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Recent Reading: Our Wives Under the Sea

Latest commute audiobook: Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield. This novel is about a woman, Miri, whose wife is a marine biologist, and goes on a submarine expedition for work meant to last three weeks. Six months later, Leah's sub finally resurfaces, but she isn't the same person Miri remembers.

This is another WIN for online queer recs - I thoroughly enjoyed it. I may even buy a copy for myself. There is a horror element to this story—for Miri, our primary narrator, the horror of watching someone you love become something you don't recognize or understand—but mostly Our Wives Under the Sea is a meditation on grief and loss. It is so easy to transform this story into a metaphor for anyone with a loved one who is terminally ill, or missing, or otherwise there, but not there.

( Read more... )

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Recent Reading: A Dowry of Blood

My latest commute audiobook was A Dowry of Blood by S.T. Gibson, a vampire novel that strides along at a brisk 5 hours run time. I have to admit upfront I did not have high hopes for this book. I somewhat warily added it to my TBR list, but I feared tired romantasy tropes that don't hit for me, and that the queerness which had landed it on my radar would turn out to be little more than additional titillation for a straight audience looking for a tale of decadence and indecency. I'm quite pleased to report neither of those concerns came to fruition!

As the title might suggest, there's a level of melodrama in this book you have to accept to enjoy the story. It reminded me in some ways of AMC's Interview with the Vampire in its shameless embrace of all those usual vampiric tropes and in the extravagances of its characters and its prose. Throughout the introduction, I was trying to decide if this was fun, or overwrought. I came down on the side of fun.

( Read more... )

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fantasy,
novella

But Not Too Bold

Not quite romance, nor quite horror -- I would say H. Pueyo's new novella But Not Too Bold is sort of a dark fairytale that runs on the logic of dreams transformed to mythology and then again rendered through a single artist's lens.

As the name suggests, a primary inspiration is the Bluebeard tale and its relatives, with the titular character here reimagined as an undeniably inhuman supernatural being with her own very particular predilections and obsessions. I enjoyed both the folklorically eccentric specificity of the worldbuilding and setting details and the painterly touches of equally eccentric character cameos. When it comes to the main character -- a high-ranking servant in the mansion of the "Bluebeard" analogue -- I am of two minds. On the one hand, her own eccentricity, of which she seems little aware, feels simultaneously natural and supernatural in a very tonally suitable way; on the other hand, perhaps it is a little too abstracted into the realm of fairytale to strike my heart beyond that. I would be curious as to how she came off to other readers!

(Note: arachnophobes and arachnophiles will both have reason to wince at some scenes. ( Read more... ))

((Oh, and, TGIF! :P))

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Proper English read-along

girlmeetstrouble is having a read-along of KJ Charles' f/f Edwardian romance novel Proper English! It began last week, but we are only through chapter 4, so there is plenty of time to catch up.

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fanfic

F/F Candy Hearts & Rare Femslashes

Happy Friday! A couple of fandom exchanges revealed works recently,

candyheartsex and

rarefemslashexchange, so I thought I'd come bearing fic recs :) I'll edit in authors after creator reveals, of course!

( Seven recs from 300 words to ~5k )

I would love your recs if you have other ones as well! May the spirit of Femslash February bless your entertainments, either way :P

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My Review of X-Cross (2007)

Here is the link to my review and recommendation of the lesser known Japanese horror movie with lesbian elements, X-Cross! lesbiangalatea.dreamwidth.org/1708.html

The poster for the movie X-Cross, featuring a woman in a lolita dress wielding twin scissors and a bloody title above her.

The poster for the movie X-Cross, featuring a woman in a lolita dress wielding twin scissors and a bloody title above her.

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"Kochab" by Sarah Webb

I'm not doing a full review, but it came to my attention today that the webcomic Kochab, which delighted me with its gorgeous art and sweet sapphic romance for years, has started up a print run. So if you're the type, like me, to prefer hard copies to digital comics, now is your chance!

Recommend if you:

Enjoy adventure stories but prefer them at a slower pace
Prefer to read a comic that's been completed rather than one in progress
Enjoy stories about characters getting over past traumas
Enjoy stories about the transformative power of love

Do not recommend if you:

Want high stakes in your adventure stories
Are looking for a spicy romance
Prefer large casts of characters
Want a complex story with lots of moving parts

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"Frontier" by Grace Curtis

Frontier by Grace Curtis is a space western, which takes place far in the future after much of Earth's population has abandoned it due to catastrophic climate change.

Then a ship falls from the sky, bringing the planet's first visitor in three hundred years. This Stranger is a crewmember on the first ship in centuries to attempt a return to Earth and save what's left. But her escape pod crashes hundreds of miles away from the rest of the wreckage.

The Stranger finds herself adrift in a ravaged, unwelcoming landscape, full of people who hate and fear her space-born existence. Scared, alone, and armed, she embarks on a journey across the wasteland to return to her ship, her mission, and the woman she loves.

I really enjoyed the way this novel revealed its story. Rather than simply track the traveler from place to place, the story shows us the traveler's journey through the eyes of the people who encounter her: a small-town librarian at odds with the local mayor, the young son of a preacher with a nasty secret, a shady woman on a quest of her own. Each chapter opens with setting the perspective of this onlooker before the traveler comes into the scene, and I felt like this was a very fun and creative way of telling her story, as well as giving us a lot more information about the world and culture of Earth in this story's universe than we could get from the traveler's perspective alone.

The traveler herself is an excellent blend of competent and human: as an astronaut among a deeply Luddite population which has technologically stagnated for centuries, she has certain advantages, like her advanced weaponry, which can quickly resolve some situations. However, she can be divested of these advantages without enormous effort: if she loses her gun, if she's facing too many enemies, if she succumbs to bodily weakness like exhaustion or injury, she's no better off than any Earthling in her situation would be.

She certainly possesses a skillset that helps her through her journey, but she's also a person. She feels fear, anxiety, weariness. She has tells when she lies, she has moments of awkwardness, she makes mistakes. She's not Terminator in a cowboy hat blasting her way to victory while the challenges slide off her without a mark.

The romance was fine. Sweet, but unremarkable. I do enjoy more queer fantasy that doesn't center romance though, so that's a win!

Some other reviews felt the ending wrapped up too quickly, but personally I was satisfied. I didn't need a confrontation with the main antagonist drawn out any more; he was such a loathsome character that I simply wasn't interested in seeing more of him. I was content with where the book left things.

On the whole, I enjoyed this book more than I expected. It was just long enough to tell its story satisfactorily without overstaying its welcome. I enjoyed the detours into side characters that gave us colorful glimpses into what life is like on Earth for the locals rather than relegating us merely to the traveler's outsider perspective. It does leave lots of loose threads behind, but it felt realistic and never, for me, unsatisfying. Life goes on after the traveler has moved onto her next goal.

A fun read!

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Run Away with Me, Girl

Happy Friday all!

I came across Run Away with Me, Girl (Kakeochi Girl) while browsing around pretty randomly and ended up quite enjoying it. It's a four-volume josei manga, with a refreshingly distinct and expressive artstyle, that I would describe as a bit of a subversion of the "S-class romance" trope: grad student Maki's childhood girlfriend Midori, who had seemed to move on as societally acceptable, shows back up in her life pregnant and engaged -- but all is not well in Midori's supposed paradise, and it's time for Maki to get serious about the title drop. The external obstacles are obvious, but I especially appreciated the depiction of their internal conflicts: each of the deuteragonists is at a different point in their journey to overcome the different ways they're inclined to acquiesce to expectations or individual pressures, and I enjoyed the difficult and imperfect ways in which they got in their own and each others' ways as they struggled with the cards they were dealt.

The first three volumes are officially available in English translation as ebooks only, but it looks like the publisher didn't pick up the fourth and final volume, which is of course where a lot of resolution happens. Unfortunate, although of course the fans picked up the slack in their own way. (See comments, I am misinformed!)

Despite the overall happy arc, the manga does cover some fairly heavy stuff and isn't a lighthearted read. ( Content notes: )

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The Annotated Mrs Dalloway - Virginia Woolf with foreword and annotations by Merve Emre

Perhaps a slightly strange entry for this comm, but I imagine there's crossover interest.

This is a new(ish) hardback annotated + illustrated edition of Mrs Dalloway from Norton, with contextual annotations and critical foreword added by literary scholar Merve Emre, but aimed at a non-scholarly audience. Everyone should obviously read Mrs Dalloway, but this is a review of the annotated edition, rather than the novel per se.

I had bought this annotated edition as a gift for a family member, but I went ahead and read it before I wrapped it up. The verdict: okay! Probably quite satisfying for non-academics. I personally thought the balance was off between footnotes I welcomed which explained particular political/historical happenings relevant to the text, gestured towards interesting academic readings, and compared draft histories and the development of specific passages, and footnotes which, literally, explained over the course of two full page-margins what Big Ben is. I'm just pretty sure people reading a $35 USD hardback annotated Mrs Dalloway on purpose are going to know what Big Ben is, and I would rather know more about what changes were made to the character of Rezia. However! There were annotations of the nature I preferred, and I definitely learned some interesting things, including scholars whose work I would like to look at more closely. I do also want to give Emre significant credit for not toeing the Hermione Lee party line and giving sexual assault and abuse their rightful place in these annotations, both as an element of the novel and as an element of Woolf's personal history.

This edition is also a beautiful book-object, full of lovely illustrations and photographs. I thought the paper stock was a good thickness and the cover was pretty. Definitely a great gift book for the right person.

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"On a Woman's Madness" by Astrid Roemer

The week before last Libby showed me a list of books my library recommended, all books translated into English in whole or in part by female translators. I made the sore mistake of going through the whole list and added about thirty new books to my TBR. This was the first of them that I've finished! It's called On a Woman's Madness by Surinamese author Astrid Roemer, translated from Dutch by Lucy Scott. The book description is:

When Noenka's husband refuses her request for divorce, she flees her small hometown for the city, where life is simultaneously free and unfree: an open book; a closed door.

Full review on my main.

Recommend if:

You like books that focus heavily on characters' emotions
You enjoy "soul searching" stories
You like messy or struggling main characters

Do not recommend if:

You prefer a linear story which communicates itself clearly
You don't enjoy heavy subject material (definitely check your trigger warnings for this book)
You want a plot-driven story

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Book Review: Down Among the Sticks and Bones

This is the second book in the Wayward Children series (first book: Every Heart A Doorway). This book focuses on Jack and Jill from Every Heart, and what happened to them before they came to Ms. West's school.

Twin sisters Jack and Jill were seventeen when they found their way home and were packed off to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children.

This is the story of what happened first…

Spoilers below!

( Read more... )

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Lady Eve's Last Con

I read this in one effervescent gulp on a plane. It was a daytime flight, so I had to stay awake for my own good, and Lady Eve's Last Con kept me from noticing that I had been awake for 24+ hours. A heist novel, a comedy of manners, and a romance all rolled up into one gilded outer-space confection like some kind of literary gougère. Ruthi, a minor con artist in the throes of separation anxiety from her little sister, sets out (unasked!) to revenge herself on the wealthy cad who abandoned and impregnated said little sister. The best way to do this, of course, is through the most convoluted identity-cum-marriage hornswoggle ever devised. Unfortunately, this brings Ruthi into unexpected contact with some other, concurrent, far more life-and-death hornswoggles afoot on the glamorous Space!Art Deco station… and said cad's alluring and suspicious sister, Hot Butch Tuxedo Mask! How will our plucky main character get out of her predicament, and possibly into HBTM? With heaps of style, a genuinely touching story of personal growth, and a venture into outer-space kashrut law which made me guffaw from my middle seat and tied the whole glorious romp together in its combined absurdity and sincerity. A book for yiddishekopfs.

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Once Ghosted, Twice Shy

I listened to the audiobook for this, which was pretty short (3 hours and 20 minutes). I really enjoyed it! It's definitely a light read, not an epic sprawling romance, but was very sweet and still managed to have a fair amount of emotional depth.

My understanding is this book is a spin-off of the author's heterosexual romance A Princess in Theory, in which an undercover prince (from a fictional African country) falls in love with an ordinary American woman. The main characters of Once Ghosted, Twice Shy are said prince's sexy butch assistant (Likotsi) and an unrelated femme second-generation Haitian-American (Fabiola).

I really liked each of the main characters and their dynamic-- one of the most important aspects of romances for me!-- which I was worried might be lacking when I found out it was a spin-off. In retrospect maybe that was silly of me... so often the side characters in books are my faves!

I also thought the backgrounds of the characters were really well done. I appreciated that there's a bit of culture clash between the two leads without it being a painful aspect of their relationship, and I was very impressed with how Fabiola's background informed her character and the story without defining her. As the child of an immigrant I find that a lot of stories fail to hit that balance for me-- either it's not present at all (fine, but of course it feels nice to see my experiences Represented) or it completely takes over to the point where it's unpleasant to read or otherwise not what I'm looking for in a casual read.

To me Once Ghosted, Twice Shy had the perfect balance of all that. Although I have very little in common with Fabiola, details in her experience from the immigrant-family perspective let me connect with her in a refreshing way, and definitely enhanced my enjoyment of the book.

There's some edits I would have made personally (I thought the opening could have been a little stronger; I didn't like some language choices, such as always referring to "the dating app" on which they met) but felt very satisfied by the time I finished the whole thing.

I really liked listening to the audiobook; I think the narrator not only had a very nice voice, but also did a great job conveying the two characters without going over the top. The two leads also have different accents which I could imagine would be harder to envision if you were just reading it. That being said, there were spicy parts of the book which I didn't realize going in, which came close to being an embarrassing surprise as I was not wearing headphones!

Recommended for:

people that think they'll enjoy a well-contained, thoughtful short story that focuses on a specific window of time in a romantic arc
people that like realistic portrayals of two competent, likable adults working out a relationship together
people that like butch/femme relationships with a very balanced dynamic
people that like when femmes top and butches bottom
people that enjoy representations of inter-cultural relationships and/or second-generation American experiences

Not recommended for:

people that want an epic sprawling romance
people that primarily want problematic/taboo elements in their romance/erotica
people that may be triggered by descriptions of the unjust treatment of immigrants in the United States

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Two comics:

If I had a nickel for every sci-fi adventure graphic novel I've read that started out as a webcomic and featured a young lesbian protagonist running away in search of the girlfriend she was separated from, finding aid and a new home on a spaceship piloted by an older mixed-race butch4butch couple engaged in an itinerant profession, [takes a deep breath] I would only have $0.10 but it's funny that it happened twice.

The first is Hannah Templer's ongoing series Cosmoknights, which I've written about previously on my personal journal.

The second is Tillie Walden's completed On a Sunbeam, which was actually published in print form quite a few years ago -- I just hadn't seen it because I'm casually oblivious and it was shelved in the YA section. But I took a dip round there before my recent roadtrip and I'm glad I did! While I was ultimately left wishing that it had dug a lot deeper into some of the interpersonal conflicts and worldbuilding elements, it was a fun and aesthetically-stunning read that made great narrative and visual use of non-linearity.

Despite the amusingly shared elements, the two comics really read very differently from one another; Cosmoknights tends more toward straightforward adventure with lots of id-forward thrills, while On a Sunbeam embraces a much dreamier, bildungsroman-y vibe. On balance, I'm more into the former, but YMMV!

Both comics are still available online in full :)

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fanfic

Yuletide 2023 f/f recs

Happy Friday! I come bringing a few small recs for perusal by those interested -- only a little late...

A Winter Wood Warming by Terrantalen (JS&MN, Emma/Arabella, ~9k, 4 chapters, G)
A luxuriously pastiched epistolary fic within a fictional-academia framing device, restrained but beautiful.

Ways to Disappear by burglebezzlement (Poker Face, Charlie/OFC, ~2k, T)
The sweetness and softness that Charlie deserves, if only she can bring herself to accept that it's hers to have.

Palímpsēstos by DachOsmin (Greek myth, Cassandra/Clytemnestra, 1k, T)
Love and fate and legend, shattered into a nonlinear litany of passionate fragments.

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comic book,
manga

She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat

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!)

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The Mimicking of Known Successes, by Malka Older

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.

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Heads up: free Annick Trent novelette

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!

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Book Review: Our Wives Under the Sea, Julia Armfield

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!