The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.
To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.
Representation Includes
- East Asian physically disabled bisexual protagonist (Wu Zetian) [sometimes uses a cane or wheelchair]
- East Asian mentally ill bisexual protagonist (Li Shimin) [PTSD, alcoholic]
- East Asian bisexual protagonist (Gao Yizhi)
Content Warnings
violence, murder, torture, human sacrifices, abuse (domestic, child), alcohol addiction, forced alcohol consumption, forced body modification (organ removal, footbinding), misogyny and sexism, femicide, rape threats, needles, discussions of colonization, discussions of sexual assaultReviews
- Author’s (Xiran Jay Zhao) “review”
- Melanie’s review
- Anna’s review
- Lucie V’s review
- Silvia’s review
- Era’s review
Where to Find
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One October morning, Laina gets the news that her brother was shot and killed by Boston cops. But what looks like a case of police brutality soon reveals something much stranger. Monsters are real. And they want everyone to know it.
As creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, seeking safety through visibility, their emergence sets off a chain of seemingly unrelated events. Members of a local werewolf pack are threatened into silence. A professor follows a missing friend’s trail of bread crumbs to a mysterious secret society. And a young boy with unique abilities seeks refuge in a pro-monster organization with secrets of its own. Meanwhile, more people start disappearing, suicides and hate crimes increase, and protests erupt globally, both for and against the monsters.
At the center is a mystery no one thinks to ask: Why now? What has frightened the monsters out of the dark?
The world will soon find out.
Representation Includes
- Ensemble cast including:
- Black bisexual protagonist
- Puerto Rican-American sapphic protagonist
- Biracial, bi-ace, trans protagonist
- Non-binary side character
- Polyamorous relationship
Content Warnings
Police brutality and shooting of a black man; implied sexual abuse of a minor; domestic abuse; drug abuse and overdose; loss of loved ones; suicide; mass shooting; goreReviews
- Theodore McCombs’s review
- Arley Sorg’s review
- Laura’s review
- Jessica Woodbury’s review
- K.J. Charles’s review
Where to Find
Details
- Published September 7, 2021 by Blackstone Publishing
- ISBN: 9781982603724
Fortune favors the bold. Magic favors the liars.
Ren is a con artist who has come to the sparkling city of Nadežra with one goal: to trick her way into a noble house, securing her fortune and her sister’s future.
But as she’s drawn into the elite world of House Traementis, she realizes her masquerade is just one of many surrounding her. And as nightmare magic begins to weave its way through the City of Dreams, the poisonous feuds of its aristocrats and the shadowy dangers of its impoverished underbelly become tangled…with Ren at their heart.
The Mask of Mirrors is the unmissable start to the Rook & Rose trilogy, a dazzling and darkly magical fantasy adventure by Marie Brennan and Alyc Helms, writing together as M. A. Carrick.
Representation Includes
- Bisexual aromantic main protagonist (Vargo)
- Bisexual minor protagonist (Giuna)
- Lesbian side character; trans side character
Notes on relationship status' at end of book
Vargo has a sexual but not romantic relationship with Iascat that is not officially over at the end of the book1 romantic relationship (cis female/trans-male) break up at the end: Tess/Pavlin
1 romantic relationship (cis female/cis female) remain together at end: Giuna/Sibiliat
Content Warnings
death, physical and psychological child abuse, drug use (including forced drug use), kidnapping, mental illness (caused by severe insomnia), fear of sexual violence (no incidents), police violenceReviews
Where to Find
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Set in a near-future world where the British Empire was preserved, not by the cost of blood and theft but by effort of repatriation and promises kept, That Inevitable Victorian Thing is a novel of love, duty, and the small moments that can change people and the world.
Victoria-Margaret is the crown princess of the empire, a direct descendant of Victoria I, the queen who changed the course of history two centuries earlier. The imperial practice of genetically arranged matchmaking will soon guide Margaret into a politically advantageous marriage like her mother before her, but before she does her duty, she’ll have one summer incognito in a far corner of empire. In Toronto, she meets Helena Marcus, daughter of one of the empire’s greatest placement geneticists, and August Callaghan, the heir apparent to a powerful shipping firm currently besieged by American pirates. In a summer of high-society debutante balls, politically charged tea parties, and romantic country dances, Margaret, Helena, and August discover they share an unusual bond and maybe a one in a million chance to have what they want and to change the world in the process —just like the first Queen Victoria.
Representation Includes
- WLW, mixed-race main character
- Bisexual, intersex main character
- Chinese-Canadian main character
Content Warnings
Clumsy handling of race and eugenics; major character who is initially shocked at learning she’s intersex; cheating in romantic relationshipEnding notes
Ending with f/f/m polyamoryReviews
- Lambda Literary’s review
- Acqua’s review
- Utopia State of Mind’s review
- Danika at the Lesbrary’s review
- Gretchen’s review
- Delucienne Maekerr’s review
- Elise’s review
- Kend’s review
- クリ’s review
- Reviews from intersex and First Nations reviewers needed
Where to Find
Details
- Published October 3rd 2017 by Dutton Books for Young Readers
- ISBN13: 9781101994979
A pansexual bloodmage reluctantly teams up with an undead spirit to start a rebellion among the living and the dead, in this dark YA fantasy by A.M. Strickland, author of Beyond the Black Door , whom Richard Kadrey calls “a storyteller of both grace and power.”
In Thanopolis, those gifted with magic are assigned undead spirits to guard them—and control them. Ever since Rovan’s father died trying to keep her from this fate, she’s hidden her magic. But when she accidentally reveals her powers, she’s bound to a spirit and thrust into a world of palace intrigue and deception.
Desperate to escape, Rovan finds herself falling for two people she can’t fully trust: Lydea, a beguiling, rebellious princess; and Ivrilos, the handsome spirit with the ability to control Rovan, body and soul.
Together, they uncover a secret that will destroy Thanopolis. To save them all, Rovan will have to start a rebellion in both the mortal world and the underworld, and find a way to trust the princess and spirit battling for her heart—if she doesn’t betray them first.
Representation Includes
- Pansexual female protagonist (Rovan)
- Lesbian love interest (Lydea)
Content Warnings
gore, death, rape threats, misogyny, enforced gender roles, blood, violence, death of family members (father, siblings), discussion of forced marriage and pregnancy, forced marriagesReviews
- Author review (discussion of content and content warnings)
- Althea’s review
- Charlotte’s review
- Megan’s review
- Theresa’s review
- Ellie’s review
- Isabel’s review
Where to Find
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A lyrical and dreamy reimagining of Dracula’s brides, A DOWRY OF BLOOD is a story of desire, obsession, and emancipation.
Saved from the brink of death by a mysterious stranger, Constanta is transformed from a medieval peasant into a bride fit for an undying king. But when Dracula draws a cunning aristocrat and a starving artist into his web of passion and deceit, Constanta realizes that her beloved is capable of terrible things. Finding comfort in the arms of her rival consorts, she begins to unravel their husband’s dark secrets.
With the lives of everyone she loves on the line, Constanta will have to choose between her own freedom and her love for her husband. But bonds forged by blood can only be broken by death.
Representation Includes
- Bisexual protagonists (Constanta, Magdalena, and Alexi)
Content Warnings
blood, murder, abusive relationships (emotional, verbal, physical)Reviews
- Author’s review (includes content warnings)
- Ellie’s review
- Silvia’s review
- Gerhard’s review
- Miranda’s review
Where to Find
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Vessel is a creature living in a dimension-hopping dungeon. His destiny? Working for his colony until he outlives his usefulness. But secretly, Vessel engages in acts of rebellion: he mercy-kills human prisoners meant to feed the colony’s parasitic larvae. When a doomed human prisoner, Clarien, leaves Vessel a diary about his life as a monster hunter, it opens Vessel’s eyes to a possible new life. But when his kindness to humans is discovered, he’s sentenced to a brutal, slow death.
Rhys and Sera are monster hunters, graduates of a school that takes in disabled children cast out by their families and gives them powers and training. Although they have an open marriage, nothing lasting has come of it. When clearing out a dimension-hopping dungeon, they find a young hunter named Clarien who’s been left to die by monsters. Catching feelings while taking care of him isn’t something they planned on.
However, the man they know as Clarien is Vessel, who’s taken on the first Clarien’s identity using his diary as a guide. Pretending to be human is hard, though, and he’s started having strange feelings for Rhys and Sera that he has no idea how to interpret.
Feelings that scare him with their intensity. Feelings that might not matter if Rhys and Sera find out that he’s the sort of creature they hunt…
This book features a trans character in a setting where being trans is no big deal, badass disabled monster hunters, an enormous gruff swordsman who would do anything for his adorable bard, a back brace that doubles as armor, and a soft bisexual eldritch abomination learning what love really is.
Representation Includes
- Polyamorous, bisexual protagonists
Content Warnings
Sexual assault; gore
Reviews
Where to Find
Details
- Published August 13th 2020
-
ASIN: B085L4PY93
A century has passed since warlock Alexey arrived in Kalinstad, chased across the ocean and dying from fever. His memories of what brought him to such a state were lost; since then he passed his days quietly, buried deep in the snowy mountains in a place rarely visited by outsiders.
His life of peace is brought to a sudden halt with the arrival of two Darkrow, sent by the Blue Emperor to unravel a mystery they will not explain. More than mere Darkrow, they are demons, dangerous and cold, but also beautiful and fascinating in the way they touch and cling and silently watch.
When they offer Alexey a chance to become a Darkrow, he accepts—and his whole world falls apart.
Representation Includes
- Pansexual protagonist (Alexey)
- Asexual love interest (Porfiry)
- Asexual, sex-repulsed female minor character who becomes a major character in the sequel (Katerini)
- A M/M/M romance
Content Warnings
Consensual cannibalism in the backstory, references to violent death, goreReviews
Where to Find
Out of print but still possible to find at libraries and as epub format
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There were two secrets in Varenx House, and Alizhan was one of them.
Alizhan can’t see faces, but she can read minds. Her mysterious ability leaves her unable to touch or be touched without excruciating pain. Rescued from abandonment and raised by the wealthy and beautiful Iriyat ha-Varensi, Alizhan has grown up in isolation, using her gift to steal secrets from Iriyat’s rivals, the ruling class of Laalvur. But Iriyat keeps secrets of her own.
When Alizhan discovers that she isn’t the only one of her kind, and that a deadly plot threatens everyone like her, there’s only one person she can trust.
Ev liked having a secret. None of the other girls in the village had a thief-friend.
Evreyet Umarsad—“Ev” to her parents and her one friend—longs to be the kind of hero she reads about in books. But the rest of the world feels impossibly far away from her life on a farm outside Laalvur. Ev will never lay eyes on the underground city of Adappyr, the stars of the Nightward Coast, or the venomous medusas that glow in the dark depths of the sea.
At least on her weekly trip to the market, Ev gets to see her thief—the strange young woman who slips by her cart and playfully steals a handful of thornfruit. When the thief needs help, Ev doesn’t hesitate. Together, they uncover a conspiracy that draws them all over Laalvur and beyond.
Thornfruit is the first book in The Gardener’s Hand trilogy.
Representation Includes
- Bisexual female protagonist (Ev)
- Lesbian protagonist (Alizhan)
- Sequels include a F/F/N-B romance
Content Warnings
emotional abuse (of a main character, while she’s a child, by a parental figure—mostly in backstory, but often referred to), manipulation/gaslighting (aided by magical memory alteration), kidnapping, pregnancy, an attempted coerced abortion, physical violence, mild gore (some minor characters get, uh, dissolved by a sea monster), murder, torture, unethical experiments on children, prejudice (mostly against people with magic, but also there are references to prejudices based on ability, skin color, foreign nationality, religion, sex, sexuality), arson, supporting character dies in a tidal wave, tidal wave causes general destructionAwards
- Nominated for the Bisexual Book Award
Reviews
Where to Find
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On the eve of a recurring catastrophic event known to extinguish nations and reshape continents, a troubled orphan evades death and slavery to uncover her own bloody past… while a world goes to war with itself.
In the frozen kingdom of Saiduan, invaders from another realm are decimating whole cities, leaving behind nothing but ash and ruin.
As the dark star of the cataclysm rises, an illegitimate ruler is tasked with holding together a country fractured by civil war, a precocious young fighter is asked to betray his family and a half-Dhai general must choose between the eradication of her father’s people or loyalty to her alien Empress.
Through tense alliances and devastating betrayal, the Dhai and their allies attempt to hold against a seemingly unstoppable force as enemy nations prepare for a coming together of worlds as old as the universe itself.
In the end, one world will rise – and many will perish.
Representation Includes
- All cultures have more than two genders
- Pansexuality is the norm, homophobia and transphobia doesn’t exist, possibly no canon heterosexual characters
- The Dhai are a polyamorous society with five genders
- Genderfluid POV character
- Physically disabled/mobility impaired bisexual/pansexual girl with asthma as a POV character
Content Warnings
Genocide, violence, graphic sexual assault, war, grooming, manipulation, self harm, death, murder, domestic abuse, marital abuses, slavery, gender-based violenceReviews
Where to Find
- Amazon
- IndieBound
- Kobo
- Worldcat