Love at 350° is a sweet sapphic romance novel set during the taping of a reality baking show. And, long story short, it’s a good sign when I finish a book and kind of want to re-read it shortly thereafter, yeah? Tori is a high school teacher, avid baker who is recovering from a bad …
This book does exactly what it says in the subtitle. It talks about the female body from the first proto-mammalian appearance of nursing all the way up to (relatively) modern history. How are women’s bodies different from men and what does that mean? What are the advantages of menstruation (humans are only one of a …
Justina Ireland caught my attention with a duology set in an alternate history where the Civil War ended early… due to the dead rising from their graves after Gettysburg. It shouldn’t have worked. Hell, I’ve been tired of zombies (and their myriad knockoffs) for years and I went in with a jaundiced eye. But Ireland …
[L]ast year I was quite taken by the book Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree […] I’ll be up front, this book owes a lot to L&L, which the author freely admits in her afterword. Which was nice because, yes, I was looking for something similar to… Reyna moves to a remote village on the …
Battle of the Linguist Mages is a mad bastard of a book, and that is high praise. On the one hand, it’s a pretty familiar story (young woman learns that magic in a video game has real power) with familiar elements of course there are nefarious forces arrayed to exploit them AND her)… but they …
We Are Satellites by Sarah Pinsker is… wow. Proof that I need a bit more faith in the good authors because Pinsker went places with this story I was not expecting and that is glorious! In the near future, Pilot is released. It’s a small brain implant that allows the brain to come close to …
Passing Strange by Ellen Klages is a remarkably restful piece of quiet fantasy that I can’t recommend enough. Set in the queer quarters of 1940 San Francisco, we follow the budding romance between two women: an artist for the pulps and a singer newly arrived trying to find a place to belong. That’s it. And …
Otaku by Chris Kluwe will have to be compared to Ernie Cline’s Ready Player One because they have a lot in common. Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a dystopian world that’s gone to hell and it would really suck if there wasn’t some kind of global virtual reality game for people to get …
A war is waged by two rival time-traveling agents: Red, who comes from a world ruled by technology, and Blue, who comes from a world rooted in organic life. The narrative is told through letters between the women, at first passionately loathsome, then– surprising both– passionately loving. Through visceral, poignant, and intricate wordplay, El-Mohtar and …
Live from PAX West, a book review! There’s something to the notion of a time war, isn’t there? One faction wants This, another faction wants That, and time is the battlefield. There’s also something futile to the notion, but that’s another book (All of an Instant by Richard Garfinkle [out of print]). This book is …
