angel martinez – A. L. Lester

Today I’ve got gay space romance, a dystopian trilogy with extremely good trans representation of secondary characters and an alt-nineteenth century straight magical romance!

By Imperial Decree by Angel Martinez

Cheerful gay space romance.

So, I don’t usually get completely sucked in by Cinnamon Roll characters! But this time, I have, utterly. Marsh is a space-station mechanic who finds a runaway prince in the ship he’s been told to bring in for salvage. The prince is hiding from various things…his mother, over-enthusiastic, dangerous suitors, his life generally. Shenanigans ensue. It’s a lovely, cheerful read and Marsh is so nice it would usually make my teeth itch, but for some reason he doesn’t. There’s, a minor appearance by his parents, space-orchard-managing non-nonsense ladies who made me grin constantly. Recommend!

The Rampart Trilogy by M. R. Carey

Eventually hopeful dystopia with great trans representation.

This a hard sci-fi trilogy, I guess? Set in a future dystopian UK where genetic engineering has made the trees and animals so inimical to human life that the diminishing population is isolated in little villages that are held together by the remains of technology they don’t really understand. The main character is a young person just reaching adulthood at the beginning of the first book, who begins to question everything he’s told about how both the tech and his society works.

One of the things I found fascinating was that it’s initially set in West Yorkshire, which I hung around in quite a bit in my college years due to a boyfriend from Halifax (or Half Ax as it’s called in the story). I spent quite a while translating the dystopian names back to the towns and villages they’d evolved from. However, even if you aren’t familiar with The People’s Republic of Yorkshire, this will suck you in.

The second thing I loved about it was that it has absolutely brilliant trans rep. It’s clear from the acknowledgements that M. R. Carey did their research and they perfectly capture some of the the different levels of dissonance and dysphoria trans people can experience. Thirdly, it’s a rip-roaring story. It’s just…perfect. And fourthly, the covers. The covers are beautiful.

So, that’s why you should read them!

Spellswept (The Harwood Spellbook, #0.5) by Stephanie Burgis

Alt-nineteenth century straight romance. With magic!

This is a lovely little romantic prequel to what I understand is a series featuring other characters. The world-building is fascinating, an alt-nineteenth century-ish world with women wielding political power and men wielding magic. But what happens if that isn’t a hard-and-fast rule and things can change?

I really enjoyed both the characters and the premise and I’m interested in reading the main series.

More next time. I have lots to catch up on!

This time I have some queer sci-fi and a non-fiction book about the First World War.

A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine, Sub Zero by Angel Martinez and Elsie and Mairi Go to War by Diane Atkinson.

A Memory Called Empire & A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

Cover, A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine

Cover, A Memory Called Empire, Arkady Martine

So, I’m late to the party with this duology. I have read both in the last week and been blown away by them. The world-building is amazing, the character development is fascinating and the way everything pulls against each other…the different cultures, the different expectations…is perfect.

In the first book there is the tension between the Stationer culture and the ever-expanding Teixcalaan empire, which have radically different values and ways of being. They are both human, but the Teixcalaan’s don’t really see non-Teixcallaanim as being real people. In book two, the human cultures are thrown against aliens who are so completely <i>other</i> that the Sationers and the Teixcallaani need to put aside their differences to learn to communicate with them and survive as a species.

Interwoven with the big, space-opera story of both books is a delicate, touching, personal story of the tentative relationship growing between the Stationer ambassador to Teixcalaan and her Teixcallaan translator. They struggle with their feelings and cultural differences against a background of violence, attempted rebellion and political maneuvering.

I found the whole thing completely absorbing and I’ll be going back to them in a few months, as I’m sure there’s stuff I’ve missed. It’s rich, textured and absorbing. Read them. They’re good.

Elsie and Mairi Go to War by Diane Atkinson

I read this as part of research into women doctors and nurses in the First World War for a story I’m writing. It started off a bit of a mad dash though the pages, extracting information to use as background colour. However, I soon got sucked into the story for its own sake…they were amazing women who saw a job that needed doing and did it. They spent a great deal of time running a first aid post very close to the Belgian lines in the cellar of a bombed out building and went out every night looking for wounded who had been overlooked on the battlefield. Their story is told through letters and photos and recollections and is a very easy read.

Elsie was quite a bit older than Mairi and I took an instant dislike to her…she was clearly an adventuress who thrived on adrenaline. She lied about being a divorcee and having a child to the Belgian nobleman she went on to marry during the war. Afterwards when he found out and they parted, she flitted from one thing to another…for example setting up a first aid post in the East End of London during the General Strike and actually causing more problems than she solved.

Mairi on the other hand settled back to post-war life with comparative ease. She, a close friend and a couple of other women opened a chicken-breeding farm in Scotland, temporarily moved the whole shebang to Guernsey and from thence back to Scotland again.

I found it a really interesting, colourful book that brought the protaganists to life. I also came away with a distinct feeling that Mairi had a crush on Elsie. She never married although she and her close friend lived together for decades after the war. Although that isn’t surprising for women of that generation, I guess, because of the swathes of men lost in the trenches.

Sub Zero (The ESTO Universe) by Angel Martinez

I loved this queer SFF story. It has a really well defined sense of place–a planet colonized by humans not once, but twice. The first colonizers abandoned their genetically engineered slaves who then became indigenous and more and more undervalued in the eyes of the second wave of humans when they arrive.

The main protagonists are a human and a not-quite-human, one sent to solve a murder, one accused of it. They fall in love, they solve the mystery, they bring a better sense of balance to the world. It sounds so simple.

But the universe is deeply textured, the details are painted with a bright, engaging brush and the relationship between the MCs grows at a steady, tender pace. It’s lovely and you should read it.

That’s it for this time!

Tag: angel martinez

#AmReading