Wizards Vs. Lesbians

This is a book about a trans runaway who is a survival sex worker and a violin prodigy and the demons and aliens she encounters in suburban LA but it is mostly about eating really amazing meals in restaurants.  Isaac LOVED this one, but it is Not Without Its Problems.

What if you took a standard romance novel setup - girl abducted and made to serve in the harem of the handsome prince - and really leaned into how awful that would be in real life?   You'd get this, a YA novel whose major tone is the suffocating dread of violent sexual assault, but with forbidden lesbian romance and a clan of secret ninjas thrown into the mix.  It's a challenging one.

We've been doing this for a year!  Unbelievably!  To celebrate, it's time for one of my favorite podcast tropes: the silly award show, in which we discuss who the best lesbian is, who the best wizard is, and so forth.

There's a girl trapped in a tower, a handsome prince comes to save her, and then everything goes wrong.  Thankfully there's a lesbian moth demon there to help. 

I mean, what is there to say?

It's our 25th episode, and so we're going to discuss an anime that is very important to us, and which is absolutely a foundational text in the wizards vs lesbians idiom. We could fill up multiple podcasts talking about this show, and just might, if provoked.

It's another retro episode!  This one to takes us back to gay London in the 1990s, where a queer cab driver named Rainbow is being haunted not only by her variously-kosher gaggle of aunts but by an actual dybbuk, unleashed upon her to fulfill a centuries-old curse.  It's Good Omens but Jewish and with lesbians - what's not to like?

It's an accidental holiday episode!  The Raven and the Reindeer is a retelling of Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen by T Kingfisher, AKA Ursula Vernon, furry webcomic artist of the old school.  And it's great - keeps all the weirdness of the original and adds a whole shovelful of gay. 

The rare modern contemporary wizards vs lesbians novel, set here and now.  It's about a young woman of Malaysian Chinese descent who returns to Penang under difficult circumstances and has to deal, among other things, with the ghost of her grandmother.  An extremely solid piece of work: If you have any litfic snobs in your circle, this is the one to break 'em in with.

It's Foundryside!  This is a book that we think might have been better as an anime, or an action movie, or a miniseries, or a comic - pretty much anything but a very long novel that seems to care mostly about setting up the pieces for the very long series of sequels to come.  But we might think that because it has the best action sequence writing of any book we've discussed so far, and also becaus...

In a slight departure for us we are discussing a romance novel - a romance novella, in fact - a romance novella starring a werebear who works at Vogue.  It's self-identified "chick lit" but it's also Wizards vs Lesbians, or at least close enough, so we discuss it (and also spend quite a long time talking about the theory that queer desire itself is the revolutionary moment.)

So, what if the founder of the Ming Dynasty was a lesbian?  That is the question this book dares to ask, and it does a really good job answering it.  A rollicking, morally complex historical fantasy which is one of my favorite contemporary books we've read for this project.

A mainline wizards vs lesbians empire narrative, this one, set in fantasy South Asia.  It's a long old read but the characters are good - particularly the colonial governor's wife, a hall of fame eminence gris.

It's our first ever bonus episode!  This series was initially disqualified due to lack of lesbians but our guest, the author P.H. Lee, argues that the lesbianism is subtextual.   Whether that's true or not, this is a classic SF series for a reason and contains both a bromance for the ages between our adventure librarian hero and her barbarian companion and some premium wizard behavior.

Retro episode!  In this one we tackle a forgotten classic of 90s cyberpunk, recommended by a listener.  It's insane and we had a tremendous amount of fun with it.   (Thanks to Isaac's internet son Olive for providing the intro and inspiring him to make a busload of terrible techno jingles.)

This one's a hoot.  A fast, funny, nasty book about interdimensional colonialism and structural inequality which manages to fold all manner of economic, racial and gender dynamics into a story which still manages to be a gripping tale of adventure featuring Evil Steve Jobs.

We journey to Fantasy Algeria for today's episode, where the Princess of Fantasy France has arrived to review her colony, only to have her life saved and (in due course) her heart stolen by a captain in her colonial guard.   This one goes deep on the emotional consequences of empire and the conflicting loyalties that arise in conquered peoples, but maintains that focus by ignoring or eliding facto...

A strange book, this - tremendously awful things happen in it but one leaves with the impression that everything might turn out all right if we all just listen to each other. Comfortable, well-written, and features a magical giant blacksmith lesbian who talks to crows.

We're back to Teixcalaan for another dose of diplomatic/linguistic foofaraw.  This is a very comfortable book, and we discuss how nice it is that the legacy of CJ Cherryh lives on, Except With Lesbians.  I could read another fifty of these, honestly.

It's Alexander the Great, but in space, with lesbians!  And she wins American Idol?? Fair warning: one of us really hated this book.  

Here we have a book about being in love with a creep - same-sex attraction, it turns out, is not proof against such things - and about attempting to colonize a planet inimical to human life and the problems that arise therefrom.  This is another bleak one, with the escape hatch at the end difficult to describe in real human terms, but it has its charms.

A girl and her cat (or is it a cat and her girl?) wander away from the factory where they were built and discover what remains of human civilization in a deeply poetic/depressing journey down the Indochinese peninsula to the sea.  It's a downer, but it's Isaac's favorite book we've done so far! 

Chaos!  Intrigue!  Murder cults!  Fantasy racism!  Problematic content as far as the eye can see!  It's Green, and we're talking about it.

It's Journey to the West but with lesbians, in space!  Or, alternately, lesbian Tony Stark wrestles with her own capacity for evil.  What's not to like?

It's our first retro episode!  We read a book from 1990 in which a magical Irish harpist (who lives in Denver) takes on the immortal elves who have stolen her girlfriend using the power of heavy metal - and friendship.  It's a hoot. Many thanks to my buddy Phoebe, AKA moltenglassheart, for providing the fresh guitar lick on the intro.   If you'd like to check out her music (which features both hea...