Recent f/f reads
Mar. 28th, 2025 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lucymonsterOne mixed, one ugh, one OMG READ THIS. Apparently I don't have any f/f icons, so I'm appropriating Faith, one of my first and most enduring sapphic crushes. She is such a babe and I love her so much you guys. But that's not the point of this post.
The Gilded Crown by Marianne Gordon is hard for me to review, because my feelings about it are polarised: there are things about it I absolutely adored, and things I really quite strongly disliked. It's a dark fantasy novel about a young woman, Hellevir, who has the rare ability to go into death and bring recently departed souls back to life with her - for a price that she pays out of her own soul. She gets conscripted into service as an on-call resurrectionist for the Queen's granddaughter and only heir, Sullivain, who is being targeted by an assassin. The Queen is a truly awful person and Sullivain shows every sign of following in her footsteps, but Hellevir falls in love with her anyway and a good time is had by no one.
Praise first. Sullivain is magnetic as a love interest: she comes in layers, with a charming down-to-earth persona on the outside, a ruthless political mind underneath it, and a core of deep conflict and wounded rage. The actual plot-relevant politics are pretty straightforward, but Gordon does a good job at making the whole political landscape feel twisty and complex and terrifying, thanks in large part to her convincingly overwhelmed country bumpkin of a POV character (which I thought was a terrific choice). I also truly love the way the book respects and prioritises women. The gender politics are conspicuous mainly by their absence: we see men and women participate equally in all aspects of public and private life, and absolutely no fuss is made of the fact. (Same-sex attraction is treated as similarly unremarkable, which makes for a very relaxing read.) Traditional "women's work" such as herbalism - Hellevir's trade, when she's not resurrecting princesses - is treated seriously and in detail. The female characters are all allowed to be flawed and complicated, to be good people who make mistakes and bad people with redeeming features and all possible shades of grey in between. This, not girlbossitude or oppression porn, is the kind of feminist writing that most deeply speaks to me, and if that were the only thing I liked about the novel I would still have felt some fondness for it just for that.
But like I mentioned, there's also some stuff I really disliked. While the political intrigue and the Hellevir/Sullivain scenes were all absolutely gripping, there's a major subplot of intra-family conflict that chews up a lot of wordcount for not a lot of oomph, and Hellevir's forays into the realm of death are painfully repetitive. Hellevir herself is a tricky character to pin down: we're mostly told she's a pure-hearted idealist, occasionally told that her underlying motive is egotistical ambition, and inadvertently told that she's a fucking idiot who makes the same mistakes over and over while ignoring all the older, wiser, more knowledgeable people who try to warn her away from them. She doesn't even disagree with their advice. She knows full well she's out of her depth; she just brushes the fact off and does whatever she wants while refusing to think about the consequences. "Heart of gold turns out to be gilded so secretly that even its owner barely knows it" is a story I could get behind wholeheartedly, but this particular instance is so confusingly executed that I'm not even 100% sure that's what I was meant to take away from it.
The worldbuilding is also a bit gappy, and the treatment of religion (which is absolutely central to the plot!) is honestly kind of juvenile. Hellevir's faith (the Good Religion, ambiguously pagan) is completely undefined, with no clear worship practices; Sullivain's faith (the Bad Religion, a half-baked Abrahamic stand-in) is cartoonishly evil at all possible times, and its doctrines seem informed mainly by what Hellevir can most easily drop zingers about. The author seems largely incapable of empathising with believers in the Bad Religion; there's even a completely wasted scene right at the end where (avoiding any spoilers here) a devout Bad Religion adherent defies their own beliefs in a really dramatic way that gets more or less completely brushed off, I think because the author isn't actually taking it seriously as a faith and so either doesn't realise or doesn't care how huge a moment it really is. Honestly all the supporting characters are pretty flat, even the ones we're clearly meant to care about, and there are a couple of lazy POV changes where the author wants us to see side characters do their Major Plot-Relevant Bit before shrinking back into obscurity, which is always a pet peeve of mine. EARN your POV changes, please. Don't commit to a close third following a single character and then jump heads at random moments just because it's convenient.
FWIW, this is probably another case of me being extra hard on a book because of how close I came to really liking it. I don't think the flaws would have bothered me so much if the good parts were less captivating. As it stands, there's a sequel that I don't think I'll even bother to read (even reviewers who adored the first book seem to think it's less good), which is such a shame. There's a world of promise here but it just doesn't quite stick the landing in the way I really hoped it would.
But I've seen a few people comparing it to The Priory of the Orange Tree, so I've put myself on the library waitlist for that. Hopefully it'll be less frustrating.
My Own Worst Enemy by Lily Lindon is...pretty much just rubbish, sorry. It's modern enemies-to-lovers romance that I borrowed from the library purely because the cover promised me butch4butch, which, HOT. And it is indeed butch4butch, but despite that huge advantage it has so far (I'm only partway through) failed to be hot in any way, mainly because holy flanderisation, Batman. I don't even know if that's the right word - can flanderisation exist in a vacuum? Can you flanderise your own characters from the very get-go? In any case, they're all written like Poptart Thor, each allotted one or two Quirky(TM) personality traits that they manage to work into every single thing they do. I know and am usually fine with the fact that romance writing tends to lean heavily on characterisation shortcuts for supporting cast, but 1) this novel overdoes it so badly I can hardly get through a page without cringing, and 2) even the main character gets a subdued version of the same treatment. The love interest has so far been immune and is thus the only person I feel even a shred of interest in, but it's not enough to make up for the rest.
So yeah. It was worth a try, but I'm definitely DNFing this one.
Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather is a novella about Catholic nuns traversing outer space inside a giant slug, and also a heartbreaking story about choice and morality and the power of ordinary people to resist the evils of empire. Like all the best sci-fi, it sounds completely bonkers but makes perfect sense within its own context. It's been on my TBR forever and somehow the stars have never quite aligned, but I needed something good to wash away that last book, and this one was recommended to me by someone whose taste I trust. Let me just tell you guys right now that my trust has been vindicated a hundredfold. This is a really, truly excellent piece of writing.
First off, it's impressively efficient. Huge and complex worldbuilding concepts are fleshed out in very few words, without ever feeling too dense or too abbreviated; a cast of half a dozen identically dressed women leading a regimented convent life together becomes quickly differentiated, each nun very much her own character living her own unique storyline. There is history in this book: humanity has lived among the stars for long enough that the colonies have developed their own languages and cultures and seceded from Earth, resulting in an unspeakably destructive war of independence that at the time of our story has not yet passed out of living memory. Through all the cultural and technological upheaval the Catholic Church has retained a stable and only selectively modernised identity, which contributes a great deal of delightful whimsy in what is otherwise quite a bleak story. The nuns' convent is a spaceship and the spaceship is a genetically engineered life form; one of the major subplots is a theological debate over whether letting the ship obey its biological imperative to mate is a violation of chastity. They sing "authentic Old Earth hymns" that any churchgoing reader will immediately recognise as popular modern worship songs. They've incorporated "gravity fasts" into their penance, literally meaning set periods where they turn off the ship's gravity and go about their daily lives as best they can while floating in zero g.
To be clear, though, this is not by any means a Christian story. It is (among other things) a scathing critique of the Church's insatiable hunger for power, and an exploration of how readily major religious institutions become complicit in the very worst kinds of political brutality. It actually made a really nice antidote to one of The Gilded Crown's biggest failings, in that it managed to make the Church a convincing villain without strawmanning or denigrating believers.
As for the f/f element: one of the nuns has accidentally fallen in love with a commercial ship's captain they met on one of their stops, and their story is gorgeous: a little bit "baby lesbian experiences her first heart palpitations over a hot woman", a bit "our love is so fated that God himself can't stand in our way", and then more than a little bit badass at the end when their affair reconverges with the main plot in explosive fashion. This book isn't really a romance, either, but the romance element hugely enriches the whole. I could happily read a whole spin-off series about the commercial ship's captain and her crew, if Rather ever decided to write one.
Honestly, at this point, I can see myself going on to read everything Rather has ever written. I enjoyed this so, so, so much, and I only haven't immediately pounced on the sequel because I want to savour the "bleak and sad with just a dash of hope" ending of this one for a while first and then rebuild my strength for whatever comes next. Because right now my heart is broken in the best way possible.
The Gilded Crown by Marianne Gordon is hard for me to review, because my feelings about it are polarised: there are things about it I absolutely adored, and things I really quite strongly disliked. It's a dark fantasy novel about a young woman, Hellevir, who has the rare ability to go into death and bring recently departed souls back to life with her - for a price that she pays out of her own soul. She gets conscripted into service as an on-call resurrectionist for the Queen's granddaughter and only heir, Sullivain, who is being targeted by an assassin. The Queen is a truly awful person and Sullivain shows every sign of following in her footsteps, but Hellevir falls in love with her anyway and a good time is had by no one.
Praise first. Sullivain is magnetic as a love interest: she comes in layers, with a charming down-to-earth persona on the outside, a ruthless political mind underneath it, and a core of deep conflict and wounded rage. The actual plot-relevant politics are pretty straightforward, but Gordon does a good job at making the whole political landscape feel twisty and complex and terrifying, thanks in large part to her convincingly overwhelmed country bumpkin of a POV character (which I thought was a terrific choice). I also truly love the way the book respects and prioritises women. The gender politics are conspicuous mainly by their absence: we see men and women participate equally in all aspects of public and private life, and absolutely no fuss is made of the fact. (Same-sex attraction is treated as similarly unremarkable, which makes for a very relaxing read.) Traditional "women's work" such as herbalism - Hellevir's trade, when she's not resurrecting princesses - is treated seriously and in detail. The female characters are all allowed to be flawed and complicated, to be good people who make mistakes and bad people with redeeming features and all possible shades of grey in between. This, not girlbossitude or oppression porn, is the kind of feminist writing that most deeply speaks to me, and if that were the only thing I liked about the novel I would still have felt some fondness for it just for that.
But like I mentioned, there's also some stuff I really disliked. While the political intrigue and the Hellevir/Sullivain scenes were all absolutely gripping, there's a major subplot of intra-family conflict that chews up a lot of wordcount for not a lot of oomph, and Hellevir's forays into the realm of death are painfully repetitive. Hellevir herself is a tricky character to pin down: we're mostly told she's a pure-hearted idealist, occasionally told that her underlying motive is egotistical ambition, and inadvertently told that she's a fucking idiot who makes the same mistakes over and over while ignoring all the older, wiser, more knowledgeable people who try to warn her away from them. She doesn't even disagree with their advice. She knows full well she's out of her depth; she just brushes the fact off and does whatever she wants while refusing to think about the consequences. "Heart of gold turns out to be gilded so secretly that even its owner barely knows it" is a story I could get behind wholeheartedly, but this particular instance is so confusingly executed that I'm not even 100% sure that's what I was meant to take away from it.
The worldbuilding is also a bit gappy, and the treatment of religion (which is absolutely central to the plot!) is honestly kind of juvenile. Hellevir's faith (the Good Religion, ambiguously pagan) is completely undefined, with no clear worship practices; Sullivain's faith (the Bad Religion, a half-baked Abrahamic stand-in) is cartoonishly evil at all possible times, and its doctrines seem informed mainly by what Hellevir can most easily drop zingers about. The author seems largely incapable of empathising with believers in the Bad Religion; there's even a completely wasted scene right at the end where (avoiding any spoilers here) a devout Bad Religion adherent defies their own beliefs in a really dramatic way that gets more or less completely brushed off, I think because the author isn't actually taking it seriously as a faith and so either doesn't realise or doesn't care how huge a moment it really is. Honestly all the supporting characters are pretty flat, even the ones we're clearly meant to care about, and there are a couple of lazy POV changes where the author wants us to see side characters do their Major Plot-Relevant Bit before shrinking back into obscurity, which is always a pet peeve of mine. EARN your POV changes, please. Don't commit to a close third following a single character and then jump heads at random moments just because it's convenient.
FWIW, this is probably another case of me being extra hard on a book because of how close I came to really liking it. I don't think the flaws would have bothered me so much if the good parts were less captivating. As it stands, there's a sequel that I don't think I'll even bother to read (even reviewers who adored the first book seem to think it's less good), which is such a shame. There's a world of promise here but it just doesn't quite stick the landing in the way I really hoped it would.
But I've seen a few people comparing it to The Priory of the Orange Tree, so I've put myself on the library waitlist for that. Hopefully it'll be less frustrating.
My Own Worst Enemy by Lily Lindon is...pretty much just rubbish, sorry. It's modern enemies-to-lovers romance that I borrowed from the library purely because the cover promised me butch4butch, which, HOT. And it is indeed butch4butch, but despite that huge advantage it has so far (I'm only partway through) failed to be hot in any way, mainly because holy flanderisation, Batman. I don't even know if that's the right word - can flanderisation exist in a vacuum? Can you flanderise your own characters from the very get-go? In any case, they're all written like Poptart Thor, each allotted one or two Quirky(TM) personality traits that they manage to work into every single thing they do. I know and am usually fine with the fact that romance writing tends to lean heavily on characterisation shortcuts for supporting cast, but 1) this novel overdoes it so badly I can hardly get through a page without cringing, and 2) even the main character gets a subdued version of the same treatment. The love interest has so far been immune and is thus the only person I feel even a shred of interest in, but it's not enough to make up for the rest.
So yeah. It was worth a try, but I'm definitely DNFing this one.
Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather is a novella about Catholic nuns traversing outer space inside a giant slug, and also a heartbreaking story about choice and morality and the power of ordinary people to resist the evils of empire. Like all the best sci-fi, it sounds completely bonkers but makes perfect sense within its own context. It's been on my TBR forever and somehow the stars have never quite aligned, but I needed something good to wash away that last book, and this one was recommended to me by someone whose taste I trust. Let me just tell you guys right now that my trust has been vindicated a hundredfold. This is a really, truly excellent piece of writing.
First off, it's impressively efficient. Huge and complex worldbuilding concepts are fleshed out in very few words, without ever feeling too dense or too abbreviated; a cast of half a dozen identically dressed women leading a regimented convent life together becomes quickly differentiated, each nun very much her own character living her own unique storyline. There is history in this book: humanity has lived among the stars for long enough that the colonies have developed their own languages and cultures and seceded from Earth, resulting in an unspeakably destructive war of independence that at the time of our story has not yet passed out of living memory. Through all the cultural and technological upheaval the Catholic Church has retained a stable and only selectively modernised identity, which contributes a great deal of delightful whimsy in what is otherwise quite a bleak story. The nuns' convent is a spaceship and the spaceship is a genetically engineered life form; one of the major subplots is a theological debate over whether letting the ship obey its biological imperative to mate is a violation of chastity. They sing "authentic Old Earth hymns" that any churchgoing reader will immediately recognise as popular modern worship songs. They've incorporated "gravity fasts" into their penance, literally meaning set periods where they turn off the ship's gravity and go about their daily lives as best they can while floating in zero g.
To be clear, though, this is not by any means a Christian story. It is (among other things) a scathing critique of the Church's insatiable hunger for power, and an exploration of how readily major religious institutions become complicit in the very worst kinds of political brutality. It actually made a really nice antidote to one of The Gilded Crown's biggest failings, in that it managed to make the Church a convincing villain without strawmanning or denigrating believers.
As for the f/f element: one of the nuns has accidentally fallen in love with a commercial ship's captain they met on one of their stops, and their story is gorgeous: a little bit "baby lesbian experiences her first heart palpitations over a hot woman", a bit "our love is so fated that God himself can't stand in our way", and then more than a little bit badass at the end when their affair reconverges with the main plot in explosive fashion. This book isn't really a romance, either, but the romance element hugely enriches the whole. I could happily read a whole spin-off series about the commercial ship's captain and her crew, if Rather ever decided to write one.
Honestly, at this point, I can see myself going on to read everything Rather has ever written. I enjoyed this so, so, so much, and I only haven't immediately pounced on the sequel because I want to savour the "bleak and sad with just a dash of hope" ending of this one for a while first and then rebuild my strength for whatever comes next. Because right now my heart is broken in the best way possible.
