J.S. Fields

Author & Scientist

Review: Starless by Jacqueline Carey

Genre: fantasy (epic/high)

Pairings: f/nonbinary

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, nonbinary (third gender)

Warnings: none

Rating: 5 stars

 

Review

Long ago, the gods fell to the earth, including one who did not deserve its fate. A princess and her sworn protector join a motley crew of mortals tasked with saving their world from the destruction of a vengeful god in this delightful high fantasy adventure with a nonbinary protagonist.

Read my more ‘professional’ New York Journal of Books review here. For a review with more raw emotion, continue below.

I requested this book through NYJB after seeing someone on Twitter ask if any enbies had reviewed STARLESS. Curious, I looked it up only to find it was written by one of my favorite authors, Jacqueline Carey. I never cared for her KUSHIEL series (pease do not send me hate mail) but absolutely adored SANTA OLIVA and SAINTS ASTRAY. Mercifully it was close enough to STARLESS’ release date that I could snag a review copy. Unsure what to expect–the inside jacket blurb isn’t great and the tag line is unhelpful–I dove in.

 

At its most basic

This is high fantasy. There are living gods that walk the earth, magic, dragons, pirates, princesses, seers, fairy-type people, etc. Mercifully it is less a midivil European fantasy and more a ‘travel the whole planet’ fantasy, wherein the reader gets exposed to numerous species and cultures. It also lacks any on-screen rape (although rape is mentioned obliquely in-world) and there are no white people saving scores of brown people. It’s not a George R.R. Martin book. There’s also plenty of women in it, which means it’s not a Tolkien book, and it does more than lip service to diversity, which is a heck of a lot more than most stuff on the market today.

The above alone would make the book worth reading, but Carey takes the book a step further with the exploration of nonbinary identities. As with my professional review, I’m going to avoid talking much about the greater plot (it’s great, btw, but I figure since someone was looking for an enby review, I’d better review the enby bits). I will say that the living gods are creepy-cool, and one of my favorite parts of the worldbuilding.

 

Khai and the gender question

Khai is born during a moon-on-moon eclipse, at the same time as a princess of the Sun-Blessed. Chosen by a god to be the princess’ protector (known as ‘shadow’) Khai is raised by an all male brotherhood and trained as a warrior. Shadows, however, are always  male, but Khai is not. In a male-dominant society where women are veiled and kept apart, Khai is raised bhazim, an ‘honorary boy.’

In order to better keep the secret of Khai’s gender, the brotherhood insist upon complete privacy. Khai never learns that he (Khai uses ‘he/him/his’ throughout the book) has different anatomy (he doesn’t even seen a woman/girl until 11).

It is not clear from the writing whether Khai actually is a boy, and thus never experiences dysphoria from the way he is raised, or does not experience dysphoria because there is no other gender option available. The experience of dysphoria, while certainly not universal to the trans, trans nonbinary, and nonbinary experience, does play a role in this book, and marks various points in Khai’s journey of gender discovery.

A quote that set the stage of my expectations, and then delightfully did not materialize, showcases the mastery with which Carey discusses the way Khai is raised:

I would not be content if I were Miasmus, raised in darkness and secrecy, cast down from the heavens for a sin I had not committed. No, I would not be content at al, but filled with a bitter and long-simmering fury…

 

I had a lot of strong feelings as I read this book

 

In relation to similar gender transformation trope books

In many ways the plot reminded me of one of my favorite series. THE BONE DOLL’S TWIN (forever after TBDT), which is a great dark fantasy but, in my opinion, really botched the ‘girl raised literally as a boy and finds out she is a girl’ trope. STARLESS is what I wanted BONE DOLL’S TWIN to be in terms of gender exploration.

In TBDT, the MC has some light struggles with being a girl raised as a literal boy (through magical body transformation), but generally gets on fine. When her body is finally remade into its proper form, the princess has little difficulty with the transition. It’s not that the transition was untrue in any way, I guess I just always thought it lacked real emotion. STARLESS does a great job at capturing that moment of shock and the resulting actions.

 

In terms of other forms of enbies

The fantasy market has had a number of gender fluid characters written, both by #ownvoices authors and not, but the gender of the character has never been pivotal to the plot. I have yet to see a fantasy with third gender character (some fantasy books with awesome gender fluid characters include DALÍ, MOONSHINE, MASK OF SHADOWS).

It’s beyond important to have every kind of representation, and I certainly don’t have any issues with the volume of gender fluid characters on the market. I do wonder though if gender fluid characters are picked up more readily by agents and publishers because the genders are relatable. Instead of constantly in between, the character may only be sometimes between, and more often traditionally on one end or the other of the binary. Writing a third gender (or agender, for that matter) character is hard, and it may be that connecting with one, for a standard cis audience, is even harder.

Khai does consider various other nonbinary designations, and it takes him the better part of the book to settle on what could best be described as third gender. Here’s a snippet of text from page 215 (hardback edition), where Khai is discussing his gender with Princess Zariya, his soul-twin and love interest.

“How do you think of yourself now?” she asked curiously. “As a boy or a girl?”

I thought about it. “Neither, I suppose. I don’t know how to be a girl but I don’t want to, either.”

Zariya goes on to tell Khai that the Elehuddin people have words for certain types of nonbinary, such as ‘neither man nor woman’ and ‘possibly both’ (note that this species can physically change their gender). This is later confirmed (page 406, hardback) where an Elehuddin tells Khai

“The first is for a person who is in the middle of changing between one and the other. The second…” Breaking off our discourse, he conferred with the Elehuddin in their own tongue. “A person who is alone, maybe a person who has lost their tribal for some reason, may choose to be both. This person may become father and mother like to their own child.”

What I find most interesting about this beat, however, is that Khai rejects the female gender here seemingly solely on the poor social status of women, which Zariya does call him out on. This sets Khai on the road to considering aspects of being a girl, and I think eventually helps him settle on an identity.

 

Relatability

I relate to Khai’s journey on numerous levels. Khai’s reaction to being told he is not the gender he was raised as, and his resulting emotions, struck a nerve. Having also been raised in a way that fit my gender identity, to find out that your body tells a different story (even if that story affirms certain peculiarities), is difficult to deal with.

It was great to see a character really grappling with the balance of male/female, and dysphoria over clothing. The most ‘real’ part of the book, for me, was Khai donning a dress to please his mother (who always wanted a girl), and both hating it and also appreciating the way he looked. STARLESS does not lack for complex emotions.

Even Khai’s journey into the city proper, when he must first start interacting with women, felt very much like my own forays into women’s circles (especially during pregnancy).

I knew nothing of cities; I knew nothing of courts or palaces save what Vironesh had told me. I knew nothing of women.

You and me both, Khai.

Even the parts I couldn’t relate to as well made perfect sense for the character. In the beat below, Khai is having a bath with women for the first time.

And yet… to be wholly naked, a woman among women? The thought of it was profoundly uncomfortable.

 

Discord

The only part of the Khai-gender-journey that didn’t seem to fit quite right was the mother-dress beat. In it, Khai learns that his mother has always wanted a girl, and promises to dress as one the following day. He does so, much to his own discomfort, but later enjoys how he looks in the dress and greatly enjoys his mother’s reaction. Khai thinks back on this moment many times throughout the book, such as in this section on page 498 (hardcover)

She stroked the soft silk. “Thank you, Khai. But I suppose such garb was little to your liking.”

I didn’t answer right away. remembering the first time I had seen myself in the mirror attired as a woman; remembering the light in my mother’s eyes when she had seen me thusly as the daughter for whom she had yearned. I didn’t think these were things Even could fully understand, even if I were able to articulate my own conflicted feelings. “That is not entirely true.”

Everyone, of course, experiences dysphoria differently (if at all), but I was left to wonder at this point how Khai even managed to put the dress on, with all the problems he had had to this point with general anxiety and dysphoria. It’s all well and good to reevaluate once it’s on, but I was surprised to not see more emotional reactions from Khai during the dressing. I’ve scratched my skin so hard it bled from trying to tear my way out of a sweater that made me feel too feminine. I can only imagine being stuffed into a dress.

 

Overall

Minor quibbles aside, this was an excellent book. While both my reviews have focused on the gender aspect, there is so much more to this book, including grand adventure, magic, and yes, love. Fans of THE BONE DOLL’S TWIN, MASK OF SHADOWS, and ARDULUM (there’s a similar journey of self discovery in ARDULUM) will enjoy STARLESS. Out of all the books I’ve read this year, this is definitely my favorite.

You can buy STARLESS in paperback here, digital here, and audiobook here.

 

P.S. This book deserved a much better cover.

Review: The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers

Genre: sci fi (space opera)

Pairings: f/f, m/AI (implied female), m/f, m/m (in-world, but not POV character)

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, trans, pansexual, gay, gender fluid, nonbinary

Notable other representations: implied autism representation

Warnings: none

 

 

Review

An eclectic crew aboard the galaxy’s ugliest ship (trope checkbox: ugly/dilapidated ship!) are given an extended mission to create a new ‘punch’ through space to an outlying world. Along the way we explore most every crew member in detail, people boink and find themselves, and only one person manages to die. Cultures are explored. Science is scienced. HEAs for almost everyone. Feels all around.

I have lost count of the number of people who recommended I read this book. Every Tweet request I put out for f/f space opera came back with this title, every FB post, every word-of-mouth query. So I feel pretty confident in say that people like this book. And I get it…sort of. I have mixed feelings.

Characters

To say this was a character-driven space opera would be an understatement. Characters were the plot LWtaSAP (forever after abbreviated as LW). Ninety percent of the tension in this book came from character self reflection and character interaction, not from external forces or plot driving. That was at once both refreshing and irritating, and in places this book read more like a cozy fan fiction than a novel, but on the other hand why don’t we have more books that are allowed to just exist like this? Why does space opera have to be explosions and death and war? Like, it’s opera, as in, soap opera. So really, when you think about it, LW is the quintessential soap opera in space, hence, space opera.

Plot

Not really. You sort of get the hint of one about halfway through, when the captain takes the long punch job to connect the mainly habited sections of space to a new outlier planet. The tension never really builds in this direction though, although we are treated to one pirate attack (with good tension) and one political upheaval (great tension), both of which are sadly quite short. The plot is the characters and the characters are the plot, and in this case, that means digging down into everyone’s past, exploring their secrets, and helping them find emotional resonance in whatever that means for them.

Of interest to me, of course, was the f/f pairing, which I thought was very well done. No explicit scenes at all, but enough tension that I was breathlessly flipping pages. I usually have a hard time getting into human/alien pairings, mostly because I’m (unabashedly) into breasts, but both female characters were so beautifully written and developed that the pairing seemed natural and obvious from the start. So too did the romance between Jenks and Lovey (the ship sentient AI). In no world did I ever think someone cuddling naked against a warm metal core would be erotic, but this book definitely proved me wrong (and I think we have THE SHIP WHO SANG to partially blame, for prepping me for this sexy moment decades in advance).

Science

Holy science, batman! Solid, solid science, from the tech to the ‘how do we explain space travel so that morons understand,’ to the little everyday household items, the science in this book was beautiful and well explained. Lovers of hard scifi will be at home, as will those who couldn’t care less about the hows and whys. The writing in this book is exemplary from start to finish, and makes even the most sciencey of technobabble understandable.

Quibbles

This is probably just personal taste, but the book, IMO, just wandered. I don’t mind a little wander, and I love a good drawn-out courtship, but I felt like the first hundred pages of this book were functionally unnecessary and seemed to just be filler. The book lacked in sort of standard structure, or a try-fail cycle, or even a strong narrative arc (an overall arc. Characters had great arcs). It just…didn’t seem to go anywhere, and we didn’t even get a through-line until halfway through the book. The story seemed more vouyeristic, like an episode of The Truman Show, Space Cadet Edition. We’re just…watching everyone’s everyday. We get to see all the little mechanics of the ship, and personal interactions, and minor stakes. We get extended meal times and shopping times and hugging times and it just… it dragged. But it didn’t drag in bad way, if that makes sense. Like, I wanted it to have more plot but I also didn’t mind what I was reading. This isn’t a book I’ll keep on my shelf, or that I’ll read again, but I don’t regret the experience, if that makes sense.

 

I think this book would be of interest, primarily, for those with a love of cozy, HEA fan fiction, true space science junkies, and anyone who has ever dreamed of ‘clean’ space opera without any mass death or military structures. It’s gay as hell, too, so if you just want a good time with some queer beings in space, this is also your book. It won a crazy number of awards, so it sounds like there are plenty of readers who have long awaited a space opera like this one!

You can buy LW in print here and ebook here.

Read the review for the second book in the series, A CLOSED AND COMMON ORBIT, here.

Review: Daybreak Rising by Kiran Oliver

Genre: fantasy

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: trans, lesbian, nonbinary, gay, pan

Warnings: whitewashing

Rating: one star

 

Review (print version. It’s relevant, trust me)

Celosia Brennan was supposed to be a hero. After a bunch of military (?) commandos put way too much on the shoulders of a teen and she fries a town, Celosia has joined the resistance. She is part of a corp of elemental magic users (GO PLANET!) bent on taking down The Council. I don’t know what The Council is. I don’t know what it’s motivations are. Apparently it either kills elementals or tries to leash them to do its bidding, and so our ragtag band is out to take it down. Among them is a blind woman, at least two lesbians, a trans man, nonbinary people, among others. There is a reasonable smattering of black people, although two have problematic blue eyes. That’s a whole different blog post.

Diverse books hold a special place in my heart.

Diversity is not, however, enough to hold an entire story together.

Books need plot. They need character development. They need a copyeditor and a proofreader and page numbers. This book had…none of those. Typos were abundant (double periods, quotation errors, NO PAGE NUMBERS), the prose was stilted and super telly (constantly telling, then showing, then sometimes telling again, ad nauseum), and the story lacked a discernible arc or plot through line. So let’s break it down, issue by issue.

Typos and redundancy

I realize this book was self-pubbed, but that isn’t an excuse for not having an editor, copyeditor, and/or proofreader. This book also suffered from a heavy amount of word redundancy within paragraphs, which made it read very fanfic and amateurish. Fundamentals were left out as well, such as, and I’m still not over this, a lack of page numbers in the print version.

Writing style

If I hadn’t wanted to leave a thorough review for this book, I’d have DNF after the first fifteen pages or so. No clear plot emerged until about halfway through the book. The backstory of the lead character didn’t come through until about thirty or so pages in. There was no way to get character buy-in, or world placement, for the first half of the book, and that was really frustrating.

There was no multi-act structure for this book. Tension was never built, save for the Big Reveal about three-quarters of the way through (which was the only moment of true interest I had in the book). The book wasn’t even a complete arc, with it ending just before the Final Battle. The primary plot appears to be getting Celosia over her PTSD (admirable, for sure), but her whole situation is confusing. She was used by the rebels, screwed up her job because she was a kid, and now everyone holds her responsible for the screw up. I have no empathy for people who hold a child responsible for failing an adult task which again, made world buy-in next to impossible.

The author mainly told instead of showed, maybe as a way to speed up the slow pace of the book (which was achingly slow). The occasional show was always followed up by a tell, which really treated the reader as a moron. Most readers can pull intent and feelings from context and motions, we don’t need to be beaten over the head with it.

 

The White Gaze

Black people with blue eyes. Just. Don’t.

Don’t.

 

Characters

Too many POV characters for the length and type of book. This was no five hundred page epic fantasy. I don’t actually know how long it was, because it HAD NO PAGE NUMBERS, but there was barely recognizable growth in our lead POV character, Celosia. All the other POVs seemed thrown in for plot relevance, but not enough time was spent with any of them to make them real people. Even three quarters of the way through the book, new POV characters were being introduced, which was very frustrating.

 

Romance

The main romance line felt forced, rushed, and lackluster. The two characters had no chemistry, and Ianthe seemed more like a plot device than a character.

 

Queer representation

This was the one strong point of the story. The trans romance line was handled well, the gender discussions were thorough, and the lesbian romance was…well, there was a lesbian romance, so that counts for something.

 

Final thoughts

I so wanted to like this book, but I felt like it reached up and smacked me every other numberless page. The typos, the lack of tension, the poor character development, the lack of any type of formal act structure, all came together in a book that felt rushed. It felt like I was reading a draft zero of a book that had a lot of potential, but the author didn’t want to go through revisions. I was left disappointed–in the book, the characters, the flailing plot, and the typos I almost drowned in.

If you’re willing to forgive all of that to see some decent queer rep in a fantasy, you can buy Daybreak Rising in ebook here and print here.

Review: Moonshine by Jasmine Gower

Genre: fantasy (unclassifiable – semi historical, semi urban)

Pairings: m/m (but one is a fairy), nods to f/f in-world and a decent dance scene

Queer Representation: disability, gender fluidity, trans issues, pansexuality, aromantic, asexual

Rating: 4.5 stars

 

 

Review

Another book from the #DVsquad and #DVpit! Woohoo! I’m delighted that I got a chance to review an ARC. As with CITY OF BRASS, this was an enchanting fantasy with a deep connection to its time period.

Daisy is a Modern Girl in a sort of post-apocalyptic version of the Roaring Twenties, where faeries and ogres and magic all exist. Not a magician herself, Daisy has inherited some trinkets from her grandmother that are imbued with magic–not enough to cause trouble, but enough to keep soot off her clothes and hide her personage when needed. She takes a job as a clerical worker at an (unbeknownst to her) magical mana factory (all very underground, you see, because in this Prohibition, it’s magic juice that’s outlawed) and looks forward to a very average life. But working for a magical speakeasy is anything but safe, and Daisy soon finds herself the target of a hit, as well as in charge of an exiled faerie her boss may have accidentally freed. Good thing Grandma’s blood magic trinkets are still around!

The strong sense of setting was my favorite part of this book. Every image evokes a sense of yearning at an era those from the USA often romanticize, but it is if we are viewing this history through a distorted lens. There are speakeasies, but they deal in magic mana. There are hit people, but they have cannons that block magical ability. There are all the same horrible social stratifications, but here they revolve around magic users, both human and other.

The plot is a bit slow to get started, which is the only real negative of this book. At first I assumed the story arc would involve something with the underground mana business, but about halfway through the book it becomes clear that cleanup of the boss’ mess (releasing the faerie) is the primary arc. With the strength of the characters (which the author carries well) and the setting, I think the narrative could have handled something heavier than ‘return faerie to his dimension’ plot, but I was not unhappy with it. I think I just wanted more, and was upset to so quickly leave this world.

The writing was strong and even, and Daisy’s voice was easy to connect with. Her desires and goals resonated quickly with me, and I also appreciated the unique voices of the secondary cast. There was a great deal of queer diversity in the book as well, spanning gender fluidity, pansexuality, ace and aro characters, etc.

MOONSHINE is a quirky, often surprising take on the Prohibition Era of the USA, drenched in fresh fantasy elements and strong characterization. It deserves a place on every fantasy-lover’s bookshelf, and is a strong addition to the #DVsquad archive.

 

You can preorder MOONSHINE in digital here and paperback here.

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