Here at WWAC, we have your winter holiday reading in mind, and can offer all kinds of suggestions for finishing off 2022 with food for thought, starting tense conversations with your family, and/or dialing up the escapism. No pressure, no judgement, but it’s clear that we have excellent taste.
Here’s what we’ve been thrilled by recently, from new space opera to queer history to rereading classics!
Emily Lauer: The Stars Undying by Emery Robin came out November 8th of this year from Orbit, and I look forward to having more friends to discuss it with! In a story inspired by Cleopatra, Caesar and Marc Antony, Robin’s narrative switches perspective between Gracia, a god-touched queen of a mostly drowned planet; and Ceirran, a military leader of a vast neighboring space empire. They have a romance, and also a truly staggering amount of political machinations. And the god in question has uploaded himself into an earring, the better to consult! Though a sequel is planned, and I’m looking forward to it now, the ending of The Stars Undying is already very satisfying. The writing is gorgeous and the world creation is, too. Both of the point-of-view characters seem like people I’d avoid in real life, but I love reading about their power-hungry exploits in fiction.
Kat Overland: I’m re-reading Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice (1976) for the first time and oh is it decadent. The prose is so lush and purple and Louis is so sad and Lestat is such a horrible beautiful man. I’m really enjoying it—probably more now than I did when I first read it as a kid. Anne Rice’s sentences are just delightful and it’s been a fun time reading the book as I slowly savor the first season of the AMC series. The book exists as another unreliable narrative within the show, which I appreciate, even as the series takes the beating heart of Rice’s gothic romance and transports it up a few decades and complicates everything with race and queerness as front and center in the story. It’s a testament to Rice’s worldbuilding and, honestly, vibes, that AMC’s Interview is as recognizable as it is, that you can feel the same blood in it. Would recommend to anyone who isn’t sure if the novel will hold up to their memories of first getting lost in Louis’ afterlife in New Orleans and beyond—it will still present you a delicious feast.
Alenka Figa: I’m reading The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison by Hugh Ryan. I don’t read a ton of non-fiction, so I know this book must have been recommended to me or on a podcast or something, but I cannot remember where I heard about it! I was on a library holds list for a long time to get it, and it was very much worth the wait. The book chronicles the history of The Women’s House of Detention, known more commonly as The House of D. The prison was located in Greenwich Village, New York, and the queer and trans masc people who inhabited it—often also people of color, poor and/or working class—contributed enormously to queer counterculture, resistance and changing mindsets about queerness, all while suffering through the abuse and trauma of incarceration.
Ryan anchors this history in the stories of several queer and/or trans masc individuals who were imprisoned in the House of D, which makes this book very accessible and very personal. While Ryan is crafting a story out of incomplete and flawed records—and he is very careful to make the reader aware of this fact, as well as to take care with how he labels each individual that he describes—the images he paints are important. The people incarcerated at the House of D shaped queer history, community and culture but have never been credited for it. Instead they’ve been referred to only in statistics and sweeping stereotypes. I usually don’t like to call a book a “must-read,” because reading is very subjective and not every book will have a meaningful impact on every reader, but I’m just gonna do it—this one is a must-read!
Louis Skye: I saw Finna (by Nino Cipri, 2020) on a list of must-read books and requested it from my library. It was quite a long wait but totally worth it. Finna follows a recently broken-up queer couple, Ava and Jules, who work at an IKEA-like furniture store. When a multiverse portal opens up and swallows one of the customers, Ava and Jules are sent to rescue her. Shenanigans ensue. I’m very partial to multiverse stories so Finna was always going to be up my alley. But this book goes in such unexpected directions, I couldn’t put it down. It’s a novella, so not terribly long, unfortunately, and I was so hooked, I ended up reading it all one night. Ava and Jules have very distinct personalities which makes them interesting to read, but it’s also clear that they’ve tried and failed at having a relationship. To be stuck on a potentially fatal adventure with someone you’re avoiding sounds like a nightmare, and Finna doesn’t shy away from leaning into the stickier aspects of love gone wrong. But this book is also incredibly visual. The descriptions of the other worlds are evocative, yet don’t bog the plot down. An excellent read, thrilling yet heart-warming.
Carrie McClain:I’m reading That Time I Got Drunk And Saved A Demon by Kimberly Lemmings, 2021, available from the Kindle Store. Kimberly Lemming is my new favorite romance writer. I could tell you that she writes diverse fantasy romance. I could also tell you that she writes page turners with titles such as That Time I Got Drunk And Saved A Demon and That Time I Got Drunk And Yeeted A Love Potion At A Werewolf. If you love your women of color heroines out there doing everything from accidentally becoming pirates to roasting cult members named Gary while living their best lives–you want to look up this author for her novels and novellas.
The full length masterpiece that is That Time I Got Drunk And Saved A Demon follows Cinnamon who is hilariously a spice farmer who gets roped into an adventure she did not want. She sees others leaving the village on the big quests and she waves them off, not interested.
It is only when she accidentally saves a demon named Fallon from a wine drunk stupor that she learns of a greater conspiracy that has befallen the land. Fallon wants to stop a witch who has been enslaving others and he needs our humble spice farmer’s help. Cinnamon with her pink box braids and her perfectly placed pockets that hold snacks is the fictional character I want to be. She seasons her food and doesn’t tolerate others abusing and oppressing others.
That Time I Got Drunk And Saved A Demon would appeal to fans of the romance and fantasy genres obviously but also fans of Dungeons & Dragons and internet humor. An added plus if you love finding women of color in your fantasy who can bust out a bow and shoot some arrows and break spells all while getting romanced. Come join me in this fandom, I’ll get the mead.
Kathryn Hemmann: Rin Usami’s Idol, Burning is only 115 pages long (translated by Asa Yoneda, 2022,) but it’s a whirlwind ride through the psychology of boy band fandom. The narrator is failing out of high school because the Japanese education system refuses to accommodate her learning style, and her world begins to fall apart when the pop star she idolizes becomes the target of social media discourse. Usami is unflinching in her portrayal of online fandom cultures, and she’s refreshingly honest about the adverse effects that flamewars can have on vulnerable people seeking support in fandom communities. It’s not always easy to read Idol, Burning, but I couldn’t put it down.
The English translation of the book includes short essays by the author and her translator, as well as statements from the cover designer (surrealist photographer Delaney Allen) and the illustrator (comics artist Leslie Hung). The novel’s story stands on its own, but it’s a treat to read about the inspirations of the writers and artists who brought it to life.
Kayleigh Hearn: The Future is Female! Vol. 2: the 1970s, edited by Lisa Yaszek, is out now! The first volume of The Future is Female! rocketed into my brain (and onto my bookshelf) after WWAC’s own Emily Lauer interviewed editor Lisa Yaszek in 2018, and its second volume quickly became one of my most anticipated books of the year. Released by the Library of America in a deluxe hardcover edition, The Future is Female! Vol. 2 is nearly five hundred pages of classic science fiction from the 1970s penned by female authors. With apologies to 2001: A Space Odyssey, the stories collected in this book are anything but monolithic—they are by turns sharp, terrifying, hilarious, and provocative.
James Tiptree Jr.’s “The Girl Who Was Plugged In” is a prescient depiction of modern Influencer culture, and in Elinor Busby’s “Time to Kill,” a time traveler’s attempt to assassinate Jesus Christ ends with a Twilight Zone-worthy twist. Eleanor Arnason writes about a science fiction author who becomes smitten with one of her creations in “The Warlord of Saturn’s Moons,” and in M. Lucie Chin’s “The Best is Yet to Be,” the world’s oldest woman contemplates her future when her brain is transplanted into a youthful new body. And that’s not even mentioning the stories by Ursula K. LeGuin, Joanna Russ, or C. J. Cherryh—those mysterious worlds I’ll leave for you to discover yourself, oh intrepid astronaut.
Just don’t skip Lisa Yaszek’s detailed biographical notes; the lives of these authors are often as surprising and illuminating as the stories they wrote. Example A: Kathleen Sky was inspired to write science fiction after seeing an episode of Star Trek and thinking she could write “better than that”… and in 1979, she had a cameo on Star Trek: The Motion Picture, appearing as an Enterprise crew member. Excelsior!
