Nelson's Books

The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain, by Sofia Samatar

2026-09-27T00:00:00Z

by Sofia Samatar · ★☆☆☆☆

I wanted to like this novella, I really did. It's an ambitious story to reference slavery so directly and to talk about the experience of a freed slave, or at least liberated to more freedom, and the challenges and the need to go back and help the people where you're from.

It just didn't work for me as a read. The writing style was too.. wispy? Ethereal? Weird choice to not give the two protagonists names but the other characters names. A lot of the plot action was pretty elliptically described and the transcendental ending lost me entirely. I didn't much like A Stranger in Olondria either, maybe this is just not the author for me.

The Cross Quarter Mysteries, by Louis Flint Ceci

2026-09-24T00:00:00Z

by Louis Flint Ceci · ★★★★★

I enjoyed this novel! It's an ambitious collection of entwined stories: a mystery, a love letter to the California coast, and gay men connecting to their hearts. All are strong and the combination makes for a solid novel.

I liked the gay men story the best. This isn't really a romance novel, definitely not erotic. Instead it's about men finding their way to emotional honesty. And developing complicated relationships: some romantic, some friendly. Also a moving side story of reconciling being gay with being Catholic. There's a wonderful interlude with a retreat to a gay camp with The Billies, a picture of gay communion that made my heart ache.

I also liked the California story. Most of the story is set in a fictional Central Coast town somewhere around Big Sur. It's well depicted and the town's cast of characters form the main structure of the story. There's a particularly thoughtful depiction of two people living on the fringes with some mental illness in the mix, they were compelling. The titular Mysteries take place in this town and I don't want to spoil anything but it follows a murder mystery novel pattern. But that's not the main focus of this book, at least not for me. Instead it's really about the people and their complex emotional interactions.

One extra setting also is remarkable. This town has a modern monastery and the glimpses of monastic life made me want for more about it. Maybe a followup gay love story set in the monastery? That might be a bit blasphemous compared to the vibe of this book.

PS: this book is written by a friend, so this review may not be quite as nit-picky as some of mine. But I genuinely liked the book.

Children of Strife, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

2026-09-16T00:00:00Z

by Adrian Tchaikovsky · ★★☆☆☆

I did not much care for this. It was a chore finishing it.

The good thing: he has a very ambitious storytelling structure, telling three stories separated by hundreds of years that all converge into how one particular planet is terraformed and colonized. And it's a pretty inventive and interesting story. I also liked the characters and setup of some of the earlier action.

Unfortunately the most recent timeline ends up being the dominant story. And it is not to my liking. The main problem is I didn't like any of the characters, all very weird intelligences. And one of them's entire shtick is he likes to hit things violently, his society is based in one-on-one combat. This did not make good for story telling.

It was reasonably well written though. Tchaikovsky's prolific output astonishes me but the quality isn't suffering. I think this book's problem was just a concept I didn't like.

Howards End, by E.M. Forster

2026-08-28T00:00:00Z

by E.M. Forster · ★★★☆☆

I enjoyed this well enough but it took an awful long time for the story to go anywhere. And like his other novels, the characters are all so unlikable! I fear this critique says more about me as a modern reader than it does Forster as a writer. But honestly, there it is.

What bothered me most was how little plot action there is. All this setting up of characters and homes and nothing really happens until halfway through the book. And the moments there are events: [A spoiler, hidden here: read it on the site.] the core moment is barely described in half a page while there are endless pages describing less momentous events. I'm sure this is a deliberate choice on Forster's part but it is not very satisfying reading. And a secondary complaint: the actual plot turns are pretty melodramatic. A lot of the book reads as highbrow farce.

What is satisfying is just how excellent the prose writing quality is. I love the first chapter, Forster efficiently characterizing two families and their homes and their roles in society in just a few pages. There's also a lot of complex emotions and social situations on display. And there's lots of little turns of phrase that are quite lovely. To take one example, "He had never known young-manliness, that quality which warms the heart till death".

Overall I recognize this as a very finely written novel but the plot structuring is just a bit inaccessible for me to enjoy.

Ilium, by Dan Simmons

2026-08-11T00:00:00Z

by Dan Simmons · ★★☆☆☆

Whew that was a lot of pages for not a lot of payoff.

At the center is a very clever book. A wildly imaginative sci-fi premise, sprawling over three interconnected stories. Some very well read intertextual writing, steeped not just in The Iliad and The Tempest but a lot of other literary sources too. At times it's really engaging.

But then it's also a mess. The story takes a long time to go anywhere. Then when it does it's in the most pot-boilery cliffhanger writing. It works but it's a cheap trick. I was mostly OK with it until the last 5% of the book when it was clear "oh god he's setting up a sequel". I gather it's a much lesser book, and this one wasn't so great, so I won't be reading it. I'll just pretend the war on Olympos ended immediately and the Garden of Eden folks went back to their horny lives.

The part that left a bitter taste in my mouth is Simmons' het male worldview. There's a lot of male gaze in this book. That's OK: straight men are allowed to like women's boobs and write about that. But there's a whole lot of it and it's kind of cartoonish and not to my interest. And then on top of that some of Simmons right-wing nasty worldview is starting to leak through in this book. Several gratuitously homophobic passages, him grinding some ax about Shakespeare's gay poets or the love between Achilles and Patroclus. He could have just left those few paragraphs out and it would have been a better book.

Not Like Other Girls, by A.L. Goldfuss

2026-08-05T00:00:00Z

by A.L. Goldfuss · ★★★★★

A lovely, creepy bit of body horror. Also a really poignant musing on relationships between women and men, I didn't expect something so sad. Tight story, a worthwhile read.

The Life to Come: And Other Short Stories, by E.M. Forster

2026-07-16T00:00:00Z

by E.M. Forster · ★★★★☆

A remarkable collection of stories Forster left unpublished until after his death. The best are the later stories he wrote that are explicitly gay, ones that were unpublishable in his time, just like Maurice.

The real jewel of gay literature here is Arthur Snatchfold, a story of gay solidarity along with an amusing and very modern scene of cruising and tricking. I think Dr Woolacott and The Other Boat are also very good reading for a queer studies curriculum. There's some other fun stories here too, some queer or transgressive. Unfortunately the earliest stories are not nearly as good, one wonders if they were unpublished because no one wanted to buy them.

It's fun reading a few of Forster's regular themes in short story form. Mocking the English upper classes. Upholding the noble strength (and sexiness) of the working man. Manly love between an intellectual and a commoner. Also a surprising theme I don't think is in his novels: a love of the supernatural, of ghost stories.

Here's my story-by-story commentary.

Ansell (1903)

A wistful, tender portrayal of a close friendship between two completely different young men. Has the Forster theme of the connection between an intellectual and a "common man." Without condescension; the self-important intellectual is the one who is mocked.

Albergo Empedocle (1903)

Weird story, reads like a prototype of A Room with a View (tourism) and then Maurice (insanity because of being a closeted homosexual). None of it quite works, he's trying to get too much stuffed into too small a story.

The Purple Envelope (1903–1905)

Not good, better left unpublished. The story makes no sense in places and the borrowing of a Gothic ghost story does not work.

The Helping Hand (1904)

Another forgettable story. It's a funny parody of English society but the plot isn't good at the irony and the end is unearned.

The Rock (1906)

Punches hard for such a short, short story. About the value of life and the tension between spirituality and lusty physical life. A little opaque.

The Life to Come (1922)

A remarkably interesting story. A dual critique of Christian missionaries and of homophobia. And with a remarkable twist ending, a sort of violent apotheosis.

Dr Woolacott (1927)

A lovely tragic story about a gay man struggling to accept himself. And being trodden down by a doctor who requires him to repress himself. The supernatural element here gets in the way but gives Forster room to write an emotional story.

Arthur Snatchfold (1928)

My favorite of the stories, a real jewel. At its core is a casual morning trick between an older man and the milkman. It's written very modern and matter of fact, quite relatable! But then it's couched in a tragic story and some unlikely gay solidarity. At least on the part of the younger man; the older man comes off as insensitive and glib. This story would make a great short movie and is totally relatable in the contemporary era.

The Classical Annex (1930–1931)

A silly story, and a little porny. More supernatural stuff I don't care for. I appreciate Forster writing this for his gay amusement but it's not particularly good.

What Does It Matter? A Morality (1935)

Another slightly silly story but this one works much better. It's a sort of queer liberation story in 1935, the idea that a whole country could just decide that sex in general and homosexuality in particular doesn't really matter and how easy that would be.

The Obelisk (1939)

A funny sort of sex romp, reads like a Three's Company episode. It's interesting reading something from Forster so light and yet still so transgressive. Honestly the whole story looks like it's a setup for a dick joke

“Anyone ever seed a bigger one?” he inquired. No one replied, and how should they to so foolish a question? “Stands up, don’t it?” he continued. No one spoke. “No wonder they call that a needle, for wouldn’t that just prick.”

The Torque (1958)

Also a funny sex romp! Sort of a spoof on pagan vs. Christian, with lots of lusty sex. Forster did say he wrote some of these stories to arouse himself... Unfortunately it's also tinged with some unconsidered sexual violence. It doesn't ruin the story but it does date it a bit.

The Other Boat (1957–1958)

What a tragic, dreadful story! But also a story of true queer liberation, or at least a temporary autonomous zone of same sex love for a few days. Until it all goes disastrously wrong when the British social order comes crashing down on them. Feels dated but interesting and relevant.

The Tainted Cup, by Robert Jackson Bennett

2026-07-12T00:00:00Z

by Robert Jackson Bennett · ★★★☆☆

I liked the fantasy novel very much! An interesting world with complicated societies, politics, fantastical enemies. And a fun narrator as the underdog newbie making his way in the world discovering his talents. All good fun.

I did not like the murder mystery novel! I mean it was OK, sort of. But then ~~Sherlock~~ Ana would stride into the scene and declaim the solution to some part of the mystery. Using information that only she knew and was revealing to us, the reader, for the first time. It was just annoying.

It's a well written book, the prose is fun, the characters are good. I just wish it didn't have the Agatha Christie thing going on.

Bad Gays: A Homosexual History, by Huw Lemmey

2026-06-17T00:00:00Z

by Huw Lemmey, Ben Miller · ★★★☆☆

I liked this quite a bit, and I like the podcast. But it's uneven.

The best parts of the book are the insidery gossip about the lives of lesser known historical figures. Pietro Aretino, Jack Saul, Radszuweit in the Weimar Germany chapter. I enjoyed learning about people I genuinely knew nothing about. And the deep professional history grounding of the work really informs well beyond just fun facts, particularly the queer theory perspective of the authors. They have done a lot of deep research on some of these figures and it's great.

The book is a little less good on figures I knew something about already. Their treatment of Frederick the Great is strangely dismissive, Frederick the Great: King of Prussia has a lot more interesting detail. The J. Edgar Hoover + Roy Cohn chapter is kind of thin.

Where the book started to bother me is when the authors have an axe to grind. Often an anti-colonial / anti-capitalist axe. I'm sympathetic to those political views myself but they interfered with the narrative IMO. The chapters about Margaret Mead and Philip Johnson were particularly frustrating this way. I get it, it's Bad Gays, and they are talking about the bad parts of these folks. It just felt a little too reductive.

Overall a really entertaining and informative history. And a uniquely good and constructive queer viewpoint. Glad I read it and glad I have the podcast to enjoy. (The episode on EM Forster is terrific.)

Platform Decay, by Martha Wells

2026-06-08T00:00:00Z

by Martha Wells · ★★☆☆☆

Meh, this was fine. But the series has outlived its welcome. This book is strangely shallow. It's basically just one big action adventure series, like a dumb summer popcorn movie. Murderbot's unusual narrative voice is intact but annoyingly so, particularly the writing style with lots of parentheticals and emotion checks. There's no character development or novel social situation.

The plot itself is entertaining enough, although a bit samey. There's some fun world-building in the crappy space station everything happens on. But all in all I'm not sure I needed to read this book. I didn't mind it though.

Big Jim and the White Boy: An American Classic Reimagined, by David F. Walker

2026-06-02T00:00:00Z

by David F. Walker, Marcus Kwame Anderson, Isabell Struble · ★★★☆☆

Good graphic novel and an important piece of storytelling. It's remarkable to think this came out about the same time as James, another Huckleberry-Finn-from-Jim's-Perspective. But this is a very different book.

It's only very loosely Huckleberry Finn, and the weakest parts were towards the start where the story tries to follow the Twain narrative. It gets much stronger when it becomes its own story. An imagined history of Jim, the liberated Slave, fighting for freedom before, during, and after the Civil War. Along with a very sweet story of his love for Huck and their lifelong friendship.

I didn't love the art. Or the simplified superhero elements in the story. I think it works as a fun graphic novel and if it brings in readers, great! But this story seemed most powerful to me at its moments of the most complexity, particularly Jim and Huck's relationship.

This book seems like a great introductory text for young readers needing a counterbalance to Confederate mythology.

A Room with a View, by E.M. Forster

2026-05-31T00:00:00Z

by E.M. Forster · ★★★★☆

It took me awhile to get into it.. The first few chapters of English people being provincial in Italy were irritating! I'm glad I stuck with it through to the second section, it got much more interesting once the romantic intrigue got going.

The romance is so thin though! George is far too underwritten a character given how important he turns out to be. We never learn much about him and the only scene of any consequence is the confusing murder in the piazza. The all-important kisses just sort of happen out of the blue with no explication. And Forster gives us very little insight into Lucy's true thoughts, although arguably that's deliberate because she does not know them herself.

I was primed to think this because of the Bad Gays podcast, but... I read this thinness as Forster's own lack of knowledge about romantic relationships. The book was published when he was 29 and a first draft written when he was 23. Meanwhile Forster didn't understand how sex even worked until age 30 and was a virgin until 37. It's remarkable he could write so poignantly about the anguish of love and desire with so little experience himself. But then, maybe that's exactly why he could write this, his own homosexual anguish.

How did anyone understand Forster's writing without knowing he was gay?! I tried asking an AI about that and it said earlier critics focussed on the wit and satire of the novel and the themes of Gothic vs Greek or rationality vs. desire. All very abstract and proper. But to me there certainly seems to be a much queerer reading, about Lucy's confusion being a parallel to a gay man figuring himself out.

Captive Prince, by C.S. Pacat

2026-05-25T00:00:00Z

by C.S. Pacat · ★★☆☆☆

I wish I could remember why I thought I'd want to read this. Or why I struggled through it after all the rape and child sexual abuse and awfulness. Not to mention the clumsy writing. Weirdly I still enjoyed it and kind of even want to know what happens next in the story. Not enough to read through all the violence, sexual and otherwise. As a rule I don't read this kind of thing and I wish I'd stuck with it.

The good: the main character's narrative voice is strong and strange but compelling. I like the complexity of his relationship with his captor. Clearly they're building to an enemies-to-lovers kind of thing. Also the pacing was strong enough the book kept my interest. It's mercifully short.

The bad: I just can't enjoy the central latent romance because part of "the setup involves torture, enslavement, sexual humiliation. And not in a fun kink way. It's hideous.

Also the bad: the writing is not good. The prose flows OK but is not particularly literary or evocative. Sometimes important things are glossed over and only explained pages later. And weirdly the author throws in some 50 cent SAT word, vocabulary far too erudite for the rest of the writing. As much as I like obscure words it just breaks the narrative voice and feels like someone showing off.

Anyway this book was sort of entertaining and sort of appalling and overall I'd rather be spending my time on higher quality writing.

Lot, by Bryan Washington

2026-05-20T00:00:00Z

by Bryan Washington · ★★★★☆

A lovely, insightful, and sensitive novel. I grew up in Houston and love local geography so all of Washington's hyper-local prose speaks to me. I also appreciate the gay experience he writes about. My own upbringing was significantly whiter and more privileged than Lot's characters, I can't relate directly, but that just makes it all the more interesting for me to read.

At its best Washington's prose has a meaningful lyricism to it. He has a slightly askew sense of associations and moods, when he writes about "the leaves plaguing Montrose" or "he felt like a bag of Tic Tacs" I can relate even if I couldn't tell you exactly what the similes mean. There's also a sort of rhythm and mood to the feelings he expresses that reminds me very much of Ocean Vuong.

I had a hard time reading this book coherently. It's a set of short stories, somewhat interwoven with someone being a character in one story and then the narrator in the next. But I never quite followed the literal through-line. Plenty of overlapping mood and scene and situation though. I feel like I'd benefit from reading this book a second time much more closely and critically, dissecting it as one would for an English class. OTOH it's far too lovely a novel to cut apart that way, I'm happy enjoying it as-is.

The strongest story for me was Waugh. A heart-breaking narrative and the protagonist Poke was easier for me to empathize with than some others.

(One nitpick: some of the geography doesn't quite make sense. Like there's no I-90 in Houston, is there? And you think you can identify the exact blocks in Waugh only the details don't quite make sense. None of this matters to the mood or meaning, it's just me being pedantic. I want to put the places on a map! It's not that kind of book.)

Death of the Author, by Nnedi Okorafor

2026-05-09T00:00:00Z

by Nnedi Okorafor · ★★★★☆

What a magical book! Was really spellbound by parts of this. What I liked best is how intensely sophisticated the narrative is, the interweaving of three storytelling modes. I also liked all the surprises in it, the bits of magic that the narrator Zelu encounters in her charmed but challenging life. Okorafor really swung for the fences with this novel and it paid off.

Alien Clay, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

2026-04-25T00:00:00Z

by Adrian Tchaikovsky · ★★★☆☆

Meh. This was a fun quick read, so 3 stars and not 2, but it's pretty forgettable.

Tchaikovsky consistently writes interesting alien intelligences. But he keeps experimenting with different narrative moods in his different novels. I appreciate that, but this particular version didn't work for me. The central story is a story about prison labor, about a rebellious group in a prison camp on an alien planet. And the social dynamics of that just didn't engage me at all. It's solidly written, I could follow the story, I just didn't care. It didn't help that it felt like Andor did this kind of story so much better recently.

The alien intelligence part is good but surprisingly thin. The central conceit is fun but pretty simple. And not well explored. I had all sorts of questions about how this ecosystem would work and in other Tchaikovsky novels he'd have explicated it all over the course of a satisfying novel. This time it was just the surface idea.

The most annoying thing is Tchaikovsky's playing with a narrative style where he hints at things but doesn't reveal them until the next chapter. Makes for a page turner but it's a cheap gimmick. Some of it is horror movie stuff: "there's a scary thing and I'm going to keep it scary by not telling you about it". Does not work in sci-fi IMHO. Some of it is that the plot and the characters are more than they seem and I'd rather he just told us rather than trickle it out.

Anyway, still good fun to read. Just not one of his best.

The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin

2026-04-19T00:00:00Z

by Ursula K. Le Guin · ★★★★☆

I read this years ago and didn't care for it much. But I was looking then for gay sci-fi and it didn't satisfy. (It's no Dhalgren)! This time I'm ready to engage just with LeGuin for her anthropological self and I liked it much better.

The world building is exquisite. Some of the details of the politics are incredibly intricate. And just barely followable, she moves fast. But it comes together into a really compelling story about a culture's response to an alien visitor representing an advanced technological power. It recalls narratives of Europeans in Japan, or China, or Hawaiʻi. Only a much gentler and kinder one focussed on common humanity and exchange of knowledge, not colonialism and weapons.

I still don't like it as a gay novel. It's just not about the gay male experience and doesn't try to be. I certainly recognize it as a queer novel though, a whole society of androgynous / changing gender humans. But their whole society is that way and its presented as entirely normal, there's nothing of the queer experience of otherness. Well there is, the cis-male narrator himself is "the Pervert", but LeGuin doesn't explore his experience as a gender variant in this society as much as I'd like.

But genderqueer and trans friends of mine find much more of themselves in this book. Or at least the hope of the experience of being something other than the basic male/female gender, of giving alternative gender experiences equal respect. That's a good thing.

Finally on gender, I tripped over LeGuin's use of "he" as the gender-neutral pronoun. LeGuin did this on purpose and then later regretted it, and part of me wonders if a light edit using they/them pronouns wouldn't read better in 2026.

Mostly I want to go back to the main sci-fi story, the part mostly separate from gender. The way the Envoy is misunderstood, and misunderstands, his alienness in this society with different ways of communicating and being. The deep friendship with Estraven is very moving, in particular the heartbreaking last third of the story. It's a lovely first contact tale.

To Be Taught, If Fortunate, by Becky Chambers

2026-04-11T00:00:00Z

by Becky Chambers · ★★★★☆

Lovely humanist story. Some good scifi about exploring new planets. But the real hook is the emotional experiences of the characters, their lives as a small family far from Earth. Some nice evocation of loneliness and distance, also of hope and purpose.

I don't normally read novellas but glad I made an exception. I would have been glad to read a novel-sized treatment but honestly she had plenty of room to say what she wanted to.

Shroud, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

2026-04-09T00:00:00Z

by Adrian Tchaikovsky · ★★★★☆

What a satisfying Tchaikovsky book. Yet another alien intelligence explored and this one truly, frighteningly alien. Both the sentients and the whole environment and planet.

The writing of the people is just good enough to work. The personal relationships are important, they operate as a foil to understanding the alien intelligence. Also the nature of the conflict between us and them. I've never thought Tchaikovsky was great at writing believable people but it works pretty well here. It helps the folks are in limited environments and circumstances.

There's a lot of interesting rhyming and parallels between the humans and the aliens. The nature of vehicles. The relationships between individuals. The approach to strangers. Innovation. Some of these parallels are explicit but a lot is implicit. The writing is quite deft here, particularly the way the main characters' friendship develops and becomes essential to the story.

One small regret: the alien intelligence shares a lot of commonality with the Tines in A Fire Upon the Deep. It's not a ripoff or anything, Tchaikovsky goes his own direction with it. But some the details of how the minds work is so similar it was a bit frustrating not to have a more direct comparison.

The Heart's Invisible Furies, by John Boyne

2026-04-01T00:00:00Z

by John Boyne · Didn't finish

Quit after the first two of nine sections. It's not a bad book, just not a genre I'm interested in reading right now. Far too much arch irony and silliness when I was on the lookout for a more serious book. Which isn't to say the book is frivolous, it's pointed satire, just not working for me.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf, by Marlon James

2026-04-01T00:00:00Z

by Marlon James · ★☆☆☆☆ · Didn't finish

Read several chapters for a book club, gave up. Not for me.

Game Changers Collection, by Rachel Reid

2026-04-01T00:00:00Z

by Rachel Reid

Tough Guy, by Rachel Reid

2026-04-01T00:00:00Z

by Rachel Reid · ★★☆☆☆

Maybe I made a mistake binge-reading three of these in a row, or maybe I just lack the imagination to enjoy a book I haven't seen a TV show for. But I think that's not it.

My real problem is I just didn't like the protagonist, Ryan. It's hard to like him! He's so anxious, and so screwed up, and so lacking in confidence. It's good writing, and I appreciate the representation of a big strong anxious guy. But her previous characters were all basically likeable guys with one big problem or flaw. Ryan's just a mess and it made it hard for me to like, particularly the first half of the book. It gets better as he builds his confidence. Fabian is far more interesting to me, the shit-together femme boi who is a musical genius. And he's so sweet with Ryan, that part moved me.

Given how horny the first two books are this one is curiously lacking in sex. There is some, but it's suppressed first by Ryan's freakouts and then by Ryan's sexual dysfunction. Again: great representation! But not fun as an escapist romance for me.

One last complaint: the book is very claustrophobic. The previous books had lots of characters and settings and a sense of freedom. But since Ryan's world is so limited, so is the book. That's gonna make for dull TV if they film this.

The thing I thought was really interesting was the strong condemnation of hockey fighting culture. The first two books feel like a love letter to NHL with some criticism about its homophobia. This one's much more hostile to the professional league. I wonder what the sports-loving fans of these books think about that.

(I was originally expecting this book to have some pornographic descriptions of hockey fights, big men fighting as a substitute for kissing. That would have been grotesque, I'm glad she didn't do it.)

Time for a break from the gay hockey books. They are uncommonly good but I've read too many too fast.

Heated Rivalry, by Rachel Reid

2026-03-30T00:00:00Z

by Rachel Reid · ★★★★☆

Well that was great. I came here from the TV show, so I was primed to like it, and it definitely helps to visualize Shane and Ilya via the fantastic performances we saw this year. But this book is well written!

I particularly like that it dwelt more on Shane's inner journey, his coming out. This came through well in the show but I felt it more in the book. Also Ilya's change. It's a little more complicated since we don't get much of his POV, or maybe he's underwritten. But the place he ends this book is lovely.

Also very sexy book! But not quite as overwhelming as the first one. Much more emotion and actual romance too, very sweet.

Game Changer, by Rachel Reid

2026-03-25T00:00:00Z

by Rachel Reid · ★★★★☆

Well that was a lot of fun. I read this after watching the TV show. Remarkable how close the show follows the book! Very little was changed. Plenty cut though, there's only an hour or so for this whole novel.

The fun thing in the book is seeing more depth. Particularly Kip's POV, his pride in being out and then the anguish of being with Scott. There's also more steps to Scott's coming out that are fun. The impact of the Big Kiss isn't quite as exciting in the book, the TV show really did set that up marvelously. I think cutting Scott + Kip's story in and out of Ilya + Shane was a smart choice for the show.

Back to the book, my one complaint is about a quarter of the way in there was too much sex. Never thought I'd say that! The sex is well written, hot and a little porny but not too much so. But then she writes the romance part of the book well too. And there's a stretch where after the fifth sex scene I was ready for more feelings and talk. Maybe it was like the rhythm of a new intense relationship where the sex takes front of stage. Or maybe the author was just finding her balance. Overall the result was fine.

There's a thread of criticism from gay men that this book and this TV show were written by a woman and that was appropriation. I didn't feel that way at all. I get the concern, but this book felt pretty authentically gay to me. Both the sex descriptions and the emotional stuff felt true, not like a woman imagining what gay men are like.

One unique thing in this romance is a detailed description of what it feels like to be in the closet. From both perspectives, the closeted man and the out man who loves the closeted man. I don't think I've read that view in a romance novel before, at least not in this detail. I wonder if that experience is less accessible to young readers. For me at age 54 it was quite familiar.

California and the Civil War (Civil War Series), by Richard Hurley

2026-03-20T00:00:00Z

by Richard Hurley · ★★★★☆

A very solid and readable history of a narrow slice of history, combining California and the Civil War. California didn't play a big role in the Civil War, at least not in terms of number of men or influential battles. (Our gold supply was a much bigger factor!) But there are a bunch of interesting incidents, also a lot of strong feelings about the Civil War even in brand-new California. So the author has a lot of good stories to tell but one gets the sense he's told all of them, that this is a complete history of all the significant things.

I like the writing style, casual and easy to read. But it's not a shallow book, it is very well researched with some significant interpretation from the author. Just the style of history I like to read.

Service Model, by Adrian Tchaikovsky

2026-03-11T00:00:00Z

by Adrian Tchaikovsky · ★★★☆☆

Wildly uneven and unusual book from Tchaikovsky. On the balance I liked it, mostly because I developed such sympathy for the protagonist. But parts were rough going.

The opening part of the book is very funny with a writing conceit about the mechanistic "thinking" of AIs. I liked it for one chapter and then it kept going and I was fearing it'd be a whole book like that. Ugh! Fortunately once the point is thoroughly made Tchaikovsky goes on to other writing styles. It's all a bit meta and too clever in places but overall it's fine.

What's weird is this is Tchaikovsky writing a light, conversational book. I tend to think of his harder sci-fi stuff. Here this book about a robot is quite humanistic and intimate. It works. Other things didn't work for me, particularly the human character The Wonk. She felt unnecessary and badly drawn to me, I am curious if this book could have been made to work without her entirely.

Also unconvinced about the ambitions of comparing itself to Dante's Inferno. Or the grand design of the whole story. It's a big, wide ranging story and it doesn't always get to his ambitious narrative goals. But overall it held together and I'm glad I read it.

Memorial, by Bryan Washington

2026-02-09T00:00:00Z

by Bryan Washington · ★★★★☆

What a lovely novel! At first it seems so casual and breezy I didn't take it seriously. Then I realized my mistake, how carefully written this book is and how much emotional truth it carries. My big question is how much is autobiographical. So much rings true. Not just about Benson, the character whose background mirrors the author's. But also his boyfriend Mike. Even the third of the novel that takes place with Mike's father in Osaka felt very honest to me, the kind of honesty that comes from a personal narrative, but I don't think that was the author's own experience. Remarkable writing!

Another remarkable thing Washington does well is convey a sense of place in his writing. Particularly Houston, the city I grew up in, it's nice to see it featured so lovingly here. But also Osaka or rather a little slice of Osaka, the book felt well situated.

An Unkindness of Ghosts, by Rivers Solomon

2026-01-26T00:00:00Z

by Rivers Solomon · ★★★☆☆

Very good and disturbing novel. I love generation ship stories. This story is that but it's a bleak and hopeless one. Not only has civilization and technology failed on the ship but so has politics and the current society is a brutal and inequitable community. With a lot of physical and sexual violence suffered by our protagonist and her friends.

It's all sympathetically written. And there's moments and love and grace, queer moments at that. The book is depressing but also humane and at times lovely.

Looking forward to more from this author!

The Priory of the Orange Tree, by Samantha Shannon

2026-01-16T00:00:00Z

by Samantha Shannon · ★★☆☆☆

I finished it! Yay me! I enjoyed the middle 300 pages. But the first 300 pages took forever to get going. And the last 300 pages were a rushed mess. This book would have been considerably improved by being edited down to half the length and then a bit more story inserted to result in three 200 page novels.

The good part is a fun, long story about women in various pseudo-feudal societies making their way through political machinations, swordplay, and some occasional magic. When this story is cooking along it does really well, it's just frustrating that it doesn't maintain that level of quality consistently.

The other good part is it's a nice queer story. A strong FF romance in the middle. Also a gay man as a side character who is interesting. Although argh! [A spoiler, hidden here: read it on the site.] What a waste of a good setup.

The bad part is the writing is just so undisciplined. And long. I almost wish the author would return to this exact same story after 10 or 20 years as a professional writer. There's a lot of good ideas here and they just need better writing.

Journey to the West: (Abridged translation by Arthur Waley originally published in 1942 as "Monkey"), by Wu Cheng'en

2026-01-16T00:00:00Z

by Wu Cheng'en, Arthur Waley · Didn't finish

The Curse of Chalion, by Lois McMaster Bujold

2025-12-23T00:00:00Z

by Lois McMaster Bujold · ★★★☆☆

Well that was lovely. A good solid fantasy story, with a light romance. And best of all told from a really kind humanist perspective. I understood the characters and cared about them. Particularly the protagonist.

It's kind of a light book, I can't think of anything particularly subtle or complex to go into detail about. It's also an awful lot of pages. But well told and very satisfying as a novel.

Frontier Comrades: From the Fur Trade to the Ford Car, by Jim Wilke

2025-12-04T00:00:00Z

by Jim Wilke · ★★★☆☆

Very solid and readable history, I'm glad I read it. Quite quickly too, it was a quick and fairly entertaining read.

I think the book is strongest at painting a picture of what life was like on the frontier in the American west. Daily life for folks fur trading or working in logging camps, mining camps, army camps. His writing is quite evocative. Maybe too much so: it felt a little embellished and a little too lengthy. But that made it an enjoyable read and his enhancements were responsible and narrative, not misleading.

The queer history part of the book is weaker. There's very little information about the sexuality of most of the subjects. How could there be? Many of them were living in a time before homosexuality or transgender identity were well defined. And to the extent it was known it was stigmatized or illegal. Of course there's little record. But then it's hard to tell a whole story of, say, a sheriff of Tombstone when the only evidence he was queer was a couple of close male friendships and some gossip from people after he died. I think the author is responsible here, I imagine that man really was homosexually inclined, but I'm not sure I learned a lot about what that was like for him.

The narrative is stronger in a couple of chapters that have written accounts of scandals. Mrs. Noonan's story is the best here, a transgender woman doing laundry for an army camp. Her story is a tragedy and the newspaper accounts are cruel. But they are well balanced by Elizabeth Custer's respectful recollection of the woman's life, some remarkable words of acceptance.

The Lesbian couple (Dietrich and Chatfield) is similarly well told through newspaper accounts. Alas, no sympathetic words and none of their own. I also loved the last chapter about a logger because it's all sourced to a Straight to Hell first-hand account written in 1975. I'd love to read that primary source!

Speaking of sources, I'm a bit confused on how much of this book is original research and how much is re-presented. The book itself is well footnoted, but a lot of the references are either to Jonathan Katz's Gay American history or else to Peter Boag's Same-Sex Affairs. Both great sources but I was unclear what scholarship Wilke added to their work. Certainly some, there's a lot more of Dietrich & Chatfield's story here.

Overall this is a good book of scholarship. I'm grateful for it because this historical record is so thin.

Paladin's Faith, by T. Kingfisher

2025-12-03T00:00:00Z

by T. Kingfisher · ★★★☆☆

I enjoyed this well enough but it felt a bit off. Too much fantasy, not enough romance. OTOH the fantasy was the better part of the novel so I was entertained by the story! Rest of this review is kinda spoilery, read at your own peril.

The romance was fun. Kingfisher takes a long time for her characters to get there, and the paladins being all self-doubting gets tedious. But that's the shtick and it works. And when we finally get to the real good sex scene, involving some mild kink, hoo boy it sizzles. Best scene in the book.

The fantasy is interesting! She's built out an elaborate world of living gods and frightening demons and a rich complex world of economics and politics. A lot of this novel is about spies and intrigue and it was fun. But parts of the fantasy are a little clumsy. And it takes a lot of pages to get where it goes. Might have benefitted from a little tightening up. I did enjoy it though.

The characters are good. Marguerite, the main female lead, is appropriately fun and brassy and lusty. The main paladin is kinda boring but does his job. I really liked Wren but just wish the author could have [A spoiler, hidden here: read it on the site.]. There's also an odd male character who joins the story later who seemed quite interesting to me, wouldn't mind more of his story.

Overall it's fun. If you liked the third of these books you'll like this fourth. I'm not sure if I need yet more of these but they are fun and competent so I'm probably in for a fifth.

Paladin's Hope, by T. Kingfisher

2025-11-17T00:00:00Z

by T. Kingfisher · ★★★☆☆

Good fun reading, light and entertaining queer romance / fantasy. Sadly I didn't write this review right after reading it and I've already forgotten a lot just ten days later. Enjoyable but not memorable. I did like the gay romance and particularly liked the character Piper, his loner confidence. The sexy parts were sexy although I wish there were more!

What I really didn't like is the main plot action for the middle of the book, probably half the book. It's a specific conceit that had me rolling my eyes at the tedium of it. Fortunately the author doesn't dwell too much on it and uses it as an artifice to hang the romance on, so it worked out OK.

The Cloud Roads, by Martha Wells

2025-11-12T00:00:00Z

by Martha Wells

Einstein’s Dreams, by Alan Lightman

2025-10-31T00:00:00Z

by Alan Lightman · ★★★☆☆

I went into Einstein's Dreams not sure what to expect, but thought maybe it'd be a hard sci-fi exposition about relativity. So I was please to find a book that is only peripherally about science. Instead it's really a poignant book about the human experience, and emotion, and our perception of change over our lives. It's lovely.

The book doesn't have a traditional plot. Instead it's a series of parables, each one exploring how people might live if time worked differently. What struck me is how little Lightman belabors the science. I read a lot of speculative fiction where authors get very into the hard sci-fi details, and that's fun, but it usually gets in the way of the human story. Here the physics is underpinning everything but it never overwhelms the emotional core.

I couldn't stop thinking about Borges, that same moody, philosophical writing driven by big ideas. But Borges' Ficciones jumps all over a bunch of ideas, it's a collection of diverse short stories. Lightman's little novel explores variations on a single idea. (Lightman acknowledges the influence.) It's is a little exhaustive, I wouldn't have minded an even shorter book, but then I imagine which of the parables resonates depends on the particular reader. They're all pretty good, many suffused with an existential sadness. Occasionally sweetened with a little romance, or affection, or human kindness.

What I like most is that this book respects both ideas and feeling. It doesn't sacrifice one for the other. It's left me feeling a pleasant melancholy.

Trouble and Her Friends, by Melissa Scott

2025-10-23T00:00:00Z

by Melissa Scott · ★★★★☆

What a remarkably good work! How come I didn't hear about this when it came out in came out in 1994? Queer cyberpunk and very well written.

First, the cyberpunk. It's high cyberpunk, full of a functioning underworld economy and lots of descriptions of virtual worlds and hacking through dramatic, exciting scenes of cracking ICE and looking cool. A good chunk of the action is written in cyberspace and it seems a little cheesy but it's so visual and attention grabbing, good fun. It feels sort of retro reading this now, the imagined cyberpunk future has not come to pass. But I like it.

Second, the queer. It's not the central part of this book but queerness is essential to the characters and the plot. The main group of people are all queer hacker friends, bonded together by their dual outsider status as queer and as hackers. Very chosen family and the queerness serves as a shortcut to intimacy with and between the characters. Also there's some hot woman/woman sex in the book that's well written and fun. Having women POV characters solves a lot of the male gaze problems that suffuse Gibson, etc.

A friend complains that not much actually happens in the book. It is a lot of pages for a pretty simple story. I didn't mind. At one point the main character spends four pages just checking in to a flophouse. The author writes a lot of details about currencies, and identification, and how door locks work, and... she did a lot of world building and was eager to show it. Makes for a slow book but fun reading. I've been reading a lot of this thinking about the Cyberpunk 2077 game where that kind of detail becomes essential to the game design.

The story itself is fairly simple. A lot of it is a "get the old gang back together" heist story. Then there's a sort of not-well-structured mystery about who the bad guy is. But then it takes a really interesting turn. The bad guy turns out to be [A spoiler, hidden here: read it on the site.]

While there's not a lot of plot for such a long book, there's exactly enough plot for a movie script. This book would make a great movie. Particularly if they added more to the script for the bad guy. Good characters, a richly realized world that would translate into a beautiful production.. Maybe cyberpunk is too retro right now, or alternately it'd feel like a sort of bad Matrix clone. But I wonder if anyone has ever considered seriously producing it.

Maurice, by E.M. Forster

2025-10-16T00:00:00Z

by E.M. Forster · ★★★☆☆

I read this as a gay novel, and a novel about England. But it's more than that, it's an important work of early English homosexuality, and I'll comment on that towards the end.

As a gay novel I found it frustrating. Far too much hand-writing about being afflicted with the unspeakable vice, not enough actual gay love. Maurice himself is quite unpleasant at the start of the novel. And then this ridiculous platonic love affair with Clive. That just sort of.. ends? When Clive is miraculously cured of any same sex love. It just felt so old fashioned and overwrought. I liked the second love story much better, with Alec. It's still couched in very old ideas of homosexuality, fear of prosecution and blackmail. But Maurice finds his way to something like gay liberation and the boys do find their way to being in love. Hooray!

Picking this as my novel to read while in London didn't work so well. It's much more a novel of rural England. And while it has a lot of stuff about English class roles and expectations. Which I'm just not that interested in, Downton Abbey was enough of that for me.

I read the book all wrong.

The exciting and important thing about this book is it was written in ~1920, by a gay author, and not published in his lifetime. And it contains the transition to a modern sensibility about gay identity. All the hand-wringing and doubt is essential because it sets the stage for Maurice' decision at the end. To break with the past, his societal expecations, the demands of his class. To declare himself in love with another man and risk everything for him. And that is a hell of a story to be writing in 1920.

So now I need to re-read the book through that eye, to set it in the same Edwardian context as I recently read Teleny and The New Life and am working my way through The First Homosexuals. Only this book is a heartfelt and personal accounting from someone living that moment, a novel author of great skill and insight. It's lovely.

Realistically I won't re-read this book. But I plan to watch the movie, which is a gem on its own merits but now may also offer me a chance to revisit the novel itself.

PS: the scenes where Maurice and Alec reconcile and decide to become lovers are thrilling. I particularly liked the chase scene through the British Museum, the inversion of power and risk and emotion. It's a very subtle and true story and I wonder where Forster got the idea to write it that wya.

Mudlark: In Search of London's Past Along the River Thames, by Lara Maiklem

2025-10-15T00:00:00Z

by Lara Maiklem · ★★☆☆☆ · Didn't finish

Usually DNF is a 1 star, but half of why I quit reading this book is I left London before finishing it. OTOH I didn't finish it because I didn't love it. It's an amusing book but it was too much about the author and the contemporary hobby of mudlarking and not enough about London history for me.

Teleny or the Reverse of the Medal, by Oscar Wilde

2025-09-28T00:00:00Z

by Oscar Wilde, Uday K. Dhar · ★★★☆☆

How fun, a gay pornographic novel from 1893. And previously unknown to me! I read the Wikisource version which has a serviceable epub.

A lot of the book is not good. Chapters 2-5 are a series of misogynistic heterosexual porn vignettes, increasingly violent. I was not here for them. Some of the writing is good but it is far too rapey for me to enjoy. These chapters are skippable.

Chapter 1 sets up a gay love story. Chapter 8 brings it to its tragic conclusion. The plot is quite solid for a pornographic novel, the story is interesting. Also the book portrays a quite modern conception of homosexuality, particularly for 1893. The narrator asserts that homosexuality is in his nature, and that while that may be shameful it is also who he is and he is harming no one. And then he has a true passionate love affair with Teleny. It's early gay pride literature.

In fact, had our union been blessed by the Church, it could not have been a closer one. Let the moralist after that explain to me the harm we did, or the law-giver that would apply to us the penalty inflicted to the worst of criminals, the wrong we did to society.

Chapters 6 and 7 are the erotic prize, particularly chapter 6. That's the consummation of the love between the two men and it is delicious and quite hot. Chapter 7 is a bit sillier, a big homosexual orgy, but that kind of writing has a long heterosexual history and it's good fun to read my version.

The prose in this book is very finely styled. Decadent and Victorian and full of archaic expressions like "unwilling contractions of the sphincter brandle the phallus". It's quite fun reading those in genuine prose, not as a parody.

Fascinating book. If you're a student of early gay literature or Victorian porn, I recommend it. But maybe just skip chapters 2-5.

Bonus: some quotes that struck me as a very modern statement of gay liberation.

Still I had thought that on the morrow—the intoxication passed—you would have shuddered at the thought of having a man for a lover?"

"Why? Had I committed a crime against nature when my own nature found peace and happiness thereby? If I was thus, surely it was the fault of my blood, not myself. Who had planted nettles in my garden? Not I. They had grown there unawares, from my very childhood. I began to feel their carnal stings long before I could understand what conclusion they imported. When I had tried to bridle my lust, was it my fault if the scale of reason was far too light to balance that of sensuality? Was I to blame if I could not argue down my raging motion? Fate, Iago-like, had clearly shewed me that if I would damn myself, I could do so in a more delicate way than drowning. I yielded to my destiny, and encompassed my joy.

...

In fact, had our union been blessed by the Church, it could not have been a closer one. Let the moralist after that explain to me the harm we did, or the law-giver that would apply to us the penalty inflicted to the worst of criminals, the wrong we did to society.

...

I was not the only member of our cankered society who loved in the Socratic fashion, and that men of the highest intelligence, of the kindest heart, and of the purest aesthetic feelings, were—like myself—sodomists.

The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler

2025-09-25T00:00:00Z

by Ray Nayler · ★★★☆☆

I liked this book, it had a lot of interesting ideas in it. I liked its depiction of different kinds of intelligence. Not just the octopuses but also a conventional AI and then some more robotic yet all powerful AI. Also the Tibetan drone interfaces. Just an interesting exploration of so many alternate forms of intelligence. It's a little like Adrian Tchaikovsky's writing but more philosophical, less gee-whiz scifi.

What I didn't like was the action in the book. Or the lack thereof. The book is curiously static. Also devoid of human connections. It's not a huge flaw, what the book does instead is interesting enough, but it felt a little one-note to me.

I also wasn't wild about the horror / monster aspects of the octopus description. I kept feeling dread the whole time. Which may not be an accident, it's deft writing, it just kind of bummed me out.

The Incandescent, by Emily Tesh

2025-09-15T00:00:00Z

by Emily Tesh · ★★★★★

Well that was fantastic. For most of the book I was thinking "so this is what people who grew up reading Harry Potter write as adults". School for wizards but with a refreshing change of focus to the decidedly early middle-aged teacher rather than feckless schoolkids. Good storytelling! Took a bit to get off the ground but all was going very well.

Then the last section. Avoiding any spoilers here but the author tried something very ambitious with the writing and it worked great. Elevated this from just a good entertaining book to something really quite special. She had me with the page turning good novel in general but the concluding section took my breath away.

Project Hail Mary, by Andy Weir

2025-09-09T00:00:00Z

by Andy Weir · ★★★★★

Just devoured this book in three days, absolutely loved it. Compared to Artemis this book is much more like The Martian, a two fisted tale of a man's survival using science and engineering against the odds. Both Hail Mary and The Martian to me read like a throwback to Boy's Life, or those survival-against-nature stories Reader's Digest used to publish. It's kind of a retro genre, and definitely out of step with the contemporary focus on thoughtful social writing from diverse perspectives. It's also for me a really fun kind of book to read full of page turning excitement and excellent fantasy. And that's OK too!

At first I thought this book was basically going to be The Martian 2. But it solves that story's problem by getting significantly more interesting, complicated, and varied as the narrative goes on. No spoilers but suffice to say the problems our hero has to Science and Engineer his way out of are numerous and varied in their problems. Also there's enough relationships and emotions to give our main character some real shape and meaning, not just be some two dimensional Macgyver expert. It all comes together remarkably well, great read.

Update read this a second time excited for the movie and enjoyed it as much or even more. What strikes me this second time is just how well crafted the book. The pacing is exciting all the way through (if a bit relentless) and the scenarios are varied and it's interesting. It almost feels like there's too much towards the end, the last two twists, but then [A spoiler, hidden here: read it on the site.]

I'm very curious how the movie is going to work, a lot depends on how they portray [A spoiler, hidden here: read it on the site.]. Also they have to cut some of the story out, right? There's too much to put every action-packed scene on screen.

The New Life, by Tom Crewe

2025-09-02T00:00:00Z

by Tom Crewe · ★★★★☆

Very solid and enjoyable book. It gets a little tedious in parts, it could do with more sex and less letter-writing. But it's a serious work of historical fiction and has a lot of insight to offer.

I'm fascinated by this era in gay history, when the modern homosexuality identity was being discovered and created. This novel makes for great companion reading to The First Homosexuals: The Birth of a New Identity 1869-1939. Also it was great to read on the back of me reading a lot of Whitman.

What I liked best is the author's historical research. I'm more than passing familiar with 19th century sexology so I was all over the details of Symonds and Ellis' lives. At the same time it's clearly fiction, with several years added to Symonds' lifespan and a third party added to Ellis' family that I think there's little or no historical basis for. That's all fine and makes for a more insightful story.

One detail I appreciated: the sympathy paid to the straight folks who also suffered the consequences of homosexual persecution. Particularly Symonds long-suffering wife, she is written with agency and dignity.

All in all a terrific book. Remarkably well structured for a first novel.

PS: Chapter 1 is available to read here. It's excellent, interesting writing and very sexy. But the rest of the book is not like this. Not as stylized and not as porny. Too bad, this chapter was fun!

Proto: How One Ancient Language Went Global, by Laura Spinney

2025-08-22T00:00:00Z

by Laura Spinney · ★★★★☆

I enjoyed this book! A surprisingly readable and interesting romp through the history of a bunch of people and languages. I love this kind of big picture history, or in this case a mix of linguistics, archaeology, and ancient DNA work.

I liked the deep treatment of historical linguistics and the reconstructions of Proto Indo-European and language evolution. I've always been skeptical of that scholarship. She makes a strong case for the rigor of it. I also love the connection to all the ancient DNA work being done right now. It's a very exciting time in archaeology!

Mostly I appreciate how coherent the book comes together, very enjoyable read.

Of Monsters and Mainframes, by Barbara Truelove

2025-08-19T00:00:00Z

by Barbara Truelove · ★★☆☆☆

Well I can say I finished this book. I was modestly entertained, it's fun enough, but it's not great.

it suffers too much from being like Murderbot but not as good as Murderbot. I hate to say it, it may be totally unfair to the author, but it's the same shtick of having a weird POV character who is a human-like AI with wisecracks and unusual gender. If I'd never encountered that idea in Murderbot I would have found this much more clever. Instead I couldn't help but make comparisons and this book is not flattered by them.

My main complaint is with the stories. And the monsters. It seems like a clever conceit, bringing classic horror novel monsters onto a spaceship. It just falls totally flat. I could barely bring myself to care about the story, or the conflict, or any of the details of the plot.

The one thing that was really nice and sweet is when we learn that Demeter [A spoiler, hidden here: read it on the site.]

If you're into the idea of this book then by all means please read it, it is well written and entertaining. But still just OK for me, not particularly distinguished.

Young Mungo, by Douglas Stuart

2025-08-07T00:00:00Z

by Douglas Stuart · ★★★★☆

I had a hard time to start with this book but I'm glad I finished it! I was here for the gay story, and on the back of Bastard Out of Carolina I was not ready for another tale of misery and abuse growing up in a hard-scrabble family and place. Honestly it was pretty brutal reading and I almost quit. But ChatGPT assured me there was a sweet gay romance to come and once I got there I enjoyed the book all the more.

Not to discount the misery parts: they are very important to the novel. And serve well to highlight how special the brief moment of grace in teenage romance is. Usually in gay novels the central conflict is about being gay. And while that's certainly part of Young Mungo's woes the real conflict is the sectarian gang warfare and his abusive family. It makes for an interesting sort of Romeo & Juliet novel, where part of the tragedy is that Juliet is actually an other Romeo but the bigger problem is the Capulets and Montagues. (And the whole damn town).

I liked the structure of the book. It was a bit confusing at first, two interwoven narratives at different at times. But when he brings them together it's quite a shock, a sort of foreshadowing of yet more misery to come, and that moment is powerful.

I enjoyed the Scots language stuff. Some fun vocabulary words in there. Some of the dialect writing is a little thick and hard to read but it's all reasonable and important to the color of the book.

Mostly I loved how warmly the romantic scenes shone through all the grime of tenement Glasgow. Even in a grimy dovecot the pure love and beauty of the young men is undeniable. The writer is a remarkably good prose stylist. "an eyeful of alabaster and rose, the glacial blue of inner arms with their veins like violet rivers"

Gilgamesh, by Stephen Mitchell

2025-07-30T00:00:00Z

by Stephen Mitchell, George Guidall · ★★★★☆

Usurpation, by Sue Burke

2025-07-29T00:00:00Z

by Sue Burke · ★★☆☆☆

Maybe it was a mistake to read these three books back to back.

This one has interesting ideas in it, but it's very diluted. The theme of bamboo sentience continues in an interesting way, but not that interesting. A bunch of other ideas are also introduced (like intelligent whales) that aren't nearly as interesting. And all of it on the backdrop of some sort of global medical emergency that is solved and zzzzz.... it just didn't grab me.

I really like some aspects of this story and world, but maybe the author has seen it through as far as it can go.