a suboptimal way to live 🌭

Gem-Knight Master Diamond

With all the LGBT+ community's powers combined, we can form a pretty sick rainbow knight tbh. No but seriously, I greatly enjoy that there's more than one archetype of colorful monsters that come together to create a white light themed boss monster with rainbow accents. And hey, Master Diamond is extra cool because his rainbow color coordinated friends are featured in the background! I immediately recognized Ruby there at the top, and I believe that's Citrine and then Topaz below him. Seraphinite might be the green one, but idk who the one directly below her is. The last two are definitely Aquamarine and Amethyst though. As for Master Diamond himself, his armor alone really isn't all that special on its own (aside from his very tall pauldrons), but when combined with the very shiny diamond accents, it ends up looking pretty neat actually. I think those are his actual hands and not diamond gloves btw (Citrine has a similar bare handed look going on). My favorite part is his helmet though, especially the Diamond horns. There’s also his killer sword, of course, which has a Rainbow Dragon-like thing going on with the rainbow gems of his fusion buddies attached down the blade. My absolute favorite part of this art, though? His clenched fist with a prism of colors spilling out. It’s just rendered so nicely that I can’t stop looking at it.

Yesterday I rec’d @natalieironside ‘s book The Last Girl Scout. If you haven’t seen that yet, go check it out!

If you’ve read The Last Girl Scout, Lead & Roses will contain many familiar folks, as well as a few new ones. It’s full of nice little tidbits that occur before or after the narrative of TLGS. But, if you haven’t read that yet, that’s okay too! The five short stories collected into Lead and Roses are spread across the post-apocalypse landscape, featuring everything from horror to queer slice-of-life.

That said, this did serve as a nice sort of epilogue for me after finishing The Last Girl Scout. There are five thematically arranged shorts: Stories, The Last American, The White Goddess, Werewolf, and That’s a Christmas to Me. The Last American and Werewolf were especially interesting reads, as they deal mainly with perspectives of folks opposite those we see in TLGS.

Stories is a wonderful story about two women building a life and community together. The White Goddess has scientists stumbling onto trouble when they go on a research trip. There's really just a little bit of everything. That’s a Christmas to Me was wonderful and heartwarming to read, especially because I read it around the winter holidays.

If you read The Last Girl Scout first, Lead and Roses serves as a cool way to expand the information we have about the world, and serves as a nice farewell to familiar characters. (I don't know about y'all, but I always have a hard time moving on to other things after falling in love with characters/stories) And if you haven't read Natalie's debut novel first, then what you're getting instead is a sampler of absolutely amazing post-apocalyptic fiction across a span of genres, and glimpses at the truly interesting world Natalie has made. There's no wrong way to go here, so definitely go check it out, along with Natalie's other writing!

How to Support the Author

Recommend Lead and Roses: Love Songs at the End of the World to your local library!

Leave reviews on Goodreads/Amazon etc.

For more writing, check out her Patreon!

https://www.patreon.com/natalieironside/

Where to Purchase Lead and Roses

For the ebook, check out Natalie’s Gumroad!

https://natalieironside.gumroad.com/l/LAR2021

Find the paperback on Amazon

I bought L&R as a little sample to decide whether I should also get the Last Girl Scout - the answer is a RESOUNDING yes.

I loved every single one, but special mention to That's a Christmas to Me, which made me ugly-cry for a solid hour.