J.S. Fields

Author & Scientist

Review: Heathen, vol 2, by Natasha Alterici and Rachel Deering

This review is for the second volume in a comic series. To read the review for volume 1, click here. To read the review for volume three, click here.

Genre: fantasy – alternate history

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, cis bisexual, cis pansexual, gender fluid

Warnings: none

Review

Aydis is back! Having freed Brynhild and spent some time in Freyja’s love nest, she now searches for Heimdall, the entrance to the land of the gods, in an effort to end Brynhild’s curse (and take out Odin if the opportunity permits). Adventures abound, including a brush with killer mermaids and a ship full of buxom lady pirates.

Now separated from Aydis, Brynhild and Freyja get their own adventures, too, with Freyja falling from Odin’s grace for aiding Brynhild and Aydis. There’s a great scene where Freyja, trying to re-entice Odin, turns into a male version of herself which was perfectly drawn and very Loki-esque.

Although this volume doesn’t push the story particularly far, the art remains enchanting and the promise of an eventual Aydis/Brynhild arc continues to tease. Like the previous volume there are plenty of bikini-tops, cleavage shots (hell, Freyja doesn’t even wear a top), and women who just don’t give a fuck. Odin is still a jerk, but he’s down an eye so hey! Things are looking up!

Volume 2 is on Amazon, and should be there for a while, though I know there is still a rights issue going on.

Review: A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers

This is a review for the second in a series. To read book one, A LONG WAY TO A SMALL, ANGRY PLANET, click here.

 

Genre: science fiction (space opera)

Pairings: none

Queer Representation: gender fluid

Warnings: none

 

Review

Picking up right where THE LONG WAY TO A SMALL, ANGRY PLANET left off, Lovey, the sentient AI, is in her new body and not having a good time. We follow her journey to understanding herself and her new housing, along with her friends/guardians Pepper and Blue.

As with LONG WAY, there isn’t an immediate through line to this book. Instead, we hop between (mostly) Pepper and Sidra’s (Lovey’s new name) POV and their day-to-day interactions. Sidra learns about being human and being limited by having just two eyes and a limited memory, meets a gender fluid alien who kind of gets her, has a disastrous tattoo experience, and really fleshes out the struggles of Lovelace in book one.

Most of Pepper’s POV is from the past, wherein we learn about Pepper being raised by another sentient AI, Owl, on a craptastic world. Pepper is a genetically engineered girl–only one chromosome–and was bred to sort scrap in a factory and never see the sky. Her compelling backstory (my absolute favorite part of the book) sets the stage for how she interacts with Sidra, and allows for a plot to finally coalesce in the back quarter of the book, where the four characters–Blue, Pepper, Sidra, and Sidra’s new friend Tak–break into a museum to try to steal Owl out of the ship that has become her tomb.

This book didn’t have the same level of science in it as did LONG WAY, but the mod speak and pseudo forum-Discord-chat board lingo is spot on. As with LONG WAY, the characters are dynamic and three dimensional, and you can’t help but love all of them. Chamber’s hallmark is character development and character interactions, and both shine through in ORBIT.

As always, there is plenty of solid queer rep. Tak (an Aeluon, a species with four genders) is particularly well done, and the discussion of how Tak changes genders, and the hormones and cultural norms around that and Tak’s entire species, is utterly fascinating. Pepper is a nice inclusion for intersex rep, though hers comes through genetic engineering and not biological diversity.

The strongest parts of the book are the human(alien)/AI interactions. Pepper’s relationship with Owl is completely child and mother, and absolutely breathtaking as Pepper tries to navigate isolation and survival and puberty. Pepper’s relationship with Sidra walks that awkward friend/caretaker role, but Pepper’s compassion for AIs, stemming from her upbringing, is organic. Their arguments pull the reader from both sides, and the resulting tension keeps the book moving forward without any need for a plot.

Some other fun notes

It’s the attention to detail that always makes Chamber’s books stand out. A CLOSED AND COMMON ORBIT includes in-text AI user manuals, chatroom dialogue, and a bunch of other fun snippets that build the world:

Yes, you can have sex! You’ve got all the parts for it, and unless you’re coupling with an expert physician who spends a lot of time looking at your bits under good light (hey, to each their own), no one will be able to tell the difference. But before you get to it, please do plenty of research about health sexual relationships and proper consent. Ideally, ask a friend for advice. Similar to the recommendation about hand washing, you should also practise good hygiene and disease prevention practices for the same of your partner. There’s no guarantee that xyr imubots are up to date.

Which leads me to my next favorite part – the use of ‘xe’ and ‘xyr’ when you don’t know someone’s gender, or when they are not a ‘he’ or a ‘she’. Fantastic neopronoun, and used perfectly in text.

The Big Bug Crew. I just… the sims and their descriptions and Pepper’s connection to them are just so perfect. I know The Big Bug Crew. After reading this book I would play that sim and buy those toys. That’s how deeply affected I was by Pepper’s reactions to and time with the sim.

While the first book in the Wayfarer series wasn’t a strong favorite, A CLOSED AND COMMON ORBIT was an easy and emotional read. It can be read as a standalone or as the second in the series, and is a must read for lovers of character-driven space opera.

Get your own sentient AI system (illegal, of course, but still cool) here in print, here in audio, or here in ebook.

Read the review for the first in the series, THE LONG WAY TO A SMALL, ANGRY PLANET, here.

~~

Hey readers! Did you know you can subscribe to this blog? Don’t miss out on review Sunday and Ardulum Wednesday ever again! Look on the right sidebar for the grey box that says ‘Get my blog posts via email,’ enter your email, and hit subscribe. It’s that easy! (if you can’t see it, just scroll down a bit.)

Review: Ruin of Stars by Linsey Miller

Genre: fantasy (sword and sorcery) (YA)

Pairings: nonbinary (genderfluid)/female

Queer Representation: nonbinary, bisexual, aromantic

Warnings: much stabbing

Rating: 4 stars

Review

Once again I had more to say on a book (surprise surprise). You can read my official review here. For more in-depth analysis, see below.

This review contains massive spoilers because it is impossible to review the book without them.

The sequel to MASK OF SHADOWS, genderfluid Sal is back as Our Queen’s Opal–ready to assassinate anyone Our Queen needs, but also hell bent on finishing off their own assassination list for the murder of their homeland, Nacea. Much like Arya Stark, Sal has a list and will do anything to cross the names off. Severed ears, missing children, rouge magic, and murderous shadows, however, keep getting in the way.

General

This was much the same as the first book in terms of plot and pacing. The start was a bit slower to get into, as there was very little rehashing and it was rough to remember all the (numerous) players in the court. I didn’t get really hooked into the narrative until page 159 (I actually dog-eared the page because I got so excited). Things got better after Sal started their quest and the character number dropped to just them and Rath, and a few additional characters. There was just as much violence and gore as the first (which was not a problem–it was very well balanced) and once again, the secondary characters really shone through. So let’s talk about…

Characters

Maud remains my favorite person in the series. She’s nuanced, complexed, and so well written than I would pay cash money, right now, for a book just written from her POV. I would read this entire duology again from a Maud POV as well. She is an absolutely delightful duplicitous servant and her devotion to Sal is just perfect. Her interaction with Sal on page 40-42 is just so quintessential Maud. There was never any doubt in my mind which team she was playing for. Please, Linsey Miller, can we have a collection of Maud shorts?

Elise gained some additional dimensionality in this book and went from simple love interest to plot-relevant sidekick. Her romance with Sal remained a bit lukewarm, but that was by design, as the two have quite the falling out about midway through.

The villains were flat out delicious. All of them. I love morally grey people (as anyone who has read the Ardulum series will know), and it was wonderful to go through their mental mechanisms and rationalizations. There were times when I could have easily sided with the villains, too. Burn Nacea! Maybe just leave off the shadow business…

To the enby stuff

Yes okay, enough rehash. You’re here for teh gay, I assume. I was pleased with MASK OF SHADOWS and its portrayal as genderfluid as just part of in-world life. Some explanations had to be given, but generally it was a non-issue. I know from discussions that the author was asked to step up the enby issues in this book, and she certainly did so. I’m not sure I like it? I don’t dislike it, but coming in the second book of the series felt a little jarring. It also only played out in the first half and disappeared again in the back half of the book. Because of all this the issues surrounding Sal’s gender fluidity, it felt tacked on instead of natural, and thus every mentioned jumped out at me, instead of drawing me farther into the book.

I want to make it very clear though, that A) I realize this is not the author’s fault and B) due to the almost complete lack of nonbinary rep in mainstream published YA literature, these kinds of call-outs to identity are almost mandatory. It’s rote for me, but not the cis fifteen year old, necessarily. So in this case, as frustrating as I found it, it has a very legitimate reason for being there.

I did really miss the emphasis on the fluid nature of Sal’s gender in this book. In MASK OF SHADOWS we got to see a lot more of Sal as a woman, Sal as a man, Sal in-between. It made the outfits fun and the titles fun and really helped to humanize Sal. We only get one of those instances in this book, on page 189:

“Lady Opal,” she said–I was but I didn’t like the way she said it, like she’d say it no matter what–and smiled.”

The subtly of this sentence is what made me love MASK OF SHADOWS, and was something I missed a lot in RUIN OF STARS, where Sal’s pronouns seem to uniformly get shoved into ‘they’ instead of bouncing between she, he, and they.

I also enjoyed the extended time with Elise and her canon bisexuality. It was only briefly touched on in the first book, but here it is a major bone of contention that actually drives part of the plot. Erlend sounds like an awful country, btw, and I’ll take a hard pass on a tour package to there, even if we get to see shadows.

The sex scene with Sal and Elise (page 372) was lovely, not only in the way it was written but in that there is no great ‘what’s between their legs’ answer. That is really the crowning achievement of this duology–Miller manages to write a three-dimensional genderfluid character without ever feeling the need to dip into the assigned gender at birth, Sal’s anatomy, or anything like that. The reader is left with absolutely no idea if Sal’s body has a penis or a vulva, and it doesn’t matter in the slightest to anyone in-world. Sure, the Erlend people want you to have one gender and stick with it, but no one appears to have an issue with genitals and gender.

So, as violent and bloody as the world is in these books, in many ways, it’s a lot nicer than our own.

 

You can buy RUIN OF STARS here in paperback and here in ebook.

 

Review: Mask of Shadows by Linsey Miller

Genre: fantasy – sword and sorcery

Pairings: nonbinary (gender fluid)/female

Queer Representation: lesbian, gender fluid (nonbinary)

Warnings: none

Rating: 4 stars

 

Review

Sal is genderfluid orphan of young-ish indeterminate age and an excellent thief. Haunted by memories of ‘Shadows’ and the death of parents, siblings, and homeland, Sal decides to join the tournament to become the queen’s new ‘Opal,’ one of a small group of mercenaries that kill on the queen’s behalf. Sal hopes that position will come with enough influence and access to take out a pretty substantial hitlist from the destruction of Sal’s homeland. But to get the position, Sal must be the last alive in a sort of ‘Hunger Games’ style competition, and an unexpected romance may lead to some unintended consequences.

The plot

Generally, this was a well done, standard ‘Battle Royale’ style book. One part Hunger Games, one part Throne of Glass, the book’s main arc deals with a number of competitors trying to kill each other off in order to become the last one standing and therefore, the queen’s Opal. There’s good worldbuilding and backstory, a decent number of secondary characters, and the pacing is good (excellent, even, for a YA, which, to me, seem to run slower than adult books–although this book definitely spans into the murky waters of YA/adult). While the ending is inevitable and involves no twist (not really a spoiler – Sal becomes Opal…we all saw that coming), there’s a neat tie-up segment at the end that gives a lot more depth to the story and sets the stage for the second book in the duology.

I think my biggest issue with the plot, overall, was just the more or less constant fighting. Of course I understand that is a major part of this book, but it seemed to come at the expense of character development and depth of story. More on that below.

Characters

The secondary characters in this book were top notch! Maud is an outstandingly 3-D servant woman, and Ruby shines as the pseudo-mentor. The love interest is intriguing, although remains firmly in just the ‘love-interest’ camp, and doesn’t really get any fleshing out until the last chapter or so.

My main issue, and this is my main issue for the book, is the lack of character development for Sal. I read this book entirely because it had an enby main character. And while the gender fluid moments were real and excellent (note: nonbinary is a huge umbrella term that encompasses many different identities. While I am nonbinary, I am not gender fluid, as the MC is, but we do share an umbrella), I had no other points under which I could connect with the main character.

Sal had a lot of anger, but not much else, and seemed to be driven only by revenge. The character reminded me of Katniss from book three of the hunger games, when most of her humanity had been stripped away. That’s more or less where we start with Sal, which makes it hard to really get invested in the journey, especially since we’re left basically in the same place, emotionally, as when the book started.

To be fair, however, there’s as much character development with Sal as there is with most adult fantasy characters (think Vin from MISTBORN), so I suppose I’m just used to seeing more character arc in YA. The action was definitely all there, so readers looking for murder, thievery, swords, knives, archery, and a fun greenhouse filled with poisonous plants will definitely enjoy this book.

You can buy MASK OF SHADOWS in paperback here and ebook here.

 

Random Notes
If you have the hardback edition, you may have noticed that Sal has female pronouns on the dust jack blurb. This was not supposed to happen and has been rectified in the paperback, but may still be present in some editions. Don’t let the copy mistake turn you off this excellent book!

Review: Dalí by E. M. Hamill

Genre: science fiction (space opera)

Pairings: nonbinary/female, nonbinary/male

Queer Representation: gender fluid, third gender, trans masculine, trans feminine, agender

Warnings: violence against enbies (may be triggering for some)

Rating: five stars

 

Review

Dalí, a human, third gender changling, used to be a highly regarded diplomat. That all changed when their husband, wife, and unborn child were murdered. Adrift in suicidal thoughts, Dalí gets into one too many fights and stumbles across an interplanetary conspiracy to sell other third gender changelings to the highest bidder. Dalí agrees to help rescue their fellows, but the conspiracy is much deeper than they feared, and making it out alive isn’t exactly a high priority.

Plot

A very space opera-y space opera, Dalí gives a look at a pseudo-dystopian future in which being born nonbinary is common (that’s not the dystopian part, clearly), but factions from Earth would prefer to see people ‘go back’ to just male and female. Add in a mess of aliens and Dalí’s proclivities for sexual encounters and you get an intense book filled with intrigue, sex, betrayal, and a host of uncomfortable parallels to our modern society.

Although I found some of the scenes too brutal at times (I see and experience plenty of enby discrimination in day-to-day life, so I don’t always care for it in my books), the book was very well written and the pacing, especially in the second half, excellent. I was hooked after Dalí began to befriend a ‘pirate lord,’ and I got to see more of their personality come forward, instead of the (understandable) gut reactions we got in the first half of the book.

General

This book was recommended to me so many times that I waited to purchase a print copy, instead of getting an ARC from Ninestar (also my publisher). It was well worth the purchase and while I didn’t necessarily connect with Dalí on an enby level (we’re just different flavors of enby), the struggles they faced were all too real, and the conflicts, while set in space, were very 2018. It’s fantastic that stories like this are getting published, and that enby readers have more and more opportunities to see themselves in fiction. Much like with THE SEEDS OF DISSOLUTION, it was nice to see a variety enby types, from true gender fluid, to agender and third gender, to transmasculine and transfeminine. This representation, too, is key, in helping to educate readers that nonbinary doesn’t mean just one thing.

A solid, well-paced plot, strong writing, and a memorable main protagonist made this book a very satisfying read. Lovers of gritty books, such as TRANS LIBERTY RIOT BRIGADE, will find this book especially valuable, as will lovers of queer space opera.

You can buy Dalí in paperback here and ebook here.

 

Read the review for the sequel PEACEMAKER here.

Keep In Touch

Other J.S. Fields Sites

Good Reads
Patreon

Other Links