This week I’ve been reading two touch-of-sff romances with trans characters by J. R. Hart and Jem Zero and a short gay novella playing with memory by Nathan Burgoine.
Miss Claus by J. R. Hart
This is a wonderful, light, Christmassy book with brilliant world building and very good pacing. The North Pole is a business, a huge industrial complex, an employer of thousands. But it’s also a small town, with politics and potlucks and pettiness alongside family and friendships and living your best life. It’s so well drawn. It’s every small town based around one big employer you’ve ever been to, except alongside all that, there’s Christmas magic.
For me, a lot of that magic was intimately tied up in the main character Kristin, Santa Claus’ daughter. She’s a shoo-in for his job when he retires as per the family tradition…until she’s not. The story follows her shock, her devastation, and then her building confidence in her suitability for the job despite the ‘traditionalist’ members of the town council being against her. They are against her twice, once because she’s a woman and once because she’s trans.
I cried at various points during the story, partly because Kris is so well characterised. Her words of kindness to a trans child and their parent are beautifully set down and were one of my sobbing points. Her journey from self-doubt to self-confidence was a joy to follow. All the characters are well rounded and it was simply a pleasure to spend time with them.
Also you will need cookies as you read this. Don’t question this. Simply accept it and get them ready before you sit down to with this excellent book.
Home Within Skin by Jem Zero
I came upon this book from a GR rec and it didn’t disappoint. I loved the premise…here’s our world…but aliens turned up in 2004. Humans don’t like them much and treat them as second class citizens. I liked the way the alien Rrhi culture was drip-fed into the story rather than info-dumped. And I think the stab at depicting how humanity would treat an alien species who had to leave their home planet and turn up on Earth asking for help is pretty accurate. Humans are so disappointing, generally.
I very much liked the human MC, Jax, a disabled, homeless trans twenty-something man with so many issues he needs a wheelbarrow to carry them round in. The story is told from his POV, but in second person, which I often find difficult but in this case worked well for me. It felt like I was experiencing his life alongside him, because that this is how he inhabits the world, keeping it at a distance.
Some bits of the story…Jax’s distress, his inability to allow himself to be anything less than utterly self-reliant because he is so afraid of being let down, his reactions to kindness…are heart-rending. But his gradual unfolding, his journey to get to a place that’s okay, not perfect, not a fairytale happy ending, but simply okay, is really engaging.
I loved Sei-vész, his alien boyfriend…a practical and kind person who happens to have tentacles, horns, very non-human sex organs and green skin. The relationship between them was beautifully drawn. I thought the contrast between Jax, so uncomfortable in his own human body, and Jax’s reaction to Sei-vész, so alien to Jax and yet someone Jax accepted unconditionally where he couldn’t accept himself was achingly well depicted.
Basically, if you like stories with messy protagonists trying to get their lives together, alien sex bit and a happy ending, you should read this.
In Memoriam by Nathan Burgoine
I really liked this novella. I can’t write about it properly without spoilers I don’t think. But it reminded me quite strongly of the film Memento in the way it plays with time and memory. I couldn’t put it down, I was so invested in the main character’s story. I started off with one understanding of him and his life and by the time I got to the end that was all turned around like a Moibus Strip or an Esher drawing. I really enjoyed it.
That’s all for this time!