review

Review: The Constantine Affliction by T. Aaron Payton

Submitted by on

The Constantine Affliction by T. Aaron Payton (Night Shade Books, 2012) is a steampunk detective story, set in an alternate London where a sexually transmitted disease has recently begun spreading, killing many and changing the sex of the survivors. This is central to the plot, but not in the way that it would be in a story that’s solidly in the TG fiction subgenre; none of the viewpoint characters are transformed, though a couple of major supporting characters were transformed in the backstory, and one other is transformed in the course of the story, though not onstage.

Taxonomy upgrade extras: 

Blog About: 

Author: 

Nina Kiriki Hoffman's "A Red Heart of Memories" and sequels

Submitted by on

Nina Kiriki Hoffman’s sequence of novels A Red Heart of Memories (1999), Past the Size of Dreaming (2001), and A Stir of Bones (2003) may be of interest to this site’s readers for one major transgendered character, who is onstage in Past the Size of Dreaming and A Stir of Bones and appears in flashbacks in in A Red Heart of Memories. Several other characters are more or less atypical in their gender identity and presentation. Hoffman has also written a number of short stories about the characters from these books, some but not all of which are in her short story collection Permeable Borders.

Taxonomy upgrade extras: 

Blog About: 

Author: 

Reviews: David Levithan and Greg Egan

Submitted by on

Every Day by David Levithan (Knopf, 2012) is a novel whose main character, A, wakes up every morning in the body of a different person. "The Safe-Deposit Box" by Greg Egan (Asimov's SF, 1990) has the same basic premise, but a very different plot and tone.

Taxonomy upgrade extras: 

Blog About: 

Author: 

Review: The Stormlord trilogy by Glenda Larke

Submitted by on

The Stormlord Trilogy by Glenda Larke (called the Watergivers trilogy in Australia, and maybe some other countries) is a secondary world epic fantasy, consisting of three volumes, The Last Stormlord, Stormlord Rising, and Stormlord's Exile. I wholeheartedly recommend it as a fine adventure epic with nifty political intrigue, knotty moral dilemmas, clever and consistent worldbuilding, and emotionally affecting characterization. The reason I'm mentioning it here is one particular character, a FtM transsexual. He doesn't appear until the third book, but he has a fairly major role to play when he appears.

Taxonomy upgrade extras: 

Blog About: 

Author: 

Subscribe to review