A Trans Book Blog

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.

Reflections: King Bro! was a simple story focusing on friendship and social transition as a young trans person. It conveyed both the stress and joy of Marcus beginning to live openly as a boy in a way that’s easily digestible for a middle-school-age audience. At home, Marcus was dealing with managing everyone’s reactions to him. While he had support, he didn’t have it easy. I appreciated how the book showed how he had to pick his battles and didn’t always have the energy to deal with every issue or every person’s feelings on the matter. It showed how some of his classmates started to get it and stand up for him on the small things, which took some weight off.

It also handled Mikkel finding Marcus’ ID and realizing he was trans in a balanced way. Mikkel may have felt upset or lied to, but it was still made clear that Marcus wasn’t wrong for not coming out and didn’t actually lie to him.

Warnings: Depictions of transphobia, dysphoria, misgendering, deadnaming, transphobic bullying. Mentions of conversion therapy and the suicide of real life trans people. 

Reflections: I appreciated seeing representation of an older trans woman and one who came out and began transitioning later in life. It had a different impact on her life than you see with younger characters who haven’t married, had kids, or had a well-established career pre-transition. In the first two chapters, Baz’s trans identity was honestly brought up very awkwardly with first Madge, then, immediately after, the college girl doing that thing where they say something that sounds overtly transphobic, then, when someone reacts, revealing that no, they meant something completely different and are actually totally accepting. That’s never my favorite thing, but doing it twice in a row made it forced. However, things settled in throughout the rest of the book. The effects Baz’s transition was having on her and how her life had changed were brought in more naturally.

Unfortunately, my enjoyment of the book was hurt by the fact that I figured out the culprit fairly early on and wasn’t given enough reason to waver much from that assumption. The main four characters didn’t have enough substance to carry me through without the mystery to chew on. Carole’s combination of bizarre ramblings and honed skills as a murderer may have provided a mystery in their own right. But without much more to her character or her relationship with Peggy, I wasn’t too interested in what her backstory might have been beyond guessing at the broad strokes.

I think Baz, especially as the newcomer, but all of them really, could have benefited from a little more depth to their feelings about what they’re doing. Murdering a rapist was one thing, but they also murdered a random scammer and were coming close to killing an innocent man (I’m not convinced Carole wouldn’t have jumped the gun if he hadn’t been Madge’s grandson). They could have worked through some mixed feelings there, or any sort of discord in what they each thought was right, which would have let me see more of who they were.

Or if that earlier impulsive murder by Carole wasn’t so easily covered up, and there was a side of tension from that to keep me wondering where things were going to go, and add extra conflict.

Warnings: Depictions of transphobia, murder, violence, overdosing. Mentions of sexual assault/rape, homophobia. 

Reflections: I have not seen the Supergirl show from which this character originated. I imagine this story is more impactful as a prequel rather than a starting point for Nia’s story. Without that outside context, parts of the story, particularly the ending, felt rushed. The introduction of and subsequent conflict with the antagonist, as well as Nia’s return home and family drama, could have used more breathing room.

I don’t think I’m the right audience to get the most out of this – it’s got a lot of the standard YA coming-of-age elements that didn’t really stand out to me. I did enjoy the incorporation of ballroom culture, brief though it was, and Nia and Maeve’s fraying sibling dynamic.

Warnings: Depictions of transphobia, transmisogyny, misgendering, dehumanization, transphobic violence/bullying.

Reflections: It frustrated me a bit how the story almost entirely focused on the past, but every now and again, the present-day plot would take a single step forward. It never really went anywhere – Dorian and Lucija were never reunited, their relationship never got redefined for the present circumstances, what Lucija’s long-term care ended up being wasn’t explored – but there was enough motion to keep me expecting something. It felt like the first and longest section set up a story that the later sections left and never returned to.

I enjoyed the mother’s story perhaps the most out of all three protagonists’ sections. Having seen her first through her daughter’s eyes, before developing her, rounding out her character, giving reason to her failures as a mother, and showing who she was and who she wanted to be outside of the role she fell into, allowed for a lot of complexity and mixed feelings towards her. The exploration of multi-generational trauma and abuse was written with care, especially regarding the way gender played into it. This section also retained the fluidity of a nonlinear narrative, moving freely through time, but didn’t feel as disjointed and occasionally hard to follow as Lucija’s section did.  However, I found it harder to enjoy as the conclusion to this story. The majority of the book centered around Lucija; her section took up half the page count, and Dorian’s section revolved heavily around her, but her mother’s section almost pointedly ignored her. There was no return to the point her story had left off at; there was no progress towards anything in the “present” where she was left in the hospital, maybe dying, maybe recovering, maybe on the cusp of reuniting with Dorian. If there had been no progress in the hospital, if the story had only been weaving through the past and the experience of locked-in syndrome without any hints of moving towards a different future, it might have been more acceptable, but as is, the conclusion felt incomplete.

The three perspectives were strung together with the through line of being trapped or reduced due to one’s body or circumstances. Dorian dealt with this as a trans man facing prejudice and roadblocks impeding his transition. Lucija’s mother was locked into her roles as a woman in a sexist environment and by the cycle of familial abuse that she tried to break, but did not fully succeed in escaping.  Lucija herself was, of course, stuck by being immobilized and confined, but also by falling into the category that the book described, through Dorian’s perspective, as “the good vulnerable, the immobile and mute, the ones the state has deemed worth protecting.” Her disability was one that made it effortless to deny her agency and dehumanize her under the guise of protection and gave her no recourse for this supposed protection being used against her whether by the state as Dorian saw it or by her mother who could more easily ‘love’ a child she could take care of and keep close without having to deal with the complexity of her as an adult person with her own life, personality, and desires.

These themes were generally well developed, though, to be honest, less so with Dorian. His trans identity seemed to be primarily what tied him into this, but, while Lucija thought about it quite a bit, it wasn’t explored as deeply in Dorian’s own perspective, which weakened that connection. But regardless, while I appreciated these ideas, the thematic connections didn’t make for the disconnect and underdevelopment with the plot.

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Warnings: Depictions of transphobia, misgendering, deadnaming, dysphoria.

Reflections: Make Sure You Die Screaming had its ups and downs. At times, the story got very caught up in the zany catastrophe of these two asshole characters doing weird and shitty things. The MC was self-destructing and taking everyone they ran into down with them, and their new partner in crime sat somewhere between manic pixie dream girl energy and rich bitch who fucks around with people because she'll never see any consequences. Sometimes I could enjoy the rubbernecking, other times it got tiresome. That was mixed in with deeper content as the MC dealt with their grief over their dead friend and reckoned with their relationship with their parents. This content had some standout moments, though in other areas it felt incomplete. The gendered experiences of the main character, who has just come to terms with being nonbinary, rang very true even in the little moments of being read in certain ways with strangers. I connected with them when their latent gender feelings boiled over when their company started requiring pronouns in email signatures, and the frustration they felt not knowing whether to lie, come out, or compromise. And of course, this performative "inclusion" was contrasted with their partner at the firm, their closest friend and occasional lover, telling them to stay in the closet because being a "man" is what they need to keep climbing the corporate ladder (plus probably her own feelings about loving someone who isn't a man). It captured both the pain of rejection from the one person you thought wouldn't do that to you and the uncertainty of knowing that even in an environment that puts on airs of progressiveness and acceptance, coming out is likely to fuck with your future.

Also, as the MC got closer to their hometown and started thinking about their mother as an actual person and not just an accessory to their father, their insights about their family dynamic, living with a conspiracy theorist conservative as a queer person, did get more interesting, though I think it didn't quite come together at the very end. The synopsis promised class commentary that I don’t think the text really fleshed out as much as I expected. Yeah, poor rural whites flock towards white-supremacy and conspiracies in part because they’re getting fucked over and are trapped in an environment that’s beating them down. And running from that might make someone who can’t squeeze themself into that culture both all too eager to be a corporate dog and feel displaced in both cultures. It presented those ideas plainly, but didn't interrogate them or do anything that would make those ideas feel fresh or poignant within the story. Maybe it would feel more insightful if these were new ideas to me and not something I could see by going outside. The ending really drew my eye to that. The woods-dwelling off-the-grid types that the MC meets at the very end -- the people who embody what the MC's father was all about and what their childhood was steeped in -- were barely people. There was the shitty cliche of the creepy mentally ill man, and that was the only character there that was distinct. Nothing felt particularly real or well developed to the people or the environment of the MC's hometown once they got there, which kind of flattened the idea that this was about class relations to more being family drama and childhood trauma.  

Frankly, it also felt weird to have the white MC come to terms with where they came from and that culture, and even feel some fond feelings for it when it's explicitly steeped in vitriolic racism. Like racism was used to paint the picture of the kind of far-right conspiracy theorists the MC's dad and his group were, but only treated as set dressing, not an actual issue the MC should think about when they're reconnecting with their family and their past. The MC was self-absorbed and not a great person, so it can be justified as part of their character, but I don't know if that's a good enough explanation.

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Warnings: Depictions of transphobia, deadnaming, misgendering, racism, abuse, alcoholism and drug abuse.

Reflections: I found this very informative. It was structured to allow for many varied perspectives, including not just different types of sex work, gender identities and expressions, and transition journeys and goals, but also commentary on their intersections with race, disability, etc., while maintaining cohesion within each chapter's broad topic. These experiences were never flattened to fit a simplistic narrative of sex work as purely traumatic or empowering or even “just another job” nor was there any sanitization of the complicated experiences of being transgender or transitioning and the way those experiences might not fit the narrative often sold to cis people and the medical establishments. I took a lot away from the discussions about the practical considerations sex workers have to make if they are pursuing transition, whether social or physical, and how common perceptions of and discussions around sex work, even by “supportive” groups, can be marginalizing or contribute to the invisibility of transmasc sex workers. 

I was also intrigued by the section on female personas. It was no surprise to hear that they would often be necessary from a business perspective. But Working Guys also delved into the way these personas could play a different psychological role for transmasc individuals than seemingly similar constructed personas might for women selling sex. The differences in how transmasc people developed this persona and related to it, as well as the trade-off where the female personas could protect from dysphoria or perpetuate it, were very thought-provoking topics explored well.

Reflections: The Last Gifts of the Universe was primarily an exploration of loss and grief strung together by a scavenger hunt across the galaxy. Scout’s connection to Blyreena through the shared experience of loss of a loved one – Scout’s mother and Blyreena’s partner – drove much of the story. Unfortunately, I found it hard to feel deeply or become invested in these characters, particularly during Scout’s side of the story. Blyreena’s life story was simple, but poignant; however, Scout’s didn’t really do anything for me except in a few moments near the end. 

The supporting characters were shallow and Scout wasn’t much better for the majority of the time. The journey to find the caches was repetitive, and the tone of the “adventure” elements didn’t tend to fit well next to the reflective portions. I didn’t feel much emotional weight from Scout’s mission. They were surrounded by reminders of great tragedy and death, always alone aside from their brother and pet, too distant for even communication with their homeworld. The whole universe was set up in a way that could have amplified the mire of grief, meshing perfectly with Scout’s internal turmoil. But, honestly, the present-day parts of Scout’s story and Scout’s experiences as an archivist lacked the character and atmosphere to bring that home. The story did find its footing over time to create more of a sense of melancholy and deliver some moving moments, but it didn’t change how I felt about it overall.

Beyond just its connection to the story’s themes, the science fiction setting was generally underutilized. Blyreena, her species, her culture, and her world were all pretty much indistinguishable from humanity and Earth; if Blyreena’s partner was “working abroad” instead of off-planet, you could have told me they were in modern-day America and I could have bought it. Scout knew nothing about any of the sci-fi elements, including the technologies they used to do their job, which left the broader setting and the details of what Scout was actually doing as an archeologist vague. The initial focus on the world-ending threat from the stars and the search for a way to survive it petered out, and I just had to accept that that wasn’t a real plotline despite how it was initially framed. 

Also, as much as it was not the point, I was distracted by these people constantly dragging their cat into danger. Why would you bring the cat places where you know corporate goons will be shooting at you and unkillable genocide machines are likely to be lurking around any corner? You are going to get that cat killed or he’s going to get you killed – leave him on the ship. Frankly it felt a little gimmicky to always have the cat in the scene, like it was just for the cozy fiction aesthetic, but instead it was just irritating.