J.S. Fields

Author & Scientist

Review: Branded Ann by Merry Shannon

Genre: fantasy – historical (lesbians on boats!)

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: Scary Black Man trope, discussion of child rape, some off-page adult rape (not voyeuristic), ethnic slur (Gy*sy)

Review

Violet, former prostitute now merchant-wife, is setting off on the vacation / move of a lifetime with her new husband. They’re headed to Jamaica, where her husband’s land holdings and wealth will make her a queen among the natives (don’t worry, it’s not a colonial narrative) and allow her to leave her past behind.

Barely into their voyage, Violet’s ship is taken by pirates, who are lead by Branded Ann, a “woman with eyes like ice and a face marred by a mysterious cross-shaped scar.” But Ann isn’t after Violet and her husbands possessions, nor is the ship carrying any worthwhile cargo. Ann is after a portion of a map that will help her translate the portion she carries, and allow her to find her father’s hidden treasure.

None of this is of much interest to Violet of course, who gets to watch her crew and husband murdered. Violet makes some key missteps and Ann, who will kill anyone who looks at her but who can’t stand rape, has to take Violet under her protection to save her from the crew (this is all very well done, I have no objections to this scene). Violet has no intention of serving Ann or the crew, except as a scullery maid. Hence she’s left to scrub decks and make friends with the cabin boy–and slowly earns the respect of part of the crew.

As Ann’s scheming takes the crew farther afield, into dangerous waters that could spell disaster for the ship and its crew, Violet and Ann must learn to trust each other as a mole on the ship, other treasure seekers, and Ann’s own crew plot to kill them both. Trust isn’t something that comes easily for the merchant’s wife or the pirate, and the reader gets treated to the very best of the enemies-to-lovers trope, while on the high seas, and surrounded by murderous pirates.

Much like SWORD OF THE GUARDIAN, BRANDED ANN combines the very best fantasy tropes (herein, pirates) with my favorite romance tropes in a skillful, suspenseful, and hot stand-alone book. There’s a real plot that I actually care about. Both Violet and Ann are three-dimensional and have their own motivations. They have unique voices. The crew of the pirate ship are complex and distinct, and act with the moral grayness of, well, real pirates. There’s a reasonable, on-page sex scene and plenty of sexual tension before it, swashbuckling, fun outfits, a misfit kid, and a pirate with a heart of gold. Seriously, what isn’t to love in this book??

Unfortunately, like SWORD OF THE GUARDIAN, this book does have some tired racist tropes, primarly in the form of Black descriptions:

Then there was Mason, a giant of a man with skin so black it shone like polished ebony when he sweat in the sun. Rumor had it that Mason had originally been captured from Africa by pirate slave ships, and the captain had been so impressed–or perhaps intimidated–by the enormous man that he’d recruited him.

For those playing their TV Tropes bingo card at home, Mason hits the Scary Black Man trope, specifically Token Minority, Proud Warrior Race, and Gentle Giant.

The book is surprisingly realistic in how it portrays the brutality of pirate lives, though it does so without glorifying violence or giving us voyeuristic rape scenes. It’s a fine line not many authors can walk, and Shannon does it with grace. Be warned, however, that there is rape of Violet, though it is off page and no actual portion of the rape is discussed other than Violet’s frustration over the encounter.

Somewhat more concerning is one of the pirate crew propositioning the ten-ish-year old girl who ends up stowing away on the pirate ship, who Violet takes under her wing. Again, it’s just a proposition and nothing happens, but it does serve to really enforce the real brutality pirate life, and the very complex morals of Branded Ann’s crew:

Saunders reached out and took hold of Charlie’s arm. “Aw now, Sister, that bunk of yours is awful tiny, ain’t it? Maybe this little one ought to share berth with me.” The lecherous gleam in his eyes made Violet sick to her stomach. “What do you say, moppet, you want to come sleep next to your Uncle Saunders?”

There’s also a concerning passage from Violet’s past about a Gy*sy woman who is paid to give her an abortion, and the effects of said potion. So, racial slur and problematic context, in a one-page backstory.

Racial and rape issues aside, BRANDED ANN is decidedly well-written and walks the perfect balance between romance and adventure. With a publication date of 2008, some of the issues are more forgivable (rape, in particular, seemed to be almost required in fantasy books from the 1980s-about 2010) than others (at no point has the slur Gy*py been okay unless you’re Roma). Readers will need to decide if they can put the racism aside for an otherwise delectable adventure.

Grab a cutlass and join Branded Ann’s pirate crew here.

Review: Skywhisperers by Natasja Hellenthal

Genre: fantasy – sword and sorcery

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: ableism, ‘almond eye’ and other food-based descriptions, consent issues

Review

Nemsa is born into a world with stagnating landscapes and dried husks of people – a land without wind (don’t think about pollination and other critical life elements too hard or the premise unravels). Her arrival at a small village and the death of the wind seem a coincidence, and Nemsa grows up in a small village surrounded by anger and suspicion.

Of course Nemsa is not to blame. How could she be, having only one eye and one good leg? Still, the weight of blame from the villagers is crushing, so she goes on a quest restore the winds once she comes of age. While wandering from her village, Nemsa meets Xenthia–a Sky Whisperer–who may be able to help her restore the wind. Their target – the old, vengeful Sun Whispered. Along the way Nemsa discovers her Chosen One heritage, enjoys some celestial sex, and interacts with a fairly generic fantasy world.

The cover of this book was gorgeous, which gave me higher expectations than I think I should have had going in. And I’m not sure if the writing is a problem because of translation issues or just authorial skill. Regardless, SKYWHISPERERS  reads more like a belabored fantasy coffeeshop AU than a book, with extended emotions that rehash scenes from multiple character POVs, dialogue that doesn’t advance the plot, and a plot that only occasionally shows it head. The book is much more romance than fantasy, more of a romance set in a fantasy setting where the plot is occasionally brought around to remind the reader there is a purpose other than having sex with a Sky Whisperer. There’s an engaging story buried within, which could have been told in half the number of pages, and without the tortured ableism.

Nemsa is introduced to the reader as having a bad leg that causes a limp, and only one functional eye. This is yet another avenue of scorn from the villagers, and early on in the book we see a lot of the expected bemoaning around these disabilities.

But, even with her true heritage revealed, how can crippled and one-eyed Nemsa’s destiny be linked with that of the much older, immortal Sky Whisperer she grows fonder of by the day?

 

I’d hoped Nemsa might come to acceptance or find creative workarounds, or found she had great power in some other aspect of herself. Alas, she is slowly healed throughout the book (healing sex! take a drink!), and by the end she is ‘whole’ (she was never not whole to begin with).

Then, I experienced the most enlightened moment I had ever felt in my life. Suddenly, I could see with both eyes it seemed.

 

The cloud grew in size almost straight away and became yellow and red for a moment. I experienced a bright jolt of pain in my bad leg. But then, as I looked down on my left leg, which had always been crooked with the knee slightly swollen, I immediately noticed the difference. It looked the same as my other leg now and…as straight.

 

I swallowed hard at her sudden poetic outburst. ‘Yet, I haven’t lost hope and I know you haven’t. So, we are going to save the world, together,’ she looked away at my abandoned stick, then at my leg and nodded.

‘At least you can walk properly now and I don’t have to carry you.’

 

I walked away, glad to finally be able to properly without seeming feeble.

 

I felt whole.

 

There’s some really pretty (if not sometimes confusing) imagery in this book

All of my life, there had been no wind until she came. I had known only stale and fetid air–the dust only moved by the shuffling of my feet–so that when it started to swirl, I grew frightened.

 

That’s when I see her. She comes down the path towards me; the stark blue of her robe standing out among the red rocks like a picture I had once seen. My mother called it a forget-me-not.

Which is unfortunately paired with the very problematic food-based racial descriptors and various ‘exotic beauty’ references:

Still, to me, she appeared very much like a frightened, fragile bird. A bird with her wings clipped even. How could this girl possess any powers? Pretty though, mind you, in an innocent and sweet way, even if she had no idea how attractive she actually was. Or could become with her skin like dark honey, her almond-shaped tawny eye, and the strange hairstyle of the village people; giving her a certain appeal.

And then to top it all off, there’s some problematic consent issues:

I tried to stop her several times, but she thought it was for her sake. That too. Of course. How could I let her do this after all? She would die before her time. Suffer, catch the Sickness like so many others…How could I be so selfish? But I wasn’t. Xenthia ensured me that I wasn’t. She did this to save Lorian.

I started to cry, but she kissed my eyes. She felt my guilt, my inner torment.

‘It’s the only way, Nemsa, and you know it. We need you. I need you. I want to help and gladly. Please, open yourself up to me and let me love you,’ Xenthia said, her voice husky with desire.

With the right editing, this book has a lot of potential. Unfortunately there are too many problematic elements and tropes to make it an engaging read, even if you are into coffeeshop AUs.

Seek your destiny with the wind by buying the book here.

Review: Escape to Pirate Island by Niamh Murphy

Genre: fantasy – pirates, lesbian on boats

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, cis bisexual

Warnings: forced removal of a woman’s clothing which exposes her gender

Review

Catherine ‘Cat’ Meadows, born a landed lady, is also a smuggler on the high seas. After her husband’s death (along with a few others) Cat becomes wanted for murder and must take passage on a ship as a cabin boy (concealing her gender…I’m fairly certain you know where my review is going from here).

Lily Exquemelin is the daughter of a landed man and a whore, and has recently been orphaned. Her father of course has left Many Debts, and Lily must clear them or end up in debtors prison. She has an old treasure map and key left from her father’s privateering days. Desperation sends her to seek out a ship she can hire with very little money, for a crew that will sail without knowing where they are going.

Only scoundrels would take such a journey, of course, just as only scoundrels would take on a cabin boy with no experience and no references. Catherine and Lily end up on the same ship, where everyone has a secret and everyone is also hunting for Mr. Exquemelin’s lost treasure. There are fifteen thousand mutinies (an estimation), character motivations switch at the drop of a hat, a kissing scene that quickly leads to some lackluster deserted island sex, and a reasonably happy ending.

This is a very hard book to review. On the one hand, LESBIAN PIRATES. Sign me up. It has all the tropes I love–the bastard heiress, the brusque pirate with a heart of gold, a little bit of cross dressing, swashbuckling, and boats. The writing is solid in terms of syntax and grammar, and I never felt beaten to death with adjectives or endless redundancy. Structurally the story was fine, with a five part act and a wide crew within a decently depicted universe.

Unfortunately, the writing felt like the author was trying to subvert tropes, but didn’t understand enough about the tropes to subvert them. Other times it felt like they wanted to lean into the tropes but not enough groundwork was put down first. Cat is our ‘top’, but alternates between rough and tumble and being a giant pushover who can’t seem to drive the plot. She spends most of the book as a plot spectator, being pushed and pulled wherever the narrative needs her to go. Lily is the femme, sometimes a Power Femme, sometimes a High Femme, dependent upon plot needs and whether Cat is topping or not.

There was little voice distinction between the two leads, and it often felt like their personalities intertwined…as if they were one character continuously split in whatever direction the author needed. It was impossible to gain a foothold into the world, and Cat’s inability to push the plot lead me to skimming most of her sections. Normally hers would be the character I would be most engaged with, but there was just so much failure. And not failure in the world, so much as just failure to act.

The book also contained the trope I hate most in the world, the exposure of a character’s gender (/birth sex) by forced removal of clothing. It wasn’t as gratuitous as in some other books since Cat IS a woman, just masquerading by choice, but Cat is still forced to be naked from the waist down right before she is whipped with a cat-o-nine-tails. Hard pass. Especially with the jeering and leering that comes along with it from the pirate crew.

(trigger warning – the excerpt is below wherein Cat’s gender is forcibly revealed)

“Remove the boy’s shirt,” he ordered them.

The men stepped forward and, to Strong’s horror, they ripped off the shirt.

They laughed and stepped back to reveal what appeared to be a boy in a girdle. 

“What’s this?” Kingsley spat, infuriated. “Armour is it? Did you hope to spare yourself the pain? One hundred lashes!” He pulled a knife from his belt and tossed it to one of the guardsmen. “Cut it off.”

Strong looked round for Fletcher. ‘Where’s the man gone?’ he thought. He couldn’t understand why he wasn’t next to hm, ready to partake in whatever action they could. 

‘Few men can survive a hundred lashes,’ he was panicking, ‘few men.’

Then suddenly there she was.

No longer ‘Jack.’ By a long way, she was no longer Jack; her hair was loose in the breeze, her eyes defiant, and her chest bare. There was no shame about her manner. She stood like a Queen of the Amazons held captive by savages.

And yes, I do appreciate that Cat owns it there at the end, but the act itself, and the threat of doing more, is just so overdone for me. Props, however, go to the author for including the first ever discussion of menstural product needs on a pirate ship that I have ever seen.

There’s so much potential in this book, and yet it really fell flat for me. I felt no chemistry between the two leads, found the writing wandered where it needed to be snappy, and was too snappy where it needed to breathe. It’s not a bad read, it’s just a boring one. An additional round of edits to trim here and expand there could have really brought this out to SHELL GAME level of awesome. Still, if you’re into lesbian pirate adventures it is worth checking out. Boring lesbian pirates are better than no lesbian pirates, always.

Grab a confusing cowboy hat (see front cover) and join your own lesbian pirate gang here.

Review: Debris Dreams by David Colby

Genre: science fiction: military

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: trans*, cis lesbian, cis gay man, nonbinary

Warnings: use of the term ‘slated eyes’ to refer to people of Chinese descent, classifying binary trans as a separate gender (WTF???)

Review

It’s rare that I so deeply dislike a book that I know within four chapters that it is going in the trash, and not even in a book box. To be fair, we didn’t start out on a great foot. It’s YA and I generally do not care at all for YA. There’s always the odd exception, so I tend to plod through just in case.

This was a bad decision.

If you’re a fan of military sci fi, it definitely does have that, with all the mind-numbing battle scenes lacking any sort of solid character development (clearly I am also not a fan of military sci fi) that one would expect. The beginning is also decent, with our introduction to Drusilla Zhao, a sixteen-year-old girl who lives in the Hub, which is a sort of space station at the top of a really long elevator that connects Earth with space. It’s used almost exclusively by the Chinese-American Alliance to exploit the moon, which is sort of a future Australia colonized (and worked) by convicts et al.

The convicts get mad that all their hard work functionally saved the ecological crisis Earth was facing and, tired of being always put in harms way to benefit a planet they can’t go to, they blow up the giant elevator. Drusilla’s parents are killed (they’re engineers on it) and she and all the teens in group care are automatically conscripted into the military. This is especially hard on Drusilla, as her girlfriend lives on Earth as a civilian.

At this point we move into a sort of Starship Troopers sort of deal, without the comedy, and it’s battle after battle in the traditional trope of Drusilla eventually realizing she’s on the wrong side of the battle, etc. There isn’t much point to it, and no major stakes other than WAR! ZOMG! over and over, as we wait for inevitable turning point for our heroine.

The worldbuilding of the Chinese-American Alliance feels very Firefly to me, though with a bit more thought about the integration of the language (the frequent non-English words used appear to have been proofed by native speakers, so that’s decent). Still, language readers appeared to have missed this gem:

He was a young kid, younger than me, with the regular mixing of blonde curls and slanted eyes that marked most of the post-Slump generation.

For reference, the only people who routinely have slanted eyes, truly slanted eyes, are those with Down Syndrome. Other than that, slants to eyes occur across most populations, including European. *sigh*

But what had me yelling at the book over and over was its treatment of trans people as some sort of foreign gender:

Boys and girls and trans and unidentified around me groaned and rubbed at sore and bruised and tweaked muscles.

So instead of spending your day screwing your brains out with some of your best friends, writing letters to girlfriends or boyfriends or transfriends, or sitting in a corner sobbing until it hurts you get to much out the vats.

Trans men are men and trans women are women. They’re not some alien gender we don’t know what to do with. If you’re dating a trans woman, she’s your girlfriend. If you’re dating a trans man he’s your boyfriend. I’ve seen ‘xefriend’ used for the nonbinary equivalent (and quite like it) but ‘transfriend’ just smacks of othering, and really, really upset me.

There’s some nice neopronoun use and a mention of androgyne as a gender, so it’s clear the author was trying, and I get that. But this is what sensitivity readers are for. With the trans issues combined with the ‘slant eyes’ comment, I will not be providing buy links for this book. I do not recommend it, although I think with a few edits it could be a really nice YA military sci fi.

Review: Crier’s War by Nina Varela

Genre: fantasy: dark  (YA)

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian (potentially bi or pan, not explicitly stated)

Warnings: some potentially problematic interpretations of asexuality and aromanticism

Review

Once upon a time there was a queen so desperate for a child that she had one Made. As with all things involving royalty, Made people became all the rage, and soon the continent was filled with Automae.

Like any good sci fi tale, the Automae were treated as servants/pets and of course, rebelled. Automae won the war and now rule over humankind, occupying the latter’s former palaces and social structures.

Enter Ayla. Orphaned by Automae slaughter (including her twin brother…maybe), her only goal in life is to bring down the Made and cut off their source of power–a special mineral that must be mined from specific source. More immediately, she can best hurt the Made by killing Princess Crier, and very early on in the book she is conveniently hired as the princess’ handmaiden.

Of course, feelings get felt. Ayla’s never had much interest in romance (only REVENGE) and Crier is an automae (who are canon asexual and aromantic… in theory). Turns out that Crier may have the Flaw of Passion inside her, which her fiancé’, Kinok, has no problem holding against her.

While Crier struggles to identify friends and enemies at court and understand her (lack of) place in the monarchy, Alya’s narrow view of the Made is threatened by Crier’s attempts at friendship. A human rebellion is also brewing, and Crier and Ayla must decide which side they are on before the truth about Ayla’s past is revealed and the balance of power is forever changed.

CRIER’S WAR is an f/f enemies to ‘lovers’ tale, and very much a setup book for a longer series. The worldbuilding is fun if not a little generic, and the pacing distinctly YA in that an inordinate amount of time is spent mentally rehashing events and feeling feelings, which drags down the pacing. For a YA book, the pacing moves at a strong clip. For an adult book (which it isn’t, so it shouldn’t be judged as such) it is slow.

The two POVs, Ayla and Crier, are distinct and easy to empathize with. Crier has many android stereotypes, including lack of sexuality/passion, problems with emotion, super strength, etc. Ayla is all hot-blooded passion, most directed at the kill side of things (yay! stabby lesbians!). They’re a natural pairing, and Varela does a nice job of slowly ramping up the tension between the two and then backing it down with real problems, such as, how do you kiss a girl whose family killed yours?

The worldbuilding takes an interesting look at the Automae and humanity. While recent fiction has driven stories of androids wanting to improve upon human tech and dwellings and such (and certainly never retaining human rituals), CRIER’S WAR shows the POV of androids who actually embrace and retain all the silly little bits of human culture, like marriage and birthdays. It’s a very strong showcase of the book’s central theme, that the Automae, despite being Made, are human.

The only real issue in the book comes from how it interprets what makes us ‘human.’ Crier believes for a good part of the book that she is Flawed with Passion. This ‘allows’ her to fall in love with Ayla and become, as the book presents it, more human. The Automae are described, functionally, as Data from Star Trek, complete with ‘going crazy if your emotions go into overdrive’ trope. They’re beautiful, but heartless.

A few have bucked that stereotype and are presented as more compassionate and more human–by taking lovers. Crier is also presented in a similar light, where it is her love for Ayla and budding sexuality that turn her away from the ways of her android people and help her better understand humanity, and empathy. And, yes this sort of development is a fairly common trope in sci fi and fantasy, it still comes at the expense of an often trampled part of the queer spectrum. Sex, attraction, desire, romance, these aren’t things that make us human. For many they are an important part of self, but for others they aren’t. Asexual and aromantic people are still human. They don’t need to fall in love to have empathy, much as atheists don’t need to find religion to be good people.

Representation gripes aside, CRIER’S WAR is exceptionally well written, with an almost lyrical prose reminiscent of THE TIGER’S DAUGHTER (which was not without its own representation issues as well). The book does not stand alone, in that no plot arcs are resolved and the reader must continue to the next book to continue the narrative, but the character development is well worth it.

The cover is gorgeous, and well worth having in hardback for the embossing and delicate bronze imagery. The plot is complex enough that teens would likely be deeply engrossed (It’s not a trope if its your first exposure to it!), and the tandem coming-of-age stories of Ayla and Crier should resonate with many younger readers.

It’s not a book I would have on my own bookshelf, but it’s one I would hold for my kid, for sure.

You can mine some Iron Heart and make your own android in paperback here, ebook here, and audiobook here.

 

 

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