J.S. Fields

Author & Scientist

Review: Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots

Genre: fantasy: superhero

Pairings: none

Queer Representation: nonbinary, bisexual woman (potentially pansexual), gay man, trans woman

Warnings: none

Review

Anna works behind the scenes as a villain tech–mostly in spreadsheets and data management. She’s low level and she likes it that way, though persistently getting short run jobs and ending at the temp agency every month is a touch grating.

During one of these no-name, low-level support gigs, Anna ends up as collateral damage when a superhero smashes her legs in simply for existing. Recovery is hard, she can’t work, and living with her best friend June is…less than perfect.

Depression sinks Anna into numbers. She likes numbers. They’ve always been her friend. Bored and in pain, Anna starts looking up how much superheros actually cost, in terms of broken buildings and broken people.

She posts her facts online.

People get interested.

Her big break (second, technically, if you count her legs) comes from Leviathan–a chitinous supervillain with a lot of money and a big, big dream. His grudge against Supercollider (the golden-haired Superman of this universe) is legendary. Anna, wanting to impress her new boss (and not lose her fancy new apartment), digs down deep, building up mass amounts of data on the world’s superheroes.

With Leviathan’s resources and her (super?) brain, they decide to rid the world of its monsters, one superhero at a time.

And Anna is really fucking good at her job.

~~

OMG THIS BOOK. It only crossed my radar because Seanan McGuire threw her arc at me and told me I needed to read it. It got lost in my ARC pile for months, then COVID hit and I finally started working my way through. WOW AM I GLAD I DID.

This is…not your standard superhero story. It’s not your standard villain story. It’s an amazing morally grey story about the costs of villainy and heroism, and how sometimes you just fucking want to eat a decent sandwich.

The book has a slow start, much like Anna’s life. It meanders. It false starts. It’s irritating enough to almost put down but Anna as a character is compelling and endearing, and, much like her best friend/roommate June, you sort of keep plodding on.

Then it hits you. BAM! Like Supercollider on a bender. All the emotional backstory and drudgey work pay off in this moment of triumph when Anna is hired by a Big Bad. And you’re so caught up in the thank god something is happening that you can directly empathize with Anna for not really caring that yes, Leviathan is evil and yes, her work is assisting that evil. Her life is moving, and it’s moving forward, and you know what? Fuck Supercollider anyway. Fuck him and his chiseled jaw and maybe fuck his longtime girlfriend (oh wait no, that’s a plotline for later in the book) for just tossing around humans like stale bagels. Anna earned this. Anna deserves this.

And just like that, you, dear reader, are also a villain.

It’s all action and emotions from there on out. Anna forms a nerd team of data specialists. Anna acquires data. Anna is really fucking good at her job. Superheroes start to fall, but in delicious, backhanded ways that are really more unraveling their lives and sense of selves than shooting them with a heat ray. It’s so good. And with each takedown, Anna slides a little bit deeper into Evil, and so do you.

This book is a 2020 must read, shitshow of a year or not. It’s filled with great lines:

I found myself hoping I wouldn’t see her back, that she’d get a good assignment and have a long lifespan (though I realized with a small pang that would mean I wouldn’t get to look at her well-muscled arms again.)

great tropes, great costumes, great emotion:

“My husband. He couldn’t deal with the career change,” he said, “He wanted to be respectable. He liked that. He liked waving me goodbye, waiting for me to come home.” His big hands were cupped around his glass. There was a noticeable callus on the ring finger of his left hand, where he must have worn a ring that was slightly too tight for his thick fingers.

“Why’d you put on a black cape?”

He bared his teeth. “The usual. Saw too many good men denied promotions or benefits. Too many honours given out to some powerful fuck’s idiot kid.”

and so much grey morality. It’s got some great sexual tension between Anna and Quantum Entanglement (I would LITERALLY MURDER someone to get a sequel where those two get together in a horizontal fashion), great boss/employee dynamics, and a best friend breakup narrative that will sear your soul.

HENCH comes out September 22, 2020, but just like…just go preorder it now. Join the forces of ‘we don’t really have the stomach for violence but the villains do have better dental’ by preordering here.

Review: Velveteen vs. The Seasons by Seanan McGuire

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

Genre: science fiction: superhero

Pairings: f/m, f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, trans woman, gender fluid person

Warnings: a hard scene where a jerk reporter pressures Princess on her assigned gender at birth. Handled very well, but may be hard to read for trans readers

Review

In VELVETEEN VS. THE MULTIVERSE, Vel strikes a deal with Santa and the other seasonal spirits in order to get a time do-over from her (more or less) successful attempt to overthrow the Super Patriots.

The deal, of course, came with a heavy cost. Vel must now spend time with all the seasons (except summer, which doesn’t have much interest in her) and allow them to attempt to woo her to their cause. If she declines all of them, she goes back to her reality. If she accepts one, she stays in that holiday, forever.

She had promised. She had taken the gifts that the holidays were willing to offer her. and she had always known that they weren’t free; she’d always known that she would have to pay for them, in the end.

Thus begins the final installment of the Velveteen books, where all of Vel’s chickens come home to roost and the reader gets a very, very deep look at the magical systems behind Santa Claus (winter), Halloween (autumn), and Persephone (spring). The end of the book wraps up the series nicely, with Vel making her choice and the reader getting to see how the ripples of that choice affect all the superheroes they have come to know and love.

What is most interesting about this book however, is how it looks at the rise of governmental legislation in the void of the Super Patriots Inc. While the seasons are intriguing and Vel’s trials entertaining and have the signature harshness of McGuire worlds, the social commentary on the grey areas inhabited by large corporations is the most critical piece to this book. While the Super Patriots, Inc., was responsible for a whole host of violations and moral failings, it did keep the government at large out of the legislation business when it came to superheroes.

She’d read most of the superhuman control legislation, the things proposed by frightened senators who wanted to protect their larger “normal” constituents; the somehow more terrifying things proposed by politicians who were virtually salivating at the idea of living weapons who carried no development cost, who would do as they were told and make “friendly fire” a thing of the past.

In that vacuum, the United States has taken up the legislation game. Readers get to watch the slow slide from what seems a ‘reasonable’ law to what is a clear grab of power and/or fear. The changing political climate over the three years Vel spends with the seasons adds an additional string of tension to the stories, pulls them together, and serves to further entrench Vel into our hearts.

This is not to say that Vel’s time in the seasonal lands isn’t engaging. Her first stop, Winter, is heartbreaking in the best and worst ways. In the previous two books we have seen Vel’s close attachment to Santa Claus, his role as a near father figure, the warmth she gets from her friends there and how she had used Winter as a tether during her time with the Super Patriots. Hence, returning to Winter not as a visitor but as a resident emotional destroys Vel and the reader at the same time–seeing the cruelness of Santa, of the other holiday spirits, of how they need Vel so they must use Vel, despite their fondness of her.

On a more uplifting note, everyone’s favorite lesbian couple does feature again in THE SEASONS, though not as prominently as in book two. But the friendship that grows between Vel, Princess, Jack(ie), Polychrome/Sparkle Bright (or whichever code name you prefer for her), and Victory Anna is everything one wants in found family, especially superhero found family.

The emotional conclusion to the Velveteen series is more than worth the cost of admission, even if you have to scour the internet to find copies to buy. Lucky for you, Vel visited from her Earth to let you know that you can buy the hardback here.

Review: Velveteen vs. The Multiverse by Seanan McGuire

This is a review for the second book in a series. To read the review for book one, VELVETEEN VS. THE JUNIOR SUPER PATRIOTS, click here. To read the review for book there, click here.

Genre: science fiction: superhero

Pairings: f/m, f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, trans woman

Warnings: none

Review

Velveteen is back! 

Settled now in Portland, Oregon, as the resident crime fighter, Velveteen almost has her life together. She has a cute superhero boyfriend, a new superhero friend, and a host of low-level villains to fight.

It all goes horribly awry, of course, when Vel wakes up in bed with Action Dude, her childhood crush. In bed. Married. And officially part of the Super Patriots, Inc.

Thus begins Vel’s journey through the multiverse. As with any good superhero story, long-hidden truths get revealed and Vel attempts to right old wrongs (she is a superhero, after all) and bring down the Super Patriots, Inc., once and for all.

Nothing comes without a cost, however. When one evil falls, another rises, and the destruction of the Super Patriots comes with an unimaginably high price tag.

VELVETEEN VS. THE MULTIVERSE is the strongest installment in the Velveteen trilogy. It is also the installment where we spend the most time with Sparkle Brite aka Polychrome, and see part of her romance with Victory Anna (a steampunk refugee from an Earth that never really existed, but who really has the hots for Yelena).

“Torrey’s very tea-oriented,” said Yelena, as she walked Vel toward the kitchen. “She’s from an alternate Victorian England that ceased to exist in a freak accident involving a time machine and a blackcurrant trifle. After spending a few years stranded in parallels without other people, she got very focused on the important things in life.”

Like tea,” said Vel.

“Tea, and shooting people who bother my girlfriend,” said Torrey, walking over with a tray.

It’s also the installment where we learn the full breadth of Vel’s powers and the extent to which the Super Patriots went to hide Vel’s potential from her. It’s a story with an amazing number of twists and turns, filled with robust characters, history, and so, so much comic book lore. Santa remains as concerningly creepy/loving as ever, Princess continues to enchant with her rodents that sew clothes and enchanted mirrors and be the best trans rep: “My name is Carrabelle Miller,” said Princess. “If you want to know what my parents called me, then you’re looking for Scott Miller. But that’s never been my name.”, Yelena’s character development turns her into my hands down favorite character, and Victory Anna is an absolute delight as an additional character who can turn anything into an explosive weapon. Anything.

There’s a final battle that feels satisfying, but opens more doors than it closes. There are promises made that hurt more than they heal, and tragic romances (no gays are harmed). Most questions are answered but in doing so, we lose the structure of our world. Was it worth the cost? We won’t find out until book three: VELVETEEN VS. THE SEASONS.

You can join Vel and her misfit superhero league in paperback here and on audiobook here. 

P.S. This is the volume where McGuire finally has Vel use My Little Ponies in battle. This is the book of my soul.

A herd of brightly-colored plastic horses came stampeding out of the alley, each carrying one or more toy soldiers on its back. Rainbow manes whipping in the wind, they circled the woman in black, and the soldiers opened fire.

Review: Velveteen vs. The Junior Super Patriots by Seanan McGuire

Genre: science fiction: super hero

Pairings: m/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, trans woman

Warnings: you might explode from sheer reading joy

Review

At twelve, Velma Martinez manifested the ability to animate toys. Her parents, previously borderline negligent, sell Velma to the Super Patriots, Inc., to be trained as a super hero.

In Velma’s admittedly limited experience, “family fun” usually meant “Mama cries herself to sleep after Daddy passes out run, and Velma and the teddy bears clean the whole placed before morning.

The contract stipulates training until eighteen, at which point Velma (Velveteen) would get to chose to stay with the Super Patriots and become a fully fledged super hero, or return to a normal life.

No one ever leaves the Super Patriots, Inc.

Velma says good bye around nineteen, shucking decades of Marketing brainwashing and severing her few remaining friendships. She can’t hold down a job, however, or get into college, or do anything except hide her powers and hope the Super Patriots don’t find her.

Years later, an unfortunate encounter with some coffee worshipers in a small town force Velveteen to use her powers in public. The Super Patriots immediately try to bring Vel in, by dubbing her a super villain. Vel, of course, is having none of it, and with the help of a bunch of cast off toys, manages to make it across the border to Oregon.

Oregon doesn’t have a super hero extradition agreement and the governor hates the Super Patriots due to the untimely death of her super hero sister, who was sent on a deadly mission far too young. The governor grants Vel a superhero license so she can fight crime within Oregon’s borders, which also, conveniently, keeps her out of the Super Patriots hands.

The Super Patriots have plans, however, and will not give up until Vel is back under their control, one way or the other. They’ll use any thing or any one under their power to get to her, including her ex-best friend (Sparkle Bright) and ex-boyfriend (Action Dude). Vel has friends of her own, however, including a new boyfriend, holiday superheroes, and a mysterious new superhero who manipulates light.

A battle between good and evil lurks on the horizon. Will Vel and her friends be enough to stop Marketing? Will Vel ever get rid of her domino mask? Who is this mysterious new super hero??

VELVETEEN VS. THE JUNIOR SUPER PATRIOTS is both fun and serious, whimsical, joyful, and cruel. Working off the premise that super powers have always been among us and it is only a recent upswing in occurrence that has lead to a need for corporations and governmental control (all due to a large batch of irradiated maple syrup, apparently), McGuire shows us a world not dominated by epic battles between super heroes and super villains, but by kids in goofy spandex costumes and the corporation that would control them. It pairs bunny costumes, talking toys, lobster boys, and witty dialogue, with the brutal truth of marketing, child labor, and child exploitation.

 

“KICK THEIR ASSES!” shrieked Velveteen, who, after a long day of driving, detours, and idiots, was glad to finally have something to smash.

“DO YOU OPPOSE ME?!” demanded The Claw.

“Oh, David.” Velveteen sighed, and slapped her palms together over her head. “Grow up.”

And that’s when the bear-shaped bouncy castle kicked his ass.

 

In many ways it is fantasy. In even more ways it is not.

VELVETEEN carries all the classic super hero tropes–calling them out, naming them, integrating them–and then in a very McGuire fashion, turns them to her own use. The goofiness of super hero names (what will poll well with the public?). The reasons for the constant outfit changes (more opportunity to buy toys!). Why the goofy poses (learn to strike your best pose on your best side, for the constant media!).

Throughout all of it is Vel, former child superhero, now emancipated adult, who just can’t get her life together. A child star with no future, but an (adorable?) ability to bring ratty old teddy bears and such back to life. Vel is instantly relatable and instantly charming, and it is impossible to not get swept into a world that feels so similar to our own–almost certainly because McGuire stuck in just enough truth that every action sequence, ever emotion, every silly costume, resonates.

If you ever had a toy you wished would come alive and play with you, you need this book.

If you ever looked at a washed out child start and wondered what happened?, you need this book.

If you really love superheroes, you need this book.

To begin your training with the Super Patriots, Inc., you’re a bit SOL. These books were print only and a limited run. Book one is sold out but available online for free.

Click to read the reviews for books two and three.

 

Review: Dreadnought by April Daniels

Genre: modern fantasy (superhero) (YA)

Pairings: f/f (implied for future books)

Queer Representation: trans lesbian, cis lesbian(?)

Warnings: gender dysphoria, verbal abuse, TERF antics that may be triggering for some readers

Rating: five stars

 

Review

Danny, a trans girl, is hiding behind a dumpster, painting her toenails and enjoying some alone time, when the superhero Dreadnought dies right in front of her. She inherits his powers, among which include the ability to take her ideal form. But while Danny is delighted with the sudden and mostly-absolute gender change, those around Danny, especially her parents, are not. Also super villains and stuff. Bam pow. You know how it goes.

Let’s just hit the (trans) nail on the head

This was a great book. It was written by a trans woman, and the realness of the emotions really shine through. As a trans reader, I deeply connected with Danny on multiple occasions, and appreciated the author’s diverse probing of trans issues–particularly the subtleties of dysphoria (for instance, Danny doesn’t take issue with her junk). I love how the superhero ‘thing’ was continually pushed aside by Danny because she just wanted to revel in looking like a girl, finally, and that even though Danny has the heart of a superhero, that’s not what this book is about.

Not all of the transition accounts will resonate with all readers, of course (and the trans experience is as unique as the human experience). Danny’s discussion of what it’s like to have tons of estrogen coursing through her system instead of testosterone would have struck me fairly sexist even a few years ago, although I’ve had enough trans friends on hormones describe much the same thing that in this instance, it resonated.

Plot

This book shares a lot in common with C.B. Lee’s NOT YOUR SIDEKICK, in terms of slice of high school life and also superpowers. Both deal with prominent issues, although NOT YOUR SIDEKICK definitely spends a greater proportion of its plot on superhero dynamics, while DREADNOUGHT merely warms up to them, spending more time on Danny’s journey. DREADNOUGHT also doesn’t pull any punches, and readers are walked through transphobic parents, entitled male BFFs, and a particularly problematic TERF superhero (who came across more as a caricature than anything else, and the narrative would have been stronger, in my opinion, if her attacks were more subtle).

In many ways this book read more like a prequel, or an extended prologue, to a greater story. That’s not to say it didn’t stand on it’s own, or wasn’t enjoyable. Indeed, the pacing was excellent, the emotions hard hitting, and there was a depth to the story I was not expecting. That Danny is not only trans but also a lesbian was an unexpected bonus, and I do look forward to where the romance line might lead in future books.

Some side thoughts

While I have read some critique of the overt transphobic reactions in this book, and while yes, they could be potentially triggering (there was at least one instance where I had to put the book down and take a walk), I think it bears mentioning that cis readers are often not awake enough to the subtleties of implicit bias. If Danny’s experience was diluted down to extended stares from classmates, indifferent and chilly parents, and a superhero legion who tolerated her presence but never really welcomed her, I don’t think this book would reach nearly the same audience. The overt transphobicness of Danny’s interactions may be somewhat dated, or seem over the top, but they certainly are not over, by any means, for queer teens, and there are plenty of us older trans people who remember those types of days all too well.

 

After a slew of disappointing books, it was great to be able to immerse myself in a world where a trans girl gets to really get her wish. And if that wish is to look like a (female) supermodel, and she gets superpowers to boot, then, well, maybe we can start tipping the scales away from all those cis het white dude superheroes with the washboard abs. It’s about time trans girls got to look hot in spandex, too.

 

You can buy DREADNOUGHT in paperback here, ebook here, and audiobook here. For more teenaged superheroes that aren’t cis het white guys, consider also C.B. Lee’s NOT YOUR SIDEKICK.

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