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Review: This Is How You Lose The Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone (2019)
“There should not be a sheet of cream-colored paper, clean save a single line in a long, trailing hand: Burn before reading.
Red likes to feel. It is a fetish. Now she feels fear. And eagerness.
She was right.”
– This Is How You Lose The Time War, Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone
Rating: ★★★★
Genre: Sci-Fi, Post-Apocalyptic
Categories: F/F, time travelDescription: A post-apocalyptic time travel novel written in a swapping-point-of-view style, featuring letters between the protagonists. Red and Blue are operatives from different factions of time travelling organizations trying to manipulate the worlds and their timelines to their own ends. They’re both the best at what they do, and recognize each other’s skill—leading to them starting to secretly, covertly exchange letters, and slowly start to care about each other. Obviously, that has consequences.
Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. And thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Except discovery of their bond would be death for each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That’s how war works. Right?
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Review: Young Avengers: The Children’s crusade by Allan Heinberg & Jim Cheung (2011)
Rating: ★★★★
Genre: Graphic Novel, Contemporary, Superheroes
Categories: M/M, Superheroes
Content Warnings: Highlight to read: Brief scenes of racism and homophobia from background characters towards our heroes. Major character death.
Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & NobleDescription: Some years ago, Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch, in grief over the loss of her children, used her reality-rewriting powers to kill a bunch of her teammates and remove the mutant powers from almost all mutants, then disappeared. But Billy and his teammate Tommy have strong reason to believe that they were the souls of her children, transmigrated into new infants in utero of other people, and born again onto this world. After all, he’s a reality-rewriting wizard and Tommy is a speedster and they look identical.
Nobody except Magneto wants Wanda back—both the X-men and the Avengers think they’d have to kill her—but only by finding her can they answer these questions, and perhaps save Mutantkind in the process. …
I’m rereading a bunch of the Young Avengers content, which has won several GLAAD awards for the queer content it introduced. If you want to follow along, I made a Young Avengers reading guide over here to make it easier to understand the order, where to get the comics, and see my other Young Avengers reviews!
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Review: Young Avengers: The Complete Collection vol. 1 by Allan Heinberg & Jim Cheung (2006)
Rating: ★★★★
Genre: Graphic Novel, Contemporary, Superheroes
Categories: M/M, Superheroes
Content Warnings: Highlight to read: Reference to kidnapping/assault (possible sexual assault) of a minor. Brief scenes of racism and homophobia from background characters toward our heroes. Some sexism of lead characters to other lead characters.
Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & NobleDescription: When the original Avengers disband, a team of teenage heroes comes together to fill the gap. Their first order of business: surviving the wrath of Kang the Conqueror and weathering the disapproval of the adult Avengers! Next, the newly-formed Young Avengers take on super-powered sadist Mr. Hyde, the extraterrestrial Super-Skrull, and a full-scale alien invasion, juggling their parents and their private lives at the same time!
I’m rereading a bunch of the Young Avengers content, which has won several GLAAD awards for the queer content it introduced. If you want to follow along, I made a Young Avengers reading guide over here to make it easier to understand the order, where to get the comics, and see my other Young Avengers reviews!
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Here There Be Gerblins (The Adventure Zone #1) by the McElroy Family & Carey Pietsch (2018)
Rating: ★★★★
Genre: High Fantasy, Graphic Novel, Comedy
Categories: Gay, Wizards, Swords & Sorcery
Content Warnings: N/A
Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & NobleDescription: Based on the hit podcast “The Adventure Zone”, join the older two McElroy brothers and father as they play D&D characters in a world DM’d by the sweet babiest brother, Griffin. Or rather, join the brave/foolhardy human fighter Magnus Burnsides, the disaffected/cowardly elf wizard Taako, and the jocular/scatterbrained dwarf cleric Merle Highchurch as they take a simple job that soon gets complicated by redacted knowledge and terrible ancient artifacts.
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Review: The Lamb Will Slaughter the Lion (Danielle Cain #1) by Margaret Killjoy (2017)
Rating: ★★★★
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Horror, Eldritch, Paranormal
Categories: F/F, Queer, Ghosts/Spirits, Demons
Content Warnings: (Highlight to read) References to a character’s previous suicide (off-screen).
Buy it at: Amazon | Barnes & NobleDescription: Itinerant traveler Danielle Cain arrives at the “ghost town” of Freedom, Iowa, a haven for squatters and anarchists living off the grid. She’s looking for an explanation for why an old friend of hers died after living here; what she finds is a guardian god who was summoned a year ago, and a town split in two between whether or not they should overthrow their oppressors via this summoned god which has begun to turn on them, or whether they should try to get rid of it entirely and live on their own.