J.S. Fields

Author & Scientist

Review: Where You Linger by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

Genre: sci fi / horror anthology

Queer Representation: bisexual, trans, nobinary, lesbian

Warnings: none

 

 

There’s no great way to summarize this anthology so I want to start off with this: I read this book around six months ago and I am still thinking about the stories in it. Even when life ate up every last second of my free time, somehow, these short stories stuck in my brain like hardening tree sap. And I’m not a big horror fan, even gentle horror like this, which I think speaks to the absolutely superb writing from Stufflebeam (what a name!) Honestly, I don’t even remember how I got this book. It’s been on my shelf, has no publicity contact form (so it wasn’t likely mailed to me like most review material), which means someone likely handed it to me at a con.

Publicists know my taste. Random people at cons do not. So to have a book land like this, is just flat out spectacular.

My favorite story in this collection is The Lifespan of Shadows, in which a sentient house conspires to force its former occupants to remain there. The two soon-to-be victims grew up in the house, and story is filled with detailed memory that deeply resonates.

The house is flat out spooky, but in that highly-relatable way in which you can follow the progression from I’m lonely to I will trap these people here forever (relatable, not saying I’d actually DO that).

The house did not know the difference. The house wanted to be loved For a moment, it thought Beth would give it that without asking for something in return, But she would not. As for Jackie, her love for the house wouldn’t be enough to save it. That much the house knew like it knew it was made from pier-and-beam, from concrete and fluffy pink insulation, from wood and granite and carpet fibers. A terrible truth; it would never be skin. But it could witness skin. The house wanted Beth and Jackie to stay. Beth and Jackie would stay, if it was the last thing the house did.

I also really enjoyed The Damaged, so much so that I reread the whole short before writing this review. It doesn’t have much of an arc, this story, but it’s so engaging right from the start that it doesn’t really matter.

Robin Underwood is an engineer for Playmates, a line of artificial intelligence sex dolls. Due to some alluded to previous bad relationships and the contractual inability to own her own Playmate, Robin finds one of the homeless ‘damaged’ playmates, takes him home, and after some bathing and sex, decides to open him up and see where her programming went wrong. She ends up taking out his heart, which is beating far too fast, and examining it.

Night after night she brings home more damaged Playmates, each of which she sleeps with and then takes apart. All have a little box inside their heart and within each little box, a screw that’s coming loose. Eventually a Playmate catches Robin and works with her to solve the mystery, and we do get an answer in the end…but goodness the treatment of Robin’s serial killer nature is just so well done. There’s a lot of ‘this would be a crime if XYZ but it isn’t’ bits, and the absolute blasé nature of her shoving Playmate bodies into dumpsters, only being able to fall asleep to the waning light of a dying Playmate, is both macabre and brilliant.

I did this again and again, the next night and the next. It began to feel like part of a routine. Without it, without the dying embers of artificial life beside me, I found I couldn’t sleep.

With Halloween just around the corner, you owe yourself this book. Maybe a Playmate too? You can definitely buy them both here. And yes, there’s absolutely tons of sapphic content, and some nice nonbinary rep as well. Neopronouns ahoy!

Review: OF DEMONS AND COAL by Thomas Gondolfi

Genre: fantasy: alternate history / low fantasy / steampunk (blends the three)

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, cis bisexual/pansexual (not defined)

Warnings: none

Review

Demons power steam engines, occasionally get out of control, and rampage around killing humans. Witch Stella Ochoa and the Hellfighters are on the job, although a certain demon seems to have it out for Stella, personally. Stella, meanwhile, can’t quite seem to sort out her love life between her dead husband and prostitute/lover Karie. There’s a lot of dialogue and period scenery described, and that’s pretty much the book.

Okay, here’s the deal. While I didn’t dislike this book, it also failed to grab my attention. The premise is neat and there’s some great tension between Karie and Stella, but in the end I felt like the tension kept snapping every time we got an extended dialogue and/or description of the city. There’s a lot of over-description for a relatively short and plot-light book, although I will say for those who enjoy the nitty-gritty of how does it work in the magical steampunk subgenera, this may be right up your alley.

On the surface, interning a loose demon is simplicity itself–tease it back to where it doesn’t want to go and then imprison it. Two witches take turns baiting the fiend with mild damage spells, getting it to chase them. Three others block the demon’s view and access to anything but its tormenters. The last witch heals any of our team who is damaged in the process. In the end, he is also often the one that seals the beast in place. But for all of that, every hellfighter has to be on their toes as something always goes wrong.

And there are fun little nuggets of real life humor embedded between all the slice-of-life moments.

“So, how do I make this work, Henry?”

“First, we put this belt around your chest,” he says, lifting a belt from beside me.

“Excuse me?”

“My apologies again. I hadn’t considered women when I put it in. It buckles through the loop on the other side.”

I eye the leather belt. The height puts it right across my breasts. “Are you sure this is necessary?”

“Quite, Stella. It is essential if there are any sudden stops.”

Ahh, the joys of seatbelts and breasts.

Stella is an interesting protagonist, who doesn’t get to do a whole lot of protagging. She does have some excellent internal monologues every so often, however,

I oft wonder if I would have made Aaron a good wife. We’d only been married for a scant few months, and only weeks of that together. My cooking manages not to poison, but nothing better. Cleaning doesn’t come naturally. I can barely throw a stitch. And I dress only well enough not to be stoned by other Catholics. My only natural talents seem to be sarcastic, witchcraft, and sex.

The relationship between Stella and Karie may leave some sapphic readers unsatisfied, as there doesn’t seem to be resolution on Stella’s side (Karie is delightfully polyamorous).

In the end, if you love world building for world building’s sake and a lot of period-appropriate talk and and humor, you’ll like find yourself at home in OF DEMONDS AND COAL. If faster pacing and plot movement is your preferred MO, better to look elsewhere.

Trap a demon and maybe kiss a lady of the night by buying the book here.

Review: For the Good of the Realm by Nancy Jane Moore

Genre: fantasy: classic retelling

Pairings: f/f  (not the lead though, as far as I can tell)

Queer Representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: DNF

Review

An homage to Dumas, FOR THE GOOD OF THE REALM is billed as a THE THREE MUSKETEERS retelling, but with a female lead. I have not read MUSKETEERS, so my review will be colored by that lack of background knowledge.

Anna d’Gart is a skilled swordswoman who serves in a queensguard. Sent on a mission by the queen, she falls in with a witch and a few others, and is eventually tasked with protecting the Realm from an ancient magic.

The premise of the book was entertaining, and I did like the attitude of Anna, our lead heroine. Unfortunately the book utterly failed to capture my attention and I Did Not Finish (DNF) about halfway through. There’s a great story in there, buried under info dump after info dump, and agonizing scenes where the reader is told instead of shown.

Scenes that could have had great tension are summarized or skipped altogether, or, in the worst cases, are rendered tensionless by removing any potential peril:

On the following day, they were again traveling in their region where they had been attacked by the incompetent outlaws. While they were not concerned about those particular miscreants, it had occurred to them that the governor’s abuses might have caused others to turn to robbery and worse to feed their families. The forest was thick enough here that they were riding close to the main road even though they were using the small trails made by the local people when they foraged…

Being attacked by incompetent outlaws does nothing for the tension, nor do recaps of events, or summaries of current events. The narrative structure of the book kept me at a constant arm’s length from the story, and while I kept picking the book back up and trying to resume, after a few pages I’d hit another giant wall of info dump or summary and I’d have to put it back down again. There was also a repeated tendency to tell, then show, where we’d get character thoughts then we’d see the actions the character had just thought about, or that had just been summarized.

The book could have been half the length and been a really strong novella. It needed a strong editor’s hand. It’s possible the narrative style is similar to that of Dumas, but if so, I’d argue that a modern readership needs a more modern, cleaner style of writing (or at the very least, fewer summaries and info dumps).

This narrative style may work for some and hence, if feminist retellings of classics are your jam, you can buy the book here.

Review – Threadbare by Elle E. Ire

Genre: science fiction: dystopian

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, cis bisexual

Warnings: on-page, plot irrelevant rape scene

 

Review

Vick is more machine than woman, due to a fatal evening with some coworkers and having inadvertently signed her body away to the military upon her death. Kelly is an empath assigned to work with Vick to help channel emotions she can no longer control.  Vick has a lot of missing memories, Kelly has a lot of questions, and the military has a lot of operations that require a super soldier. Unfortunately those suppressed memories of Vick’s keep turning up and leading to rage, which compromises both the missions and Vick’s usefulness.

The military wants Vick alive but emotionless. Kelly wants Vick naked and in control of her life. The Fighting Storm organization is crumbling from the inside and it is up to Vick and Kelly to figure out who is out to get them, before Vick destabilizes and takes Kelly down with her.

So.

This book.

Premise: fun-super soldier with suppressed trauma needs an empath handler. It’s a natural romance opportunity. The first chapter has solid tension and a seemingly decent plot. Vick is pretty easy to like, and Kelly fleshes out the more you read. Nice start.

Everything unwinds around chapter three. Nonlinear timelines between chapters don’t help, and neither does the flimsy plot, which does not stand up to even a gentle prodding. Fighting Storm is a pseudo-military organization that helps people with their (violent) problems and maybe also is a government entity. The plot tries to establish and then gets repeatedly back-burnered by the romance arc, which starts and stops more often than my car. On the plus side, there’s some psychic sex scenes, which aren’t too bad:

 

Oh holy hell.

I was the reason she hadn’t satisfied her sexual needs, the reason she was so overwhelmed she was practically ready to explode and had to hold herself in check.

If she’d touched herself, I would have felt it. I would have known exactly who and when and how. Yeah, that would have been awkward for both of us.

 

Kelly gains three dimensionality as Vick looses hers–a function of the choices Vick makes, yes, but not helpful for the narrative. And at the end we get treated to an on-page rape scene which serves no narrative purpose except tittilation, then a plot/romance conclusion that is not at all satisfying (first part below so you can get the flavor of it):

I clench my jaw as he slips the carving knife under my collar and rips downward, slicing through both my envirosuit and the uniform beneath, all the way to my waist. Another flick severs my bra between my breasts, and the material falls away, baring me to his insane leer. My nipples harden to a painful state as the chill hits them. A glance down his body tells me they aren’t the only the only things that have hardened.

This is the first in a trilogy, but I won’t be reading the others. The book had a lot of promise and a very nice set up for a romance, but the plot was far too flimsy and on-page rape scenes are a big no for me. There were some solid sci-fi elements, but not enough to drive the narrative. I felt like the book tried to walk a 50/50 split between romance and sci fi, and failed to meet the trope expectations of either.

You can have telepathic sex with a hot android lady by buying the book here.

Review: A Little Light Mischief by Cat Sebastian

Genre: romance: historical

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, cis bisexual

Warnings: none

Review

Alice had her eye on that lady’s maid.

Yes. Yes she did. For like the whole book, which I read in about and hour and thoroughly enjoyed. I was not expecting this to be as good as it was. Wow.

The cover is a little…well it reminds me of the kind of romance novels my grandmother used to read. I almost didn’t buy the book because of it. But then I remembered how much I loved THE LADY’S GUIDE TO CELESTIAL MECHANICS, also an Avon Impulse book, and thought I would give this a try.

Not. Disappointed. This tiny novella packs a punch.

Alice Stapleton is a confirmed spinster, thanks to A) Mr. Tenpenny, the gentleman who accosted her virtue and then said she came on to him (oh the nerve!), B) her asshole father who kicked her out of the house for smearing the family name, and C) Mrs. Wraxhall, and older spinster who has brought Alice to live with her, provides everything she needs, and really would like Alice to have a better time (but isn’t going to push it).

Alice likes embroidery, so she spends her free time…embroidering.

Molly Wilkins is a lady’s maid who used to be a pretty decent thief and maybe still is, for the right mark. She works for Mrs. Wraxhall and is trying to stay straight (HAHAHAHAHAH ahem) but you know, Stapleton just looks so nice and pretty and is so damn proper and irritating and maybe if Molly just set her right on a few things…

Anyway.

Molly likes the ladies and embraces it. Alice likes the ladies and can’t admit it. Mrs. Wraxhall pretends to be oblivious to everything (hilarity). But Molly dragging Alice from her shell digs up more backstory than either were planning, and the two have to help each other to forgive, forget, and even embrace parts of their pasts.

This book is adorable. And short. It has no wasted words or pages, gets right to the flirting and sass, and has decent sex scenes. Molly is every part the seductress scamp with a heart of gold and Alice, though initially irritating, proves to be a really engaging lead by the end. Her father gets a sound smacking, as does Mr. Tenpenny (I’d love to smack the guy myself), true love blooms, and Mrs. Wraxhall is hilarious in her silent aiding and abetting.

Another solid lesbian romance installment from Avon Impulse. You can get your own sassy lady’s maid by buying the book here.

 

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