Showing that truth is stranger than fiction, Sylvain Neuvel weaves a scfi thriller reminiscent of Blake Crouch and Andy Weir, blending a fast moving, darkly satirical look at 1940s rocketry with an exploration of the amorality of progress and the nature of violence in A History of What Comes Next.
Always run, never fight.
Preserve the knowledge.
Survive at all costs.
Take them to the stars.
Over 99 identical generations, Mia’s family has shaped human history to push them to the stars, making brutal, wrenching choices and sacrificing countless lives. Her turn comes at the dawn of the age of rocketry. Her mission: to lure Wernher Von Braun away from the Nazi party and into the American rocket program, and secure the future of the space race.
But Mia’s family is not the only group pushing the levers of history: an even more ruthless enemy lurks behind the scenes.
A darkly satirical first contact thriller, as seen through the eyes of the women who make progress possible and the men who are determined to stop them…
Representation Includes
- WLW main character (Mia)
Content Warnings
racism & racial slurs, antisemitism, homophobia, suicide, miscarriage, blood & gore depiction, body horror, forced institutionalisation, description of conversion therapy, grief & loss depiction, sexual harassment (allusions of rape and coercion), death of a child, death of a parent, genocide, gun violence, torture, car accident, animal deathReviews
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Will a dark history doom their future together?
New York copper Tom Halloran is a man with a past. If anyone finds out he once ran with the notorious O’Connell tunnel gang, he’ll spend the rest of his life doing hard time behind bars. But Tom’s secret is threatened when a horrible murder on his beat seems to have been caused by the same ancient magic that killed his gang.
Cat shifter Cicero is determined to investigate the disappearance of one friend and the death of another, even though no one else believes the cases are connected. When the trail of his investigation crosses Tom’s, the very bohemian Cicero instinctively recognizes the uncultured Irish patrolman as his witch. Though they’re completely unsuited to one another, Cicero has no choice but to work alongside Tom…all the while fighting against the passion growing within.
Tom knows that taking Cicero as his familiar would only lead to discovery and disaster. Yet as the heat between them builds, Tom’s need for the other man threatens to overcome every rational argument against becoming involved.
But when their investigation uncovers a conspiracy that threatens all of New York, Tom must make the hardest decision of his life: to live a lie and gain his heart’s desire, or to confess the truth and sacrifice it all.
Representation Includes
- MLM male protagonist (Tom)
- MLM male protagonist (Cicero)
Content Warnings
violence, murder, racist slurs, antisemitism, homomisia & homomisia slurs, attempted sexual assault, alcohol consumption mentioned, blood depiction, gun violence, kidnappingAwards
- Rainbow Award for Gay Paranormal Romance Winner (2016)
Reviews
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The dreamers walk among us . . . and so do the dreamed. Those who dream cannot stop dreaming – they can only try to control it. Those who are dreamed cannot have their own lives – they will sleep forever if their dreamers die.
And then there are those who are drawn to the dreamers. To use them. To trap them. To kill them before their dreams destroy us all.
Ronan Lynch is a dreamer. He can pull both curiosities and catastrophes out of his dreams and into his compromised reality.
Jordan Hennessy is a thief. The closer she comes to the dream object she is after, the more inextricably she becomes tied to it.
Carmen Farooq-Lane is a hunter. Her brother was a dreamer . . . and a killer. She has seen what dreaming can do to a person. And she has seen the damage that dreamers can do. But that is nothing compared to the destruction that is about to be unleashed. . . .
Representation Includes
- Gay protagonist (Ronan)
- WLW main character (Carmen)
Content Warnings
vomit; body horror; car crash; descriptions of suicide by gun; violenceReviews
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Author of Empire of Sand and Realm of Ash Tasha Suri’s The Jasmine Throne, beginning a new trilogy set in a world inspired by the history and epics of India, in which a captive princess and a maidservant in possession of forbidden magic become unlikely allies on a dark journey to save their empire from the princess’s traitor brother.
Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters — but is now little more than a decaying ruin.
Priya is a maidservant, one among several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, so long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides.
But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. The other is a priestess seeking to find her family. Together, they will change the fate of an empire.
Representation Includes
- Lesbian protagonists in a fantasy world based on India
Content Warnings
From the author’s site:- Explicit violence including immolation and self-immolation
- Gender-based violence (this does not include sexual assault)
- Homophobia and internalised homophobia
- Suicidal ideation
- Self-mutilation
- Abusive family dynamics
- Child murder
- Body horror (plant-based, cosmic)
- Forced drug use and depictions of addiction/withdrawal
Awards
- Include whether the book was nominated for or won any awards. This information is typically listed on Goodreads. If there are no awards, simply delete this section.
Reviews
- Rainbow and Sunshine’s review
- May’s review
- Reads Rainbow’s review
- Lex Kent’s review
- To Other Worlds’ review
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Would you leave your life behind to save a world you never knew?
Florian has always felt like an outsider. He never thought it was because he was from another world.
He knew being gay and trans made him different, but then his estranged father shows up with claims of royalty, prophecy, and a dying kingdom. His curiosity piqued, Florian joins him to visit the magical world he’s supposedly from, and not just to spend time with the handsome wolf shifter body guard, Kade, that his dad brought along.
The pull of the Veil and the prophecy about him prove to be a siren song Florian can’t resist, throwing him headlong into mystery and danger in equal measure.
With all the one-on-one time they suddenly have, Florian discovers a kind heart behind Kade’s silent facade. But can he afford to fall in love when he’s supposed to be saving the world?
THE CHANGELING PROPHECY, book one of the Chronicles of the Veil, is a slow burn MM paranormal romance.
Representation Includes
- Gay trans man protagonist (Florian)
Content Warnings
Provided by book: Parental death. One brief instance of body horror involving gender dysphoria. Steamy scenes between a trans man and a cis man with a range of gendered terms used for body parts.Reviews
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Darkness blooms in bestselling author Kalynn Bayron’s new contemporary fantasy about a girl with a unique and deadly power.
Briseis has a gift: she can grow plants from tiny seeds to rich blooms with a single touch.
When Briseis’s aunt dies and wills her a dilapidated estate in rural New York, Bri and her parents decide to leave Brooklyn behind for the summer. Hopefully there, surrounded by plants and flowers, Bri will finally learn to control her gift. But their new home is sinister in ways they could never have imagined–it comes with a specific set of instructions, an old-school apothecary, and a walled garden filled with the deadliest botanicals in the world that can only be entered by those who share Bri’s unique family lineage.
When strangers begin to arrive on their doorstep, asking for tinctures and elixirs, Bri learns she has a surprising talent for creating them. One of the visitors is Marie, a mysterious young woman who Bri befriends, only to find that Marie is keeping dark secrets about the history of the estate and its surrounding community. There is more to Bri’s sudden inheritance than she could have imagined, and she is determined to uncover it . . . until a nefarious group comes after her in search of a rare and dangerous immortality elixir. Up against a centuries-old curse and the deadliest plant on earth, Bri must harness her gift to protect herself and her family.
From the bestselling author of Cinderella Is Dead comes another inspiring and deeply compelling story about a young woman with the power to conquer the dark forces descending around her.
Representation Includes
- Bi/pansexual Black protagonist, who is adopted
- Black WLW love interest
- The protagonist has two moms
Content Warnings
Stalking; on-screen murder of a parent; vivid descriptions of the effects of poisonous plants; immortal love interest for 17-year-old MCReviews
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The day before moving into her new dorm, college freshman, Maya Lilac, has a haunting dream that ends with her coming face-to-face with a second version of herself. After being haunted by the dream during move-in day, she finally comes in contact with her double, nicknamed “Lucent”, and learns that she actually has powers and can—among other things—make her dreams come true.
Maya’s heritage, however, runs deeper when she discovers that she’s the True Dreamer, a person reaching back as far as Joan of Arc that’s tasked with protecting her species, as well as the world, from any and all threats… including her seemingly-peaceful and non-combative double. But, not everyone shares Maya’s vision that her clone isn’t out to harm anybody, especially her mother. As Maya and her mother fight over whether Lucent is a legitimate threat, Maya trains in her now-active powers to fulfill her destiny of protecting the world, whether she has to take care of Lucent or not.
Representation Includes
- Bisexual protagonist
- Lesbian supporting character
Content Warnings
Help grow this entry by commenting below or emailing queersffbooks@theillustratedpage.net.Reviews
Where to Find
Details
- Published March 19th 2019 by Ja-Mel Vinson
-
ISBN: 9781732858
A mermaid’s supernatural beauty serves one purpose: to lure a sailor to his death.
The Massacre is supposed to bring peace to Eriana Kwai. Every year, the island sends its warriors to battle these hostile sea demons. Every year, the warriors fail to return. Desperate for survival, the island must decide on a new strategy. Now, the fate of Eriana Kwai lies in the hands of twenty battle-trained girls and their resistance to a mermaid’s allure.
Eighteen-year-old Meela has already lost her brother to the Massacre, and she has lived with a secret that’s haunted her since childhood. For any hope of survival, she must overcome the demons of her past and become a ruthless mermaid killer.
For the first time, Eriana Kwai’s Massacre warriors are female, and Meela must fight for her people’s freedom on the Pacific Ocean’s deadliest battleground.
Representation Includes
- The main character is sapphic and Indigenous from a fictional Northwestern Pacific Island
Content Warnings
gore, death, torture, animal death, abuseAwards
- Won the Best Indie Book Award
Reviews
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Mulan meets The Song of Achilles in Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun, a bold, queer, and lyrical reimagining of the rise of the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty from an amazing new voice in literary fantasy.
To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything
“I refuse to be nothing…”
In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…
In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.
When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother’s identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.
After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother’s abandoned greatness.
Representation Includes
- Genderfluid lesbian protagonist (Zhu Chongba) who is Chinese and also
spoiler
becomes an amputee (missing hand) partway through the book. - The other main character/protagonist is Ouyang, who is both gay and a eunuch.
- Ma, a major POV character and Zhu Chongba’s love interest, expresses attraction towards multiple genders
Content Warnings
Gender dysphoria, mentions of sexual assault, mentions of slavery (Ouyang’s backstory involves slavery, war themes, murder, death, violence, child murder (off-page), starvation, death of parents, death of sibling, misogyny and patriarchy, misgendering, internalized homophobia, ableism, amputation, non-consensual castration, brief mention of cannibalisms, hurt to an animal, death of an animal, mention of vomiting, plague, mass illness, quarantining, off-page torture, bombs, death by fire, death of queer character’s love interestReviews
- Utopia State of Mind’s Review
- May’s review
- Liz Bourke’s review (Tor)
- Liz Bourke and Alex Brown’s review (Locus)
- Lee Mandelo’s review
Where to Find
- Amazon
- IndieBound
- WorldCat
In a space-faring civilization where a single woman is increasingly disenfranchised, the star pilot Silence Leigh is defrauded from her inheritance by a greedy competitor. Forced to ally with two men, Silence is dragged into a deadly political struggle, and is tantalized by the hints of the legendary Earth, as well as the dread and the glory of Magi’s power. Her dreams of having her own ship and of escape from the Hegemony’s oppressions take on new direction and focus when she joins the crew of “The Sun-Treader”
Representation Includes
- Polyamorous F/M/M triad marriage
- Reads as a demisexual narrative; see more in Bogi Takács’s review
Content Warnings
Pervasive misogyny as part of the laws and cultureReviews
Where to Find
Details
- Published April 1st 1985 by Baen
- Paperback ISBN13: 9780671559526
- Out of print