Wizards Vs. Lesbians

It's witches versus gay boys this time around! It's a richly-textured epic journey through fantasy Southeast Asia and there's a whole metatextual second-person out of time narrative framework and it all adds up to less than the sum of its parts.

A 150-year-old sexy vampire story, re-released and given a kinda-sorta makeover by Carmen Maria Machado. None of it feels particularly necessary, but the illustrations are cool!

A debut novel from a short fiction specialist. How'd it go? The review writes itself, unfortunately.

So, the horrible vulture monsters have emerged from hiding deep within the earth, and they have read Nietszche, but good news: the US Government has figured out the most efficient way to appease them! It involves summer camp.

Kiana joins us to discuss one of Isaac's favorite games.  We talk about furries, murder and a decidedly pre-Trump vision of rural Pennsylvania.

It's Chuck Tingle's debut novel! It's not great!

We discuss a series which is arguably foundational to the wizards vs lesbians microgenre (despite a distinct lack of lesbianism) with special guest Ann Leckie. 

Bad news: you've gone to heaven, but it's a terrible English country village in space and your neighbors are not respecting your neurodivergence. Better climb the mountain that is God!

We answer questions about stuff we've read, and also stuff we haven't.  Is the author still dead? 

Could small-town football hero Coach Bakula not be what he seems??  A campy clusterfuck, three teen movies at once, and very enjoyable. 

A support group for failed messiahs, a device to torture grad students by making them look at a door, the world's funniest surface to air missile - all this and more in a first novel that has no business being this good.

There's a good book in here! A real noir psychodrama in space. Unfortunately there's also a lot of stuff about space jews.

Two books starring a sexy supersoldier and her hot girlfriend.  The first one is a melodrama with Politics, and the second is a teen movie that might actually achieve Minus Politics.

In which Angrboða and Loki get Extremely Divorced. Featuring the most canonically monstrous children of narcissistic parents yet - but despite all this, nobody gets monstered by the narrative, not even the world's most useless excuse for a husband. 

Our shameless self-celebration returns once again, with full panel of judges in tow. But there's a twist!

P.H. Lee joins us to discuss  another  masterpiece.  Read it if you haven't, it's short.

We continue our three-part series on books inspired by Norse mythology with The Valkyrie. This one wonders what would happen in Fafnir teamed up with Attila the Hun but is mostly about what a schmuck Siegfried was.

I think we slipped some good advice in here amidst the silliness?

A violent girl in a milquetoast world gets to go to Autism Heaven, where she can be torn apart as much as she wants. We love this book, despite everything. Thanks to Fabian for the intro!  His music can be found at: https://fbgtz.bandcamp.com/ https://toyoudeary.bandcamp.com/

We have struggled to fit Ann Leckie's books under our remit because there are usually too many genders in them for something as pedestrian as lesbianism to take place. Luckily for us this one fits neatly under Narcissistic Parents of Monstrous Children. 

A psychological horror story about the delusions of a narcissistic parent. (We aren't sure the book knows that's what's happening but it is what it is.) It's like the Book Eaters - to the extent that we think they constitute their own emergent genre - but possibly worse.

As an end of year treat (for ourselves, exclusively) we asked for questions and then answered them. Thank you for indulging us.

We've made it to 75 episodes, and as has become the custom for these milestones we're watching cartoons.  We've run out of Utena so we're moving on to one of Isaac's favorites, and we've chosen the most Wizards vs Lesbians part to talk about.

It's one of the great novels of China, With Lesbians!  The contemporary moral framework the author brings to the story sits uneasily atop the chaotic and bloodthirsty original but it's still a good time.

Oh, this is a good one. Sequel to She who Became the Sun, follows the continuing adventures of a bunch of ruthless moral lacunae who want to become Emperor, features the most tender BDSM relationship between a trans man and a eunuch ever committed to paper.