J.S. Fields

Author & Scientist

Review: In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire

Genre: portal fantasy

Pairings: none

Queer Representation: in-world mention of cis lesbians

Warnings: EMOTIONS

Rating: 5 stars

 

 

Review (note that quotes come from the arc, and may change in the final draft)

Lundy, a quiet, studious, rule-bound girl, finds a door to the equally rule-bound land of the Goblin Market. By her eighteenth birthday she must choose whether to stay in the market or live with her birth family. But Lundy, who has always loved loopholes, may not be able to find one big enough to avoid the consequences of making an unfair deal beyond her door.

A little backstory

How I ended up with the arc is sort of a portal fantasy within itself. I was an invited guest at OryCon 40 (Portland) this year, and Seanan McGuire was the author guest of honor. I had a booth with a few friends as well (a very queer books booth… you couldn’t miss us), and Seanan, whom I did not recognize, stopped by and ended up buying all three ARDULUM books (may she not hate them, please god(s)).

We got to talking and because it had been a really whirlwind of a con with a lot of homophobia and racism around, when she mentioned she was the author  guest of honor it still didn’t click who she was and I asked. So then she showed me her name tag and I did not drop dead on the spot, although I probably should have. I wanted to tell her how much I loved the Wayward Children series but of course could not remember one damn title and stumbled my way around with ‘oh I read your first and second book and reviewed the third…the one with the girl…’ while she’s looking at me with what I hope was bemusement and mentioning that she’s written lots of books, so ‘first one’ doesn’t really help.

Anyway, eventually my misfiring brain got out that I was a book reviewer with the New York Journal of Books and I was really upset because I missed IN AN ABSENT DREAM in the que, and someone else got to it first, so I wouldn’t get to review it. And then Seanan pulled an arc out of her bag and offered it to me. So even though I can’t get this review up on my normal official channels, I took that book, damn it. She even signed it for me. And she had me sign the ARDULUM books for her and I’m still recovering from that so excuse me while I fan myself.

We talked for like half an hour and I think might kind of sort of be friends now (I mean, we had an in-depth conversation about speculums and sex toys and if that doesn’t qualify past ‘acquaintance’ I don’t know what does), or at least ‘I wouldn’t hit you with my car if I saw you on the side of the road’ friends. Whatever. The point is that I HAVE THIS ARC, DAMN IT, and I’m thrilled, and I’m going to review the damn thing, even if it’s only on Goodreads and my blog. So with that…

Lundy

Those familiar with the Wayward Children series may remember Lundy from EVERY HEART A DOORWAY as the counselor and right-hand assistant to the head of the school. She ages both incredibly slowly and also backwards, and IN AN ABSENT DREAM explores the origin of this strange aging, as well as Lundy’s world and door, similar to the other Wayward Children books.

Lundy as a character had a lot less, let’s say, distinction than some of McGuire’s other wayward children. I spent about the first fifty pages looking for that special thing that set the other kids apart, and it took me until almost the end to realize that her lack of that thing was actually what made her so unique. She’s quite. She’s a rule-follower. She has decently loving parents and a solidly middling life and aside from growing up a girl in the 1960s, there was very little going against her.

It’s that sort of SARA PLAIN AND TALL vibe that really drew me in. I connected with Lundy more than I have with any of the other wayward children, which is likely by design since each of the books targets a very specific sort of child. I also fell hard for the ‘rules’ of the Goblin Market, where children are allowed to go back and forth multiple times before their eighteenth birthday. That gave IN AN ABSENT DREAM a much more sort of fairy tale feel than the other books in the series, and gave Lundy’s choices less…seriousness? Concreteness? The flexibility made the doorway seem less ominous and definitely less final, which really made the gut punch at the end of the book that much more brutal.

Emotion

While the other wayward children books have been fun, creative, delightful-if-not-dark-and-that’s-okay journeys, IN AN ABSENT DREAM read more like an emotional, coming-of-age journey. As always, McGuire captures childhood reasoning and childhood voice in a way very few adults are able:

Children begat adults begat children, now and forever, amen. She was in no hurry to reach those terrifying heights of adulthood; she assumed they would happen somewhere around the eighth grade, which was impossibly far away, and happened on the junior high school campus, where her father held no sway.

McGuire also delivers what has to be the best paragraph on sisterhood that I have ever come across,

Let us speak, for a moment, on the matter of sisters. They can be enemies to fight or companions to lean upon: they can, at times, be strangers, They are not required to be friends, or to have involvement in one another’s lives, or to be anything more than strangers united by the circumstances of their birth. Still, there is a magic in the word “sister,” a magic which speaks of shared roots and hence shared branches, of a certain ease that is always to be pursued, if not always to be found.

The use of authorial voice is equally as strong in this book as the others. Though where it tended to grate in UNDER THE SUGAR SKY, here it soothes and injects cautionary humor.

Her book fell from her suddenly nerveless fingers, landing in the dust of the trail. This will be important later.

There was action in this book, certainly, but it was less sword and sorcery (these events happening in the background and recounted and remembered more than anything) and more emotional action. As with all good fairy tales, lessons were couched in rules and childhood innocence:

“Sometimes ‘fair’ is bigger than just you,” said the Archivist. She handed Lundy a pillow. “Sometimes ‘fair’ has to think about what’s best for everyone.”

yet still manages to deliver some sound critique on social constructions and the current political landscape.

Moon

Secondary characters were limited, which is perfectly expected in a novella. Of note, however, is the character ‘Moon.’ Born to the Goblin Market by a mother that abandoned her there, Moon and Lundy become fast friends. Friendship never really comes to Lundy from the ‘real’ world, and her pairing to the impulsive and perhaps-not-very-well-suited-to-the-Goblin-Market Moon is instantaneously genuine and satisfying. So well drawn is Moon’s character that McGuire even notes,

Let us pull back for a moment, and see things through her eyes–for while this is Lundy’s story, Lundy’s cautionary tale, it might as easily have been Moon’s.

Followed a paragraph later by the ominous,

It might have been a kinder ending.

A gut punch to the emotions, this book. Building like Pan’s Labyrinth where you know what is coming but the background is too rich and the characters too beloved to look away. And then it happens and you’re left with a sweet anger that you can’t really explain because you’re not angry, not really, but you wanted something different, even when your heart told you you wouldn’t get it.

Damn feelings.

This book was, is, childhood. So much more than its predecessors, IN AN ABSENT DREAM delivers echos of wild youth and the adolescent pursuit of found family. It buries itself deep inside the reader to dredge out memories and emotion maybe best left buried–regurgitated now to settle back amongst Lundy’s journey and her critical mistake. As with all the Wayward Children books, the reader is left with the yearning of where is my door?, but IN AN ABSENT DREAM asks too, would my choices have been any different?

You can preorder IN AN ABSENT DREAM in hardback here, audio here, and ebook here.

Final thoughts

I always swore that if I met Seanan McGuire I would talk to her about our mutual love of My Little Ponies and DID I DO THAT? NO. BECAUSE I AM AN IDIOT. I mean, we use the same vibrator apparently but could I get out any words about whether she’s more a Firefly or Medley fan (you can tell a lot about people by their answer to this question)? No. No I did not. Half the dealers room heard us talking about speculums AND I TOTALLY FORGOT ABOUT MY LITTLE PONIES.

I’d cry if it wasn’t so damn funny. Also, where is my damned door?

Review: Paladins of the Storm Lord by Barbara Ann Wright

Genre: science fantasy

Pairings: f/f, m/m

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, cis gay, cis bisexual

Warnings: wonky feelings on skin tone and aliens

Rating: 2.5 stars

Review

Over two hundred years ago, a colony ship from Earth was knocked off course and forced to settle an undeveloped new world. Those that were asleep when the disaster struck became colonists. Those that were awake and shepherding the ship became gods with superhuman abilities. But the native life of the planet has had enough, and supernatural abilities or not, humanity’s dominion over the planet is about to be called into question.

In general

This had the bones of a good story. Supernatural humans ruling over normal humans, some in-betweens, a hint of space lesbian romance, what’s not to like? The worldbuilding was strong without being overbearing, and the interpersonal interactions generally resonated. The dynamics of the ‘gods’ on the ship, especially, were very engaging. Some great one and two-liners cropped up, too, such as this gem:

As she watched them, Cordelia thought of how humans would have called the scene love at first sight or soul mates or some other crap. Leave it to the less technologically advanced species to reduce it to chemistry.

Unfortunately, it was very had to really sink into the novel. There were innumerable POV characters that swapped out mid-chapter and sub plots that always seemed to hint but never deliver. Relationships, both friend and otherwise, settled in at a lukewarm pace and never had time to become fully realized. A number of very exciting conflicts were set up, but then the characters seemed at times to be paraded through them instead of being allowed to move organically. Much of the dialogue came across as stilted approximations of witty banter, lacking emotional depth.

Relationships

The best relationship was between Cordelia (a main POV character) and her solider/drinking buddy/general screwup Liam (a minor POV character…I think? I think he had a few paragraphs?). The damsel-in-distress pick up scene on pages 12-13 (paperback), in particular, was fantastically well done and one of the main reasons I kept giving this book a chance. The banter throughout those pages was exceedingly well done and it was very easy to empathize with all parties. That it lead to a stock bar scene on a secondary Earth didn’t matter. It was relevant, and it spoke to experience, and it was everything I was hoping for from PALADINS OF THE STORM LORD.

Dillon (god, main POV character) and Lazlo’s (god, minor POV character) relationship was the most complex of the book, skating around toxic relationship issues with solid POV moments from both characters. There were plenty of times, however, where I wanted to really stay and explore their dynamic, just to be pulled from them after only a few paragraphs. As the book progressed this became more and more problematic, until these otherwise three dimensional characters felt as flat as cardboard.

Skin tons on aliens

There was a lot of description of the aliens and their brown skin, and much less of the humans. Human characters were routinely introduced with hair or eye color, not skin tone (although that was occasionally dropped in later) but the aliens were almost uniformly presented as ‘skin tone.’ It was… othering, although it’s possible the author was trying to add social commentary via this channel (the publisher’s website does have the book tagged under POC) but personally, it left a bad taste in my mouth. I don’t know if it would for everyone.

 

Overall

The action scenes were decent and tension sustained at a moderate level throughout the book. Fans of military sci fi that has the bones of fantasy, as well as those looking for more queer inclusion outside of straight romance, will likely enjoy PALADINS OF THE STORM LORD. You can purchase the book here in ebook and here in paperback.

Review: The Consuming Fire by John Scalzi

Genre: science fiction: space opera

Pairings: f/f, m/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: delightful social commentary

Rating: five stars

Review

I’m embarrassed to admit that this was my first Scalzi book. I’d followed him on Twitter for a while and his sense of humor worked for me. When THE CONSUMING FIRE popped up on my review site, I thought, hey, why not? I like space opera, he writes space opera, and clearly knows something about writing what with all the awards he’s won.

And wow, was I glad I took the chance. Unexpected lesbian content!

The full, pro review is here. At its heart this was the quintessential space opera. Intergalactic politics. Feuding families. Hints of romance. Religions that easily mirror modern monotheistic dogma. As with any good science fiction there was a healthy dose of political commentary as well, torching uptight scientists (that might have hit a little close to home) and power-hungry politicians (who put power above the good of humanity) in the same breath.

Plenty of plot lines and point of view characters wound through the story. Of particular importance for this blog was the arc of Kiva Lagos, a particularly foul-mouthed (love!) woman who is put in charge of one of the more corrupt houses in the Interdependency. Kiva uncovers corruption (shocking!), earns the ire of the former head of the house and then of course, ends up the victim of various assassination plots. She also ends up falling for the mole sent to spy on her which really, sounds less than romantic but the whole book is a bit tongue and cheek, and the romance between Kiva and Senia Fundapellonan is just… well, it’s satisfying. There’s really no better way to describe a relationship that starts off with, at the head of chapter 7:

Kiva Lagos was in the middle of receiving some perfectly serviceable oral when her table pinged.

I mean, sign me up.

Kiva’s story (outside of the perfectly serviceable oral) is central to the main arc, and its her interactions with her lover and the Emperox that were the most engaging (in terms of character engagement. Plot engagement was strong amongst all the POV characters). Scenes that the Emperox and Kiva shared, especially in the final chapter, were far more than ‘serviceable,’ and the book ending had that sort of smug and fulfilling satisfaction that always comes at the end of a good shoot-em-up or -get-the-bad-guy book.

It’s the kind of feeling you got when you watched A New Hope for the first time, but without the bitterness of knowing that Leia was probably the only woman allowed to speak in the whole galaxy, and that meant opportunities for her to boink another woman were in no way possible.

So live your dream, queer space opera nerds. I promise you won’t regret it.

You can buy THE CONSUMING FIRE in paperback here, ebook here, and audio here.

Review: The Phoenix Empress by K Arsenault Rivera

Genre: high fantasy

Pairings: female/female

Queer representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: the same as with book one

Rating: 3 stars

note: the cover above, from Amazon, differs from the cover I received both in review paperback and final paperback. My copy has the tag line: ‘Lose Yourself to Save the World.’

Review

I both received an ARC of this book through my reviewer gig, and bought a copy because I so loved book one (while still recognizing its problematic behavior). My professional review is posted here. I wanted to take some time, however, to discuss some additional elements to the book that either didn’t belong in the pro review, or I was unsure how to best discuss in the third person.

THE TIGER’S DAUGHTER was, for me, a breathtaking epic fantasy centered on the love between two women and the clashing of their cultures. It was also problematic in terms of addressing colorism within Japanese and Mongolian communities, and blended elements of China into Japan in a way that was confusing and, in some cases, offensive. Some of the more blatant problems were summed up in this Goodreads review.

I chose to preorder THE PHOENIX EMPRESS anyway, because its predecessor had so moved me and I really wanted to see what became of Shefali in particular (I never really cared for Shizuka). I mean, you get semi-possessed by a demon and then covertly marry your lover to upset her emperor uncle? Heck yeah I want to read that sequel!

And the sequel was…meh. Well, parts of it were ZOMG I AM SO INTO THIS!! and parts were ‘I’d DNF this if I didn’t have to leave a review.’ So, let’s break it down.

Lane problems

As far as I can tell (and I am not an expert on Japanese, Chinese, or Mongolian culture), a lot of the bigger cultural issues were rectified. There was only one slur in this book (there were many rice-related ones in THE TIGER’S DAUGHTER that caused a lot of harm to readers), and it was truncated halfway through by a character chastising the other. Arsenault Rivera also appeared to try to distance the imitation China, Japan, and Mongolia from the actual places by adding more distinct fantasy elements, developing the world farther away from the base countries, and adding in additional queer elements. Which brings me to…

Representation

THE TIGER’S DAUGHTER fell into the trap of  ‘homosexuality isn’t discussed as having existed in feudal/medieval times so therefore it wouldn’t exist during the fictional time of my book, either.’ Which is, of course, ridiculous, because dragons, demons, magic swords, magic hair, mermaids, whatever, actually didn’t exist ever, but a couple of ladies macking near a river is clearly stretching disbelief.

Come on.

So it was nice to see a mention of the frequency of homosexual relationships in THE PHOENIX EMPRESS, with a reference being made to many types of pairings, as well as people existing outside the gender binary. +1 for breaking that trope!

Pacing

Here, however, is where the book fell flat for me. Book one wove a strangely compelling tale through epistolary form. It wove action and romance and character development evenly, beautifully, and once you got over the glut of names, the book read smoothly. THE PHOENIX EMPRESS, on the other hand, was completely out of balance. The first half of the book went between the author telling you what the second half of the book would do (I hated this), and the more compelling reuniting of Shefali and Shizuka, and dealing with Shizuka’s alcoholism.

The relationship part of the first half was well done. Shefali and Shizuka were believable wives with believable problems and that tenderness-laced-with-steel that makes for compelling character interactions. Unfortunately that was perhaps 25% of the first 250 pages, with the rest rumination by Shizuka, painful info dumps, or even more painful prose that, instead of being enchanting like in book one, skewed more towards the purple.

I can’t say that it was worth sticking it out for the second half, but I did truly enjoy the second half. The action picked up dramatically here, and I was treated to Shizuka’s battle with the black bloods and her retaking of the Empire (not a spoiler–you learn she did this on like page five but don’t actually get to see it until well past the halfway point). I enjoyed learning more about Shefali’s demon. I loved the magic of their godhoods and how they both explored their gifts. And I adored the last chapter or so, where the two have to choose between saving Shefali’s life or battling The Traitor (big head baddie who is also a magical god).

Overall

I think there was a really sound book in here–a roughly 300 page book that was consumed by 200 pages of useless fluff. If overly flower language and endless metaphor (and I mean endless) are your things, or if you love deep interpersonal relationship play with no plot movement (no shame, sometimes I’m in the mood for that too), this is your book. If you’re hoping to see some sort of forward plot momentum, start around page 250 or 300. You won’t have missed anything, trust me.

You can buy THE PHOENIX EMPRESS in paperback here, ebook here, and audio here.

Review: Translucid by Zen DiPietro

Genre: science fiction (space opera/military)

Pairings: female/female

Queer Representation: bisexual, pansexual, lesbian

Warnings: none

Rating: 3.5 stars

 

Review

Emé wakes up on a space station with no memory of who she is, but a complete memory of her job as a security chief. With every part of what makes her her missing, Emé must learn to trust those around her while she pieces her life back together. It turns out, however, that the person she was before was a liar–a good one–and Emé must unravel not only her personal identity, but determine why she lead a second life on Dragonfire station…with a wife who was originally her ‘mark.’

General

Heeeey it’s space lesbians! My favorite trope! The book started off strong, with a great hook chapter with Em waking up without her self-memory but a great technical memory… and then having to go home with a wife she does not remember. Em also discovers she has some uncanny fighting skills that she’s been hiding from the entire station. There’s great tension, the pacing is reasonable, and the interaction between Em and her wife is fantastic. The only time the pacing drops is in the final third of the book, when Em leaves Dragonfire station to find her missing Black Ops friends. Even then it doesn’t drop so much as it changes. The book goes from a sweet space opera directly into military sci fi, which was a little jarring. It was almost like two books smashed into one without much transition, leaving me to wonder if the rest of the books in this (extensive) series skew to the space opera side, or the military sci fi side.

 

Writing

This is one of those times were the narrative carried the book despite its flaws. The writing could have been much cleaner and direct, and there were numerous instances of timeline conflicts (pg 89, for instance, when Wren tells Em that a friend will be visiting for dinner that night, only to have Wren and Em watch a movie and go to bed because the friend actually isn’t coming over until the next night). The editorial work on this book was not tight, but it was easy to forgive amongst the intrigue of Em’s identity and the richness of the station.

 

Characters

I was instantly involved with Em. Her lost memory and the issues surrounding her wife and living situation created strong conflict from the first page and drove the book the entire time Em was on the station. Wren, her wife, was three-dimensional despite having very little page time. There was a menagerie of secondary station characters, all of whom were fleshed out and had distinct personalities. A number of cultures were very well described as well, giving a 270 page book surprising depth.

The members of the Black Ops team were less compelling, likely because they were introduced late in the book and had little screen time. It was hard to make the transition between Em’s daily station life and her Black Ops life, especially after she left the station. I think I needed more investment in the three other ops characters before I could get on board with the story line moving in their direction. One of the main factors keeping me from picking up the next book, in fact, is the uncertainty of whether it would continue the military side with Em’s operative friends, or whether it would drive Em back to the station and her interpersonal relationships there.

In the end, TRANSLUCID is a strong addition to the lesbians in space genre. Those interested in space opera and its intersection with military science fiction will enjoy this book. Those looking for straight space opera may want to look elsewhere.

You can buy TRANSLUCID in ebook here and paperback here.

As an addendum, since purchasing this book the cover has been updated. The cover in this post is the old cover, which I adore. The new cover is…decidedly not as nice.

 

 

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