Set in the late 1980s, this story opens with teenage orphan Marcus living on the streets of San Francisco. He has a violent and tragic past; he has a bleak present; he wonders if he has any kind of future at all. Out of the blue, on Dia de Los Muertos, a handful of cops begin chasing Marcus seemingly trying to kill him. A group of teens intervene, and they save Marcus's life before kidnapping him and taking him to meet their mentor. It turns out they are all students at an underground school for assassins and they've had their eye on Marcus for a while. Most of the students are the children of Mafia, Yakuza, Neo Nazis or the heads of drug cartels, but Marcus is offered admittance. However, remarkably little of this first volume takes places at the school or shows any of the education that takes place there- instead it mostly follows two off-campus trips Marcus does that turn into drug-fulled murder scenes. I liked the art quite a lot and the inventive page layouts drew me in, but the story didn't do much for me. If you want to read about kids at an assassin school I'd recommend instead Five Weapons, a comic series by Jimmy Robinson which is much lighter, humorous and clever; or the fantasy trilogy Book of the Ancestor by Mark Lawrence, which is set at a girls' martial arts monastery and has multiple queer characters; or Robin Hobb's Assassin's Apprentice, the opening book of an epic and devastating fantasy series.

I've loved every Becky Chambers book so far and this was no exception! Four astronauts, Ariadne O'Neill, Elena Quesada-Cruz, Jack Vo and Chikondi Daka, make up the crew of the OCA spacecraft Merian. When the story opens they have just woken up from 28 years in suspended animation, and are excited to step out onto the first of four planets they have traveled to survey. They are interested in everything to do with these alien worlds, all of which contain some kind of flora or fauna. Each world presents a unique challenge, but also a fresh place for the quartet to learn more about the universe and also themselves. They are so caught up in their research it takes them a long time to realize their regular dispatches from Earth have stopped... The audiobook is only 4.5 hours and I listened to it all in one day. Chambers, a queer author, is very good at gently folding in different queer identities into a story without making the story about the character's sexualities or gender identities. This space crew is 100% queer, with an ace character, a trans character and poly relationship. If I had one request, actually, it would have been to see just a little bit more of that side of things. But as a novella, this piece is very satisfying.

I wanted to like this book more than I actually did. I heard the author speak on a panel, and I loved her description of the book so much I bought it without reading any reviews. It needed up being much more of a YA teenage feelings story than the hard science sci-fi I was expecting. In the beginning we meet seven British teenagers, all graduates of an exclusive astronaut prep school, six of whom have been chosen for the 23-year-long space journey to Terra Two, an Earth-like planet which orbits two suns. There's Harrison Bellgrave, the handsome junior pilot/commander who has an arrogant and violent streak; Poppy Lane, a polyglot from a low-class background who becomes the Comms officer and suffers from depression; twins Juno and Astrid Juma, in training to become a medial officer and astrobiologist- both have eating disorders; Eliot Liston, a robotics specialist in training as an engineer who has mental health issues; Ara Shah, botanist and manic pixie dream girl who is having second thoughts about the mission; and Jesse Solloway, who desperately wants to go but ends up on the reserve replacement crew. One of the hardest things for me to believe is that a crew with so many clashing personality issues would be sent on a mission due to last more than two decades; surely the British Interplanetary Society would have considered the crew's emotional cohesion necessary for mission success? This book has a lot of debut-novel inconsistency: the first 150-200 were engaging but then it heads into a middle section which dragged so much I almost gave up on it. I'm glad I didn't because the last 100 pages were action packed and dramatic, but the 4 star ending only pulls my overall book rating to 3 stars.

A delightful remix of many classic Baba Yaga fairy tales in a modern setting. Masha is a teen girl who has experienced a lot of loss: her mother died when she was a child, and her beloved grandmother died a year ago. When her father announces his plans to re-marry, Masha is full of mixed feelings. Meeting her new step mom and aggressive brat of a little step-sister is painful enough that Masha decides to head into the woods to find Baba Yaga... who recently published a personal ad in a local paper looking for an assistant. Masha knows she will have to pass multiple tests in order to win over the dangerous witch's trust, but luckily she's got some tricks up her sleeve. She has a head full of fairy tales her grandmother old her, and also her grandma's old doll, which might be magic. Beautifully illustrated by Emily Carroll, who is most know for her horror work. This book is for kids, but she brings in enough creepy to give this story some teeth.

A tantalizing beginning to a sweet high school romance. Charlie is a moody, melancholic teen, out as gay at a English all-boy's school. He's had to deal with some bullying and also unwanted advances. Nick is a cheerful rugby player, a golden retriever in human form who befriends Charlie when then are seated together in homeroom. They click immediately, but neither of them know what to do with their feelings for each other. Will they be able to navigate peer pressure and teenage shame to an honest relationship? Oseman's drawings are charmingly loose, just giving as much information as needed and no more. This book is a very quick read, and will leave you immediately wanting more. Luckily, this story is also serialized online as a webcomic on tumblr: https://heartstoppercomic.tumblr.com/ and on Tapas: https://tapas.io/series/Heartstopper/info

This book is wonderful. Juliet is a 19 year old Puerto Rican teen from the Bronx, getting ready for an internship with her favorite feminist writer between her freshman and sophomore years of college. Before she finishes packing her bags and leaves for Portland, Oregon, Juliet needs to finish the epic mix CD she's making for her secret girlfriend- and also come out to her family as a lesbian. Will she be able to do it at the family dinner table, or will she chicken out? So begins Juliet's whirlwind summer, full of adventure and new experiences: vegan food, polyamory, middle-aged dyke drama, heartbreak, radical politics, love, haircuts. A big theme of this book is the inadequacy of white allies in conversations about racism, racial micro aggressions, and how to navigate friendships with people who have let you down. Do you abandon them? Do you try to educate them? I really appreciated these conversations in a YA book, they were very well done. Overall it's a fast, fun read, the deep topics mixed with simmering sweet summer romance.

An extremely strong collection of memoir essays, centered on themes of queer community, gender transition, reckoning with white masculinity, being a working class artist, relationships, trauma, healing, and accountability. Two short pieces about childhood, "Lincoln Street" and "Boombox", ached with the feeling of the last period of freedom before the full onslaught of gender policing and puberty. Many of the pieces provided a window to a specific queer moment in San Francisco in the 1990s, when punk artist collectives could still afford rent and run wild through the city. Bombardier also writes about working in traditionally masculine spaces, in carpentry, in welding, in construction, and as a college campus security guard. I enjoyed the nonlinear organization of the pieces in this book, and I highlighted several lines which I know I will be thinking about for a long time.