A Trans Book Blog

Reflections: This book had the best hook I’ve seen in a while. Within the first five pages, Martha had perfectly staged her own miscarriage, from the carefully carved beef liver fetus to the precise placement of her blood-speckled panties and her (tastefully) smudged mascara, every detail artfully crafted for her husband to discover. The only doubt that passed through her mind as she set up a tragedy was whether she had to sacrifice such a lovely dress to sell it. What a picture it painted of our main character.

Martha was a 5-star character to me. But I will admit, she was a little hard to get on board with. She was not a nice person; she was cut-throat (actually kind of my favorite trait in female characters), judgmental, and conniving.

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Her perfectionism extended to her femininity and womanhood – she created the perfect wife, perfect mother, and perfect youthful beauty in herself, but to a misogynistic society’s standards. She turned her internalized misogyny not only on herself but on other women. It was hard to be in her head when she was, for example, “with barely concealed contempt,” deciding what work another woman needed done – “retinoid-heavy skincare routine, a Brazilian blowout, a Fraxel laser treatment, a deep plane facelift, and full-body contouring liposuction” (ch. 5, I have the eARC so no page numbers to cite). I knew she knew that sort of thing wasn't a healthy attitude to have, but she sure did keep it up. And don’t think she wasn’t hitting her fellow trans women with that too.

She was also the poster child for respectability politics. She had everything done up, got on estrogen, got breast implants, vaginoplasty, plastic surgery, then ruthlessly cut herself free from the queer community. (“The bricks were living as bricks. [Martha] was living as a woman.”) (ch. 28) Minding the home while her husband worked and her step-daughter was at school, she slid effortlessly into the trad wife lifestyle and did away with anything and anyone from her old life.

So, not the most likeable of traits there. But, ultimately, Martha was a woman stuck in survival mode. No matter how well she dissected femininity and beauty or how perfectly she fit into the white cisheteronormative idea of a traditional woman, she never once felt truly safe. With the shit this transmisogynistic world put her through, you can’t say she was wrong for that even when it leads her to bizarre and morally dubious places. Honestly, I could talk about Martha all day, but I’ll call it here.

The depiction of chronic illness through Martha’s strange decay, only cured by rotting meat and gasoline enemas, was unfortunately all too relatable. Martha was better off than I’ve ever been, with the money to see all the good doctors, no fears around employment, not even a real sense that the ball was being dropped on housework since the family had a maid, but that wasn’t doing anything about the soul-crushing feeling of chronic illness. The things she loved became impossible. Nothing changed. Nothing improved, day after day. She was left lonely, bored, and feeling useless. When she got a cure, nobody was even willing to hear her out about her or take her seriously at all. As a sick, pregnant woman, Martha’s body barely belonged to her, and she, as a person, was erased in favor of the unborn baby and the sensibilities of men. I don’t know what I would have done in Leon’s position, but turning their home into a prison, complete with a warden, made him despicable in my eyes.

All these ideas around bodily autonomy, womanhood, transmisogyny, motherhood, and pregnancy were woven through the story and the characters well. The horror came from both sides: the actual body horror and the social commentary. My only real issue with the story was the exploration of the supernatural elements. They were just there, unexplained, and I wish they’d gotten a little more to them.

Warnings: Depictions of transphobia, transmisogyny, transphobic hate crimes (physical and sexual abuse), use of slurs. Descriptions of blood, pregnancy and related medical procedures, (faked) miscarriage, sex, cheating on a partner, chronic illness, thoughts of suicide, and body horror. 

Reflections: The story felt incomplete. It was a quick one-shot focusing in on what it wanted to say about toxic productivity culture and burnout, while drenching the reader in gore. I can appreciate the simplicity, but I still felt there was something missing from the characters and the world. And while the bleak ending was fitting, it was very abrupt.

Also, Molly has got to win a prize for Least Genre Savvy Character.

On the other hand, I loved the artwork. There was so much lovingly detailed gore and disturbing, fleshy monsters. It was dynamic and made great use of the striking black, white, and red color scheme and panel framing to ramp up the horror. The reveal of what Sal saw before sending their coworkers away especially stood out.

Reflections: The summary implied that this would be primarily Ilsa's story, but instead it was told from a wide cast of narrators. Ilsa got the distinction of bookending the story, but other than that she didn’t stand out as THE main character above some of the other narrators. While a glut of POV characters and frequent perspective switching can sometimes muddy a story or make it hard to get into, A Bad Deal in Mormon Land pulled it off. All of the characters and their various plot lines were carefully interwoven, and access to each character's internal thoughts always served a purpose not only in their journey and in deepening their character, but also in adding nuance to the other narrators.

Ilsa ended up honestly being one of the less compelling characters of the bunch by being pretty straightforwardly what she was presented to be. She remained a down-on-her-luck, fake spirit medium with generally good intentions, but not so far as to get in the way of a payday for the length of the story. Many of the other characters had much more inherent internal conflict. Diantha Marsh was part of a plural marriage and still cared deeply for her husband despite coming to oppose the practice and her husband's intentions to revive it, and loved Mormonism despite her distaste for its general treatment of women. Francie Bream’s disgust with the violence powerful men could get away with led her to embrace violence herself and ultimately confront the unpleasantness of learning that the people she hoped to help didn't see her as a heroic vigilante but just as another violent, dangerous person. Others offered uncomfortable glimpses into their humanity that elided simple ideas of the roles they filled and made it hard not to feel a conflicting mix of emotions for them, like the trio of sad, lonely little men– Adam, Roger Marsh, and Gilbert Snaith– who played powerful villains in other characters' stories while being pitiable and vulnerable from their own perspectives. I was taken with all these characters; regardless of how quickly or slowly their strands of the story moved, they always kept my attention with their messy, complicated relationships and internal lives.

The only letdown in the book was the ending. After the plot lines converged, it was a rush to the end. I was left unsatisfied with many characters' fates, their stories cut off rather than resolved. And some plot threads were simply left hanging.

Warnings: One instance of misgendering. 

Reflections: I started to really not like any of the central characters in this. Sam was pushed aside, with not a whole lot of personality or agency. And Charlie and Ravi… obviously they were going to have angst and tension between them, but the way it was written made them so irritating. Ravi’s anger at Charlie pushing him away was fine before he knew about Charlie’s powers, but when it increased after learning about them, it was hard to like him or want him to get into a relationship with Charlie. He kept acting like he was completely the victim and ignoring Charlie’s fears. Charlie didn’t make themself look all that good in those moments either. Given that both the inciting incident and the ending were predicated on the idea that these two were committed to each other and in love, it was important to make them seem like they’d work, and for me, that didn’t happen.

What I did like was the way stealing and holding on to life force was portrayed as a serious temptation for Charlie, rather than something they were only forced to do. They felt disconnected and emotionless without it and craved the high they got when taking it wantonly. That fit well with Jessie and Jill’s idea that Shepherds weren’t really living humans and fed Charlie’s fears that they were evil and unable to ever have a normal life. Their angst had some real weight behind it.

Warnings: Depictions of misgendering, dysphoria

Reflections: Us was a quick story told mostly from the point of view of Sara, with some sections narrated by Diana. It has a very cute, pastel art style that fits the moments of humor and exaggerated emotions, but doesn’t subtract from the serious content. Diana’s story did get heavy, touching on fears many trans people may face, like choosing between potentially losing a long-term relationship if you transition or that you’re “easier” to be around if you closet yourself. And while their relationship worked out in the end, Sara did not hide the fact that her own fears and biases led to some ugly thoughts at first. Us captured the messy parts, the steps forward followed by steps back, in both coming to terms with being trans and in moving past preconceptions and cisheteropatriarchal ideas to be able to define one’s own identity and relationships outside of them.

There were some “welcome to womanhood” comments, which, while obviously made humorously and not maliciously, I still didn’t love to see. There were also points where the book stepped away from Diana and Sara’s story to do more LGBTQ+ 101 lectures/explanations that weren’t as interesting to a trans reader, but may be for a cis reader or someone not very in touch with the queer community and our experiences. Overall, though, their story was told well.

Warnings: Transphobia, misgendering, use of slurs, dysphoria, deadnaming (name censored), biphobia.

Reflections: The concept for this dystopian world, where technology awakens with these screaming, confused fragments of souls, was a big draw for me to pick this up, and in that aspect, the book delivered. I love even the little glimpses of the machines as inhuman people and what their experiences were – from Ada and Ruby talking their medical micro-bots down and growing up with a shared life, to the idea of nuclear weapons lulled by the quiet dark of their silos or the one remaining arcade machine finding some reason to keep living through its suffering in its humming and whirling colors. The atmosphere of this world was great, as was that around the endlessly thirsty thing hiding in the shadows, ashamed to be seen in the light, with its distorted form of intelligence. However, the story was often carried by the vibes of this poetic and strange winding down of the world. 

There were parts of this story that didn’t get the room to breathe, revelations that didn’t have time to sink in, plot points that popped in too late to get explored enough, or were just glossed over. Also, the characters at times felt like just another way to build the world's atmosphere, rather than fully believable people. There was a dreamlike haziness to the world that extended to the characters, reducing them rather than simply helping them fit the tone. Their emotions and conflicts were dulled, and their relationships had the air of a half-remembered past rather than a living, growing thing.

Reflections: A Burning was agonizing in the best way. Increasingly towards the end, I would reach the end of a chapter and think, ‘if I just stop now, I can still imagine a happy ending,’ but I’m glad I never did.

It was a deeply political story touching on issues of poverty, corruption, nationalism, religious discrimination, trans issues, and more, all tied to the central theme of how morals can become compromised, and other people can be sacrificed to reach a better life.

I often dreaded PT Sir’s chapters as he fell further into right-wing politics. He was exactly the type of man who I could imagine taking that path, from the moment, in his first chapter, when his response to Jivan disappearing from his school without a goodbye or a thank you was anger and to reframe her as an ungrateful leech on his goodwill, rather than worry for her. His disregard for the female teachers he worked with and the sense that his disillusionment was unique from anyone around him only added to it. But he was far from a flat caricature or a simple villain. He was often just a man who wanted to do good, but also wanted recognition, power, and money, and the latter won out over the former. He was a teacher who quietly provided food for an impoverished student, no strings attached. He was a politician who genuinely wanted his party to favor improving conditions for teachers and students over focusing on using the education system to push propaganda. But he craved recognition and power; he desired to be looked on by others as someone who had earned a place above them. And that won out. He allowed himself to be the man who would give false testimony that ruined lives for money and who would consign a young woman to death to advance his political career. His descent throughout the book as he threw himself in with the Jana Kalyan Party and increasingly lied to himself to avoid facing the choice between his promising career and his morals head-on was frustrating and compelling in equal measures. There were so many points– points that he recognized as well– where he could have turned back.

Lovely added a dimension to that story of corruption by showing similar temptations from a wholly different perspective. She could not have been more different from PT Sir. Where he was financially comfortable and socially privileged, but bored of the monotony of his life and ready to be swept up in anything more exciting, Lovely was poor and disdained by society, kicked out of her parents house for being a hijra and living as part of a hijra community in which she begged and offered blessings for a living, but possessed a vivacity and internal drive that never let her stagnate. She held more tightly to her morals, but the consequences for her were much higher. Her temptation was closer to a struggle for survival, a better life right on the horizon if she would just abandon another poor, vilified woman. I wish I knew more about the hijra community to be able to say if she was a good or bad representation, but she was certainly an interesting character to see and something of a look at hijra communities.

Warnings: Depictions of transphobia, misgendering, unsafe/botched bottom surgery.

Reflections: This whole collection was suffused with sexuality and frustrated lust. Sometimes it seemed the inclusion of sex and taboo/deviant desires was intended to read as profound on their own, regardless of how they were used within the stories. Without that mindset, there were certain stories and moments that lacked substance. But on the other hand, there were plenty of stories where these elements did serve the feminist and anti-capitalist elements or were enjoyable in their own right. 

My favorite of the collection was probably ‘The Sorrows of Young Lotte’, which reimagines Goethe’s ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’ from Lotte’s perspective. Bakić’s Lotte was such a colorful protagonist, clever and cruel, while Werther’s romantic ideas of himself slough away to reveal him as entitled and dangerous. 

‘1998’ in which girls were being lured in by a deceptive being in the lake and ‘Fellow’s Gully,’ a role swapped Hades and Persephone retelling in which Persephone kidnaps and marries Hades with Hades’ mother drawing him back to the underworld for part of the year, were also up there in terms of favorites. 

Warnings: Depictions of misgendering.

Notes on Rep: The main character of ‘Gretel’ identifies as a woman ‘born a man.’ 

Reflections: I did not know the main character was a trans woman when I picked this up, so that was a nice surprise. I liked how her identity was incorporated as both a subtle nod in the present-day story, but also an important part of her history as the driving reason why the folktale around the mountain, Velebit, and its treasure changed for her, and as part of her connection to the village and the land.

I enjoyed the portrayal of the family relationships. Doris and her wife had the soft love of a relationship that’s settled in gently. Meanwhile, her relationship with her father was strained, but also had an undercurrent of deep care for each other that made it clear why Doris would return to this diseased, dying home to see him one last time. Amidst the horror was a tender and sad depiction of the child and the parent reaching the point of swapping roles, the child becoming the caretaker, and Doris’ reflection on her childhood/teenage years through that lens.

As for the horror itself, it was an interesting blend of eco-horror and folk horror. The eerie, apocalyptic atmosphere was palpable in the emptying, hollowed-out town and the ever-present rot from the sea. It captured the sense of inevitable decline and transformation. There was also some solid body horror with the effects of the illness.  I did wish the story had been longer to give more meat to the mystery and the progression of the changing sea.

Reflections: The art in this graphic novel was gorgeous. Particularly in the dream worlds and when Oberon used his powers, the colors were vibrant and expressive, and the imagery and page layouts were creative.

Oberon and Kon’s relationship was cute. They had a slightly antagonistic way of flirting with each other, but also helped each other reconnect with the world. The slight side of angst when Oberon wondered if he’d just created a hollow mimic of his former crush and was falling in love with a dream.

The other character dynamics and interpersonal struggles could have been conveyed better. Before he got his powers, Oberon was going through a breakdown as his anxiety and internal pressure to prove himself to make up for being the only one of his siblings to not have powers came to a head. His new dream powers and feelings for Kon pile on top of that, but those other issues are still a major part of his character. But Oberon’s family and friends became a blur of faces without much characterization. This was made worse by the problem that the speech bubbles were often confusingly laid out, making some conversations hard to follow. So I was left feeling like there should be something developing with Oberon’s family dynamics and friendships as the story progressed, but it stayed vague and hard to get a grasp on, which weakened Oberon’s character as well.

Not all of the plot felt well incorporated, either. The Ghost Authority, for one, didn’t mesh with the rest of the plot or the worldbuilding. They seemed like a manufactured threat, so Oberon wouldn’t tell his family about his powers, and he and Kon could have more one-on-one time together. Lots of scenes are disjointed, which works for the dreams, but wasn’t as welcome in the rest.

​Reflections: All anthologies have their ups and downs, but this was mostly ups. I enjoyed how out there many of the concepts and worlds were. Some (but not all) of the highlights for me were: Carseed by Maxine Firehammer, one of the shortest stories, which nonetheless held pretty poignant body horror and left many equally horrifying questions as the protagonist chooses a disturbing and possibly fatal transformation. The Majestic Art of Flesh by Hailey Piper, a biopunk story that also leaned into horror, where the strange magenta flesh Jerseyites use to reshape their bodies is forced into their minds, revealing, perhaps, a mind of its own. And My Robot Body by Megan Hyland, in which the protagonist takes shifts piloting a mobile lab robot that they long to become permanently. All of which showed very different perspectives– ranging from sweet to unsettling– on the desire for bodies (and minds) that transcend humanity and how technology expands the human experience.

Warnings: Depictions of transphobia, dysphoria

Reflections: This book had a wonderful melancholy to it. Harlowe was adrift in a way I found relatable. He was dissatisfied in a way that came down not just to the relationships that didn’t fulfill him or the haphazard career path he’d been on since getting his PhD, but a deeper sense of being lost and disconnected from his life path. Life for him often seemed to be something that happened to him, rather than something he was building. His break-up with his long-term boyfriend started him down the road of realizing that he needed a change and something of his own in his life. Then the cottage forced him to confront moments of indecision and times he let things lie to his detriment, and let go of the things he was dwelling on from his past. It was easy to feel for Harlowe, even when I wished he would take action. The setting and characters of P-town were also charming. They weren’t fleshed out significantly, but they were fun and enjoyable.

My one issue was that, in some ways, Harlowe’s relationship with Nathan and his decision to stay in Cape Cod felt like a continuation of his tendency to go along with whatever was laid in front of him instead of making his own choices. He went along with the half-hearted way his father tried to maintain their relationship, instead of telling him that it wasn’t enough. He moved in with his ex and kept up their relationship even as it became increasingly distant because that’s what his ex wanted. He aspired to academia because that’s what he was supposed to want, then gave up on it for an IT job because it was right in front of him. Then Nathan fell for him, and he took the relationship even when neither of them was really being open or able to support each other in the way Harlowe seemed to want. And he was perfectly ready to go back to the city until he was suddenly offered the position to manage the cottages. I could imagine plenty of ways he could have shown more agency over those decisions in the end that would have done more to convince me he learned something over the course of the story. As is, the ending felt shaky. I could just as easily imagine that he would run off again in another seven years, as imagine he had grown as a person and would settle into himself. That kind of open-endedness didn’t seem to fit with the intent of the story.

Reflections: This was an easy, quick read, and there was some fun to be had, but in many areas, it was underdeveloped. In the acknowledgements, the author said that this evolved from a rom-com without a plot, and honestly, I can see it. The plot was weak. The mystery around the homeowner and his family felt a bit slapped together. In that conflict, neither side’s plans seemed well thought out (especially since they were the culmination of years of investigation/plotting). The reasoning for the teens’ total isolation in the house was contrived. The property happened to only have one, under-maintained and easily destroyed, access point, not just for vehicles, but for people, too, okay. And there was absolutely no cell service, sure. But also, none of the many people who were aware of these kids trapped up there managed to do anything to help them until there was an unauthorized helicopter and gunshots going off on the property? It became a bit much. Especially given their proximity to a major city. This wasn’t a cabin deep in the wilderness.

The tension never felt especially high either, despite the supposed stakes. There wasn’t much real distrust and fear within the group, and threats were sporadic. The issue of dehydration also sort of petered out. Rationing water seemed like a big deal until they were actually out, then it only impacted cosmetic details (descriptions of cracked lips and such), but again never raised tempers or fractured the group, nor impacted their ability to fight in that last confrontation.

I didn’t mind Sam and Dylan’s romance. It moved too fast for my tastes, which I suppose was a necessity if you wanted to fit the whole arc of their relationship into the limited time frame (personally, I would have preferred taking it slower and ending on a tentative beginning to romance, but that’s just me). Their fights and misunderstandings consistently ended in very smooth, very therapist-approved conversations, despite how very rockily their relationship started, which I had mixed feelings about. I do prefer when characters actually talk about their miscommunications instead of just stewing on it and that they don’t make interpersonal drama their big issue when people are getting murdered, but some of it felt too easy for real people — they miscommunicate at first, but in their reconciliations they say exactly what they need to say in the exact right way, their feelings don’t stay hurt or mixed. However, they did have some chemistry and moments of real connection.

Outside of the romance, there was not much going on with the side characters and Sam’s relationships to any of them.

Warnings: Depictions of transphobia and discussions of transphobic violence/hate crimes.

Reflections: This was off to the races immediately, starting right after Dani was attacked by her cousin, and did not slow down from there. I understand the desire to jump into a high-stakes moment to grab the reader's attention, but I felt that the way it introduced everything presumed I knew more about these characters, their relationships, and their world than I actually did. It never really walked it back either, or gave me a good place to get situated in their story, just barreling ahead.

I would have benefited from seeing some of the lead-up to the attack or the attack itself to know and care more about what was going on.

The plot was basic — the world’s going to be destroyed, find the one thing to stop it. Without the breathing room to build a deeper connection to the characters/world and with a plot that didn’t lead itself to defining the characters on its own (not wanting everyone including yourself to die doesn’t require or highlight any specific character traits or motivations), the story didn’t have much for me outside the expected beats of the generic plot and I couldn’t stay all that interested.

There were some compelling moments and ideas towards the end. I liked what they were going for with cult indoctrination and redemption, but it was too late in the story to build much. Showing Muir as a person and family to Dani before he was an enemy could have done more for that.

Reflections: Simplicity delivered an anti-capitalist, anti-facist message through the lens of a satirical tech dystopia mixed with a cult murder mystery. While these themes and the overall message of taking action rather than excusing your complicitness as just what you have to do to survive were ones that I agree wholeheartedly with, some of the elements were on-the-nose or satirical to the point that it undermined the message. Like the ending seemed to be delivering a powerful moment of self-reflection and agency on Lucius’ behalf but it was meshed together with laughable caricatures of meathead cops and evil billionaires and delivered quite unsubtly. It felt very turn to the audience and state the message where maybe it would have been more meaningful to allow the actions to stand on their own in that moment. There's a balance to be struck between being blatant with your views vs. letting the reader see them in action and between humor vs. serious moments that didn't land in a place that I fully enjoyed.

The explanation for Lucius' dreams sequences left them in a place where they turned out to mostly just be for vibes, but were also so prescient to what was happening in real life while he was having them that there feels like they should have gone somewhere. 

The first two sections and into the third moved slower and mixed the different tones more evenly. I found plenty to enjoy there despite the ending not quite leaving me fulfilled. Lucius' slow acclimation to cult was done well, both feeling like a seduction into strange and perhaps dangerous and like a natural, comfortable freeing from the restrictive, unfulfilling ways of the city. I liked the imagery of the dystopian cityscape with its weird holographic ads inescapably popping up over everything and the obsessive focus on 'security' that Lucius and the other inhabitants were inured to. Lucius' experiences being trans in the city vs. the cult were brief, but well done as well. In the city, he was able to socially transition and access at least some aspects of medical transition, but still faced a medical system that wasn't designed to treat a trans body, perhaps an subtle show of the way the city can adopt a veneer of progressiveness that is only that, a veneer, in a similar way to their environmental and cultural "preservation". In Simplicity, though, where they tend to eschew gender and labels, he couldn't easily reconcile the way his identity formed and his attachment to it with that mindset either. 

Warnings: Depictions of transphobia and medical discrimination.

Reflections: Leo Fox’s bizarre and surreal art beautifully captured a conflict between body and mind. It dived into a disconnect that could stem from dysmorphia or gender dysphoria, but could also arise in anyone trying to reconcile the animal needs of the body, the unrefined physicality of it, and the self/the mind/the soul that sees itself as something greater or something other, limited by the body’s reality. The strange, distorting world Lucille lived in showcased the dreamlike detachment from the physical world that Lucille longs for but also flees from.

Reflections: There was so much relatability in Hancox’s story of trans youth – claiming your gender when you’re younger then losing that as you get a little older and gender roles are pushed harder, really trying to be your assigned gender and still somehow being clocked as something ‘other’ or something confusing, panicking at signs of puberty and ignoring them hard like that will make them go away. Adolescent angst and awkwardness took on that extra layer when such a basic part of yourself was repressed and hurting.

Through all that, it was nice to see the support system for Hancox, even while most people in his town were ignorant as to what it actually meant to be trans. Bringing his parents back in for their current perspective on their behaviors at the time gave a sense of the growth that’s gone in terms of awareness of transgender people and issues, as well as the way people tried to be accepting despite their ignorance.

Hancox kept the story light with humor and the ever-present reminder that he did make it through and transition. The heaviest topics, like his eating disorder and body dysmorphia, weren’t erased, but kept a bit at a distance.