizing an unjust bargain and negotiating with the odds against you. I found it a meditative read full of vivid imagery -- bloodier in attitude than the Singing Hills novellas, appropriately, given the ruthlessness of the social scene -- and enjoyed the delicate ways in which Vo drew those social dynamics into the realm of magic, simultaneously dreamy and matter-of-fact.

It's a bit stranger and wilder and more nuanced than the blurb makes it sound, I think, but when are blurbs good at that sort of thing?

Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill—but she doesn't care. She’d rather play a monster than a maid. But in Luli's world, the worst monsters in Hollywood are not the ones on screen.

The protagonist is lesbian and has several f/f romances and sex scenes; however, I would say that the romance subplots are not the focus, but rather one important facet of her story and her selfhood. (Also, I enjoyed the LIs -- particularly Tara, and I wish we'd gotten to see more of Jane -- but I actually wound up shipping her with her huldra roommate Greta a lot, something which the book itself slyly alludes to. Unattainability, that accursed ship-magnet!)

If anyone here has read Siren Queen I'd love to hear your thoughts!

oursin

Posted with some commentary over at my own journal: Inside a Secret Lesbian Sex Toy Smuggling Ring: In the 80s, Thrilling Bits was clandestinely selling dildos, vibrators and banned queer erotica – right under the nose of customs.

rocky41_7

I'm slightly unsure this one really belongs here, as it's not totally clear the protagonist of this novel still identifies as a woman by the end of the book, but it's close enough to share and still likely to be of interest, I think. She Who Became the Sun is a historical fantasy novel by Shelley Parker-Chan. It is the first in a duology and the description is:

She Who Became the Sun reimagines the rise to power of the Ming Dynasty’s founding emperor.

This one I grabbed on impulse at the bookstore back in January because I vaguely remembered hearing about it somewhere. As with my last review, I'm going to keep this short because I simply do not have the energy for more. I liked this book and I do plan to read the next one. There were moments I wasn't sure about it, but I'm glad I stuck with it and I think Parker-Chan crafts some very interesting characters here.

The main protagonist Zhu is fascinatingly driven and unrepentantly ambitious. She is also ruthless in her pursuit of her destiny, which starts to get pretty interesting at the end of this novel, and I expect will feature even more prominently in the next. She also reads, to me, as asexual or something close to it, which as an ace person myself was fun to see, especially because it isn't treated like a problem in her relationships. Neither does it stem from her own complex relationship with gender--it's just how she is.

The deuterogonist Ouyang is every bit as interesting, even though we don't see his POV until the middle part of the book. He is someone who is so viscerally torn between feeling compelled towards revenge and yet not desiring anything that will actually come of it that it's so interesting to watch his fate play out. I think Parker-Chan does a great job getting you into Ouyang's head during his perspective chapters and it was so interesting to me how Zhu leans into their connection while Ouyang is repulsed by it.

Recommend if you:

Enjoy morally gray/amoral protagonists--both Zhu and Ouyang do shady to outright horrifying things in pursuit of their goals.
Want queer relationships--won't give spoilers on this but both Zhu and Ouyang have queer experiences ,
Enjoy a historical setting that leans into the contemporary cultures--we get a good look both at the culture of the Mongols and of the Chinese.

Do not recommend if you:

Like heavily detailed stories--my only real criticism of the novel is that it often skims over things I would have liked explored in more depth.
Like a happy ending--of course this is only 1 of 2 books, but based on how it's going, I would not hold out hope for a happy end. The end of this first novel was not an uncomplicated victory.
Prefer romance to be a core of the story--as noted there are queer relationships here, but for the most part they are not the central part of the novel.

Crossposted from my main and

books

justanorthernlight

Happy Revenge of the Fifth everyone!

Out of the Shadows is the 2nd YA novel in the Star Wars: The High Republic series, which spans adult, YA, and middle grade novels, as well as a variety of comics. Certain characters and plot threads weave in and out of the different age levels and media types, so it can be a little hard to follow at times.

Out of the Shadows follows a new character, teenage freighter captain Sylvestri Yarrow, as she becomes entangled in a web of politics, corporate interests, and family secrets while trying to get Republic help in dealing with the Nihil, a group of ruthless space pirates who happen the be the series's main villains. Along the way she becomes re-entangled with her ex-girlfriend Jordanna Sparkburn, who has been working with the Jedi on their end of the Nihil problem.

Some parts of the story felt kind of rushed/underdeveloped to me, and I'm not sure how well it would read without all of the background content, but it's the first Star Wars YA novel I've read with a main queer relationship explicit enough to use the term "girlfriend" and display regular affection to each other. The story has a much stronger focus on the family conflict(s) than romance (on top of Sylvestri's family secrets, Jordanna is a cousin of the San Tekka family, who also have a major role in the story), but overall I enjoyed it! There are also some interesting worldbuilding elements at play regarding the non-linear nature of hyperspace and it's weird connection to the Force.

hebethen

(Novellae?) (It's still Friday somewhere, right?)

I recent(ish)ly read a couple of sci-fi novellas featuring f/f couples and enjoyed both, each for different reasons!

The first was Malka Older's The Mimicking of Known Successes, a murder mystery set on Jupiter, featuring an academic and a detective who had dated, then broken up, when they were younger. Being a book by Malka Older, there's of course a bit of thinking about systems and institutions and situations where there may not be a right answer (but there definitely are plenty of wrong ones).

The worldbuilding was, I thought, presented in a way which would not excessively put off either "jump right in"-style enthusiasts like myself nor those who prefer a more explicit style, and the dynamic between the two leads also struck a satisfying balance between conflict and comfort. I found it a fun read and hope there will be more about these two.

The second novella was Lee Mandelo's Feed Them Silence, a near-future hard sci-fi story featuring a married couple who are going through a really, really rough patch. Our POV character is a workaholic neurobiologist who's been neglecting her home life; her wife is an anthropologist who's sick of her shit and also feels that her current research -- putting a special implant inside a wolf's brain so that a human can "see" from the wolf's perspective -- is unethical and not an effective approach to conservation.

This was a difficult story to read -- the arguments were very real, our POV character often very wrong, the sense of impending doom with the wolf research project appropriately icy and foreboding. I found it well-crafted but very dark in a realistic way -- not grimdark or utterly hopeless, but very uncompromising. The well-written wolf POV sections only made it harder!

hebethen

rarefemslashexchange creator reveals are coming later today, so I thought I'd rec out some of my favorites from the collection! No matter which way I sliced it I couldn't decide on four, so here are five SFW fics which delighted me and may perhaps delight you as well (amusingly, I didn't notice so many of them were AUs until I started writing this post):

Do You Love It Love It? (The Good Place, Tahani/Eleanor, ~2.1k)
What if Tahani invited Eleanor to stay with her in Australia? An entertaining AU depicting the comical tribulations of a courtship between social worlds.

Five Views of Two Rabbits (Disney Mulan, Mulan/fem!Shang, ~1.6k)
What if Shang was in the same boat as Mulan? The different character POVs employed to depict their romance not only flesh out minor characters but create a beautifully grounded mosaic portrait of the couple's facets.

Memento Mori (Interlude) (DS9, Jadzia/Lenara, ~2.4k)
What if Lenara had come back to Jadzia? A sweet and introspective contemplation of what a more permanent union might have meant to them, full of love and loss.

a question and answer (A League of Their Own, Carson/Max, ~900)
Okay, this one's not an AU, but it's quite likely to be retroactively rendered AU by the next season of ALOTO if/when we get one, so I'm counting it. Max and Carson in canon had a wonderfully understated dynamic which here bears the fruit of a quiet, inevitable romance.

Vervain (original, Boisterous Bard/Wicked Queen, ~6.4k)
A fun, fast-paced fantasy adventure that hints at more heart than the opening lets on -- and carries a hidden knife too.

hebethen

Happy Femslash February, folks! Long time no post. I haven't been through the entire CHEx collection, but I can feel my energy plummeting due to life/work reasons, so I figured better to post recs from what I've seen even if it's not comprehensive! All of these are rated T or below; there are others that I enjoyed but these were my favorite four out of all of them. (I suppose favorite five would have also worked for alliterative purposes, but four is more symmetrical.)

Two original work recs:
moth and flame have a sweetheart deal (fantasy, guard/princess, ~1.9k)
Pining is a way to put it, but not just in the saccharine way of crushes and romantic longings -- pining for freedom, clarity, leverage. It lets the characters be jagged and brutal and sympathetic, which makes them matter.

Space Aliens! On an Adventure with Pirates (contemporary, actor/stunt person, ~1.8k)
A fluffy little kinda-meet-cute with really excellent dialogue between charmingly nerdy craftspeople.

And two fanwork recs:
Who Could Ask For Anything More? (Dimension 20: The Unsleeping City, Josefina/Misty, ~3.4k)
An achingly beautiful sequence that brings life to (a sliver of) Rowan's past as well as the tragedy of her firework-glittering affair with Josefina.

As the Ocean Courts the Strand (Fallen London, Hephaesta/Pirate Poet, ~300)
A short, resonantly poetic snippet that perfectly captures the tone of the source material; it wouldn't be out of place in a Sunless game.

blueshiftofdeath

I posted about Rafiki, The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, Intimates, Carol, Mosquita y Mari, Circumstance, Saving Face, and Desert Hearts on my journal! (They're all lesbian movies, although Mosquita y Mari is really just subtext, and Intimates doesn't have much explicit lesbian romance.) I thought Circumstance was OK, and I really liked all the other ones.

rocky41_7

One Last Stop is a romance novel by Casey McQuiston with a very light fantasy element. If you enjoy fanfiction in general, you will probably like the writing in this book. The description off the back of the book is:

Cynical twenty-three-year old August doesn’t believe in much. She doesn’t believe in psychics, or easily forged friendships, or finding the kind of love they make movies about. And she certainly doesn’t believe her ragtag band of new roommates, her night shifts at a 24-hour pancake diner, or her daily subway commute full of electrical outages are going to change that.

But then, there’s Jane. Beautiful, impossible Jane.

All hard edges with a soft smile and swoopy hair and saving August’s day when she needed it most. The person August looks forward to seeing on her train every day. The one who makes her forget about the cities she lived in that never seemed to fit, and her fear of what happens when she finally graduates, and even her cold-case obsessed mother who won’t quite let her go. And when August realizes her subway crush is impossible in more ways than one—namely, displaced in time from the 1970s—she thinks maybe it’s time to start believing.

I did a longer review on my blog, but here are the highlights:

Do recommend if you:

Want a fluffy, relatively uncomplicated lead romance
Enjoy fanfiction
Would like to see a butch love interest
Like stories about "finding your place"
Want a queer romance where the struggles do not stem from being queer

Do not recommend if you:

Find the found family trope tiresome or overdone
Are tired of young adult protagonists
Prefer to see interpersonal conflict between characters

rocky41_7

As of now, only two books of the trilogy have been released, beginning with The Jasmine Throne, followed by The Oleander Sword. The author is Tasha Suri. The jacket description from The Jasmine Throne is:

Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of powerful magic – but is now little more than a decaying ruin.

Priya is a maidservant, one of several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to attend Malini’s chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, as long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides. But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled . . .

I covered a more in-depth review on my blog, but TBK is a south Asian-inspired fantasy with a fantastic cast of characters and an interesting leading romance.

The books are ~500 pages each, but the prose makes for pretty quick reading.

Recommend if you:

Want to read some fantasy that is not culturally European/Western
Want a F/F relationship where the characters feel genuinely for each other but struggle with "duty vs. love"
Enjoy multi-POV stories that cover several plotlines simultaneously
Want female-centered fantasy

Do not recommend if you:

Are turned off by in-universe homophobia
Want an action-heavy story (there is action but it usually is not described in depth)
Want an uncomplicated "fluffy" romance

definitely_not_an_alb

This is one of those fantasy books that is inexplicably marketed with three vague lines basically everywhere, so have an actual dust jacket blurb up front:

Eadaz du Zāla uq-Nāra of the Priory of the Orange tree has been sent undercover to the far-away court of Inys to protect Queen Sabran Berethnet the Ninth in secret. Sabran, young and unwilling to marry, is suffering under the burdens of her office; to be not just the Queen of a country, but also the religious head of three countries, direct descendant of the saviour and founder of Virtuedom, living seal against an unspeakable evil and future mother of the next Berethnet. Sabrans and Eads shared close friend Arteloth Beck has recently disappeared; he and his friend Kit are on a mission to the draconic nation of Yscalin. In the East, Tané, a village orphan chosen by the gods, is fighting for her place in the Clan Miduchi, the famed sea fighters and dragon riders that protect Seiiki from pirates and evil firebreathers both. She crosses path with Sabran’s denounced, exiled and bereft former court alchemist who seeks the secret of eternal life. All of them live in the shadow of an era ending and an old threat to all humanity, the Nameless One, ruler of wyrms, rising once again.

Priory of the Orange Tree is a sprawling Pseudo-Arthuriana/Mythical Epic Fantasy novel with an appropriately fraught, clandestine courtly-chivalric love story and at its centre. It's over 800 pages long, so it take a while for anyone to actually kiss, and it plainly is a high fantasy, not a romance novel, so I wouldn't read it solely for any promised relationships.

Less formally, I described it over in my more in-depth review on my blog as having everything: giant evil dragons, good wise dragons, horse-girl dragon riders, lady knights, identity shenanigans, chivalric knights and dames, secret orders of lady fighters, lesbians with swords, pirate ladies, tragic romances, tragic bromances, non-tragic romances, secret romances, chivalric romances, ancient horrors and also a giant flying tsundere weasel.

My main complaints/(non-cw) caveats are that if you love Tané in the beginning ... well, she gets way less plot/page-time/attention than she deserves, which is a shame and secondly that despite being an 800+ page door stopper, a lot of locations and plot points did not get the breathing room they imo needed.

( Some content warnings )

blueshiftofdeath

I have long been recommended this by a friend and finally got around to it-- I loved it just as much as she thought I would! It is apparently a former The Devil Wears Prada fanfic with the characters renamed, which I think can give you an idea of the style and overall dynamic. There's love, there's angst, there's a lot of erotic scenes, and the chemistry of the two leads (a naiive younger woman and a super sexy dominant older women) is very much centered.

As someone that often goes back to fanfic for a reason, The Lily and the Crown really hit the spot. The main downside that I attribute to its origins is I think it could have used some more editing-- I noticed a fair amount of typos, and I think it could've been edited down. But those to me are very minor issues in comparison to how much I enjoyed everything else!

Recommended for:

people who wish there was more femslash fiction with the thrills and narrative arc of slash fanfic
people that like the idea of botany in space
people that think Meryl Streep was super sexy in The Devil Wears Prada

Not recommended for:

people that would have their erotic romance reading experience be ruined by slavery being brought up extremely frequently (in a disapproving way)

blueshiftofdeath

This is a two-volume yuri light novel that's about exactly what the title says. It's clear early on that it's largely feminism 101: it talks about what sexism is, what it looks like, why it's bad, and various ways it manifests. There's a plot, but feminism 101 is very interwoven with every major plot point. I thought the author did a great job with that-- I think it's easy to find something like that too preachy or too focused on the message, but actually I found the story and characters very engaging.

The author also did a great job with the feminist messaging, which I think can be super tricky with something like this, especially since there's so much division within feminist thought. The narrative manages to not be patronizing towards women (shaming them for dressing a certain way etc.) while acknowledging how societal pressures can lead to women not prioritizing themselves. Basically, I think the feminist messaging is something almost everyone (that isn't sexist) could get behind. I was also afraid that it would be a huge bummer to be reminded of real sexism issues throughout my read, but I personally thought it succeeded at being cathartic.

The yuri component is definitely secondary to the feminism, but it's still present and cute. Overall, a sweet and funny story!

(Here's also a review from Okazu.)

shewhostaples

Well, the title says it all, really. Lesbian novices in a mid-twentieth century convent, with a touch of magical realism to facilitate the romance. I liked the detail, and it was clearly well-researched.

With both title characters having chosen to enter the convent of their own volition and already aware of their sexual orientation, I wasn't convinced that the challenges of the vows ought to have been much of a surprise, and both came across as somewhat immature and irritating.

I'd recommend In This Small Spot (Caren J. Werlinger) as a more nuanced take on a similar setup, though that had some issues of its own.

shewhostaples

A police procedural set in Los Angeles in 1985 (published 1987). The mystery was reasonably diverting - I guessed the murderer a few chapters ahead of the detective - but what really fascinated me was the setting. The Nightwood Bar is, as the name suggests, a lesbian bar, and I loved the snapshot of lesbian life - the tensions within the community and with the police and other establishment groups, solidarity with gay men (AIDS is there in the background, though doesn't affect the plot), the whole personal-political thing. Plus the bar sounded like a really nice place to hang out when there weren't murders going on there.

Also a couple of freebies - A Very Sapphic Christmas (a mixed bag, generally fun, although some pieces could really have done with a more thorough line edit) and Christmas Road Trip (Jae) - also fun, if slight, with a twist I won't spoil.

blueshiftofdeath

I just read this and the first book in the series, Gideon the Ninth. I absolutely loved both! Harrow the Ninth is very very different tonally, and ultimately (relevant to this group) delivers more f/f. I think it's enjoyable without that though-- this is a great pick for someone in the mood for "a book that happens to be f/f". Also a great pick for people that love human anatomy, because boy does this book have a whole lot of references to that.

This book felt kind of "intellectual" to me, especially compared to the more action-y first book. Which makes sense since this follows Harrow, the nerd to Gideon's jock character. I thought the conclusion of the book was just brilliant.

(I also made a little post on the series on my journal.)