J.S. Fields

Author & Scientist

Review: RUST IN THE ROOT by Justina Ireland

Genre: fantasy: alternate history / high fantasy (upper YA)

Pairings: f/f to f/nonbinary

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, pansexual/nonbinary/its complicated (gender/sex changing magical creature)

Warnings: none

 

 

Review

An absolute MUST read. This is one I did for New York Journal, so you can find the full review here. I hope this has multiple sequels because I cannot wait to get back into the world. Double extra bonus for a strong sapphic lead, a lady/sapphic nonbinary love interest, unicorns and dragons.

Review: The Winter Duke by Claire Eliza Bartlett

Genre: fantasy: sword and sorcery (YA)

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, nonbinary, gay men, cis bi/pansexual (not explicit)

Warnings: none

 

Review

Ekata is a middle child in a huge, vicious royal family that decides heirship via Battle Royale. The princess has no interest in ruling Kylma Above, however, and is days away from leaving for university, where she will train as a biologist. All she has to do is make it through the crown prince’s bride selection ceremony. Her bags are packed. Her nurse is ready. Finally, finally, she has the chance to escape!

The morning after the bride selection, Ekata awakes to find her entire family has fallen into comas, leaving her the Duke of Kylma Above. Worse, her adopted brother, mysteriously immune from the sleeping sickness, wants to take over the kingdom. Unwilling to let her sadistic step-sibling win, Ekata agrees to be interim duke while she attempts to solve the mystery of her family’s sickness. But Sigis has plotted for too long to let sixteen-year-old Ekata keep the throne. The princess must weigh her desires for university, her loathing of her family and the throne, against a budding romance with her new warrior-wife Inkar and her desire to learn more about the mysterious mer-people of Kylma Below–the merpeople that may be the key to unleashing her magical abilities.

THE WINTER DUKE was a surprising YA. The start was slow, as I find with many books in this genre, but picked up steam quickly. The middle third of the book was absolutely fantastic, and the worldbuilding unlike anything I’ve come across (why wouldn’t you have an ice castle above a lake that has fish people in a mirror kingdom, I ask??). Then the back third sagged again as the book became mired in politics.

Still, despite the politics-FISH PEOPLE OMG-politics arc, what kept me reading was Ekata. I have never encountered a heroine in YA who is as brazen, confident, and successful in fantasy. I’m much more used to the trope of ‘confident and slapped down, confident and then bad thing happens,’ etc. And bad things do happen, but this was a world where, generally, when Ekata spoke, people did what they were told. And that’s because this book achieved what many do not–it is (mostly) free of patriarchal bias.

I don’t mean this in a ‘there is no patriarchy’ way. I mean it in a ‘the lead lady character is treated the same as her male counterparts.’ Most fantasy books, and some sci fi, seem to bundle sexism in with things that our heroine must overcome, and it is so tiresome. THE WINTER DUKE gives us ageism, sure, and palace politics (blurgh), but no ‘why would we listen to a little girl!?!’ BS.

And just, fucking thank you, Claire Eliza Bartlett, for that.

Other redeeming qualities of the book include the love interest Inkar, who doesn’t give a fuck about politeness and carries to axes around wherever she goes, yet looks like a confection in her dresses. +10 for YA power femme/soft butch.

Their faces ranged from bored to angry–except for one girl, the girl who’d smiled at me last night. her muscle-toned arms were bare under a green wool vest, and her dark hair had little light streaks in it, as if it had caught pieces of the foreign sun and spun them into gold. I frowned at her crest, a serpent wound in a knot, She didn’t speak–she just drummed her fingers on her belt, where two ax loops sat empty.

She smiled at me again, and my stomach flipped. She had fresh kohl around her eyes, pink on her cheeks, and red on her lips. She looked like she was enjoying herself.

She looked like she laughing at me.

—

“Salijom I command you not to laugh at me,” Inkar grumbled. I looked around, confused, then Realized that Saljo was the name of the guard. How could Inkar know his name better than I did?

Saljo snorted. “Yes, Your Grace.”

“This is awful,” Inkar said. She kicked the inside of her skirt. “How am I supposed to protect you in a skirt like this?”

“You’re not supposed to protect me,” I said. “The guards protect me. They protect you, too.”

“I do not need protection,” Inkar replied. “Except you buried my axes under an entire sheep.”

 

+20 for completely random merpeople under the castle, which I was NOT expecting and was really the best damn worldbuilding I’ve seen in a long time. My regret there is that we didn’t spend nearly enough time in that arena, instead focusing on the (tired) politics of murder monarchies. -5 for underwater fungi, since fungi are obligate aerobes, but I’ll let that slide for now (foxfire does NOT work this way…). +5 for absolute, without a doubt, lesbianism:

“Careful,” he purred.

Was he flirting with me?

Oh no.

He was flirting with me.

Still, for YA (which you all know is never my favorite), this book was a damn delight. Read it for Ekata, read it for Inkar, read it for the fish people and their magic, or read it because dudes do actually get their comeuppance, and you don’t have to wait till the end of the book to see it, either. Whatever. Click here to get yourself an ice rose and settle in for a read you’ll be delighted to share with your daughters (and other offspring, but particularly your daughters).

Review: Adaptation by Malinda Lo

Genre: science fiction: dystopian (YA)

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian, cis bisexual

Warnings: none

Review

High school students Reese and David are on their way back from a debate competition in Arizona with a faculty chaperone when birds start dropping from the sky and dying. Planes crash. People die. The government steps in, all within hours of the initial bird strike.

As the United States panics and looting begins, their chaperone is killed at a gas station for his car. Reese and David flee and end up driving themselves through Nevada, only to end up in a terrible accident when birds dive bomb their car.

The two wake up in a secret government hospital, and something isn’t quite right. They are forced to sign NDAs and are finally released back home, but both have some weird residual ‘powers’ post operations, and unfortunate memories. Reese suspects she is being followed by government agents, but decides to let that slide in favor of hanging out with her new mysterious friend, Amber Gray.

Kissing girls, it turns out, is fun. Memories that haunt you are not. Reese must confront both her past and present, come out of the closet to her mom and friends…all while coming to terms with aliens, their tech, and a government that wants to lock her up.

ADAPTATION is a firmly YA sci fi dystopian thriller, with all the trappings that go along with such. The pacing is similar to other Malinda Lo books, in that a great deal of time is spent on setting and mood, and less on pushing action sequences. The book is slow, sometimes plodding at times, but never boring. The characters are well-fleshed, sympathetic, and relatable, and you can almost taste the governmental conspiracies from page one.

The book struggles in balancing the YA elements (Reese realizes her attraction to girls in this book) with the tension and world building, and tends to jump between the two in increments that break the tension just as it begins to tighten. Despite this, both major thematic arcs are enjoyable, and readers are bound to be drawn into one or the other, if not both.

“Can you help me out? I think I might be too big for it.”

Reese remembered the times she had gone shopping with Madison, who liked to try on every single prom dress in Macy’s even if she didn’t have the money to buy a single one. They crowded into tiny dressing rooms together, and Reese helped Madison button and zip and smooth out those gowns. But never–not once–had she felt as self-conscious as she did now, when she put her hands on the hem of the dress–her dress–and tugged it over the curves of Amber’s hips and breasts…

Reese forgot to breathe. Amber’s bra was pale pink with white stripes, like a pastel candy cane, with a froth of white lace on the edges of the cups. It was nothing like the bras that Reese’s mom bought for her. This was a confection, meant to be seen.

The secondary characters in the book are also very well done. Of particular note is Reese’s mother, who corners Reese to talk about her budding romance with Amber:

“So,” her mom continued, “is she your girlfriend?”

“Oh my God,” Reese muttered. She sat in the armchair and dropped her head into her hands so that she wouldn’t have to look at her mom.

“Well, is she?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“How long have you two been together?”

“I’ve only known her for a week.”

…

“Are you sleeping together?”

“Jesus Christ–“

“The lord isn’t going to help you with this, honey. Are you using protection?”

Fans of dystopian YA will be very at home in this book, as will those familiar with Lo’s signature pacing. This book has less atmospheric beauty than ASH, but then again, it’s a different type of story. Here, the writing energy has gone into a more clinical, mechanical force (the government) and the characters are more engaged with mysterious bird issues than chasing fairies into woodlands.

The romance, like many with teens, is a whirlwind of desire and discovery. Lo does an excellent job capturing the tumultuous feelings of first (lesbian) kisses and awkward parent conversations and realizing that you’ve looked at girls in bras before, but they’ve never caught your attention in this way.

You can battle (or embrace) alien tech and maybe see a lacy bra or two by buying the paperback here and ebook here.

Review: Ruin of Stars by Linsey Miller

Genre: fantasy (sword and sorcery) (YA)

Pairings: nonbinary (genderfluid)/female

Queer Representation: nonbinary, bisexual, aromantic

Warnings: much stabbing

Rating: 4 stars

Review

Once again I had more to say on a book (surprise surprise). You can read my official review here. For more in-depth analysis, see below.

This review contains massive spoilers because it is impossible to review the book without them.

The sequel to MASK OF SHADOWS, genderfluid Sal is back as Our Queen’s Opal–ready to assassinate anyone Our Queen needs, but also hell bent on finishing off their own assassination list for the murder of their homeland, Nacea. Much like Arya Stark, Sal has a list and will do anything to cross the names off. Severed ears, missing children, rouge magic, and murderous shadows, however, keep getting in the way.

General

This was much the same as the first book in terms of plot and pacing. The start was a bit slower to get into, as there was very little rehashing and it was rough to remember all the (numerous) players in the court. I didn’t get really hooked into the narrative until page 159 (I actually dog-eared the page because I got so excited). Things got better after Sal started their quest and the character number dropped to just them and Rath, and a few additional characters. There was just as much violence and gore as the first (which was not a problem–it was very well balanced) and once again, the secondary characters really shone through. So let’s talk about…

Characters

Maud remains my favorite person in the series. She’s nuanced, complexed, and so well written than I would pay cash money, right now, for a book just written from her POV. I would read this entire duology again from a Maud POV as well. She is an absolutely delightful duplicitous servant and her devotion to Sal is just perfect. Her interaction with Sal on page 40-42 is just so quintessential Maud. There was never any doubt in my mind which team she was playing for. Please, Linsey Miller, can we have a collection of Maud shorts?

Elise gained some additional dimensionality in this book and went from simple love interest to plot-relevant sidekick. Her romance with Sal remained a bit lukewarm, but that was by design, as the two have quite the falling out about midway through.

The villains were flat out delicious. All of them. I love morally grey people (as anyone who has read the Ardulum series will know), and it was wonderful to go through their mental mechanisms and rationalizations. There were times when I could have easily sided with the villains, too. Burn Nacea! Maybe just leave off the shadow business…

To the enby stuff

Yes okay, enough rehash. You’re here for teh gay, I assume. I was pleased with MASK OF SHADOWS and its portrayal as genderfluid as just part of in-world life. Some explanations had to be given, but generally it was a non-issue. I know from discussions that the author was asked to step up the enby issues in this book, and she certainly did so. I’m not sure I like it? I don’t dislike it, but coming in the second book of the series felt a little jarring. It also only played out in the first half and disappeared again in the back half of the book. Because of all this the issues surrounding Sal’s gender fluidity, it felt tacked on instead of natural, and thus every mentioned jumped out at me, instead of drawing me farther into the book.

I want to make it very clear though, that A) I realize this is not the author’s fault and B) due to the almost complete lack of nonbinary rep in mainstream published YA literature, these kinds of call-outs to identity are almost mandatory. It’s rote for me, but not the cis fifteen year old, necessarily. So in this case, as frustrating as I found it, it has a very legitimate reason for being there.

I did really miss the emphasis on the fluid nature of Sal’s gender in this book. In MASK OF SHADOWS we got to see a lot more of Sal as a woman, Sal as a man, Sal in-between. It made the outfits fun and the titles fun and really helped to humanize Sal. We only get one of those instances in this book, on page 189:

“Lady Opal,” she said–I was but I didn’t like the way she said it, like she’d say it no matter what–and smiled.”

The subtly of this sentence is what made me love MASK OF SHADOWS, and was something I missed a lot in RUIN OF STARS, where Sal’s pronouns seem to uniformly get shoved into ‘they’ instead of bouncing between she, he, and they.

I also enjoyed the extended time with Elise and her canon bisexuality. It was only briefly touched on in the first book, but here it is a major bone of contention that actually drives part of the plot. Erlend sounds like an awful country, btw, and I’ll take a hard pass on a tour package to there, even if we get to see shadows.

The sex scene with Sal and Elise (page 372) was lovely, not only in the way it was written but in that there is no great ‘what’s between their legs’ answer. That is really the crowning achievement of this duology–Miller manages to write a three-dimensional genderfluid character without ever feeling the need to dip into the assigned gender at birth, Sal’s anatomy, or anything like that. The reader is left with absolutely no idea if Sal’s body has a penis or a vulva, and it doesn’t matter in the slightest to anyone in-world. Sure, the Erlend people want you to have one gender and stick with it, but no one appears to have an issue with genitals and gender.

So, as violent and bloody as the world is in these books, in many ways, it’s a lot nicer than our own.

 

You can buy RUIN OF STARS here in paperback and here in ebook.

 

Review: Corruption of Honor by A.M. Rycroft

Genre: fantasy (sword and sorcery) (YA) (novella)

Pairings: f/f

Queer Representation: cis lesbian

Warnings: none

Rating: 3.5 stars

 

Review

Shaun Grayson has always wanted to be a knight, and protecting Princess Sara, whom she definitely does not have a crush on, is her mission. But when the Kingdom of Riverend is sacked and Sara’s life is truly in danger, Shaun finds there’s much more to being a knight than cute girls, petty squabbles, and court intrigue.

General

Okay, I’m a sucker for knight/princess trope when it’s f/f. Give me damsels in distress being saved by other damsels any day. A number of these types of books have come out (heh) in the YA market recently, and CORRUPTION OF HONOR (hereafter CoH) fits well within them. There aren’t any real surprises in this book, and I think readers will find it comfortably familiar: the squabbling with the love interest princess, the courageous, pure of heart knight, and a set of (predictable) circumstances that throws them together.

Not every book has to be a great modern work of fiction. Sometimes its nice to have slice of life books and trope books, and CoF scratched my ‘knights and princess’ itch perfectly. The pacing was reasonable, the action scenes well done, and there was suitable chemistry between Shaun and Sara. The ending as well–a cliffhanger–left me both pleased with the book’s progress but also wanting to read more. Not bad for a 138 page novella.

In late, out early

I don’t believe I have ever said this about a book before, but I think CoH came in way too late in the story. Yes, the conventional wisdom is ‘in late, out early,’ but CoH begins in what I would consider a chapter three or four–thrusting us into Shaun’s and Sara’s conflict without any real worldbuilding or character dynamics. It’s effective as the reader is immediately part of the story, but I felt like some comfort tropes were missed. Since this is a trope book at heart, that some of the formula was skipped made me grumpy.

Where was my ‘Shaun has always wanted to be a knight but XX stands in her way?’ Where was my ‘Sara is feisty and once beat Shaun in a wooden sword duel so is both girly and able to take care of herself?” Most importantly, where is the tension of how Shaun and Sara met and how Shaun became her guard? I think there was a lot of potential in this narrative for a delicious romance, but instead the book was a very short introduction and then one hundred pages of battle. And I like battle, don’t get me wrong, but I needed more character grounding, and an info dump in the back of the book in some backmatter doesn’t help much.

Despite my grumbles however, this was a fun, short read. It lacked any serious problematic elements and could be a teen’s easy introduction into sword and sorcery fantasy. Shaun and Sara are believable protagonists, their sexuality is on-page but never an issue, and the book follows well-known and well-loved trajectories. Readers looking for a fun adventure-fluff read, as well as those who enjoyed OF FIRE AND STARS by Audrey Coulthurst, LUNAV by Jenn Polish (although this is more dark fantasy), and PORTRAITS OF A FAERIE QUEEN by Tay LaRoi, will also likely enjoy CoH.

You can buy CORRUPTION OF HONOR in paperback here and ebook here.

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