time for a Big Bad Wolf reread!!! I desperately need Coop and Park in my life rn so I’m jumping into book 1, The Wolf at the Door. check it out of you love a gay disaster MC, a super fine and mysterious LI, werewolves, crime solving, humor, sexual tension, and angst. I really can’t praise this series enough! truly exceptional characters and development. my heart gets all wonky just thinking about Coop and Park! I’ll be sharing quotes and reactions as I go along
Just thought I’d give anyone who’s out there and wondering a status update on me. Yes, I AM writing right now. For the most part. (It can be difficult for me to concentrate with everything that’s happening, even though my normal day job is closed down for now.)
I’ve mostly been working on the first novel of my YA series, Raiken Student. I’ve also been working somewhat on the first novella of my new Dreamers series, but not nearly as much. I had a kick of visual creativity a while ago and worked on a bunch of book covers for Dreamers (there will eventually be several books in this series) as well as Raiken and that was quite fun.
I know some of you are anxious for Arenacea Book Two and I am still working on it a bit (I’m over halfway finished), but I’m much closer to finishing Raiken Student, so my brain has been more focused on just getting that done so I can get it out there. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Hopefully soon I’ll have at least something out that you guys can enjoy!
The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall is a fantastical, weird retelling of a Sherlock Holmes story. The narrator–the Watson parallel–is a trans man named John Wyndham who is a veteran of a time war, while the Holmes parallel is an absolutely ridiculous sorceress named Shaharazad Haas. This book is loosely based on “A Scandal in Bohemia” and follows Wyndham recounting when he and Haas were hired by an ex-girlfriend of Haas, Eirene Viola, to find the identity of an individual trying to blackmail her into calling off her upcoming wedding. The major twist here is the fact that this takes place in an absolutely wild world that includes magic, time travel, and literally cosmic horrors. There are vampires. There are sorceresses. There is planetary and interdimensional travel. There are eldritch abominations. All of this is an improvement to Doyle’s stories, really.
This story doesn’t hold too dearly to the Sherlockian storylines and concepts, so if you aren’t a fan of Sherlock Holmes or aren’t familiar with them, that shouldn’t be a turn off from the book. If you understand the general concept of Sherlock Holmes, then I think that is enough for people to understand what they’ll need to understand going in.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book a lot. It wasn’t heavy in material and it was just a fun book to read. Honestly, the word I’d use to describe it is “wacky.” There’s a lot of worldbuilding, but none of that worldbuiling is rather deep. That was one of the biggest hang ups I had when getting into the story. I would read a section and then feel like I needed to reread it because I hadn’t taken in the sheer amount of worldbuilidng that had happened in that section, but that is largely the point, I think. You don’t really need to understand or take in every single detail that gets dropped, because it’s not really the content that is important there, but the ideas that the content is trying to give you. Once I accepted that, it was much easier to get into the book and enjoy it. We get taken from scene to scene, setting to setting, bizarre concept to bizarre concept pretty quickly and don’t linger on any of them for too long. While I definitely enjoy books that are deeper in exploring what they put out, I think this book specifically really accomplishes what it’s trying to do better by not lingering anywhere for too long. Especially since this is supposedly being written by Wyndham as a series of installments for an in-world publication.
As for the queer/LGBT content, there is a whole lot of it. As I mentioned in my description, our narrator, John, is a trans man and he reveals that pretty much immediately (literally on the second page). I believe he’s also attracted to men, though I don’t remember his sexuality being brought up that often. Haas–our Sherlock Holmes–is queer in some way but I’m not sure its ever specified how. I’ve seen some reviewers saying that she was pansexual but I don’t remember that being specifically said in the text. Regardless, she has past relationships with women, and that is literally the motivation for one of her exes to hire her. That ex, Eriene Viola, is also sapphic (obviously) and is engaged to a woman. Throughout the course of the story you also see some of her previous romances, but talking about that too much you entail spoilers.
All in all, this is a very queer book and its very blatantly so. If you’re looking for a queer book that isn’t super romance heavy, then this is probably a good one. There’s a little bit of that, but it doesn’t involve the main characters. The blurb on the front cover calls it queer and, for once, that promise feels fulfilled by the book itself.
In terms of content that might turn you off, there’s only really one thing that might be off putting. Warning for transphobia here: Wyndham comes from a society that doesn’t accept his gender and we don’t ever really see him within that society except in background information that he provides. He doesn’t get too detailed about that but it’s present. There’s also one scene in particular where someone (who is basically the equivalent of a cop) tries to order him to deadname himself. He doesn’t and he reads the hell out of the woman trying to get him to do it, but it’s a scene that happens. The transphobia is portrayed as completely wrong, but it is present briefly in the book. I am pretty sure that this is the worse it gets, and as I’m not a trans person, I’m not going to try to judge how affecting this scene may or may not be.
Overall, I would recommend the book, I enjoyed it a lot. It’s not my new favorite book or anything, but its a fun queer read and also a standalone book, though I could see sequels coming out eventually. If you want a weird, fun, queer book that isn’t going to emotionally exhaust you, this is definitely one to pick up.
Format I Read: audio dramatization (previously read the ebook)
Length:2h 22m
Genres: Horror, Gothic, Vampires
This review is going to be a little different.
Since we’re in the midst of spooky season and Halloween is less than a week away as I’m writing this, I decided now would be a good time to reread and discuss this book. The fact that audible is giving away a dramatization of this book for subscribers also helped, and though I’ve read Carmilla before, the dramatization is the version I went with for the reread. The dramatization is really good, all the actors are wonderful and Rose Leslie in particular really said gay rights with her performance.
Carmilla is a book that I’m always surprised by the people who do know what it is and the people who don’t. I feel like it has gotten a lot more recognition over the past few years with the web series of the same name being pretty popular among internet gays, but even some people who watched that web series didn’t realize that it was based on a novella from the 1800s (though it said as much in the credits).
In case you don’t know, Carmilla is a novella that revolves around a young woman named Laura who lives in Styria with her father, and under weird circumstances they take in a house guest: Carmilla, a girl who appears to be of a similar age as Laura. Assumptions can be made when I say that this is a vampire story, and its ones that predates Dracula by several decades. It’s also very gay and the namesake of this very blog you’re reading now.
I don’t think spoilers really ruin the book, and I think a lot of the “spoilers” that I’m going to discuss are rather obvious, but here is your one and only spoiler warning. Normally I’d be more careful, but as I said, this is a different sort of review.
Given that I named my blog Karnstein Review, after the Duchess Karnstein herself, it should be fairly obvious that I adore this book. It’s a book I knew at least hinted at some sort of sapphic relationship between Laura and Carmilla, but when I’d first read it, I assumed it would just be hints. And subtle hints at that. It was written in the 1870s, after all. Well, it’s very very very gay. I’m not sure how else to describe it other than that. The gayness is not only overt, they blatantly discuss love and romance and kiss each other. It’s a lot more than I expected from a 19thbook.
But, I also have to acknowledge that it is a 19th century book about a lesbian, and it’s one written by a man nonetheless. Things don’t end well for Carmilla and Laura’s relationship, and there’s pretty intense judgement on any kind of sexual feelings, much less sexual feelings between two women. The message that Carmilla’s seduction of Laura is wrong and immoral is as blatant as her seduction of Laura is. So why do I like this book so much?
Well, for one thing, I’ve always been a sucker for vampire stories (my god I only realized that pun after I wrote it). I think that a lot of queer people who grew up with religious backgrounds are drawn to vampires and vampire stories, and there’s a reason for that. Particularly with these older stories like Carmilla and Dracula, one of the major themes of vampire stories is sexual fear, desires, and moralizing about those things. Vampires represent something that we are told is dangerous. Something that can kill us and even hurt our very soul. Vampires will seduce you and take something from you that you need to live a normal happy life. They may even steal your salvation. In Carmilla when I was rereading it, I noted that her need for blood is never described as thirst or hunger. It’s called lust, specifically “lust for living blood.” Many who grew up with feelings for people of the same gender have been told similar things about those feelings. Vampires are those feelings. And these vampire stories were often written specifically to express and moralize about sexual feelings. Of course vampire stories are attractive to us.
With Carmilla the sexual moralizing plain, and it would definitely not be something I let fly in a modern book, but there’s something strangely familiar about it here. The book is told from Laura’s perspective, and she herself described her confusing and intense feelings for Carmilla. She’ll say she’s in love with Carmilla and repulsed by Carmilla in the same sentence and it doesn’t feel like a lie either time. She’ll be clearly very troubled by Carmilla’s overt flirtation and courting, but also keep doing things that put her close to Carmilla. She’ll keep flirting back and keep acknowledging the feelings that she has. It’s paradoxal, but it’s a familiar feeling. It’s someone just realizing that they have feeling for someone of their same gender and being very, very troubled by what that means. Laura’s words and thoughts feel very familiar to me, and I don’t think that J. Sheridan Le Fanu was purposely trying to accurately portray my own gay panic, yet he definitely did.
I don’t think that Carmilla is the perfect story. I keep imagining all the ways in which I’d like to rewrite it, which all involve me just giving Carmilla and Laura a happy ending, but I think it’s an important to the history of gay fantasy and horror. I also think that it’s a story that can still mean a lot and speak to queer people today, as evidenced by the very popular web series adaptation of it. It’s a book I would happily suggest, but it’s also a book I’d suggest you know what it is going in. It’s a lesbian vampire story written in the 1800s, and all the implications that come with that are true.
Format I Read: ebook (part of In Our Own Worlds anthology Tor.com gave out for free during Pride Month 2019)
Length:131 pages
Genres: historical fiction
LGBT Rep: So many lesbians. F/F romance between main characters and multiple other F/F couples that either show up or are mentioned.
Spoiler-Free Review:
Another book I knew nothing about before going into it except that it was queer, as it was featured in the In Our Own Worlds anthology. Throughout the beginning chapters (the framing device) I was a bit confused, not only about what the story was, but who the queer characters were, and frankly I was little concerned based on how it began. However, once what I’ll call the “Actual Story” began, everyone was gay and the gay jokes were superb.
This book is as much about the hidden histories of 1940s San Francisco as it is about the queer characters, and I’m sure I could have appreciated that element more had I ever been to the city or knew much about it, but as it is, I still liked the story a great deal.
There are some elements that could detract from the story a little. There’s some definite u-hauling, though the story does give a reason for it. But yeah, those lesbians fall in love real fast. The way the story is structured is also somewhat confusing. The fantasy element of this story is pretty sparse, to the point where you might forget it’s a fantasy story until the end when the fantasy becomes important for the climax.
Overall, though, I really did like the story a great deal, and thought that it ended with really interesting implications
Synopsis: The majority of this book takes place in 1940s San Francisco, and revolves around lesbian women living in a time where they’re either seen as deviants or a spectacle to be gawked at. The story shifts in point of view frequently—especially toward the beginning of the novella—in a way that is somewhat confusing to understand what the story actually is at first. But eventually, the story does come to focus on two women who meet, fall in love, and struggle to live together through an increasingly intense amount of Heterosexual NonsenseTM the world throws at them.
The Good: The entire focus is on queer women, their communities, and their forced secretive history. There are frank conversations about things that I think are phrased somewhat more modern than they would actually would have been, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing and it makes some of those conversations seem still relevant today. There were some discussions about sapphic identity that I personally related to and liked a great deal.
What Might Hinder You from Reading It: There’s a lot of sexism, homophobia, and anti-Asian racism (usually specifically anti-Chinese) throughout the book. It’s never made out to be acceptable by the book and the point is largely to show the cruelty of the time period and specifically the tourists and outsiders there to be entertained by the “exotic” and “deviant”. But it’s definitely present and I could see people not wanting to read it regardless of how its handled.
There also should be a warning about relationship abuse, including physical violence. The abuse doesn’t come from any queer characters but it involves them.
Would I Recommend It?: Yes, so long as you’re aware of the above caveats.
Copper Thronehas finally hit the shelves! Pick up the final part of this trilogy of seafaring, wlw and mlm solidarity, the found family trope, a magical school, sword and sorcery, sea monsters, and added poly and aro rep if you are looking for your next diverse read!
I won’t include a link since the tumblr algorithm will bury the post and I’m sorry that I’m mainly selling through am*zon but it’s the only way a self-pubbed author can make some money right now.
