Reviews: Books

Shira Glassman writes self-described "fluffy queer Jewish princess fantasies" (ok, I may have reworded slightly but I think I've kept the essence of it). The Second Mango introduces the reader to Perach, a secondary-world fantasy realm where everyone just happens to be Jewish. I mean that in the most positive possible way -- when creating a fantasy setting completely separate from real-world history, why not set it up exactly as you choose?

I've been a fan of Donoghue's academic works on the history of same-sex relations between women, but although I've collected up a number of her novels, I've only recently decided to prioritize them on my reading list. One essential thing to know, going in, is that a Donoghue novel about romantic and/or sexual relationships between women in history is not a "lesbian historical romance." These aren't formulaic books with happily-ever-after endings, they're fictionalizations of the lives of real historic women.

When reading a contemporary werewolf story, generally one’s first thought isn’t “I love the multi-layered allegorical resonances,” but that’s what I came away with from Lundoff’s Silver Moon (originally published 2012 by Lethe Press but now reissued as one of the initial offerings of Queen of Swords Press).

I ran across this book during my “book release re-boot” promoting titles released in November 2016 and was rather startled to realize I hadn’t taken note of it when it originally came out. But that was what the re-boot was about, after all. A Certain Persuasion (very clever title, by the way) is an anthology of queer stories inspired in some way by the fiction of Jane Austen. It includes new looks at Austen’s protagonists, imagined back-stories for minor characters, and stories about modern characters that interact with the Austen canon in some way.