@blitzlowin /cracks knuckles/ i do this for u. there is no order to this list, but here we go -
the jasmine throne - 2021, epic fantasy. fantastic. lesbeans. just gorgeous worldbuilding, and the main characters Priya and Malini are likeable and smart while they’re maneuvering around each other and the other moving pieces in a colonized country under the thumb of an empire that’s rapidly taking a turn towards war. the cover for book 2, the oleander sword, just dropped, and I’m dying.
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the luminous dead - 2019, scifi/horror. lesbeans, with even more emphasis on the morally grey aspects this time. absolutely fucking terrifying - the threats in this alien caves are very real, stacked with the psychological tension of having someone above control the caving suit that keeps you alive while underground for weeks at a time and the economic pressures of being trapped on a dead-end planet, leaving you no choice but to keep delving deeper...and deeper...
again, the worldbuilding is insane. I reread it periodically and can never get over how well-paced the beats are. this is the kind of merch you get:
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iron widow - 2021, scifi/fantasy. the bisexual poly love triangle we’ve all been screaming about. I describe it as an inverse Pacific Rim, but you won’t get why until pretty much the final pages. all three of these have had morally dubious protagonists but in iron widow Zetian GOES OFF AND WE LOVE HER FOR IT. she’s chaotic furious. she’s unhinged in the best way. “May he stay unsettled.” the author themselves has described this as accidentally furry Dragonball Z with giant Pacific Rim robots and monsters, essentially. I have absolutely no idea what will happen with book 2 but I know it’ll be balls-to-the-walls insane (complimentary).
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the outside - 2019, cosmic horror scifi. lesbeans. humanity is ruled by AI gods throughout the stars, the angels are cybernetic post-human cogs in a repressive machine, and Yasira accidentally makes a scientific leap that invites in a disruptive, heretical, reality warping presence that destroys a space station. things spiral out of control from there. the second book didn’t hit as well for me (mostly because mysteriously it was half the length it needed to be? it goes from a novel to a sequel novella almost, so not sure what happened there) but the outside is 9/10.
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the world gives way - 2021. scifi. you will cry. like that’s it, it’s a short little novel written entirely to gut you. that is all.
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murderbot - scifi. I feel like everyone by this point has heard about/read murderbot by this point, but the fact is I can’t in good conscious leave it off a rec list. there are six books, now, a mix of novellas and one full length novel about Murderbot, and Martha Wells (bless her for this and for the Books of the Raksura, her series full of bi poly shapeshifters) apparently has a contract to write at least three more murderbot books so we’re set for life basically. Ms Wells has never let me down ever, in her life -
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the darkangel trilogy - 1982-1990. scifi/fantasy, though you may not realize the scifi at work at first.
okay. okay listen. listen. hear me out. you read the first book description. it sounds like a traditional dracula hetero set up. Aerial and her mistress are kidnapped by the darkangel. it has an almost fairy-tale kind of logic to the magic system. it ends with Aerial literally exchanging her heart with the darkangel’s to save his life, causing him to fall in love with her.
meredith ann pierce then spends the next two books deconstructing the consequences of that choice, as Aerial finds herself more and more estranged from the rest of the humanity-adjacent people of her world - including the darkangel himself - and becoming a sorceress whether she wants to be or not, inextricably linked to the sci-fantasy workings that keep their world turning under the light of a [spoilers] COMPLETELY IRRADIATED EARTH. ultimately she has to make a choice to give the darkangel his own choice back, and take up a responsibility that will leave her cut off from her humanity entirely but for one person who stays with her to the very end. meredith ann pierce’s meld of scifi and fantasy is what I aspire to - the worldbuilding is so subtle at first that you don’t even realize what’s happening until it happens.
(do I like to imagine it ends on a slightly lesbean note because of that last part? maybe so...)
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tgcf/heaven official’s blessing - 2017, now being published officially in English starting with book 1 in December this year. putting the g in LGBT. before, I could have linked to the free online English translation, but everything has been taken down since it was licensed officially for publication. Xie Lian ascended to godhood 800 years ago, and through a series of catastrophes and extremely traumatic events was banished, ascended again, got banished again in even more disgrace, and spent the rest of that time wandering the world, luckless and alone, until he finally...ascended again. but the evil and mysteries that plagued him 800 years ago haven’t gone away, either. (MXTX also did MDZS/Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, the basis of the Untamed show.)
