Megan G reviews Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color edited by Christopher Soto

As soon as I came across this anthology and its haunting cover I knew I had to pick it up. As soon as I realized that the title of this anthology (and the journal it originated from) came from a quote from Gloria Anzaldúa, I knew I’d made the right choice.

The poems in this anthology cover quite literally every topic you can imagine. While this makes for quite a trigger-heavy piece of work, it…

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Alexa reviews Out of Salem by Hal Schrieve

4.5 stars

When I saw that cover and read the blurb, I was ready for an epic queer urban fantasy adventure. I mean, doesn’t that just sound badass? Two fourteen-year-olds: a nonbinary witch zombie, and a Muslim lesbian werewolf. I have read many urban fantasy books where the supernatural creatures live in secret, so I was excited to see this book went in another direction, one I’m always eager…

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This review is not purposefully vague. I could give you a cold recital of events, chapter by chapter, but that would be as lifeless as a sparrow dissection, and this work deserves much better treatment than that. It has a dream’s motion to it, inexorable but winding.  There’s nothing extra, nothing that could be cut away, but it doesn’t feel spare or thin. The world is never explained with any clarity (why do the spaceships all look like koi, and how do they travel so quickly? Why isn’t there a single male character? What’s the political power structure of the human universe?) and simultaneously, it’s not necessary.  This is a love story, and a story about finding family in unexpected places, and it’s enough to know that all the science and history exists at all in the world. We don’t need to see it, because it’s not what we’re focusing on.

Final rating: Five out of five stars. I’m buying multiple copies to give as Christmas presents, because this is the most enjoyable graphic novel I’ve read all year.

On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden was reviewed @ the Lesbrary

Alexa reviews Rescues and the Rhyssa by T.S. Porter

Two occasional lovers with many differences team up to save three kidnapped kids. And then it gets even more complicated.

Sophi is the captain of a smuggler ship with a diverse crew, including two types of aliens, a nonbinary human, and Muslim humans as well, if I understood the cultural clues right. They are quite literally a found family, especially with the reptile-like aliens who accept…

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The Half-Light Makes for a Clearer View: Genevra Littlejohn reviews On a Sunbeam by Tillie Walden

I’m writing this from inside of a curious space. About a week ago I stood up into a cabinet and gave myself a concussion, which I then immediately exacerbated by doing Chinese lion dance in four shows for a local production of The Nutcracker. So my life for a few days was cut harshly between periods of bright light and motion, and periods of sleep. Being awake has felt like one of those dreams…

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Alexa reviews Learning Curves by Ceillie Simkiss

Learning Curves is a 70-page novella with little conflict and a fluffy love story between two women at college. One of them is a Puerto Rican lesbian studying family law, and the other one is a white panromantic asexual woman with ADHD. You shouldn’t expect a huge epic plot: Learning Curvesis more about everyday life, college, celebrating Christmas, a huge, loving Puerto Rican family, and two…

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Mallory Lass reviews the Alpennia Series by Heather Rose Jones

The Alpennia Seriesnever stopped surprising me and often put a smile on my face or pulled a laugh from my lips. The theme of “found family” runs through this series and gave me so many warm and fuzzy feelings. I’ve also wanted to give at least one or two of the characters in each book a good shake. I will talk about each book in turn but I wanted to tell you why you should read all three (a…

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Girl Made of Stars faces rape culture head on. It had my stomach in knots, but I couldn’t stop turning the pages. I finished it one day–partly because Blake’s writing is captivating, partly because I was so invested in these characters that I wanted to know what happened to them, and partly to be able to walk away from this sickening situation. It’s not an easy read, emotionally. It was especially difficult to deal with the fact that Owen was not some abstract villain. He was someone that Mara thought she knew. And someone she will have to live with, and will likely still love, for the rest of her life. How can she reconcile that?

Girl Made of Stars by Ashley Herring Blake was reviewed @ the Lesbrary