Tag: LGBTQ+

Five Impossible Things by Koji A. Dae

Alice lies dying in a hospice bed while her mind attempts to gain citizenship in Vtora Sviat, a virtual reality realm designed as an alternative to dying. The challenge is that the mind must accept the VR as reality. But Alice struggles to do this each time she visits by noticing the impossible things in the virtual world. With time running out, she must overcome this mental obstacle or face imminent death.

The call backs to Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland are obvious in this penultimate story of the September issue of Clarkesworld. The storytelling is superb—touching, poignant, and heartfelt. Alice struggles with leaving her family behind, exploring the difficulty of relationships in a hospice situation. At the same time it tackles the experience of discovering new things about yourself. Another fantastic story that I highly recommend.

Length: 4,110 words (about 20 minutes)

My rating: 5/5

A Dream of Twin Sunsets by Ryan Cole

On a planet orbiting twin suns, a civilization struggles to survive. Their greatest danger is the poison pollen storms that choke the engines of their gliders and can lead to any number of unpleasant deaths. As a consequence, their society is one of strict rules and adhering to them. Disobedience will almost certainly lead to death by nature or the government. A leader of this culture, who narrates “A Dream of Twin Sunsets“, meets a deserter on his first glider mission. He falls in love with the man in the short time they are together but cannot bring himself to stay. He goes on to marry and have a daughter. But this experience continues to haunt him until…. I’ll let you find out for yourself.

This is one of the most beautiful and poignant love stories I’ve ever read. Like most things worth having in life, love involves difficult choices. The writing evokes deep feelings that are in opposition to each other. It is easy to read and immersive. The world really comes to life as a natural background to the characters and their activities. I highly recommend this story. Please, read it!

My rating: 5/5

Someone in Time edited by Jonathan Strahan

I read this as member of my book club at my local library. We each read a different book on a particular topic. For the most recent meeting we read historical fiction that takes place prior to the twentieth century. I kind of cheated with this one. It is short stories and only some of them go that far back in time. But it seemed to be a hit when I told them about it.

The editor was able to get stories from a lot of well know contemporary authors of science fiction. The theme of the anthology was time travel love stories. The book’s title as a call out to the 1980 move Somewhere in Time was totally on purpose. There were sixteen stories in the book. Here are my brief synopses and ratings.

  • “Roadside Attraction” by Alix E. Harrow — After his girlfriend breaks up with him, a young man loses himself by going to the past over and over only to find his destiny in the present. (5/5)
  • “The Past Life Reconstruction Service” by Zeb Cho — A movie director recently dumped by his boyfriend keeps seeing him as he explores his past lives. (5/5)
  • “First Aid” by Seanan McGuire — In order to take care of her younger disabled sister, a woman prepares to go back permanently to Elizabethan England. (5/5)
  • “I Remember Satellites” by Sarah Gailey — When a time traveler draws a short straw job that leaves her permanently in the past, she has to leave behind a girlfriend to become a divorcée who causes the future King England to abdicate. (5/5)
  • “The Golden Hour” by Jeffrey Ford — A time traveler stuck in time reconnects with his time-traveling wife. (3/5)
  • “The Lichens” by Nina Allan — A woman in northern Scotland during the time of Culloden encounters a scientist from the future looking for a buried spacecraft. (4/5)
  • “Kronia” by Elizabeth Hand — Lovers who grew up a mile apart find each other through time. (2/5)
  • “Bergamot and Vetiver” by Lavanya Lakshminarayan — A woman from the 2500s travels back to the Indus Valley Civilization where the future’s leaders use her to steal water the man she falls in love with. (4/5)
  • “The Difference Between Love and Time” by Catherynne M. Valente — A woman tells the tale of her romance with the personification of the space/time continuum. (4/5)
  • “Unbashed, or: Jackson, Whose Cowardice Tore a Hole in the Chronoverse” by Sam J. Miller — A young man regrets not walking his first love home, finding out the next morning that he has been murdered for who he loved. (4/5)
  • “Romance: Historical” by Rowan Coleman — A young neurodivergent woman mysteriously connects with a man from 1914 in the bookshop where she works. (5/5)
  • “The Place of All Souls” by Margo Lanagan — Two people who found each other connected in the space between times, find each other and struggle about what to do about it and how it will affect their families. (3/5)
  • “Timed Obsolescence” by Sameem Siddiqui — A man pursues a fling during multiple visits to the past only to find that his behavior there has affected his present. (2/5)
  • “A Letter to Merlin” by Theodora Goss — A woman from the future inhabiting the body of Guinevere in an attempt to keep the timeline on track writes a letter to Merlin who is also inhabited by someone from the future. (4/5)
  • “Dead Poets” by Carrie Vaughn — A female academic drinks from an ancient cup dreaming of meeting Sappho but instead goes back to 1536 to visit Sir Thomas Wyatt in the Tower of London shortly after the execution of Anne Boleyn. (4/5)
  • “Time Gypsy” by Ellen Klages — A woman goes back in time to meet her scientific hero only to fall in love with her and discover that her advisor in the future isn’t what he seems to be. (5/5)

The average of these ratings give the book as a whole a rating of 4/5.

We Are the Crisis by Cadwell Turnbull

This is the sequel to No Gods, No Monsters and the second book in Cadwell Turnbull’s Convergence Saga. My book club read the first two years ago and decided to read the sequel in October.

The story picks up about a year after the climactic events of the first novel. Monsters continue to seek recognition and equal rights from their human neighbors. Naturally, a group rises to oppose this, othering monsters as inherently dangerous. The story climaxes in a similar devastating event as the first novel.

This just felt like more of the same without adding much. The writing is engaging and the subject matter is a telling metaphor for LGBTQ+ rights. But the storytelling is still disjointed. It jumps around and left me feeling confused and a bit disoriented. Worst of all for me was that the author did little to nothing to help catch up those who read the first book in the series. Often authors will seamlessly add little reminders of what happened previously. There was little to none of that here. I recommend reading this one immediately after the first. And if you plan to read the whole series, wait until the last one comes out so you can read them one after the other. Despite all these shortcomings, I still enjoyed the novel.

My rating: 3/5

Why Are People Into That? by Tina Horn

I receive a number of bookish newsletters. One of those is by Neil Pasricha. In his latest newsletter, he made an unusual recommendation. As the third book he recommended this title. When he picked it up at a bookstore in Ottawa and browsed the table of contents he “could feel internal aversions and curiosities, and knew I should probably pick it up to learn more.” That piqued my curiosity, so I borrowed it from my library.

Each chapter covers a different fetish, such as “Feet”, “Spanking”, and “Orgies”. They open with a frank discussion of what they are and a compassionate look as to why people enjoy them. I appreciated this approach, especially for the chapters I was less comfortable with like “Consensual Nonconsent”.

I highly recommend this book for those whose only exposure to kinks is mainstream movies or porn. Both show fetishists as out of touch weirdos. From this book, I learned that there is much more to what turns people on than the surface understanding that comes from such sources. It is a real exercise in understanding the motivations of others. And that is a valuable experience regardless of the subject matter.

My rating: 4/5

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

I’ve had this book on my To Be Read pile for almost three years. Last week it caught my attention when I was considering what to read next. I finished in less than a week.

The story takes place on a future Earth where a way has been discovered to travel to alternate universes. This allows Earth Zero (the one that discovered and developed the technology) to begin a brisk trade with alternate Earths. The challenge of traversing, as its called, to these other worlds is that you can only do so to worlds where the alternate version of you is no longer alive. The main character is valuable to the company employing those who traverse because she is dead in more alternate worlds than anyone else. But what happens when she is sent to a world where her alternate self isn’t actually dead? That happens, kicking off a fantastic thriller of a novel.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It has everything. A likable but mysterious protagonist. A driven plot with multiple twists that are hard or impossible to see coming. Character development that happens in line with the plot and provokes considered thought about the human condition. And a love story that feels as genuine as possible in a complex and dangerous world. I found this book un-put-down-able.

My rating: 4.5/5

Gender Queer: A Memoir by Maia Kobabe

Before the recent Academy Awards ceremony, the nominated short documentary The ABCs of Book Banning was available to watch in its entirety (you can watch the trailer here). The premise of the short film was to give banned books to school kids to get their thoughts on why they might be banned. It is well worth watching and is available on Paramount+. Gender Queer was one of those banned books, so I decided to read it myself.

The book is a memoir in graphic novel form. In it the author tells eir story of growing up with gender dysphoria and coming to understand that e was nonbinary and asexual. I have to admit that the whole transgender and nonbinary controversy is a little challenging for me. As a cishet man, I honestly don’t understand it. That’s part of why I read this book. But I don’t need to understand it in order to allow others to be themselves.

This book was exactly what I was looking for. It gave me a glimpse at the life of one real person who lived through the confusion of dealing with gender dysphoria and how e came to understand who e was. It was both educational and transformative for me. I now feel I have a better understanding of what this issue means and how it can be addressed with compassion and understanding. I still don’t completely get it, but this book was an excellent start on my growth in this area.

My rating: 4/5

Feed Them Silence by Lee Mandelo

Last year was my year of short fiction. In addition to all the short stories I read, I collected a number of novellas to read. This was one of them. I was drawn to it because part of its premise is a scientist who figures out how to share the experience of a wolf. It did not disappoint.

As the story opens, the scientist and her team are performing surgery on a wolf in the wild to implant a device in her brain that will broadcast to a corresponding device in the scientist’s brain. When the connection is turned on, the scientist is able to experience all that the wolf sees, hears, smells, and feels. Naturally this experience is in many ways quite foreign for a human and begins to affect the scientist. At the same time, the scientist is experiencing relationship difficulties with her wife.

I loved this short novel! It deals with so many complex topics in ways that really connected with me. It didn’t feel heavy handed or like it was trying to give particular answers. It was more of an exploration of the complexity of human relationships as well as relationships between human animals and the rest of the animal kingdom and the natural world. I found it incredibly moving and a rich reading experience.

My rating: 5/5

Happy Place by Emily Henry

The author name at top and book title at center on a magenta background. At the bottom, six cartoon people are floating on and jumping into water.

I occasionally read a romance novel. One of my favorite authors in this genre is Emily Henry. When she recently released her latest novel, I requested it from my library. My turn finally came around earlier this week, and I finished it in three days.

About half way through this book, I wasn’t sure if I was going to end up liking it. The story is told from the point of view of Harriet. She and her long-time boyfriend Wyn broke up five months ago, sending her into a tailspin. They used to attend the annual friends vacation together, but this year is her turn after the split. But when she gets there having just about gotten over him, Wyn is there, too. They end up having to make the most of a bad situation for reasons I won’t spoil.

I wasn’t sure this book was for me because the crux of the plot is a miscommunication between Harriet and Wyn, or at least a lack of communication. They spend much of the book making assumptions about the other’s thoughts and feeling regarding how and why they broke up. I hate this trope! I mean, just talk to each other and clear it up already! But when the author gets around to clearing things up around 70% of the way through, it turns out there are good reasons for not having discussed it. And they feel legitimate and real rather than forced.

As I said, this is a miscommunication, enemies become lovers (again) romance. But it goes surprisingly deeper than that covering such themes as life purpose, individuality, self-care, mental health, and growing into yourself. I am very glad I finished the book. It may be my favorite of hers so far.

My rating: 4/5