This is a 60-page, perfect bound collection of comics, prose and fan art made by trans Harry Potter fans and allies. I am very biased because I created a six page story for the book and it was edited by a dear friend of mine, but I think it's brilliant :) My story is about nonbinary Tonks starting puberty in the summer before starting at Hogwarts and trying to decide which dormitory room suits them. You can find out more and order the book here: https://gumroad.com/l/transHPzine

I listened to this as an audio book without knowing anything about it and was delightfully surprised by my random choice! Set in a far future in which humans and supernatural beings have terraformed and colonized multiple worlds, this is an action-packed young adult sci-fi with magic in the vein of Artemis Fowl. The main character, Min, is from a family of shape-shifting foxes, traditionally the least loved and least trusted of the supernatural races (all of whom are drawn from Korean mythology). Her older brother Jun joined the Space Forces a few years ago and Min longs to join him and see other worlds once she is old enough. Then comes the devastating news: her brother is missing, and is being called a deserter; the rumor is that he abandoned his post to chase after the fabled Dragon Pearl. Min knows this can't be true, and she decides she has to prove it. She runs away from home and before long has tangled with pirates, gamblers, and ghosts. She ends up impersonating a cadet on her brother's military ship to search for clues where she befriends a young dragon cadet and a goblin cadet. One of best surprises was that this book has several nonbinary characters who use they/them pronouns, which are a completely normalized part of this society. The most unrealistic part is that Min is only 13 years old when she leaves home for a wild series of adventures that would tax the cleverness and resources of a full adult, but that's YA for you. I'd definitely recommend this as a fun quick read and I will probably look into other books by this author.

I listened to this collection of 15 retellings of Asian myths written by contemporary POC writers as an audiobook. All of the stories were good, but these especially stood out to me: "Olivia's Table" by Alyssa Wong, about a Chinese American teenager who must cook a banquet for the hungry ghosts of an Arizona mining town; "Counting the Vermilion Beads" by Aliette de Bodard, about two sisters trying to escape a life of working as accountants to the Emperor; "The Land of the Morning Calm" by E.C. Meyers about a teen girl who's mother was obsessed with an MMORPG based on Korean myths- and who may still haunt the game after her death; and "Bullet, Butterfly" by Elsie Chapman, set in a dystopian future China, a teen boy soldier disguises himself and sneaks out of the hospital to work in the city armory. I wish that the authors of each story had read their own works in the audiobook; instead, the majority of the stories from female POVs are read by an AFAB narrator; the stories from male POVs are read by an AMAB narrator. This didn't add to my listening pleasure, but overall I still enjoyed the book.

"Murderbot" is a security android, rented by a team of scientists for an assessment mission on an unoccupied planet. The scientists are unaware that Murderbot has a damaged control module, meaning it is capable of making all its own decisions and choices. Mainly what it chooses is to pretend to be a normal sec unit and consume vast amounts of downloaded TV dramas in its downtime. But then a series of unexpected dangers and mysteries begin to crop up around the scientist team. Can Murderbot protect its humans without revealing its free will? This novella turned into just a 3 hour audiobook but it's a very satisfying installment. I'm delighted that it's the first of a series!

Another fantastic installment of the Murderbot Diaries. Murderbot goes on an investigative mission to try and understand the traumatic mining accident in its past: the time they murdered 57 humans and then had their memory wiped. Murderbot needs to know- did it do this voluntarily, or involuntarily? Along the way it meets an over-intelligent research vessel and a small crew of humans who have need of a security expert. Murderbot takes the job, but before you know it, other humans are trying to kill it's humans. What the hell is wrong with humans??

The audiobook is voiced by a male reader. I spent some time thinking about how I might experienced this story differently if it had been read by a non-male person- or by a computer generated voice. Murderbot is asexual and has no gender; I'm trying not to let the male-sounding voice influence how I view the character too much.

Still happily making my way through these audio books at the rate of about one per day this week. The corporate-political plot which Murderbot is trying to solve, in order to gain evidence for a legal trial involving it's favorite human, is getting more complicated and more dangerous. Murderbot once again ends up with a group of humans it chooses to protect- which is very hard, because humans are SO stupid sometimes. I enjoy it's long-suffering attempts to do the right thing.

A beautifully designed, brightly colored coffee-table style book, informative and very pleasing to the eye! There's definitely a Western/American focus, but other traditions are included as well from Kabuki theater, Peking opera, the Kathakali dancers (of precolonial India), to Thailand's Miss Tiffany Universe competition and Thai Drag Race. Drag queens who have had particular culture impact, such as Divine, RuPaul and Lady Bunny, get features as does the involvement of drag queen in queer liberation movements.

Murderbot learns that its previous mission to gather evidence of GrayCris Corporation's illegal mining operations has caused that company to lash out against the team from Preservation. Specifically they have captured Murderbot's favorite human, Dr. Mensah. Murderbot has to plan a rescue mission, which is very stressful, especially when all it really wants to do is watch entertainment media. This series stays sharp and the reluctant protagonist so, so relatable.

I listened to this as an audiobook, and greatly appreciated that it was read by the author. Shraya weaves together stories of the kind of mundane, everyday violence committed by men that is so common as to be normalized. Shraya's experience of this violence is layered by being a person of color, queer, and trans. She unpacks different kinds of dangers when she was presenting as a gay man versus as a gender nonconforming woman. The text is quite short- only an hour and a half of audio- and flows like one cohesive essay, or even a long prose poem.

Review written in 2018:
Despite the fact that this series is written under a pseudonym, I find it impossible to untangle my feelings for it from my feelings about JK Rowling. Recent decisions she has made in the extended Harry Potter franchise- the lack of acknowledgement or apologies to Native American and Canadian First Nations people hurt by her appropriations of native stories, her continued support of Johnny Depp despite the evidence against him, revealing that Nagini in the films is in fact an Asian woman- are deeply disappointing. I wish the author who had written such a moving (if flawed) story about inclusion, compassion, and resistance to fascist authority would have more progressive politics.

I read this book with particular attention to how characters of minority backgrounds were portrayed. The only mentioned gay character is a middle-aged government man who gropes his young male staff. The only Muslim character has been disowned by his family for working for this government official, and the gay rumors that spread to him. The only genderqueer character to have ever been mentioned in hundreds of thousands of words by JKR is a whiny, unsympathetic thief. One of very few brown characters has recently gotten out of prison for involuntary man-slaughter. I understand that this is a murder mystery, and to have multiple suspects, there have to be multiple unsavory characters in the book who have motive and means to commit crime. But even women are not treated very well in this story: I would say there are two whom I like and root for, and one of those has a traumatic rape as the main event of her backstory. Interestingly, several characters with disabilities are show in a very sympathetic light: the main character, Cormoran Strike, is an amputee; there is a respected and responsible blind parliament woman; and a character with schizophrenia who is one of the kindest and most honest men in the book.

But even despite seeing all of this on the page, I was still deeply engaged by this book. Whatever her faults, JKR can write a gripping story. I sped through 650 pages in three or four days, and at the end of it I wanted to go back and re-read the first one. I won't buy them, and I'm uninterested in seeing any more fantastic beasts movies, but I'm sure I will be checking out the next book in this series from the library the month it comes out, just as I did with this one.

Edit added in 2020:
I no longer plan on reading any new book by JKR ever again, even from the library.