#bethany jacobs

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

“That book. It was about two women, and they fell in love with each other.” And then Lily asked the question that had taken root in her, that was even now unfurling its leaves and demanding to be shown the sun: “Have you ever heard of such a thing?”

Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can’t remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.

America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown. Red-Scare paranoia threatens everyone, including Chinese Americans like Lily. With deportation looming over her father—despite his hard-won citizenship—Lily and Kath risk everything to let their love see the light of day.

Historical fiction, 1950s, young adult

These Burning Stars (The Kindom Trilogy) by Bethany Jacobs

Jun Ironway—hacker, con artist, and occasional thief—has gotten her hands on a piece of contraband that could set her up for proof that implicates the powerful Nightfoot family in a planet-wide genocide seventy-five years ago. The Nightfoots control the precious sevite that fuels interplanetary travel through three star systems. And someone is sure to pay handsomely for anything that could break their hold.

Of course, anything valuable is also dangerous. The Kindom, the ruling power of the star systems, is inextricably tied up in the Nightfoots’ monopoly—and they can’t afford to let Jun expose the truth. They task two of their most brutal clerics with hunting her: preternaturally stoic Chono, and brilliant hothead Esek, who also happens to be the heir to the Nightfoot empire.

But Chono and Esek are haunted in turn by a figure from their shared past, known only as Six. What Six truly wants is anyone’s guess. And the closer they get to finding Jun, the surer Chono is that Six is manipulating them all.

​It's a game that could destroy their lives and devastate the stars. And they have no choice but to see it through to the end.

Picking up where These Burning Stars left off, On Vicious Worlds follows Chono, Six, and Jun into the Treble, a space system controlled by the three branches of the Kindom, both church and government in one, in the wake of the Jevenis' escape from the hands of those who would wish to enslave them or complete their genocide begun a hundred years earlier. While the first book was more action-packed, this sequel focuses more on interpersonal issues: who can you trust, what does it mean to be intimate with someone else, how far would you go for someone you loved and defined your life around? This is, of course, not to say there aren't intense action scenes where the characters lives are on the line and Jacobs gets your heart pounding and hurting for them, since that definitely happens, in fact, these relationships and themes developed add even more weight to these moments, for you begin to truly feel for the characters, as messy and often terrible as they are.

This leads me to one of my absolute favorite parts of Jacobs' writing, namely that she doesn't shy away from writing messy complicated women who are no paragons of virtue, but would even burn down the universe and destroy entire planets, betraying countless innocents, to protect someone that they love or an ideal that they hold. This leads to a constant theme of complete and utter devotion, bordering on obsession, that drives the plot and characters forward.