i got some long flights coming up and i wanna start reading before bed again for my mental health

Scarlet Odyssey series by C. T. Rwizi

things I enjoyed in the last couple years: A Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland, A Master of Djinn by P Djeli Clark, A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows

Rowland also has Sailing Close to the Wind out recently which is set in the same world as Gold and Iron, is about pirates

it's a sci-fi/fantasy trilogy inspired by African folklore and it is very queer in the second and third books

(the first book is still queer, it's just more on the sidelines)

I think you can get the whole thing on Kindle

A lot of Nghi Vo and T. Kingfisher.

Silver in the Wood (The Greenhollow Duology, #1)I read this and the sequel recently, and enjoyed them

Psalm for the Wild Built and Prayer for the Crown-Shy by Becky Chambers are pretty quick novellas!

SaroSaron: I have also read silver in the wood and its sequel. so delightful

mistakesweremade: lmao those books emotionally destroyed me. maybe i will reread

lmao well at least I'm on the right track!

Just started A Marvellous Light which I like so far! It's a semi-historical urban fantasy

lavellalalan: I feel like Rowland has been on my radar before so I'll have to check her out! P Djeli Clark is always a delight tho

SaroSaron: it is very much the right track

brief but EMOTIONALLY DEVASTATING

the end of the first one. wuff

haeralis: I will check these out! always love seeing queer stuff from BIPOC authors

(Rowland is they/them! I think Foz Meadows is too) - I really enjoy their style and world tbh!! I think Rowland and Meadows are very cozy writers...a bit tropey but in a good way for me. Lovely characters. Endurance and Gold and Iron are definitely romances as an FYI

thanks for the correction! i will definitely check them out. i do also love a good fantasy romance

\o/ I will rec these books until the day I die tbh. the inscription on my gravestone will read "read scarlet odyssey"

highly recommend those then!! I think the sequel to Endurance has recently come out or is about to soon too

A Taste of HoneyI thought this one was pretty good, though I'll warn a big chunk of the book is enduring the suffering of compulsory heterosexuality

ah yeah i started reading that one and i don't think i made it past the compulsory hetero part, lol

CRACKS KNUCKLES

The first two books (third not out yet) of Erin M. Evans' Books of the Usurper series are fantastic. The first one is very subtle/low key on the queerness but the second book is all in on Most People Are Bi Or Pan Actually. They're also just incredible works of fantasy worldbuilding. Book 1 is Empire of Exiles, book 2 is Relics of Ruin

Ben Aaronovitch's The Masquerades of Spring is technically set within a much larger series (Rivers of London) but is a novella in a different time period starring a new character, a foppish drag queen in 1920s New York who is also a magician and who gets tied up in magical problems. It's like Bertie Wooster but with magic. Loved it frankly.

I really liked Notorious Sorcerer by Davinia Evans. Great characters, strong worldbuilding. I've been having some challenges working my way through the sequel (mostly because it's still good but it's suffering a bit of middle book itis) but I expect I'll be all in again once the third book is out. A world where alchemy can be done in only one city,

sorcery is illegal, and a glorified errand boy has learned to dive into other planes to find items to give alchemists so that he can scrape together lessons. Which is fine until he accidentally brings the wrong thing back.

Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell is very fun lesbian monster romance, but from the point of view of the monster.

If you haven't read the Kyle Murchison Booth stories yet, they're sort of M.R. James/Lovecraft style horror. Not like a lot of gay romance stuff but Booth himself is queer. I can give you where to find all the stories/novellas if interested, they're a bit spread out.

I enjoyed the Mars House by Natasha Pulley -- it was a bit of a hard sell for me and took a while but the story and romance won me over. (It's very "on mars earth people are prejudiced against, but it's hard to argue with the fear because their muscle mass comparatively can literally kill people by accident, what if there's an arranged marriage between

an earth refugee and the mars local political leader.")

A surprise favorite for me this year was Song of Carcosa by Josh Reynolds. It's Arkham Horror tie-in fiction and Josh made it extremely queer (nonbinary "identifies as a problem" sorcerer, lesbian and gay characters appearing throughout, there's a reference to a poly triad in the past), he's also a great author.

(I also just picked up a Legend of the Five Rings tie-in novel by him on the basis of liking his Arkham Horror tie-in so much and it's also incidentally queer and beautifully written). Anyway yeah if you like lovecraftian stuff, I picked it up without being familiar with Arkham Horror and wanted to rec it to everyone

The Redwinter series by Ed McDonald is also great. Main female character is bi, there's other queer characters in it as well. It's very dark and depressing Scottish fantasy, so make sure you're in the mood for character deaths and grief before reading. I've read the first two books, about to read the third actually (it comes out in nov)

Martha Wells' Witch King is my new favorite book and I simply will not hear any criticism of it. It's got shades of MDZS throughout it (mostly with the secondary leads, a lesbian sorcerer and her angry celestial wife) and the main character is a male demon who's inhabited different bodies over time including different genders and was in love with a prince.

the second book is in progress, but the first book is lovely. You have to be in a quiet space to read it tho imo, it's very like... it defines what's really going on in the story by the things the protagonist doesn't want to talk about and is reluctant to touch on in a lot of ways, so it's a good book for when you have time for a cloes reading

Obviously if you haven't read our good friend Madeleine Nakamura's Cursebreakers I HIGHLY recommend it. Gorgeously written magical world with a truly fantastic lead character and one of my favorite problematic secondary characters ever.

The Mimicking of Known Successes by Malka Older is a lesbian sherlock holmes in space story, very fun if that's what you're looking for. I myself read it on a plane lol

OH YES SECONDING CURSEBREAKERS

I cannot recommend the Goblin Emperor books highly enough. The stand-alone Goblin Emperor book itself isn't really queer (though it's GORGEOUS political fantasy that's actually just about people, the political mystery is not actually much of a focus), but the spin-off trilogy the Cemeteries of Amalo follows a sad gay elf who talks to ghosts solving murders

The Witness for the Dead and Grief of Stones are out so far, Tomb of Dragons releases in early 2025. Love these books. You don't have to have read Goblin Emperor to read them (though I don't think it will ever hurt to read Goblin Emperor)

those are by Katherine Addison (aka Sarah Monette)

(also the author of the Booth stories, which I realize I forgot to put in there)

I enjoyed a Taste of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Roland, a bodyguard/prince romance that's also a mystery about counterfeiting. Main character has anxiety. It had a few dropped plot threads and a bit of a weak ending but it was still a solid 4 star read for me

The Red Scholar's Wake is about a marriage between a woman and a spaceship who is also a lesbian pirate as they attempt to navigate a pirate war (in space). very fun.

(by Aliette de Bodard)

Tossing in that I haven't actually read A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske (the first book in the Last Binding series) but I DID somehow end up reading the sequel, A Restless Truth, which is about a young repressed Victorian woman discovering she REALLY likes girls while also solving magical crimes on a boat.

It looks like each book involves a slightly different pair following a storyline about this one magical conspiracy and working with the others at a remove, so the first book is actually about two men, and the second book is about the sister of one of them. it was very fun, still mean to go back and read A Marvellous Light now

I'm done now probably, that's my faves from the last 2 years or so that are sci-fi/fantasy and queer specifically

EXORDIA

somarysueme: lmao sadly i loathe seth dickinson

Oh, if you haven't read the Last Binding series, definitely worth checking them out. They're pretty frothy and have some flaws, but they are fun and I actually liked eat of the books better than the one before it.

I have only recently been reading the Elemental Logic series by Laurie J. Marks but I'm deeply enjoying it.

in the theme of trilogies where each book is about a different couple, the Kingston Cycle by C. L. Polk, where the murder of a gardening columnist leads to the overthrow of a monarchy

also I have to yell about Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard, which isn't explicitly queer in the first book but might as well be

I also enjoyed about half the books mentioned in this plurk, lol

YOU KNOW WHAT if you haven't read the last Ravka duology by Leigh Bardugo, that gets pretty queer!

it's there in King of Scars but then it goes ABSOLUTELY HAM in Rule of Wolves

like KoS is "yay more canon wlw!" and then in RoW it pivots into "BUT WAIT. TRANS???!"