J.S. Fields

Author & Scientist

Review: Undertow by Jordan L. Hawk

Genre: fantasy – historical (novella)

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, cis pansexual

Warnings: utter monster fucker delight

Review

Secretary Maggie Parkhurst has a missing friend, dead squid on her windowsill, and an overbearing potential-fiance’. As she works to uncover the secrets of the quaint seaside town she has found herself in, Maggie runs afoul of magic, mayhem, and some sort of brutal sounding mermaid people who also make excellent lovers.

Yes, it’s that sort of book.

Written in the sort of pulp vein of THE ADVENTURE OF THE INCOGNITA COUNTESS, Hawk brings us a short novella in the Whyborne & Griffin Universe about a shy secretary and the sea monster that loves her. The book is short, pulpy fun with enough substance to give you that full feeling, and enough fluff to leave you wanting more.

The adventure begins with Maggie waking to the smell of squid. One is on her windowsill, which makes no sense, but is quickly forgotten once her friend, Irene, goes missing. Persephone, Maggie’s old sea monster-mermaid friend, is also lurking around (definitely not leaving old squids on windowsills at courtship material), as is Maggie’s potential male fiancé.

Events transpire as they tend to do in these sorts of books, the obvious villains revealed, and a fun mermaid battle scene ties up the end. There’s an excellent sex scene between Maggie and Persephone towards the end, and plenty of delightful scenes such as the one below:

“But you didn’t like the squid,” she said, as though making an argument. 

“The squid? What…oh.” Realization dawned. “You’re the one who left the squid on my windowsill?”

“How else was I to court you?” She must have read my shock in the expression on my face, because her brows drew together. “This isn’t a human custom?”

“Not…not quite.”

At 83 pages, UNDERTOW is a quick, sexy, delightful little mosterfucker book that’s well worth the cost of admission. Fans of Cynthia’s Ward’s vampire series would be quite comfortable in the port town of Widdershins, which you can visit in paperback here and ebook here.

Review: The Thousand Names by Django Wexler

Genre: fantasy – military

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: rape, racism, thinly veiled Christianity

Review

An army  of white people from not-Europe who practice not-Christianity wage war against magical, less developed grey-skinned people to steal a holy artifact. Lots of people die.

In general

The book is primarily military encounters and battles in a fantasy setting that very much mirrors any number of Europe’s holy wars. The people of color are grey instead of brown or black but are still discussed as primitive, having witchcraft and magic, etc. The white people all practice a religion that banned magic (and had a lot of other Christianity touchstones for those familiar), and the grey people all practice magic. The entertaining part comes in the form of the Church wanting the grey people’s power for their own, and attempting to steal it as part of the land grab campaign.

Women
Much like ISLAND IN THE SEA OF TIME (amusingly, S.M. Stirling blurbed THE THOUSAND NAMES), there are some decent female characters, and lesbian female characters, amid the racist world. Though it takes a while to pass the Bechdel test as most of the armies are made of men (which, really, in a fantasy… come on) we do get three (THREE!) well rounded women. Two are masquerading as men in the army, one a general foot soldier, the other a lieutenant and one of the POV characters. The third is an informant/spy/paper pusher, who ends up having a fantastic arc.

Winter, the only POV woman, is a delight and her sections kept me reading through all the battles that I had little interest in. Her backstory from the orphanage, her love with one of the other girls who is eventually sold as a wife, made her hands down the most compelling character (and the one given the most backstory). There’s no romance for Winter in this book but I’ve been told some crops up around book five. Unfortunately I don’t know if I have another four books of war and thinly veiled racism in me. Still, Winter is an outstanding character for an otherwise male centric military fantasy, and the inclusion of her character should be commended.

With that said…

Writing women

Both of the women masquerading as soldiers bind their breasts. This makes sense. What does not make sense is the lack of discussion of how this affects their service. There are several 15 mile runs noted in the book, of which Winter participates, as well as many, many drills. Running in a binder, in the heat, is a quick way to pass out. It is also noted that Winter has been in her section of the military for seven years and only takes the binder off occasionally to quickly bathe. Long term binder use has consequences on internal organs, ribs, etc. None of this is given any discussion, which made it increasingly difficult to suspend disbelief. Winter’s aching breasts are mentioned, in fact, and of course there is a scene where her binder is ripped and breasts tumble out, but no page time is given to actually looking at what wearing a binder for so long, during active military service, would mean.

There’s also a smattering of problematic POV, such as this line:

“Beneath the spectacles, the severe hairstyle, and the mannish clothes, he guessed she was actually quite pretty.”

Again, it’s a character POV, but one that is never rebutted.

Finally, there’s a throwaway line that I’m sure was meant to elicit laughter, but came off as pretty coarse:

‘”It’s been nearly two years.” Winter drew her knees to her chest. “I feel like I’d nearly convinced myself.'”

This comes from a scene where Winter is discussing her ‘secret’ with a woman she’s rescued. And while I understand what the author was getting at, it falls into the problematic narrative that so often crops up in the ‘woman pretending to be man’ trope. Gender identity is not something one can turn on or off at the drop of a hat. If Winter is indeed a woman, pretending to be a man would not have been easy, and there is no way living like one for that long would have changed her identity unless she was already questioning. Which of course, is possible, but no hint is given of that in the narrative.

Grey skin is still a POC

The people being fought, who get very little page time and limited POV time, are the grey skinned (sometimes copper-grey skinned) people of a relatively tropical location, who hold mystic magical knowledge. Some wear loin cloths. They’re pastoral to a point and heard sheep and goats. They are repeatedly referred to as ‘heathens.’ I suspect the author was trying to showcase the problems with characterizing people in such a manner by having some of the most vile characters do the discussions of heathen natures, but the narrative isn’t consistent and the attitudes are never rebutted. One of the white leaders who allows his men to rape and murder women and children while taking a village (and the imagery is quite graphic) is defended by one of our supposedly more upstanding POV characters, Marcus, when a superior wants to fire him. Marcus standing up for him helps him be a better man…. on the backs of all the POC who were raped and murdered.

Even the POC refer to themselves using animal language on occasion, which clearly doesn’t help things.

“Jaffa sat, watching them go after each other like a couple of angry cats.”

Finally, much as with ISLAND IN THE SEA OF TIME, this is a decent story with a strong female lesbian lead that falls short with racial equality. The various ‘power ups’ that happen at the end could make the sequels interesting, but there is a lot to unpack in other areas for the reader. POC and trans readers, in particular, will want to prepare themselves before diving into the series.

You can contemplate problematic tropes by buying the book in ebook here, paperback here and audiobook here.

Review: DREAD NATION by Justina Ireland

Genre: fantasy – historical / zombie (YA)

Pairings: m/f, discussion of f/f

Queer Representation: bi / pan (unclear), asexual/aromantic (unclear)

Warnings: whatever standard warnings come with zombie books…om nom nom

Review

In an alternate time (the darkest timeline??), the Civil War is cut short by ZOMBIES! Both sides must stop fighting to focus on the undead, but old tensions remain. A law is eventually passed requiring black and native teens to all train at boarding schools to fight the zombies, which is both effective at educating the children, but also puts them in much more danger than their white counterparts.

Jane, a student at such a school, is impetuous and deadly with sickles. When she isn’t sneaking out at night to save white people on the road from zombies, she’s failing her etiquette lessons and dreaming of returning home. Well to do racists have a different plan for Jane and the other graduates of her school, however, and with the undead developing some sort of greater hive intelligence, it will take all of Jane’s training, both in etiquette and weapons, to save herself and those she loves.

In general

The pacing was fantastic and the characters well rounded. The portrayal of racial tensions from a young black girl’s view was utterly compelling, and the various macro and micro aggressions included in the book would make a great primer for anyone looking to better understand the Black Lives Matter movement.

The Native content, unfortunately, fell well short. An excellent analysis of that area can be found at this link, so I won’t belabor the issue other than to note that in placing black people in a (fantasy) historical context that was traditionally occupied by Natives, some erasure issues cropped up.

Queer content takes a backseat in this book to racial issues, although Ireland does take the time to specifically discuss Katherine’s aro/ace leanings, and Jane’s encounter with one of the other girls at the school. Canon bisexuality is fairly rare in SFF books these days, and though Jane spends most of her time recounting a boy, it’s nice to see mention of her interest in women, too.

Plot

The plot has an excellent number of twists and turns, some of which were unexpected. Ireland kept the tension high even in ‘fancy dress’ scenes, and enough attention was given to clothing affecting fighting that it was easy to imagine being in the clothes yourself. In particular, the multiple discussions of the effects of corsets on running and fighting, as well as breast binding, was critical in building the realism of the book.

The science of the zombies too, while not amble, provided enough for reader conjecture. Their evolution through the book was a particularly enticing hook, so much so that I was disappointed we didn’t get more information on them in the end. It looks as though DREAD NATION might have been aiming for a sequel, which I would happily ready.

To fight zombies in a lacy dress but no corset on the Wild West frontier, click here for paperback, here for audio, and here for ebook.

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Review: An Accident of Stars by Foz Meadows

Genre: fantasy – portal fantasy

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: pansexual, cis lesbian, cis gay, aromantic, agender, trans

Warnings: none

Review

Saffron Coulter, a mild-mannered but angry sixteen year old girl from Earth, has had enough. Between the sexual harassment from the boys at her school to the uncaring faculty, Saffron’s biggest wish is that someone would just stand up to all the BS. Someone other than her, that is.

During a particularly nasty encounter with a schoolboy, Saffron is saved by the unknown Gwen, a woman with a mysterious past. Saffron ends up following Gwen to a more secluded area of the school–mostly to thank her–when a portal opens. And Saffron, being done with boys and high school and Earth, hops right in.

What follows is a twisting, engaging if not sometimes confusing, adventure through Kena–a magic using world teetering on the brink of war. Gwen, the worldwalker Saffron followed through the portal, must bring her up to speed on a very complex social hierarchy and several religions lest Saffron get herself killed through simply existing. As happens in these types of books, Saffron soon becomes ensconced in the war and ends up a key player in the final battles.

Format

I have mixed feelings about this book. The beginning is strong, and Saffron a sympathetic protagonist. Her motivations for going through the portal make a lot of sense and her first day or so on Kena has a lot of strong action. The setting is delivered well, the secondary characters are charming and delightful and cruel, and enough tropes are employed to help the reader feel comfortable in the world before they have a lot of information.

Where I struggled was with the swapping third to omniscient voice and the number of characters who got to wield either or both.

In some places, the POV switch is indicated by a line gap. In some the head hopping happens simply between normal paragraphs. There never seemed to be a reason for why narration changed, and it didn’t seem to follow the character with the most agency or interesting happenings, either. Due to the sheer volume of characters that were allowed a POV, I soon lost interest in a sizable section of the world.

The amount of time spent in Saffron’s head is excellent, and helped pull my interest back in every time she was on page. However, the extensive worldbuilding and political mechanics were beyond the scope of one book or at least, beyond the scope of Saffron’s understanding and therefore also beyond the reader’s.

Because I was so invested in Saffron and Zech (a younger girl who ends up in a sort of mind-meld with Saffron) I persisted through the book. The back third was mostly delightful, and the action, especially when the group hit the queen council and Zech and Saffron had to go through trials, was by far the best part. The final battle as well was very well done and the book had a fantastic, melancholy-but-still-happy ending.

It is saying something, however, that I skimmed pages and pages of this book, and almost the entire princess storyline (after her introduction, when it was clear she would only be annoying) and still felt like I didn’t miss anything. The ending made perfect sense and the final battle was still very compelling. As AN ACCIDENT OF STARS skims close to high fantasy, I wonder if it wasn’t shooting for world-as-character levels of description, and just fell a bit short.

Some excellent parts

I enjoyed that Saffron is Australian, which isn’t a POV I get to see a lot of in mainstream fiction. The racism of the teachers and Saffron’s own internal racism are addressed on page, and that was wonderful. I’m not sure I’ve ever read a fantasy that called out the implicit bias of its characters so directly:

“Not seeing Viya as a queen because she’s not white is racist,” she whispered into the pillow. “I’m being racist.”

British racism was also touched upon:

She didn’t say, ‘the police wouldn’t look for me when I vanished, because they didn’t think a missing black woman mattered.’ She didn’t say, ‘my parents convinced themselves I’d run off with a boy I was too ashamed to bring home, and when I came back, the second thing they asked was if I’d had an abortion.’

The trans rep was also fantastic, which isn’t surprising since the author is genderqueer. The ‘alikrevaya’ (trans) are seen as a natural variance and allowed to declare themselves however they wish. The worldbuilding of a culture of trans acceptance was so seamless that it actually took me a few pages to realize what the author was talking about. Also, they have sex-affirmation magic. Fantastic.

“It means she was born with her body and spirit in conflict, so the priests of Kara used the sevikmet to reshape her.”

“Bodies are bodies, and hearts are hearts. The priestess hood admits women only, though flesh plays no role in such determinations;”

Overall, AN ACCIDENT OF STARS is strong portal fantasy with solid queer rep and a sweet f/f line. The action scenes in particular stand out, although the book would have benefitted from some tighter 3rd limited.

To go through your own portal to Kena, buy the book here in print and here in ebook.

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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?

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