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: Compass Rose by Anna Burke

Genre: science fiction – dystopian, pirate, lesbians on boats

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: implicit racism in the narrative, racist language not refuted in-narrative or by authorial voice

Review

The year is 2513. The apocalypse came and flooded the Earth. Land is scarce, the navy rules, and most people live on boats, either as part of a naval force or as a pirate.

Rose is a member of the Archipelago fleet (a navy fleet). She’s a big rule follower, clearly likes in-charge women, and doesn’t mind the company of the ladies. When Admiral Comita sends her on a daring mission – to infiltrate the pirate ship Man-O-War, Rose has no option but to accept.

And oh, lesbians. This is the pirate ship of your dreams. It has a hot lesbian pirate captain. It has a ragtag crew. It has danger! Power play! Hot kissing scenes! Seeeeeecrets! Racism!

Damn it.

This could have been the perfect book. And it almost was. God, the chemistry between Rose and Miranda is hot. HOT. Their eventual sex scene will leave you unable to work for the rest of the day. You will. not. recover. There’s political intrigue and beautifully rendered worlds and three-dimensional characters. There are Lesbians. On. Boats. I mean, I literally don’t know what else to ask from a book, except maybe that it check its implicit and overt bias at the door.

So, let’s lay it out, incident by incident.

Our opening scene is Rose being assaulted by Maddox, a large, brown man.

I didn’t have to look far. Maddox’s large bulk towered over me, a bead of sweat dripping from his crooked nose to the floor….Maddox’s chiseled chest glistened in the light of the bioluminescence, the genetically modified algae that flowed through the light tubes of the ship casting blue shadows over his brown skin. I entertained myself with a fantasy of plunging several sharp objects into his over-developed pectorals, but kept my mouth shut.

Unsurprisingly, the skin tones of the white characters are seldom, if ever, noted (our MC is brown skinned as well, which is noted early in the book. Annie, a secondary character, is noted as having ‘dark’ skin. These are the only skin descriptors we get. I am left to assume all other characters were walking skeletons with some musculature, and no skin at all). This is known as white default. But more of an issue is the trope of large, black and brown men, especially very toned ones, being a threat. I could link about this ad nauseum, but here is a good place to start. This is another beautiful article.

So, we started the book off on the wrong foot. Sometimes things get better! Sometimes it’s just the one instance and the rest of the book is fine.

Sometimes it gets a lot worse.

On page 33 (print edition) we get our first racially-charged descriptors.

He had a flat face with a flatter nose, and his dark hair was slightly gray at the temple. The woman beside him was only slightly less intimidating, with biceps that were at least as thick as my thighs.

And I might have ignored it except we don’t get a name for said character right away, and by pg 35 we get:

“Are you a navigator or an engineer?” Flat Nose said with a sneer.

And it continues for several pages. Flat nose, of course, is a racial description for black people and some Asian people. Adding to the flat face makes this a clear Asian stereotype with very unfortunate implications. There are so many better ways to describe people of color that don’t involve radicalized, weaponized descriptors. Writing With Color is always a great reference, and great place to start.

And it’s just…so infuriating because this is otherwise such a monumentally great book! How can you not love a pirate captain who spouts lines like “I could take you any way I wanted you.” I mean, yes, please. Please.

Finally, we have our villain, Ching Shih.

Yup. Not even going to bother with a link on that one.

The fundamental difference between implicit bias and overt bias is that overt bias comes with intent while implicit does not. Not having intent, however, does not absolve someone of the damage caused from racism, whether implicit or overt. The coding, both implied and implicit, of all the major ‘problem’ characters (Maddox is brown, a stuffy, gruff guy is Asian, the biggest ‘villain’ of the piece is also Asian) is a bad trend. Yes, our MC is also brown but with the white default at play, we are still in a very white world, where most of the PoC are villain coded.

And that’s not okay.

So while this book could have easily been absolutely magnificent, and in many ways it was, that doesn’t mean we should overlook the bias, or not discuss it. PoC deserve to have representation in books, and they deserve that representation to be good representation, where they get to play the full spectrum of roles, from villain to hero and everything in between. The queer community has been active for years in discussing queer-coded villains and homophobia. As a community we owe it to our intersectional queer people, and the PoC community at large, to voice our concerns over other forms of bias, not just the ones that affect the white parts of our community.

You can purchase COMPASS ROSE and try to navigate the minefield of bias to get to the freaking amazing sex scene here.

 

 

Review: Beggar’s Flip by Benny Lawrence

This is a review for a second book in a series. To read the review for the first book, click here.

Genre: fantasy – low

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, cis bisexual, cis gay man

Warnings: racism presented as in-world problem, racist language, implicit racism in the narrative. Deep misunderstanding about how fungi work

Review

In this (much anticipated) sequel to SHELL GAME, Pirate Queen Darren must return to her home of Torasan Isle and mop up the mess her father created. Darren was permanently exiled from Torasan, however, and returning, especially with a female lover, is not going to go over well.

Lynn, Darren’s ‘slave girl,’ is plagued by horrible flashbacks and nightmares of her step mother and the abuse she suffered in book one. Lynn knows Darren has to go home and become the noble she’s long tried to deny existed, and Lynn must find the strength within herself to let Darren go–even if it means losing her forever.

BEGGAR’S FLIP picks off right where SHELL GAME leaves off, once again transporting the reader onto the high seas with all their favorite crew members. Darren is still a foul-mouthed do-gooder running from her past, and Lynn is still a bossy little sub in the hero making business. FLIP forces both of the heroines to begin confronting their past trauma: for Lynn, her history as a serving girl and the relationship with her half sister, and for Darren, her exile.

The book begins with Darren learning of the death of her father, and watching her oldest brother die, in short order. She also learns of a traitor on Torasan that she is tasked with unmasking. Though initially unwilling to return, Lynn insists that she must, more to gain closure and heal old wounds more than anything else. Also, things are getting heated between Darren and Lynn’s sister on the lead ship, and there are only so many noble arguments Lynn can take.

Eventually, of course, Darren consents. We all know who is in control of this relationship.

Darren is greeted with open arms at her return to Torasan Isle by yet another brother (Milo), who has assumed control. Few of the siblings her age remain, except for one younger sister who seems particularly prickly. Darren is offered a chance to help rule (under Milo, of course), and a hand wave for past discretions. Her pirate fleet is useful, and her brother has big plans to bring Torasan back from the brink of economic and social disaster.

But people are starving in the streets. Darren’s father has bankrupted the isle and revolution is in the air. When the people rise up against the nobles and Darren is captured, imprisoned, and tortured, it is up to Lynn to once again enter into the land of nobility, save her hero, and do what must be done for her sister, her sister’s lover, and the people of Torasan Isle.

There’s a bit less swashbuckling in FLIP, and a lot more political mechanization. Romance, too, is pushed to the side in favor of character backstory development and focus on a few secondary characters, primarily Lynn’s sister, Ariadne, and her lover, Latoya. It’s still a great adventure, and a few nice BDSM lines are snuck in here and there to remind you of the flavor of SHELL GAME (and as with the previous book, there is no sex on page).

The biggest problem with BEGGAR’S FLIP comes in how it deals with in-world racism, and implicit racism. There were a few problematic elements in SHELL GAME, but they were small enough that, while noteworthy, did not substantially detract from the book. In BEGGAR’S FLIP the racism cannot be ignored, and in fact is dragged into the spotlight in several areas, where Latoya is mocked for her skin tone and size by other characters (the ‘good’ characters refute the overt stuff, it should be noted).

The issues here are more in how problematic elements are portrayed. Homophobia is presented as an in-world issue as well, yet none of the lesbian characters are subjected to anything near as pervasive and derogatory as Latoya. Lesbianism is also not called out at basically every opportunity, unlike the two characters with darker skin, who, the reader is reminded constantly, do not look like everyone else.

His saddle-brown face was flushed with anger. (note that the white characters seldom, if ever, get their skin tone mentioned. This is known as white default)

Compounding that is basically every description or scene with Latoya, wherein it is mentioned that she is black, or very tall, or very muscular, or very strong, or some combination. Or that she feels little pain. While this bias is implicit more than overt (and it is clear the author is trying very hard to give Latoya agency), it falls squarely into problematic tropes of consistent othering, magical negroes, sassy black woman, and the tropes of black people being valued for their strength and physical fitness (see essays here and here), as well as the dominant black woman trope.

I could see Latoya already, looming head and shoulders above the rest of my sailors as they cleared the decks. The coil of chain draped over her shoulder was smeared with bits of things that I didn’t want to think about.

“Sand ape.”

“You think that’s actually a woman?”

“I think you’d have to shave it if you wanted to know for sure.”

“I dunno if shaving it would help. Probably isn’t much of a difference between a gorilla and a brown bitch, once you take off the hair.”

Latoya smashed her fist down on the rail with a shattering crack, and wood splinters flew.

I jumped. I challenge you not to jump when someone of Latoya’s size starts breaking things near your head.

Some other minor quibbles came up, more dealing with a lack of research more than anything. It should be noted that placing moldy bread on an open wound is a great way to get an even worse infection and potentially die of sepsis.

“She scraped the mould off the bread, rubbed it on a rag, tied it against the sore, and then she pulled out a pallet and made me take a nap…And do you know, when I woke up, I felt better.”

The recurring discussion of using moldy bread to heal infections (instead of leeches and such) is deeply problematic, in that A) bread molds from several thousand different fungi; B) penicillin is derived from just a few species of Penicillium; C) Penicillium is a HUGE genus; D) it takes thousands of cultures of the right species of Penicillium to make enough penicillin to fight an infection; D) penicillin is a fungal secondary metabolite that is secreted by certain fungal species. It has to be extracted off a substrate. You could shove three whole loaves of moldy bread into an open leg wound and it still wouldn’t be enough penicillin to do anything. Anything.

Bows have not, nor have they ever, been made from rotten wood. Traditional bows, especially those made from yew trees, were made from the heartwood/sapwood interaction zone. Tree heartwood is dense and rigid. Tree sapwood (usually a lighter color) is springy and soft. With the heartwood on the inside and the sapwood on the outside, the bow has strength and elasticity. Sapwood is not rot. Sapwood is a normal part of the tree. Rotten wood, especially white rotted wood, does not bend–it breaks apart into mushy white strands.

“But let’s say you’re making a longbow. The best longbows come from yew trees that are rotten on one side. The other side, the good one, has to hold the tree’s full weight, so the wood there gets denser and stronger.

This is also not how reaction wood works, for the record. Wood that grows in a tree in response to lean, or stress like identified above, is actually very poor quality. Depending on whether it is a conifer or a deciduous tree, it lacks various layers of the wood cell wall and its microfibril angles are all kinds of screwed up. Reaction wood also has much more longitudinal shrinkage than regular wood. It is terrible for building anything, especially something you want to have strength.

Despite all of this, BEGGAR’S FLIP has all the fun quips and dialogue we’ve come to expect from Benny Lawrence, and is worth a read even if it gets filed under ‘problematic favorite.’ SHELL GAME remains one of my all time favorite books, and I would definitely read another in this series.

Regon liked breasts, Ariadne had two of them–relationships had been built on less.

Ah, but the best relationships are built on exactly that!

You can tie yourself to a mast of a pirate ship and hope for a very hot pirate queen lover by buying the ebook here and paperback here.

Review: Powerful Things by Kelli Jae Baeli

Genre: science fiction – light/general

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, cis bisexual (male and female)

Warnings: So. Much. Rape.

Review

Two generations ago aliens known as the Bandonese landed in a remote section of Colorado. The surviving crew being entirely female, the Bandonese went into nearby towns and got themselves pregnant. The resulting generation is now half human / half Banonese (I have so many questions) and trying to continue their way of life in isolation in Colorado.

Their leader, Mozzik, has secrets and is power hungry. he grows increasingly off balance as the book progresses (for no discernible reason) and a confrontation is eventually necessary. This drives our heroine, the half-human Sivon, to a nearby farm where she meets and falls for Zoey. Zoey’s father is on Mozzik’s hit-list, of course, because Plot, and Sivon must confront Mozzik if she is to keep her newfound relationship in one piece.

This incredibly low-stakes, light sci fi work appears to be a romance novella with sci fi seasoning thrown in for giggles. Sivon is barely three dimensional and follows the tired tropes of ‘woman who wants to love women under a patriarchal asshole,’ made more irritating by the gratuitous rape that appears to be a way of life for the aliens. It’s made worse by no direct authorial discussion of the rape issues, making it seem like the narrative supports it.

On how the first generation alien women got pregnant:

Crew members used their formidable mental skills to incapacitate the male humans who lived at the sprawling farm–the workmen, the servants, and male members of the large family that occupied the main house. They used the males for seed, and soon, the first generation of hybrids was born.

Had I not been hoping for some development a bit later on, I’d have stopped reading right there. I have no interest in reading about a rape-culture species.

And then, of course, yet more rape:

Corchi crawled onto the bed and began to work on Brix’s flaccid member, as Mozzik took a position on his knees behind Corchi, and lubed his own. The leader’s needs had to be met, Mozzik had always told him. And it was too dangerous to meet those needs with outsiders. He just had to do what he was told. It would be over soon, Corchi knew.

Lest you think it’s just the men getting raped, well,

He stood up abruptly, grabbed Sona and pushed her over onto her stomach, pulling her hips up and to the edge of the bed, so that her behind was up in the air. Then he unfastening [sic] his pants. “I’m not here to serve you. You’re here to serve me.” And he thrust inside her.

These two were forgetting their place, Mozzik thought. Just to make his point more distant, he grabbed Luna by her hair and directed her on her knees behind him. “You put your mouth on me, Luna. Now.”

She did as she was told.

Equal opportunity rape, I guess. All gratuitous, and none that furthers the (flimsy) plot.

The author also appears to either be unfamiliar with some forms of intersex anatomy, or was trying (poorly) for inclusion. The hybrids are described as having some bigger organs, including clitoris:

Sivon moaned involuntarily, as Zoey found the bud the size and shape of a lid from a bottle of eye drops.

First, that is probably the least sexy way to describe a clit during a sex scene. Second, micro penis is real and should not be in sci fi as some alien thing, or fetish thing, or whatever is going on here. Third, what a waste of an opportunity! Sivon has a micro penis but all Zoey does is treat it like a standard tiny clit. There was SO MUCH SPACE HERE for a unique sex scene. But it, like much of the book, seemed to be an afterthought.

I will say that if you’re looking for camp, this book has it. Viewed as a sort of a pulpy-camp novella, it could have its charm (without the rape, anyway). For instance, nothing says camp like sex-healing water energy from fated lesbian lovers:

“Our water…” Zoey considered the implication. “The water with our sexual energy in it.”

Sivon was breathing hard, this time not from sexual arousal. She dipped her hand in the water and poured a bit of water from her cupped palm atop another bit of brown foliage nearby. As the watched, it, too, came to life.

“Sivon…do you know what this means?”

“It means our sexual union creates some kind of…healing…in water, at least.” She thought about it. “They say that we are all made of star stuff. When the universe was formed, all things came from that. So maybe your star stuff and my star stuff is the same stuff. And it creates some kind of powerful force when it’s rejoined.”

“And that’s also why we are so drawn to each other. Like we being together because we are the same in a fundamental way. Like missing pieces to a puzzle, that completed a picture when they are linked in the right way.”

(Those tense changes happen a lot throughout the book, FYI)

This book is a hard pass, noting its lack of substantial plot, two-dimensional characters, and problematic tropes (and I don’t provide buy links for books with gratuitous rape). If you want lesbian romance, consider OPEN WATER by Pol Robinson (free of rape!). If you want lesbian science fiction, consider THE WRONG STARS by Tim Pratt. If you want lesbian thriller with lots of side characters with dimensionality, consider INTO THE DROWNING DEEP by Mira Grant.

 

 

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.

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