J.S. Fields

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May 25, 2018

Review: Banquet by Adan Ramie

Genre: science fiction (unclassified)

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: racism

Rating: one star. possibly five stars. Depends on what you’re looking for

Review

Rison Ecks, prisoner aboard a transport spaceship headed for…a penal colony (I think), gets marooned on a planet. The droid she befriended on her voyage is kidnapped, and Rison risks death, out of body orgasms, and unattractive women in order to save the droid and…get off the planet? I think? I’m not sure what Rison’s higher purpose is, honestly.

Normally I would break the review down into basic elements, like plot, characters, etc., but the lack of most of these elements in BANQUET make that difficult. Generally speaking, this book has all the campy elements of 1970s era pulp sci fi (+1 for slave girls, +1 for random lesbian sex scenes, -1 for white default, -1 for magical negro, +1 for not burying your gays) without the benefit of really any form of social commentary. The only person of color (barring purple and red skinned aliens) is simply referred to as ‘the dark man’ for the first few chapters until he and the ‘ugly woman’ are captured, leaving Rison alone on a planet filled with… strange lesbians and beings that like meat a lot (which is not a gay joke, and I feel like that was really a lost opportunity there).

For some reason not specified, possibly due to lack of character development, Rison chooses to save the captured droid she befriended on the prison barge, instead of the black guy or the ugly woman. Hence, she goes on a quest to find the thing, running into (not necessarily in this order): a mirage of her dead lover with whom she has sex, a random pregnant woman, a woman who gives her another woman to have sex with, but during the sex she leaves her body to talk with the first woman, the antagonist who really likes meat, and the love interest (I think) who is a really good cook.

Also there is a cooking contest? Did I mention that?

If it weren’t for the problematic implicit bias, the lack of narrative structure, the typos, and the magical black man trope, I’d be tempted to file this book under the ‘ridiculously campy’ tab, and have it sit next to such favorites as (and really, these are some of my favorites) ETERNAL PLEASURE (they’re men with the souls of dinosaurs and they need a hot limo driver, STAT!), DAUGHTER OF THE BLOOD (magical cock rings of obedience!), and everything by Chuck Tingle. Alas, the writing fell too flat for me to tell if the book was meant to be pulp satire or not, the tropes were problematic, and I never connected with the narrative.

Sadly, as much as I love space lesbians, and as eager as I was to get my hands on this book, I can’t say that I enjoyed it. However, those looking to relive 1970s era pulp fiction, complete with its problematic attitudes but minus the homophobia, may be well served by this book.

You can buy BANQUET here

 

Filed Under: book review Tagged With: lesbian, problematic tropes, reviews, sci fi

May 7, 2018

Review: Witches, Princesses, and Women at Arms, edited by Sacchi Green

Genre: low fantasy / fantasy romance

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, cis bisexual

Warnings: racism, heavy objectification

Rating: two stars

 

Review

Western European fairy tales reinvented to be f/f, but with the same problematic issues with racism and objectification as the originals.

I really wanted to like this book. There was no reason I shouldn’t have liked this book, noting my deep love of both A) fairy tales and B) lesbian romance / sexy time. Books like these have a decent track record, too, from KISSING THE WITCH to all three volumes of INTO THE MYSTIC. So while yes, retelling of fairy tales with a f/f bend is not novel in the slightest, it is still a lot of fun.

Unfortunately, WITCHES, PRINCESSES, AND WOMEN AT ARMS (hereafter WPWA), was not fun.

General

Almost all the stories felt rushed. In the desire to have a drawn out sex scene in each (it is erotica, after all), character development was often completely ignored. Personally, I have no real interest in a sex scene unless I care about the players involved (much like with a fight scene). If I don’t care about their struggles, their passions, and their goals, why do I care what they do beneath the sheets?

In the vein of fairy tales, most of the descriptors in the book were overly purple and food-based. This was especially frequent when describing women of color, who were overwhelming described as exotic things, fruit-colored things, things to be worshipped and revered (sometimes reviled, if they were a witch), but were wholly other.

Seriously. It’s 2018. This book was published in 2017. Stop it. People of color existed in western Europe during fairy tale times, and they interacted with white people outside of ‘here is a visiting princess.’ Perpetuating this narrative has got to stop.

In other irritations…

I was surprised by the homogeneity of the stories in this collection which were for the most part, basically forcing two women into a situation where sex was inevitable (some exclusions apply, see below for story-by-story breakdown). In KISSING THE WITCH, the authors altered the stories enough that some were not even recognizable as the original fairy tale, and others were twisted enough that I was pleasantly surprised by the ending (such as with the Beauty and the Beast retelling, which was amazing).

I was also surprised that a book published in 2017 would only include Western European fairy tales. In all of the INTO THE MYSTIC books, we are treated to a range of cultures’ fairy tales, which makes for a much more exiting read. It also meant that women of color weren’t perpetually treated as exotic beauties.

As a final general comment–the very cis nature of the stories was bothersome. Women come in lots of flavors, heck, even lesbians come in lots of flavors, and the most creative the authors got in this book was a lesbian/dryad pair. Very disappointing.

Story by story breakdown

STEEL by Cara Patterson

A strong start to the book, and with a decent amount of character development. I never really felt the chemistry between Sianna and the witch, but I liked the backstory and the taming of the dragon. This story suffered from cramming a big story into a small space, and I think it would have been much better served with another twenty pages.

ROBBER GIRL by Madeleine Shade

Problematic from the start, this story lacked any real character development or plot. Noting this, it would have been better served as just a sex scene, without the attempt at plot. I was also done with it the moment our ‘dusky skinned, plum-colored nippled’ protagonist wished to look like the white love interest because she was so beautiful. There is literally a line that says “In that instant, I hated my inherited darkness…” I’ll spare you the rest.

THE PRINCESS’S PRINCESS by Salome Wilde

While I enjoyed the power dynamic in this one, I could have lived without another ‘exotic other’ trope. “…whose looks made it plain she was from a distant land.” Nope.

WOODWITCH by M. Birds

The strongest story in the book, and by far my favorite. A tomboy princess runs off to war to help her father, only to find her father is a terrible king and hey, witches are also pretty fun. Excellent atmosphere, good character development, and a lovely ending. This was also the only story that I really felt any sort of chemistry between the two main characters. I’d be very interested to read more from this author.

THE PRIZE OF THE WILLOW by H. N. Janzen

A sweet woman x dryad story. Not much of a narrative arc, but enjoyable and very comforting.

TOADS, DIAMONDS, AND THE OCCASIONAL PEARL by Emily L. Byrne

This one just seemed to wander a bit much for my liking. The premise of a princess questing to make her own destiny, and running into another princess doing the same (and breaking a curse), is solid enough ground, but the execution seemed lacking. I had a hard time finishing this one.

SWF SEEKS FGM by Allison Wonderland

A first date between Cinderella’s wicked stepmother and her fairy godmother. Great premise, and very unique writing style and voice. It was denser than I’d thought, so a bit hard to get through, but I really appreciated the quick. This story stands out in the anthology as by far the most unique.

THE MARK AND THE CAUL by Annabeth Leong

This was another of my favorites. Excellent worldbuilding. The character development was a bit rushed, but I liked the destiny trope and Sam, the plodding, do-good protagonist. The princess was also a lot of fun, and I do like that her (very) risky scheme to save Sam works out well in the end.

PENTHOUSE 31 by Brey Willows

The modern-day retelling of Rapunzel had a lot of good bones, but it never really fleshed out. The homages to the Disney version kept pulling me from the narrative (our heroine is ‘Bren Ryder’), and I didn’t understand enough about the magic involved to feel like the Rapunzel character was ever truly trapped. The story also lacked any real chemistry between the characters.

THE MILLER’S DAUGHTER by Michael M. Jones

A Rumplestiltskin retelling without much changed except the gender of Rumplestiltskin. Nothing much of note with this one. It failed to capture my imagination, but neither did it make me angry, either.

WARRIOR’S CHOICE by A. D. R. Forte

I was confused for most of this story. Having now read it twice, I’m still not quite sure what the character arc is supposed to be. There’s some character chemistry, but the world and character building seem flawed. I think this is another story that would have benefitted from another fifty or so pages.

TROLLWISE by Sacchi Green

I DNF this one. I just couldn’t get into it and honestly, I was kind of tired at this point in the anthology.

THE SORCERESS OF SOLISTERRE by Lea Daley

An interesting romance between a bisexual queen and a white witch. I enjoyed this one, especially the turning of one of the suitors into a rat, and would have loved if this was about thirty pages longer, to really give it some meat.

 

Overall, while the quality of writing in WPWA was higher than the INTO THE MYSTIC books, and about the same as KISSING THE WITCH, it suffered from too much homogeneity and some outdated (and highly problematic) writing styles. Still some of the stories were well worth the read.

You can buy WITCHES, PRINCESSES, AND WOMEN AT ARMS in paperback here and ebook here.

Filed Under: book review Tagged With: bisexual, fantasy, lesbian, problematic tropes

January 10, 2018

Review: The Tiger’s Daughter by K Arsenault Rivera

Genre: high fantasy

Pairings: f/f (cis)

Queer Representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: racism, colorism, cultural appropriation, fetishized culture, misinterpreted cultural exchange, cultural misogyny

 

Review

Demons are taking over the Hokkaran Empire (a mix of Japan, China, and Mongolia, but more on that later). A corrupt emperor rules. Two girls, born a month apart and on auspicious birthdays, are fated to save the land and each other through a mix of magic, love, and epic fantasy landscapes.

I just… I have a lot of feelings about this book. I have a lot of feelings and they’re all mixed up and I’m not sure how to write this review at all. I know we can love something and still admit it is problematic, but I didn’t want this book to be problematic, because it was so beautiful. Our two main characters, Shefali and O-Shizuka, are perfectly developed. Their world is rich and lush. The conflict is present but never overwhelming, the narrative driven but never reckless. The writing is lyrical to the point of near poetry. There is love, real love, between our two main characters, to the point where the descriptive sex scene felt too coarse, like the very act of them kissing was too much for me to handle.

On its most base layer, I loved everything about this book. I loved its generic fantasy setting that wasn’t Europe (finally), I loved the casual magic, I loved the writing style. The story pulled at my heart and wouldn’t let it go, and when I found out there was a sequel, I was as breathless as I was when Shefali and O-Shizuka first kissed.

But I knew, too, as I read, that some things seemed maybe not okay. I’ve spent a fair amount of time in various parts of Asia. I used to live in Thailand. I’ve studied Chinese and Japanese in both university and from private tutors. I spent some hard weeks in Cambodia. So as the narrative built, and the animosity between these Asia-inspired groups in the book grew, I got curious and flipped to the back. The author isn’t of Asian descent. And I took a deep breath, because I already loved the book at this stage. In my head I thought, surely she had sensitivity readers. Surely Tor vetted this. Please let me be overreacting. Maybe those lines about flat faces and the very obvious taking and mixing of Japanese and Chinese culture is just…it’s going to be okay. Right? Right?

I went to Goodreads. I saw reviews. I saw the review by Laurelinvanyar in particular, and it reaffirmed what my gut was telling me. This book had problematic themes. This book had problematic tropes.

This book hurt people.

God damn it, why? WHY couldn’t Tor have gotten some sensitivity readers to clean up this almost-book-of-my-heart? I want to cry, right now, at the potential this book had, and this world, and how none of that matters one damn bit because this book hurt people.

And like, in my head I’m still trying to rationalize it. Maybe it was just really good writing and it’s the characters that are racist. Maybe it’s just that the world built here is racist (except the world is basically dynastic Japan). Maybe that’s what the author was trying to show. Maybe the flagrant use of ‘ricetongue’ is an attempt hang a hat on a problematic slur. Maybe maybe maybe…

Maybe this world was built off a role playing game, as noted in the author bio, and off of a love of Japanese anime, and not enough time was spent really learning the deeper culture, or understanding how a pan-soup of Asia could affect readers.

I just… it could have been amazing. It could have been perfect. It could have been poetry, and it still is all of those things, it’s just so damn problematic, too. That tears my heart apart.

I can’t star this book. I can’t star it because my heart wants to give it five stars, and my brain wants to throw it out so it can’t hurt someone. I remain at an emotional impasse.

 

You can buy the book here in paperback and here in ebook.

 

 

Filed Under: book review Tagged With: fantasy, lesbian, problematic tropes, reviews, too far outside lane

December 20, 2017

Review: Daybreak Rising by Kiran Oliver

Genre: fantasy

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: trans, lesbian, nonbinary, gay, pan

Warnings: whitewashing

Rating: one star

 

Review (print version. It’s relevant, trust me)

Celosia Brennan was supposed to be a hero. After a bunch of military (?) commandos put way too much on the shoulders of a teen and she fries a town, Celosia has joined the resistance. She is part of a corp of elemental magic users (GO PLANET!) bent on taking down The Council. I don’t know what The Council is. I don’t know what it’s motivations are. Apparently it either kills elementals or tries to leash them to do its bidding, and so our ragtag band is out to take it down. Among them is a blind woman, at least two lesbians, a trans man, nonbinary people, among others. There is a reasonable smattering of black people, although two have problematic blue eyes. That’s a whole different blog post.

Diverse books hold a special place in my heart.

Diversity is not, however, enough to hold an entire story together.

Books need plot. They need character development. They need a copyeditor and a proofreader and page numbers. This book had…none of those. Typos were abundant (double periods, quotation errors, NO PAGE NUMBERS), the prose was stilted and super telly (constantly telling, then showing, then sometimes telling again, ad nauseum), and the story lacked a discernible arc or plot through line. So let’s break it down, issue by issue.

Typos and redundancy

I realize this book was self-pubbed, but that isn’t an excuse for not having an editor, copyeditor, and/or proofreader. This book also suffered from a heavy amount of word redundancy within paragraphs, which made it read very fanfic and amateurish. Fundamentals were left out as well, such as, and I’m still not over this, a lack of page numbers in the print version.

Writing style

If I hadn’t wanted to leave a thorough review for this book, I’d have DNF after the first fifteen pages or so. No clear plot emerged until about halfway through the book. The backstory of the lead character didn’t come through until about thirty or so pages in. There was no way to get character buy-in, or world placement, for the first half of the book, and that was really frustrating.

There was no multi-act structure for this book. Tension was never built, save for the Big Reveal about three-quarters of the way through (which was the only moment of true interest I had in the book). The book wasn’t even a complete arc, with it ending just before the Final Battle. The primary plot appears to be getting Celosia over her PTSD (admirable, for sure), but her whole situation is confusing. She was used by the rebels, screwed up her job because she was a kid, and now everyone holds her responsible for the screw up. I have no empathy for people who hold a child responsible for failing an adult task which again, made world buy-in next to impossible.

The author mainly told instead of showed, maybe as a way to speed up the slow pace of the book (which was achingly slow). The occasional show was always followed up by a tell, which really treated the reader as a moron. Most readers can pull intent and feelings from context and motions, we don’t need to be beaten over the head with it.

 

The White Gaze

Black people with blue eyes. Just. Don’t.

Don’t.

 

Characters

Too many POV characters for the length and type of book. This was no five hundred page epic fantasy. I don’t actually know how long it was, because it HAD NO PAGE NUMBERS, but there was barely recognizable growth in our lead POV character, Celosia. All the other POVs seemed thrown in for plot relevance, but not enough time was spent with any of them to make them real people. Even three quarters of the way through the book, new POV characters were being introduced, which was very frustrating.

 

Romance

The main romance line felt forced, rushed, and lackluster. The two characters had no chemistry, and Ianthe seemed more like a plot device than a character.

 

Queer representation

This was the one strong point of the story. The trans romance line was handled well, the gender discussions were thorough, and the lesbian romance was…well, there was a lesbian romance, so that counts for something.

 

Final thoughts

I so wanted to like this book, but I felt like it reached up and smacked me every other numberless page. The typos, the lack of tension, the poor character development, the lack of any type of formal act structure, all came together in a book that felt rushed. It felt like I was reading a draft zero of a book that had a lot of potential, but the author didn’t want to go through revisions. I was left disappointed–in the book, the characters, the flailing plot, and the typos I almost drowned in.

If you’re willing to forgive all of that to see some decent queer rep in a fantasy, you can buy Daybreak Rising in ebook here and print here.

Filed Under: book review Tagged With: disability, fantasy, gay, lesbian, mental health, problematic tropes, trans

December 14, 2017

Review: Touched by Starlight by Linda North

Genre: romance, very light scifi

Pairings: f/f (lesbian)

Queer Representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: rape, dubious consent, body shaming, transphobia

Rating: none

 

Review

“…she clicked on the notebook expecting to see some heifer that looked like a drag queen…”

This isn’t going to be a normal review. I have a lot of very strong feelings about this book, and they need to couched in a discussion of tropes, and the lesbian fiction arc genre as a whole. Before all that, a quick plot review.

Kiernan is a space tech genius with a sizable fortune. Due to the stipulations of her grandmother’s will (of course), Kiernan must be married and produce a child by her 40th birthday. Ariel (who is, yes, named after The Little Mermaid) is a physics professor. Her mother, a data analyst, gets charged with hacking into Kiernan’s business, and through some very underhanded dealings by Kiernan’s uncle, Ariel is forced to marry Kiernan so that Kiernan will not press charges.

So there’s strike one right there.

Let’s talk about tropes

I love tropes. When I read, I’m not always looking for fresh. Sometimes I want to be comforted. Sometimes I want to relax into the known, to follow a path I know the ending to. It can be fun, even exciting, to see a common heterosexual romance trope turned around to involve a same gender pairing. Hot, even, especially when well done (see Gardner’s Born Out of Wedlock, which contains, and this isn’t hyperbole, almost every lesbian trope out there).

The problem with simply doing a find and replace for a standard het romance trope is that a lot of het romance, especially older het romance, is couched in misogyny and/or rape culture. It’s important that authors be mindful of that when redoing these tropes, as otherwise we can unknowingly perpetuate this culture within our own.

I want to be really clear. There is no place for rape culture. Not in the heterosexual world, and not in the homosexual, either. I’m not talking about rape fantasy, which I would be willing to hear an argument for. Here, specifically, I am talking about a greater culture.

 

Doing it right versus doing it wrong

Many of the books I’ve read that rely on heavy-handed tropes (power differentials of different forms, among the most popular being the forced marriage trope), also employ an additional spin. I’m going to keep coming back to Born Out of Wedlock, because 1) I recently read it and 2) it could have gone very, very wrong, but it didn’t. Born had the same set up as Touched by Starlight: forced marriage, power femme, bitchy pseudo-butch (half-butch? moderately butch? Is there a shorter word for ‘butch on the streets, femme in the sheets’?), unbreakable inheritance wills, meddling men.

The fundamental differences between the two are, at the core, intent and consent. For intent, the pairing in Born both have something to gain from the forced marriage. They both have choices. They both have something to lose. The agreement is a business agreement, and there is not even a mention of a forced sex clause. In Touched, sex is stipulated by the contract (by the meddling uncle) and Ariel is coerced into the marriage via threats by her future wife.

See above. Strike one.

For consent, Born operated, for better or for worse, in third person omniscient. Not a particularly popular choice for a narrative, but it made sense in the first bedroom scene, where Addison has aggressive sex with Joanna (our power femme). Because we are in both heads we know Joanna is willing, and while Addison herself is lacking that context (and later laments that she may have raped Joanna), we, the readers, know that not to be the case. It gives conflict, and the ‘heat’ of rape fantasy, without any actual lack of consent. The scene may not be to everyone’s liking, but it was done as well as it could be, and I admire the author’s very clear attempt to remove rape components from such a scene.

In Touched, the word ‘no’ is used repeatedly. Ariel continues to penetrate Kiernan until she is actually in pain. In the orchard scene before this, Kiernan touches Ariel and makes advances despite Ariel having verbally rebuffed her several times. We get access to both sets of thoughts over time, but it is clear in the first sex scene, specifically, the Kiernan wants Ariel to stop, even verbally requests it several times, and Ariel does not.

That’s strike two, and quite frankly I’d have stopped reading at this point if I wasn’t already so determined to finish the book so I could write a proper review.

I don’t know what the author was striving for here. Just because our power femme, who lacked power and was coerced into the marriage, was sexually aggressive to her aggressor to the point of rape does not make rape okay. That they are both women does not make it okay. This would have been rape in a het romance, and it is rape in a same-sex romance. And while I read enough of my grandmother’s bodice rippers to know that falling in love with one’s rapist is a time honored trope, I really expected better from lesbian fiction. We don’t have to be constrained by patriarchal stereotypes. We don’t have to participate in rape culture. We’re better than this.

 

And then there’s the writing…

Strike three was the writing. Choppy, often telling (and then showing, and then telling again), with many redundant scenes. The book read more like a fanfic than a novel in that it wasn’t tight. There was too much ‘here’s a chapter in Kiernan POV, and then here is a chapter in Ariel POV, but they cover the same time span’. The scifi aspect felt tacked on and yet, it was the only fresh part of the book. How did we not get scenes with Kiernan racing spaceships? How did we not get scenes with Ariel designing one, or fixing one? Kiernan runs this space tech company and is apparently very good at it, but we get one spaceship scene, at the end of the book, with mostly a ‘the ship is going to explode’ arc and not any real wonder or tech. There are so many places the author could have taken the plot, and yet, it remained simply a power struggle romance.

 

It’s not over till the fat lady sings

“…she clicked on the notebook expecting to see some heifer that looked like a drag queen…”

Yes, I lead with this quote segment. I’m repeating it again because these casual acts of body shaming and transphobia have no place in lesbian literature. I know they exist, clearly, but they need to be called out, every time. Since this line came from Kiernan’s POV and Kiernan was well established to be a pretty terrible person (I assume this is why she ‘deserved’ to be raped?), it could be argued that this view reflects the character only. If it were the only offense I might be more forgiving. After all, characters grow and authors often enjoy writing unlikable characters. But this, combined with the deplorable acts by both our main characters, makes me wonder if this was just an offhanded line thrown in without thought for what it actually says.

I’m surprised, frankly, to see a book like from a publisher, especially a queer publisher. It makes me wary not only of other books from this author, but of other books from the publisher as well.

I’d like to look for some way to recommend this book to some subset of readers, but I can’t think of any group applicable. It is possible that those interested in more patriarchal rape fantasy, looking to see that trope with two women, will find this book enjoyable. I’d argue, however, that the sex scenes definitively cross the line between dubcon and full on rape.

 

You can buy Touched by Starlight in paperback here and digital here

 

Filed Under: book review Tagged With: dubcon, lesbian, problematic tropes, sci fi

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