J.S. Fields

Author & Scientist

Review: The Harbinger by Mary Eicher

Genre: urban paranormal

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: child rape threats late in the book (a few lines from a baddie trying to be scary)

Review

‘Stunningly beautiful’ attorney Artemis Andronikos is hiking with her twin brother when he falls to his knees and clutches his head, claiming to hear loud bells. Three days later her brother dies, along with a host of other people, all of whom have heard the same bells, exactly three days prior.

Nosy reporter Lucy Breem is determined to solve the mystery of the bells and tracks down Artemis. Intrigued by Lucy’s hypotheses, Artemis agrees to help her investigate the bells and their potential significance as death harbingers. Meanwhile, the bells spread, people collectively lose their minds, and strange new religions spring up. Also children become clairvoyant and there may be angels…I’m not super clear on that part.

The premise of this book was interesting, even if the execution left something to be desired. Based in the principles of continuing human evolution, the internal head-bells are discovered to be an early warning system of impending death, potentially giving people a chance to get their affairs in order. People, of course, are notoriously bad at this, and things spin wildly out of control. Cults pop up. Entrepreneurs try to make a buck. As more and more people are affected by the bells, the situation becomes exponentially worse–though timely, as the book has a lot of the same human ridiculousness that we are witnessing right now with COVID.

Thus, the plot is inventive and dynamic. The characters are alright–the two main women are moderately three-dimensional, though Lucy’s daughter is definitely the stand-out character. The main villain is an archetype but that makes him easy to hate, which is useful in a book like this. The other POV characters mostly serve to drag out what would otherwise be a tight plot, and there’s far too much head-hopping, especially early on, to really hold reader attention.

The plot technically concludes about 50 or so pages before the book does, which is always frustrating. This could have been helped by a heavier editing pen, and in fact there were numerous scenes that rehashed early scenes from a different POV, which made the narrative drag. Some editorial tightening could have easily removed these issues and made for a much more dynamic book.

One of the reasons I didn’t really connect with Artemis and Lucy came from the writing of the romance/love scenes, which, to me, bordered on silly, dime-novel romance tropes (which are fine, in dime-novel romances):

It was a side of Artemis she hadn’t seen before, but she wasn’t all that surprised. She already had decided the astonishing woman had depths yet to be plumbed. And Lucy couldn’t deny a growing desire to plumb them.

Plumbing in this sense makes me think of plunging a toilet or snaking a drain (since we’re going down into depths), and I don’t really want that associated with boinking a woman. There’s also a strange combination of too many adjectives per sentence, and not very descriptive adjectives happening:

Seeing her, Lucy couldn’t turn away. Artemis was standing in a relaxed contra-post pose. She was stunningly beautiful in the slanted yellow sunlight. Her slender body was perfectly proportioned, and she looked like the product of a Michelangelo or Polyclitus.

—

Artemis had a similar reaction watching Lucy’s attractive body gradually emerge from her clothes. It made her juices flow and she felt an urgent need to dive into the cool water of the pool.

I’d have much preferred to ‘watch’ them get undressed and see their reactions so I could experience them too, instead of reading about them like a reporter was giving me highlights of a show I’m not allowed to see. An unfortunately, ‘beautiful’ and ‘attractive’ don’t really tell me anything about either character. It’s so much more fun in these kinds of scenes to see what the characters notice about each other, specifically, so you learn what they are into. Maybe Artemis likes tattoos. Maybe Lucy likes freckles across the bridge of a nose, or chin dimples. That’s what I want to know.

Another issue was the narrative’s reliance on telling us what was happening, instead of showing. Most of what should have been excellent action scenes were not shown, but told about in summary, which completely destroyed any potential tension. Also also Artemis sets the would-be mass murdered free at the end, who had endangered Lucy’s daughters life half a dozen times, and literally wtf with that? There’s compassion, and then there’s failure to protect.

This is another of those books that had a lot of potential, but needed a strong editorial hand to trim the fat from the meat, and really let the plot live to its potential. Still, if you’re after an f/f contemporary paranormal from an indie press, you could do far worse. I was entertained, but not enough to continue with the series.

You can see if you hear the harbinger bells by buying the book here.

 

Review: The Winter Duke by Claire Eliza Bartlett

Genre: fantasy: sword and sorcery (YA)

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, nonbinary, gay men, cis bi/pansexual (not explicit)

Warnings: none

 

Review

Ekata is a middle child in a huge, vicious royal family that decides heirship via Battle Royale. The princess has no interest in ruling Kylma Above, however, and is days away from leaving for university, where she will train as a biologist. All she has to do is make it through the crown prince’s bride selection ceremony. Her bags are packed. Her nurse is ready. Finally, finally, she has the chance to escape!

The morning after the bride selection, Ekata awakes to find her entire family has fallen into comas, leaving her the Duke of Kylma Above. Worse, her adopted brother, mysteriously immune from the sleeping sickness, wants to take over the kingdom. Unwilling to let her sadistic step-sibling win, Ekata agrees to be interim duke while she attempts to solve the mystery of her family’s sickness. But Sigis has plotted for too long to let sixteen-year-old Ekata keep the throne. The princess must weigh her desires for university, her loathing of her family and the throne, against a budding romance with her new warrior-wife Inkar and her desire to learn more about the mysterious mer-people of Kylma Below–the merpeople that may be the key to unleashing her magical abilities.

THE WINTER DUKE was a surprising YA. The start was slow, as I find with many books in this genre, but picked up steam quickly. The middle third of the book was absolutely fantastic, and the worldbuilding unlike anything I’ve come across (why wouldn’t you have an ice castle above a lake that has fish people in a mirror kingdom, I ask??). Then the back third sagged again as the book became mired in politics.

Still, despite the politics-FISH PEOPLE OMG-politics arc, what kept me reading was Ekata. I have never encountered a heroine in YA who is as brazen, confident, and successful in fantasy. I’m much more used to the trope of ‘confident and slapped down, confident and then bad thing happens,’ etc. And bad things do happen, but this was a world where, generally, when Ekata spoke, people did what they were told. And that’s because this book achieved what many do not–it is (mostly) free of patriarchal bias.

I don’t mean this in a ‘there is no patriarchy’ way. I mean it in a ‘the lead lady character is treated the same as her male counterparts.’ Most fantasy books, and some sci fi, seem to bundle sexism in with things that our heroine must overcome, and it is so tiresome. THE WINTER DUKE gives us ageism, sure, and palace politics (blurgh), but no ‘why would we listen to a little girl!?!’ BS.

And just, fucking thank you, Claire Eliza Bartlett, for that.

Other redeeming qualities of the book include the love interest Inkar, who doesn’t give a fuck about politeness and carries to axes around wherever she goes, yet looks like a confection in her dresses. +10 for YA power femme/soft butch.

Their faces ranged from bored to angry–except for one girl, the girl who’d smiled at me last night. her muscle-toned arms were bare under a green wool vest, and her dark hair had little light streaks in it, as if it had caught pieces of the foreign sun and spun them into gold. I frowned at her crest, a serpent wound in a knot, She didn’t speak–she just drummed her fingers on her belt, where two ax loops sat empty.

She smiled at me again, and my stomach flipped. She had fresh kohl around her eyes, pink on her cheeks, and red on her lips. She looked like she was enjoying herself.

She looked like she laughing at me.

—

“Salijom I command you not to laugh at me,” Inkar grumbled. I looked around, confused, then Realized that Saljo was the name of the guard. How could Inkar know his name better than I did?

Saljo snorted. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“This is awful,” Inkar said. She kicked the inside of her skirt. “How am I supposed to protect you in a skirt like this?”

“You’re not supposed to protect me,” I said. “The guards protect me. They protect you, too.”

“I do not need protection,” Inkar replied. “Except you buried my axes under an entire sheep.”

 

+20 for completely random merpeople under the castle, which I was NOT expecting and was really the best damn worldbuilding I’ve seen in a long time. My regret there is that we didn’t spend nearly enough time in that arena, instead focusing on the (tired) politics of murder monarchies. -5 for underwater fungi, since fungi are obligate aerobes, but I’ll let that slide for now (foxfire does NOT work this way…). +5 for absolute, without a doubt, lesbianism:

“Careful,” he purred.

Was he flirting with me?

Oh no.

He was flirting with me.

Still, for YA (which you all know is never my favorite), this book was a damn delight. Read it for Ekata, read it for Inkar, read it for the fish people and their magic, or read it because dudes do actually get their comeuppance, and you don’t have to wait till the end of the book to see it, either. Whatever. Click here to get yourself an ice rose and settle in for a read you’ll be delighted to share with your daughters (and other offspring, but particularly your daughters).

Review: Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire

Genre: fantasy: portal fantasy

Pairings: none

Queer Representation: intersex girl

Warnings: none

Review

Full disclosure – this isn’t an impartial review because I worked as a sensitivity reader on this book. But the Wayward Children series is one of my all-time favorites, and I wanted to take some time to discuss parts of the book that really moved me, especially as they relate to intersex conditions. The main character and I shared a diagnosis at the time of this book’s writing (mine has since been changed from AIS to ‘we-don’t-know-what-the-fuck-you-are-but-definitely-it’s-an-intersex-thing’ syndrome).

Regan is a quintessential girl, especially when it comes to horses. Her best friend is also a quintessential girl, and the school queen bee. Unfortunately, Regan does not realize how tenuous her position in Laurel’s circle is until she makes the mistake of trusting her ‘best friend’ with her fresh new secret – she’s XY Androgen Insensitive.

“You’re not a boy,” said Maureen soothingly. “If you feel like you’re a girl, then you’re a girl. You’ve always been our daughter. You’re just also part of a small percentage of the population who are considered intersex, meaning your body  has its own ways of regulating things like hormone production. Some intersex people are more clearly a blend of what doctors would consider male and female attributes; that wasn’t the case with you. There was no surgical intervention or modification after you were born–not that your father and I would have approved that if the doctors had wanted to do it. You are exactly as you were meant to be.” 

(bold emphasis added by me)

(I want to add here, that it’s great to see a definition of intersex that encompasses not just those with deeply externally visible differences. Our understanding of intersex conditions has come so far in the past decade, now working to include PCOS as well, and it’s important to remember that it can be changes to your internal structures as well as hormones, that make the unique cocktail that is Disorders of Sexual Development (DSD), or intersex.)

Though her parents are fully supportive, best-friend Laurel absolutely loses it. She declares Regan a disgusting boy, kicks her out of the social circle, and blabs about it all over school. Regan, having wanted nothing more than to just be normal her whole life, runs into the nearby forest, where she finds her door.

This door takes Regan and the reader to the Hooflands – where all the beings are some form of horse-type creature (with some exceptions, mostly drawn from the canon of G1 1980s-era My Little Pony). She is first entranced by the unicorns, but soon gets picked up by a herd of centaurs, who think her most unusual feature is her ability to climb trees easily and swim:

“When a human shows up in the Hooflands, it means something bad’s about to happen. You’re tricky little things. Well suited to tight spaces, and thumbs. Having thumbs is sort of like having a magical sword no one can take away from you. It’s destiny!” Pansy held up her hands and wiggled her own thumbs exaggeratedly. “Centaurs have thumbs, but we can’t fit in a lot of places humans can, and we don’t swim very well.”

Thus, Regan finds the normal life she always wanted with the (unicorn ranching) centaurs. Mildly hanging over her head is the knowledge that humans only come to the Hooflands when a Great Deed is needed, and that at some point she will go the way of the other humans – to the Great Deed, and then vanish.

Aside from the Hooflands clearly being where I’d go regardless of being intersx (hello, My Little Pony obsession!), the book’s entire structure treats intersex conditions in the way I think most intersex people treat them–a part of who we are, but not WHAT we are. This isn’t a book about a girl overcoming being intersex, or coming to terms with being intersex. It’s about a girl who happens to be intersex, and gets to have an awesome adventure where she learns everything she is, is enough. She doesn’t need to be a hero. She isn’t anything special. She’s just Regan. And that’s okay.

It also allows the reader, through Regan, to remember the desire for the simplicity of childhood as our peers moved into the complex social dynamics of junior high/middle school, and high school. It walks that fine line between innocence and self-awareness, which is nowhere more apparent than here:

“No one’s going to snatch me in the food court,” said Regan, the uneasy awareness that children had been snatched in food courts before flooding in on the heels of her words. But that was in another world, one filled with bullying, backstabbing humans, not in this brighter, cleaner world of horse-people and honest answers. She would be fine here.

Inadvertently, Regan and I share this aspect in common too (unbeknownst I think to Seanan when she originally wrote this). I was abducted from a mall arcade in the sixth grade, though I was the exact age Regan is in this book. Which is probably another reason I found such a great home in the Hooflands, along with Regan and the centaurs. And I do appreciate the Tyrek cameo, since Escape from Midnight Castle scared the living daylight out of me as a kid:

Seen this close, he was terrifying, a mountain of a man walking through a world built to a much smaller scale, Each of hooves was larger than her entire face. He swung his muzzle around to face her, expression bovine and unreadable, and snorted.

Though I did find the following section the most chilling in the entire book, possible because I tied it to the discussion of food court abductions, as above:

None of them looked away until Regan had reached the place where the road began to bend out of sight. Bit by bit, she disappeared. One of the goals made a disbelieving wailing sound. She didn’t come back.

She didn’t come back.

For me, this was the perfect book. Perhaps because I’ve read the entire series and never felt at home with any of the doors, partly because I think I didn’t realize how much I needed to see an intersex child having an adventure completely independent of her chromosomal arrangement. This book is beautiful, and melancholy, and fractal, and I think it will be not only a lifeline to those who share Regan’s diagnosis, but to anyone who has ever felt like their biology kept them somehow apart.

You can see if a door will let you into the Hooflands by preordering here. Note – extensive knowledge of MLP not required, but useful.

 

Review – Disease by Sarah Tolmie

Genre: literary fiction

Pairings: f/f (in one of the shorts)

Queer Representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: none

Review

A very pandemic-appropriate collection of short works exploring the human condition, wherein said conditions are looked at like diseases. For instance, the disease of ‘estrangement,’ wherein conjoined siblings (all humans are joined to their twin via an umbilical cord throughout their whole lives) grow apart enough that their cord dries up, leaving them unable to stand one another (it is here that we meet the one lesbian pairing of the book, Constance of the broken twin set, and her doting wife Martha).

Another example is the disease of Involuntary Compassion, as described in the case study of Aliyah, a young teen, who:

At the same time she was learning to skateboard and experimenting with swearing, she became obsessively concerned with the small animal and insect life around her. She religiously avoided stepping on ants on the sidewalk, relocated earthworms after rain, and even trained herself not to scream and run at the sight of bees.

It’s this disease short that has my favorite line of the book:

She went to university, ignored the endless wailing about the need for women in STEM, and studied 20th-century history, She took political science. There are just as few women there, and nobody wails about it.

A final disease of note is Misericord, as described by Jacob K., who, in high school, found himself able to instantly rank people’s misery level. This was a particularly interesting piece, with another great set of lines:

War versus famie? Hitting the glass ceiling or losing both hands in the factory? Jacob can provide the numbers, An underemployed American housewife and a 7-year-old Malaysian child laborer both score a 58. A surgeon in Tasmania who has botched an operation and killed someone is a 79. The survivor or a Bosnian internment camp is a 65. The commandant of the camp is a 60.

DISEASE is, generally, a fun, short romp of literary fiction that feels very timely here in the late stages of 2020. You can purchase your own escapism and maybe see if you have some quick diseases here.

 

Review: Debris Dreams by David Colby

Genre: science fiction: military

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: trans*, cis lesbian, cis gay man, nonbinary

Warnings: use of the term ‘slated eyes’ to refer to people of Chinese descent, classifying binary trans as a separate gender (WTF???)

Review

It’s rare that I so deeply dislike a book that I know within four chapters that it is going in the trash, and not even in a book box. To be fair, we didn’t start out on a great foot. It’s YA and I generally do not care at all for YA. There’s always the odd exception, so I tend to plod through just in case.

This was a bad decision.

If you’re a fan of military sci fi, it definitely does have that, with all the mind-numbing battle scenes lacking any sort of solid character development (clearly I am also not a fan of military sci fi) that one would expect. The beginning is also decent, with our introduction to Drusilla Zhao, a sixteen-year-old girl who lives in the Hub, which is a sort of space station at the top of a really long elevator that connects Earth with space. It’s used almost exclusively by the Chinese-American Alliance to exploit the moon, which is sort of a future Australia colonized (and worked) by convicts et al.

The convicts get mad that all their hard work functionally saved the ecological crisis Earth was facing and, tired of being always put in harms way to benefit a planet they can’t go to, they blow up the giant elevator. Drusilla’s parents are killed (they’re engineers on it) and she and all the teens in group care are automatically conscripted into the military. This is especially hard on Drusilla, as her girlfriend lives on Earth as a civilian.

At this point we move into a sort of Starship Troopers sort of deal, without the comedy, and it’s battle after battle in the traditional trope of Drusilla eventually realizing she’s on the wrong side of the battle, etc. There isn’t much point to it, and no major stakes other than WAR! ZOMG! over and over, as we wait for inevitable turning point for our heroine.

The worldbuilding of the Chinese-American Alliance feels very Firefly to me, though with a bit more thought about the integration of the language (the frequent non-English words used appear to have been proofed by native speakers, so that’s decent). Still, language readers appeared to have missed this gem:

He was a young kid, younger than me, with the regular mixing of blonde curls and slanted eyes that marked most of the post-Slump generation.

For reference, the only people who routinely have slanted eyes, truly slanted eyes, are those with Down Syndrome. Other than that, slants to eyes occur across most populations, including European. *sigh*

But what had me yelling at the book over and over was its treatment of trans people as some sort of foreign gender:

Boys and girls and trans and unidentified around me groaned and rubbed at sore and bruised and tweaked muscles.

So instead of spending your day screwing your brains out with some of your best friends, writing letters to girlfriends or boyfriends or transfriends, or sitting in a corner sobbing until it hurts you get to much out the vats.

Trans men are men and trans women are women. They’re not some alien gender we don’t know what to do with. If you’re dating a trans woman, she’s your girlfriend. If you’re dating a trans man he’s your boyfriend. I’ve seen ‘xefriend’ used for the nonbinary equivalent (and quite like it) but ‘transfriend’ just smacks of othering, and really, really upset me.

There’s some nice neopronoun use and a mention of androgyne as a gender, so it’s clear the author was trying, and I get that. But this is what sensitivity readers are for. With the trans issues combined with the ‘slant eyes’ comment, I will not be providing buy links for this book. I do not recommend it, although I think with a few edits it could be a really nice YA military sci fi.

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