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kyatic's Reviews (974)
Her Royal Highness is an f/f YA novel about Millie, a girl from Texas, who goes to a fancy boarding school in Scotland, where she finds out that her roommate is the princess of Scotland, Flora. It's basically a queer version of the ever popular 'girl falls in love with boy, but he turns out to be a prince' trope, and I'm very here for it.
Millie is bi (and yes, she self identifies as such several times), as is her ex girlfriend, and Flora is also queer, and one of the best things about this book is how people's sexuality is completely accepted. There's no inner torment or external homophobia; her sexuality is a stated fact. This is obviously a fairly idealistic view, and I'm by no means suggesting all books should follow suit; I absolutely think there's a necessity for stories about homophobia and queerphobia, but sometimes it's just nice to completely relax and suspend your disbelief to read a book where that's not part of the narrative.
This is a really great feel good read with a cast of well drawn (although not always particularly likeable) characters, and those who read and enjoyed Red, White and Royal Blue will probably love this one for its similarly idealised portrayal of society and queer issues. Obviously there are things to consider, such as the question of romanticising colonialism, but it's a refreshing take on a popular trope, and I'm a fan of subverting genres that have previously been completely het.
A feel good f/f romance which might make you very slightly want to rewatch Brave.
Millie is bi (and yes, she self identifies as such several times), as is her ex girlfriend, and Flora is also queer, and one of the best things about this book is how people's sexuality is completely accepted. There's no inner torment or external homophobia; her sexuality is a stated fact. This is obviously a fairly idealistic view, and I'm by no means suggesting all books should follow suit; I absolutely think there's a necessity for stories about homophobia and queerphobia, but sometimes it's just nice to completely relax and suspend your disbelief to read a book where that's not part of the narrative.
This is a really great feel good read with a cast of well drawn (although not always particularly likeable) characters, and those who read and enjoyed Red, White and Royal Blue will probably love this one for its similarly idealised portrayal of society and queer issues. Obviously there are things to consider, such as the question of romanticising colonialism, but it's a refreshing take on a popular trope, and I'm a fan of subverting genres that have previously been completely het.
A feel good f/f romance which might make you very slightly want to rewatch Brave.
There's lots of things to recommend this book. First and foremost, it gives a voice to people who are historically underrepresented in media and publishing, and that can only be a good thing. Some of the stories here are great, and I'd love to read full length novels of many of them (particularly Kai Cheng Thom's). The variety of representation and narrative is really interesting, too. There are myriad takes on the fantasy genre, from D&D style mages to 1940s Noir. There are stories which delve into the colonial genocide of Canada's indigenous people, and there are stories which are generally light-hearted and funny but have a deeper message about identity beneath the humour, and there are those which create entire new worlds in a few thousand worlds and let you live in it for a short while. I liked more stories in here than not.
However, I have no idea who proof-read this, but some of it was borderline unreadable - one in particular is so full of errors and typos that I had to skip most of it. It read like it had been written in English and then put through Google Translate and translated back into English. I couldn't read more than the first 2 pages. Having said that, my copy was an ARC and perhaps much of this was later corrected or amended.
I think a lot of this is down to the smallness of the press, and therein lies the problem; marginalised people often have to rely on small presses because big publishers won't take risks on marginalised writers (even though readers have shown time and time again that it's not really a risk) and those presses don't always have the resources available to edit the books as much as they need.
I'd still recommend this book and I enjoyed more of the stories than not, but it definitely suffers from a lack of cohesive quality.
Standout stories which I would very happily read again and again are those by Kai Cheng Thom, Izzy Wasserstein, Kylie Ariel Bemis and Lilah Sturges.
Edit for my own edification: the story I couldn't finish was Potions & Practices by Gwynception. It was just really, really bad, both in terms of editing and writing quality. I mention it here because multiple other reviews have said the same thing. I'm not sure it should have been included in a published book in its current state.
Highlights:
Dreamborn - Kylie Ariel Bemis (the absolute best story in this collection, no competition; I would absolutely devour a novel length version of this)
Undoing Vampirism - Lilah Sturges
I Shall Remain - Kai Cheng Thom
The Vixen, With Death Pursuing - Izzy Wasserstein
However, I have no idea who proof-read this, but some of it was borderline unreadable - one in particular is so full of errors and typos that I had to skip most of it. It read like it had been written in English and then put through Google Translate and translated back into English. I couldn't read more than the first 2 pages. Having said that, my copy was an ARC and perhaps much of this was later corrected or amended.
I think a lot of this is down to the smallness of the press, and therein lies the problem; marginalised people often have to rely on small presses because big publishers won't take risks on marginalised writers (even though readers have shown time and time again that it's not really a risk) and those presses don't always have the resources available to edit the books as much as they need.
I'd still recommend this book and I enjoyed more of the stories than not, but it definitely suffers from a lack of cohesive quality.
Standout stories which I would very happily read again and again are those by Kai Cheng Thom, Izzy Wasserstein, Kylie Ariel Bemis and Lilah Sturges.
Edit for my own edification: the story I couldn't finish was Potions & Practices by Gwynception. It was just really, really bad, both in terms of editing and writing quality. I mention it here because multiple other reviews have said the same thing. I'm not sure it should have been included in a published book in its current state.
Highlights:
Dreamborn - Kylie Ariel Bemis (the absolute best story in this collection, no competition; I would absolutely devour a novel length version of this)
Undoing Vampirism - Lilah Sturges
I Shall Remain - Kai Cheng Thom
The Vixen, With Death Pursuing - Izzy Wasserstein
Star / Sun / Snow is simply the most affecting poem I've read in years. The rest of the poems in this could be awful and it would still get 5 stars for that one. The other poems are also beautiful, of course; Zoë Brigley is an enormous talent and the rage and tenderness in these pages is a quiet but simmering thing, always under the surface. Other favourites are Beatitudes for the Women, My Last Beatitude, and Letter from Nemi. Haunting and visceral work and absolutely recommended.
'Nobody said how close a mother
and baby could be: as close
as teeth in the same
mouth.'
'Nobody said how close a mother
and baby could be: as close
as teeth in the same
mouth.'
Some really insightful points, and others that seem quite nascent and borderline questionable (I think it's reductive to say that transphobic cis women, for example, are transphobic because they have internalised misogyny, rather than an entitlement to womanhood and a view of femininity as biology) but an important and useful read nonetheless.
Ramaswamy wrote this memoir of her pregnancy in the style of nature writing, following Nan Shepherd's The Living Mountain, as she views pregnancy as being somewhat akin to scaling a metaphorical mountain, and it makes for a really close view of the human body as topography.
As an Indian woman in a lesbian relationship, Ramaswamy writes beautifully about how the human body undergoes the sea changes of fostering human life, and juxtaposes it with how society receives a brown body about to become a parent outside of a 'traditional' heterosexual marriage; one of the most moving chapters is Ramaswamy's musing about her child's potential resemblance to her white sperm donor, and what it means for her to give birth to a baby who, if it 'passes' for white, may automatically be perceived by strangers as the white offspring of a heterosexual relationship, rather than a mixed race child of a queer household.
Although the main focus of the book is the psychological and physical effects of pregnancy on a person, Ramaswamy's memoir challenges the limited viewpoint that often constrains narratives of pregnancy to notions of white heterosexual couples, and she speaks to the ultimate human connection to the creation of life that should be accessible to all people, but which is still so stigmatised when applied to certain bodies.
A really moving memoir of what it means to nurture life, and to do so beyond the boundaries of heteronormativity.
As an Indian woman in a lesbian relationship, Ramaswamy writes beautifully about how the human body undergoes the sea changes of fostering human life, and juxtaposes it with how society receives a brown body about to become a parent outside of a 'traditional' heterosexual marriage; one of the most moving chapters is Ramaswamy's musing about her child's potential resemblance to her white sperm donor, and what it means for her to give birth to a baby who, if it 'passes' for white, may automatically be perceived by strangers as the white offspring of a heterosexual relationship, rather than a mixed race child of a queer household.
Although the main focus of the book is the psychological and physical effects of pregnancy on a person, Ramaswamy's memoir challenges the limited viewpoint that often constrains narratives of pregnancy to notions of white heterosexual couples, and she speaks to the ultimate human connection to the creation of life that should be accessible to all people, but which is still so stigmatised when applied to certain bodies.
A really moving memoir of what it means to nurture life, and to do so beyond the boundaries of heteronormativity.
