J.S. Fields

Author & Scientist

Review: Sword of the Guardian by Merry Shannon

Genre: fantasy: sword and sorcery

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: white default, near-rape scene (in detail), ‘girl masquerading as a boy and isn’t trans’ trope

 

Review

Orphaned from a young age by a band of village marauders, Talon and her sisters are sold to a traveling theater troupe. The two younger sisters are trained as singers and Talon, masquerading as a boy, becomes a skilled acrobat.

Some years later, during a performance, Talon has the opportunity to perform for the royal family. She impresses the Princess Shasta, but shortly thereafter an assassin kills the crown prince. Talon takes a dagger to protect the princess, lives, and she and her sisters are purchased by the king. Talon is to be the perfect protector for the princess, and the two younger girls are to be her ladies-in-waiting.

The plot progresses in a traditional romance fantasy trope fashion from there. Talon is brave and learns to be fundamentally invincible with a sword, the princess turns out to be more caring than at first appearance, they grow close, eventually Talon’s gender is revealed, they’re driven apart, they realize their feelings for each other, there’s a battle, and they finally get together.

It’s formulaic, but that doesn’t make it any less hot.

Published in 2006, SWORD OF THE GUARDIAN, at the time, filled an important role in the sparse lesfic world, allowing lesbians to see themselves in popular generic fantasy settings. SWORD took many of the tropes of male generic fantasy: berserker fighting, Gary Stu-like leads, fridged parents, and a hero’s journey, and blended them with the newly-established lesfic tropes that were emerging at the time, such as the butch character hiding their gender to survive in society, rape as a plot device to establish the morality of men, and the quintessential self-actualization of both main character and love interest (in terms of being lesbians).

Looking at SWORD as a product of its time, it was a groundbreaking piece of fiction. It didn’t have a hope of being picked up by Big Five Publishing (oh, how times have changed!) and it found its home in small press, where it could be the steamy, romantic, adventure tale we all want to be a part of.

Unfortunately, while small press gives a platform to underrepresented voices, it also lacks a lot of quality control, which is readily evident in SWORD. Under a strong editor, the book could have gone from simply ‘good’ to ‘amazing.’ The amount of repetition in the book, especially in the front half, made it virtually impossible not to skim.  Motivations, backstory, even entire phrases were repeated over and over, sometimes paraphrased, sometimes not. Much of the beginning backstory was told, not shown, in some incredible info dumps. The back third lagged and the last one hundred pages were superfluous, and only served to drag down a story that had a decent pace and strong tension, under the guise of a ‘lesbian’ happy ending which, of course, always involves marriage and a baby. It is a romance, after all.

Formulaic, of course, doesn’t mean a book is bad, by any means. In the romance genre in particular, readers have expectations as to how the story will progress, and SWORD does not disappoint. The romance between Talon and Shasta develops at a decent clip, with each interaction pushing their physicality that much closer to actual sex. The tension is palpable, the chemistry strong, and the characters dimensional enough that the lack of distinct voice can be overlooked. For a romance book, it’s really good. For an action book, or sword and sorcery fantasy, it’s mediocre at best. SWORD tries to juggle between the two and this is where it stumbles–when it tries to world build too deeply, offering stuttering political intrigue and extended battle scenes without sufficient tension or character buy-in. It shines best in the romance, the love triangle of chambermaid-guard-princess, and the relationship between Talon and her sisters.

Indicative of its time, SWORD also suffers from white default, and not subtly enough to be ignored, even with the steamy sex (not that it should ever BE ignored, but one slip or two you one usually eyeroll their way through). The consistent othering of Talon is exhausting, and Shannon seldom misses an opportunity to bring up Talon’s skin tone and how dark it is compared to everyone else (no one else HAS skin, as far as the narrative is concerned. No one else’s skin tone is every mentioned, therefore I deem it now canon that they are walking skeletons with muscle).

Talon grinned, well aware that her dark Outlander coloring and androgynous, elfin features…

…and looked down at the handsome olive-skinned face resting peacefully…

What a strange person stared back at her, she thought: this androgynous dark face with its delicate elfin features…

…picture his smooth olive skin in the lantern light.

…but for the first time she noticed how the soft white linen shirt seemed to glow against his farm olive skin…

She planted kisses on every inch of the olive skin that she could reach…

The fabric fell back to reveal a mass of ugly bruises that spread across the olive skin in a terrible rainbow…

…and Shasta’s blue feather necklace resting against the dark throat.

…the glorious warmth of her dark skin…

…and the dark skin of an Outlander…

We get it. She’s got olive skin that is apparently very dark despite olive skin not actually being all that dark. Meaning everyone else either has no skin, or is so lily white they are nearly translucent. Also dark skinned people don’t belong in the Only Kingdom That Matters. *sigh*

Another persistent problem in lesfic writing is dealing with butch characters who wear binders. The issues with this tend to stem around two focal points: 1) there is a line, though somewhat blurry, between butch women who wear binders as a presentation effect, and non binary people and trans men who do so out of gender dysphoria. Throwaway lines like so-and-so sometimes almost forgot they were a girl–erase that line and therefore scoot towards erasing our trans siblings. One does not forget their gender–it is an intrinsic part of who we are. A butch women is a woman, no matter what she wears unless she states otherwise. She isn’t going to forget she is a woman, unless she is in fact not one at all (perhaps nonbinary or a man, and working towards that realization). And SWORD establishes very early on that Talon is not a man:

…and contrary to popular belief–and evidently her own rebellious body–she was most definitely not a man.

and yet, we get this line a handful of pages later:

‘Have I been impersonating a man so long, she wondered, that somehow I’ve become one, on the inside?’

And while the above are Talon’s own thoughts on trying to figure out her sexual attraction to women, they still edge on problematic without a narrative rebuttal. Especially as Talon’s gender reveal comes without her consent, which is a consistent and really big problem in fantasy narratives. Forcible gender reveals, whether on gender nonconforming people or not, are an act of violence. And while no one rips or tears Talon’s binder (thank goodness!) she is still forced to reveal her gender after being wounded (trope! take a drink!):

“I’m tired of this, Talon, I’m sick of all your silly games and secrets. If you can’t give me one good reason–“

“I’m not a man!”

The second, more pressing issue for SWORD is the effect of a binder. Anyone who has worn a binder can tell you two things: 1) they aren’t comfortable for long term wearing (think of how much you love taking off a bra at the end of the day, now compound that times 1000) and 2) they’re dangerous. The long-term repercussions of binder wearing, especially 24 hours a day, is well documented in medical literature. They also restrict your breathing, as well as permanently deforming your ribs and moving your internal organs, much like a poorly-fitted corset.

Leaping into the center of the room, she launched right into her routine, executing two cartwheels and a front flip, bending backward, and then kicking into a handstand. With exquisite precision, she lifted one hand off the ground and held the position while one of the smaller troupe members placed delicate cups of steaming tea on the tups of her toes and in her open hand.

Hence, the idea that Talon has been wearing a binder since puberty, while working as an acrobat and then training as a swordsman, and has absolutely no issues becoming absolutely fucking fantastic at everything she does, stretches the suspension of disbelief. That she makes it into her twenties and has no long term health effects from said binder, is also highly unrealistic. SWORD is a fantasy, yes, but with a focus on lesbians and lesbian lives. As such, these particular areas deserve a bit more scrutiny than the rest.

Despite all of that, SWORD OF THE GUARDIAN was a fun read, with some very tight romantic tension and nice sex scene near the end (“Well then, Corporal, I hope I remember to whisper when I’m calling out your name.”). For those tight on time, feel free to skip the last 50-100 pages, but definitely don’t skip the beginning, as the sexual tension is set up well and is a delight to follow.

You can get yourself a binder that somehow doesn’t crush your ribs, grab a sword, and seduce a princess in paperback here and ebook here.

P.S. And yes, I did note the anatomically incorrect fungi. Spores can’t and don’t burrow, just for clarification, even in fantasyland.

 

Review: Shell Game by Benny Lawrence

Genre: fantasy – low

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: none

Review

He said, “My name is Hasak, and I am going to rule these islands.”

She said, “My name is Darren, and I am going to punch you in the nose.”

So begins one of the most enchanting and erotic lesfic books I have ever read (and erotic without any actual on page sex, either!) Darren is a (not great) pirate, hell bent on stopping other (not great) pirates/warlords from continuously plundering little villages. She’s also a noble–outcast from Torasan Isle for daring to fall publicly in love with a woman.

That first relationship ended badly, as they tend to do. Now, with no home and no wife, she sails the seas with a ragtag crew, looking for assholes to punch and fishing villages to save.

Life continues to chug along at a normal pace until Darren stumbles into a fishing village that has just had enough.

The fishing village where I lived was nothing special–just a bunch of mud huts and a fishing skiff or two. And yet four raiding parties had invaded it in the past three days. The first set of raiders took all the young men, the ones with the muscle to work the oars of a warship. The second set took all the men older than twelve and most of the women as well. The third set took what food was left: sacks of flour and jugs of oil and piles of dried fish. The fourth set wasn’t very impressive.

With every island out for itself, the commoners are caught in between warring nobles, and their populations are dwindling.

Lynn, resident of said fishing village, knows an opportunity when she sees it. She challenges Darren, looses, and ends up literally tying herself to the mast of Darren’s ship, insisting Darren kidnap her and keep her in chains or, at the very least, ropes.

If you’re seeing the BDSM vibe already, good work.

Darren has no fucking idea what she has inadvertently signed herself up for. She’s crap at relationships and almost as bad at being a pirate. Lynn, on the other hand, knows exactly what she wants, and is hell bent on molding Darren into the hero pirate queen the world needs. Getting Darren to admit to her penchant for some kink in the bedroom is a nice bonus.

Darren eventually learns that Lynn has a dark past herself, it turns out. One that only a pirate queen can save her from.

SHELL GAME is pirate fantasy at its finest. There’s swashbuckling rogues, political intrigue, fantastic pacing, romance, and one of my favorite tropes: lesbians on boats. The characters are three-dimensional and it takes very little time to gain investment in the two leads.

The romance is hot. Hot. Hot enough that even though you never get any on page sex it doesn’t matter because you know what they are doing. The dom/sub relationship between Darren and Lynn is by far the best I’ve ever read in fiction, showcasing how the power dynamics should work, the role of consent, and the role of respect.

More than once, in some desperation, I wondered whether I would have to keep her in a small metal box to protect her from the others. But Lynn never allowed me to protect her. She had a sharp tongue and a level head, and a strong sense of pride, and she gamely took on the job of carving out her own place on board [the] ship. She did let me show her what parts to kick on the human body to inflict maximum pain, but that was about the limit of what I was allowed to do.

The banter alone is enough reason to read the books. Some favorites:

And every time, I would whisper, “You know, I’m not really a pirate queen.”

And every time, she would whisper back, “Do you honestly think that anyone can tell?”

—

They say he foamed at the mouth while he was fighting, and each time he impaled one of his victims, he let out a shuddering pant, as if he had just–well, you know.

—

He moved, but as he moved, he muttered, “Your slave is going to kill us for leaving you.”

“It’ll be good for you,” I called after him.

“What? Being killed?”

“It teaches humility.”

—

Iason was on his feet, screaming to everyone and no one, “Kill her! Kill the bitch!”

It’s always the same. Just once, I’d like someone to point at me and scream, “Giver her a foot massage! Give a foot massage to the bitch!”

—

And of course, Burke occasional slings some life truth in the narrative, such as:

I would like to pause at this point to share something about women that it took me a very long time to learn. If your girl tells you that she has a headache, she is sending you a message in code. The message is that she wants to play a game, and the game is called, “Figure out what is bothering me by reading my mind.” If you fail to guess right, you lose. If you do guess right, you still lose, because you should have known that something was bothering her before she said anything. Either way, be prepared to set aside a couple of hours for back rubs and apologies.

SHELL GAME is an absolute pirate delight. There’s really no excuse not to read this book, unless you’re a asshole noble, or an abusive step mother, or just plain dead inside. Join Darren and Lynn on the Badger in ebook here and print here.

 

To read the review for the sequel, BEGGAR’S FLIP, click here.

Contest!

Bill Tracy and I have conspired up a fun new contest to celebrate the release of both of our books. If you’re a fan of lesbians and also giveaways, read on (copied from Bill’s newsletter post for consistency)!

 

Contest for Ardulum and Fruits of the Gods!

J.S.Fields and I are in the same critique group, which means we help provide feedback to each other when we’re writing books. But this also means we get the chance to have some fun when we write. And in this case, we have a scavenger hunt for you several years in the making!

J.S.Fields released the last of their Ardulum series on June 10th; a collection of short stories set in the same universe as their three-book series. You can find the whole series here (and you’ll need a copy of book 2 for the contest, at least!)

The Contest:

We’ve each hidden a cameo character in our respective books. J.S.Fields has hidden one of the inhabitants of Fruits of the Gods in Ardulum: Second Don, and I’ve hidden an Ardulan in Fruits of the Gods. The first people to email methe section of text with the cameo gets a prize!

The Prizes:
The first person to find the cameo in Ardulum: Second Don gets a soft enamel pin and an audio book code, courtesy of J.S.Fields.

The first person to find the cameo in Fruits of the Gods gets one of the few remaining Dissolutionverse buttons, a postcard with the map of the Nether, and an eBook of Tales of the Dissolutionverse.

The first person to send in both cameos at the same time (a different person than above winners) will get a mailed copy of Tales From Ardulum  AND a copy of Fruits of the Gods, each signed by the authors (plus maybe some swag thrown in…)

Where do you get these fine books? As it happens, NineStar Press is running a deal for June and Pride month. All these books are available on their website, and you can get 40% off your purchase by entering PRIDE as a coupon code, until June 30th! That means you can buy all of these books at once for only $21.50 instead of $36!

The Books:
Fruits of the Gods (Contains the Cameo)
Ardulum: First Don
Ardulum: Second Don (Contains the Cameo)
Ardulum: Third Don
Tales From Ardulum

Remember to put in PRIDE as a coupon code to get 40% off!

Review: Fruits of the Gods by William C. Tracy

Genre: fantasy (high/epic)

Pairings: f/f, f/m

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, trans, cis gay men

Warnings: (as listed on the book jacket) abuse, rape, mutilation, torture, incest

Implied Tropes Later Subverted (but important to note anyway incase of trigger): lesbian after rape, magical travelers, Kill Your Gays

Review

Disclaimer – I worked as a CP and sensitivity reader for this book. I am more intimately familiar with its content than most books I review

Sisters Belili and Kisare, born slaves, find a magical box with a strange seed while out working one night. Determined to change their fate, the sisters escape from the orchard and, with the help of another group of outcasts, learn to use their own magic to bring back the gods who once ruled the land.

Epic fantasy is rare in small press, which is why I always get so excited when I find it.

FRUITS is a blend of the grit from GAME OF THRONES and the regimented magic system of any of Brandon Sanderson’s work. It paces much more along the lines of STARLESS by Jacqueline Carey, and has elements seen in many small press SFF titles, such as deeper introspections.

The POV is pretty tight for epic fantasy, juggling only between Bel and Kisa. This takes out the elements I find most irritating in epic fantasy–the constant head hopping–and allows for a steady pace as the sisters move from journey to final showdown at the palace.

The secondary characters get ample ‘screen’ time in the book, from the charismatic Hbelu, prince of the Asha-Urmana, to the delightedly subversive Ligish–a slave turned spy. Keeping with epic fantasy tropes, the good people versus villains are clearly delineated, and our villains are the mustache-twirling level of evil that can be really nice to read–especially when they get their just desserts.

FRUITS has trigger warnings, and with good reason. Some caustic themes are explored in the narrative, and some problematic tropes are presented (and then subverted), including a ‘kill your gays’ fake out (unreliable villain diatribe, don’t worry, no queer people actually die!), a ‘caravanner’ stereotype, dealt with through larger worldbuilding, a piece of which is quoted below:

(here Kisa describes the ‘camp’ of the Asha-Urmana (caravaners), which is nothing of the sort)

The construction was finer than the master’s house, and the boards on the upper portions of the dwellings were coated with a clear varnish that kept the original glow of the wood. The stone at the base looked like polished marble, and Kisare wondered where they quarried it. The stone at the Aricaba orchard was gray and drab granite. This marble fit together so tightly she could see no crack between the blocks. The streets were similarly made of flat fitted stones. 

It’s worth noting, however, that the rape and incest portions take place entirely ‘off-screen.’

For queer content, the book has a nice romance line for Bel and Ligish, though they do meet through a shared trauma, so keep those trigger warnings in mind. Queerness is canon in the world, and plenty of instances are described through basic worldbuilding, such as:

“Once we get you better clothes and a little paint for your faces, you will have half the population of Karduniash falling over you.” She leaned in closer. “And I’m not just talking about the men.” She laughed at Kisare’s expression, but Bel looked thoughtful. “The capital is a lot different from a mountain orchard.”

One of the major secondary characters is a trans woman, and her identity is neither brutally revealed (so help me if I read another ‘clothes get ripped off and oh so-and-so is a different gender oh my! book I will scream), nor more than a blip on anyone’s radar. Gender as a whole is dealt with well, and I am particularly fond of the scene below, where Bel is trying to figure out which of the ruling twins is the man and which is the woman:

“So this is the pretty one,” the one on the right said. Belili used the last of the prunus juice, held under her tongue, to look at the person’s throat. Female. Then the other was the male twin.

I’m a sucker for a clearly defined magic system (which is why I read Sanderson), and the fruit magic tied to hair color really worked for me. Like any good magic system, the benefits and drawbacks are well defined, and it is a delight to watch Bel and Kisa discover not only their own colored hair (all non-magic people are blonde in the book and slaves’ hair is bleached weekly to hide any magic hair they might possess) but their ability to wield the godfruit.

The sisters’ interactions, from loyalty to bickering and back again, came across as particularly authentic. Though the two must rely on each other to survive, old slights still crop up and, as they are worked through, help round out the characters. It’s also really nice to see an epic fantasy lead set that isn’t a m/f love interest set, or a group of men/elves/orcs/dragon slayers, whatever. And even with two female leads there is no backbiting and cattiness–just two sisters who need each other, love each other, but also really don’t like each other sometimes. Just like real life.

Lovers of Brandon Sanderson’s MISTBORN trilogy, GAME OF THRONES (yes, there is incest between twins!), and epic fantasy that doesn’t need a whole new language to function, will enjoy FRUITS OF THE GODS.

You can get your own malus fruit and join in on the adventure here by preordering!

Tracy’s website

Tracy’s Goodread’s page

 

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.

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