Fox 8 is described as a darkly comic fable, and that's a fair description. Fox 8 is a letter written by the titular fox, to his new human neighbors. After a mall and suburbs break down his patch of forest, Fox 8 is launched on a journey to find a new place for himself and his family.

Reminiscent of Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God's transcription of the Southern dialect, Fox 8 tells his tale with words spelled how they sound. His natural surfer dude attitude is hilarious, and the dark part of the tale happens when that starts to slip away. The strength of Fox 8's character lends to the poignancy and gut-wrench at the end. I wasn't expecting to like this story as much as I did, but the environmentalist call for better land management and kindness to all creatures won me over.

If you're a fan of fairy tales or George Saunders pick Fox 8 and pet the spine. He's a good boy.

I was about 50 pages into the The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter, and I knew I was going to give it 5 stars. As a Victorian lit nerd, the very concept of this book is a thrilling one. Once I dove in, the story was everything I wanted. It's what The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen ought to have been.

The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter follows Mary Jekyll, the daughter of the infamous Dr. Jekyll, in her pursuit of her erstwhile father, making end's meet, and justice for her fellow women. Along the way, she forms the Avengers finds a new family of women like her.

At its core, the book is a love letter to Victorian creature features. Goss' handles the same themes of science and aberration with tender deftness and sly humor. Throughout the novel, there are script-style interjections by the main cast, and it works with a flair I don't think I've seen since the footnotes of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. The female friendship and character development are epic and a balm to the world-weary soul. Suddenly the strange tales, the terrors of unfettered science, and the gaslamp glow depicted women like me. Their reality of caring for one another, surviving and thriving together, going on adventures, and making ends meet are dreams my own group of friends have had over and over. Goss takes pains to make each woman distinct, and their chemistry sparks off the page. I'm already eager for the next book.

I do benefit from my whiteness here, though. As far as I can tell, only Catherine, who is literally a former puma, has dark skin and is of color. Boo. Black Victorian lit nerds are still waiting for their mirror. There are hints that Catherine and Justine Frankenstein might be lovers, but I wish that it was confirmed. The good the book did for me is real, but I respect any queer reader of colors' opinions if they wanted more. Totally understandable. Maybe the next book will add more diversity.

I spotted Love, Hate & Filters at my local library and absolutely squealed. Ahmed's debut has been much celebrated throughout the #YALit world, and I enjoyed every page of it!

Our YA heroine is Maya Aziz, an Indian-American Muslim with a dream to be the first of her heritage to earn an Oscar for Best Director...aaaaaand to kiss lots of boys. The only problem is her parents don't want that life for her: they want her to be safe, living near home, happily married to an Indian Muslim boy, and running a successful law firm. The clash is well-done, with compassion for both sides. Add to the mix some all too real racism and white supremacy, and readers are in for a tour-de-force that'll leave them flailing for more.

Samira Ahmed has masterful, clear wordcraft. The plotting and tension are taunt as a violin string, and I was engrossed from Chapter 1. The snippets between chapters make everything infinitely better and worse. Like with other contemporary YA, the characters are the strongest selling point. I know next to nothing about film-making, but through Maya I learned its delights. The characters felt real, and their struggles organic, relatable, and heartbreaking. Love, Hate & Other Filters is a proudly #ownvoices novel, and Kav and Vicky have written excellent reviews addressing that here for Kav's review and here for Vicky's review.

In summary, don't walk, run to read this Love, Hate & Other Filters. Though the subjects may be tough, but the journey is well worth it.

After meeting Stephanie Ahn through #LGBTWIP on twitter, I was eager to read her work, and nothing could have prepared me for such an electric, thrilling debut of a novel.

Deadline follows the (mis)adventures of Harry Lee, a paranormal investigator of New York City. After a blood magic ritual gone bad, Harry is struggling to make rent as a freelancer. When a low-tier warlock with connections to the highest of magical families offers a life-changing case, Harry takes it--only to find herself in deeper trouble than ever.

For disappointed fans of the The Dresden Files (and there's a lot of be disappointed about in Butcher's work), Deadline is everything the investigator-end of urban fantasy should be. The pacing is on point, the story is riveting, the world-building is precise, and the characters are strong and brilliant. The identity diversity is thriving, and I am thriving because of it. Harry's inner voice is hilarious, heart-wrenching, and all too real. I was glued to the page from Chapter 1 and am super eager for the sequel. I want Harry to go on to have many, many adventures. And yes, there is lots of Harry kissing fantastic ladies and yes, I did squeal in the middle of the gym & earn confused looks.

Honestly, if you enjoy urban fantasy at all, treat yourself to Deadline. Ahn's work is going to be my go-to urban fantasy detective rec from now on.

When I was studying abroad in the UK, I came across an essay about Wide Sargasso Sea that sang its praises. It adored Rhys for de-colonizing the Jane Eyre story, and for finally giving Antoinette a voice. Now that I've finally read Wide Sargasso Sea myself, I can see what the essayist was talking about.

Rhys's loving tribute to Antoinette is a fascinating journey through a mental landscape hemmed in by race, patriarchy, and colonialism. The first section describes Antoinette's childhood and adulthood right before her brother sells her to the Rochester's. The second section describes the perfect--and very common--storm. Rochester's wilful ignorance of Caribbean culture, his lack of compassion for the people around him, and his British ego and insistence on his own righteousness doom Antoinette spectacularly. The third part is the heart-wrenching conclusion with Antoinette's time at Thornfield. Antoinette's mental illness is treated with little respect or dignity, and the tragedy in that is a kick to the gut.

Rhys's writing is beautiful and intricate, like the swirling vines and flowers of the jungle she describes. Longing, fantasy, and heartbreak ache off the page. The imagery is devastating in its beauty, cruel and precious all at once. I'm not ashamed to say that it invaded my dreams. If you're a fan of Jane Eyre, Jean Rhys's masterpiece is a must-read.

I met Kyler Fey through Twitter's #LGBTWIP event and when I realized that his omnibus hadn't much attention on GR, I wanted to fix that. I downloaded the sample through Kindle and got to reading.

The omnibus collects the first five novellas of the Commander Jace and the Unsuitable Boys series. Set in the distant future, humanity has moved from Earth to further populate other planets. The whole "populate" thing hits a snag though: somehow heterosexual men have been rendered sterile, while queer men are now super fertile. Sex slavery and black market semen become the norm until Commander Jace Dekka tears it all down, and the fertility crisis is solved. Jace now lives with a close knit group of partners, dubbed the Unsuitable Boys, on Maya Plaxa island. It's with this background world building that the novella collection begins, and it's quite the romp.

The Forward to the collection explains the series with a deft, sometimes overzealous hand, and I appreciated the warning that things were going to get graphic with very little preamble. Fey expertly captures the feel of an erotic sci-fi pulp novel from the '70s or '80s, with his characters inhabiting a "porntopia" free of sexual repression. While reading I was reminded a lot of Barbarella, John Varley's Gaea Trilogy, or what I imagine The Man From O.R.G.Y. is like, but with queer men. There's a triumphant moment with a group of men re-shooting Star Trek episodes with the goal of bringing the homoerotic content to the fore. Kirk seduces a man, and it had me grinning ear to ear because finally.

The sex is near constant and burn yourself hot, but the scenes also brought out my one quibble with the work. I wish Jace did not have a partner who was also his adopted son, though I know May-December romances are a popular trope. Fey tries to broaden the distance between them, but it didn't feel quite enough at times.

With the sample, I received the Forward and a teaser of "The Case of the Tattooed Twink," and I highly recommend it if you're not sure you like erotic sci-fi pulp novels. I give Commander Jace and the Unsuitable Boys Omnibus five stars because it accomplishes exactly what Fey wanted it to accomplish with fantastic panache. Live long and prosper indeed.

I purchased the ebook of Blackout after getting to know Kit Mallory during Twitter's #LGBTWIP event. The novel presents an authoritarian future uncomfortably close to a real life possibility.

When an energy crisis hits the UK, a hot mess of corporations and wealthy people take over the government and establish an tyrannical regime known as "the Board." After a massive hate campaign to demonize the citizens of the UK's north, the Board overnight builds a wall to separate the North from the South and cuts off all power and water to the North. Even after leaving these Northern thousands to die, the Board insists there's not enough resources, so strict rationing and omnipresent police are the new normal.

Enter Skyler, a wizard hacker. Enter Mackenzie, a master thief. Enter Angel, a mysterious woman with a reputation for healing and killing. After they accidentally uncover the Board's latest harrowing plan, they decide it's time to not just survive the Board's brutality, but to actively fight against it.

Friends, reading Blackout was really, really hard. Mallory's eye for rain-soaked detail left haunting images in my mind. Both Skyler and Mackenzie are illegal refugees from the North, and Mallory takes pains to explore how deeply this affects nearly every aspect of their life, from lack of medical care to choice of living place. Sorrow and mourning were visceral, touchable things. While the premise is reminiscent of Saci Lloyd's [b: The Carbon Diaries|4935015|The Carbon Diaries 2015 (Carbon Diaries, #1)|Saci Lloyd|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1273722854s/4935015.jpg|5000676], Blackout is much, much darker, and perhaps that difference is reflective of how much has changed since 2009, with Brexit.

The identity rep, which initially drew me to the book, seems pretty spot-on. It's cheering to see other reviewers with matching identities be happy. This might be my American background talking, but one area left unexplored was race/ethnicity. From my understanding, Asian and Middle-Eastern UK citizens are often the target of discrimination, especially if they practice Islam. The novel uses Northerner as its speculative fiction cipher, but I guess I wanted that complicated. For all the vivid world-building, the characters were described blink-and-you-miss-it briefly. Does our reality of race touch this fictional world at all?

In any case, Blackout is a fantastic piece of YA dystopia fiction, and I dearly hope it stays fiction. I recommend it to anyone who'd like to brave a grim and terrifying possibility, with a side of two women kissing and excellent OCD rep. I await the sequel with no tiny amount of (the good kind of) dread.

Switch is the second free novella I've read from Lina Langley, after meeting her through Twitter's #LGBTWIP event. It was a lovely little friends-to-lovers read.

In this slice-of-life novella, the hard working, "if I keep my head down, nothing bad will happen, right?" Greg worries for Kyle, his best friend. Kyle has not kept his head down, so to speak, since he came out as gay years ago. In the intervening years of their friendship, Greg has watched Kyle get burned by homophobia and an abusive lover alike. The difficult times are difficult enough that when Greg figures out he's also gay, he shuts the closet door, refusing to tell Kyle. But then Kyle starts acting strangely, and Greg knows something's gotta give.

While my last Langley read, Your Majesty, was sweet and funny, Switch is more grit and angst. Some of the mentions of homophobia swung very close to home. Kyle is careful to limit how many times he mentions his partners in conversation and doesn't bring them to small parties, out of fear of being too "in your face" among his assumed straight friends. I've literally done that and sometimes still do. While I didn't find most of the storytelling elements truly remarkable, Langley hit every beat soundly. Both Greg and Kyle are authentic, relatable characters, the plot was clear & nicely arched, and I was invested enough in the setting and characters that I didn't care I could see the ending twist from pages away. To eliminate any confusion from the title, Switch is the name of a drag queen bar, and there's no sex or s/D play. Like in Your Majesty, Switch halts sex to further verbally discuss feelings, trauma, and growth.

While Langley tells a compelling tale in the page space, like other reviewers, I wouldn't have minded if Switch was longer. Kyle felt uncomfortable being loudly gay in Greg's space, and Greg felt uncomfortable coming out to Kyle: this failure of being a safe space for each other, despite years of friendship, is interesting to me. It's a tension not quite resolved by the end.

The ending is still happy though, and Switch is a solid romance read I recommend to anyone who likes M/M friends-to-lovers angst. It's a good, gay time.

I signed up for Lina Langley's free book list after meeting her through #LGBTWIP on Twitter. The proliferation of her work is astounding. I'm a slow writer by nature, and meanwhile she churns out fiction after fiction, each with a gorgeous cover to boot. It's truly amazing and impressive.

The first free book I downloaded was Your Majesty, which is a novella that I devoured in the fifteen minutes I was waiting for my partner to get out of work. I completely failed to understand the blurb, so I was quite surprised when Jaded Millennial™ Sawyer bumped his head, traveled to Regency Era not-England, and met William, whose intoxicating beauty is wasting away while his father arranges his marriage.

Overall, the story was very sweet and funny, with lots of the cultural confusion trope and innuendo-laden banter. I giggled and enjoyed how much Sawyer reminded me of Marvel Comics' Jessica Jones. The story's vibe is more sensual than erotic: there ends up being no sex in favor of clearer verbal communication. My main quibble would be I wanted Langley to more fully own the magic of the story. Sawyer's traveling is treated a little too deadpan for my tastes, and I wanted more atmospheric details and skin-prickling strangeness. Like other reviewers, I wouldn't have minded the novella being longer too, maybe with more fleshing out of William's situation, more explicit character gender ID (couldn't tell if they are bi/pan with preference for men or gay), and the ending more established as happy.

As is, Your Majesty is a pleasant read, and I recommend it to romance readers looking for a quick, fun bite.