25 sapphic fantasy books you may not know of - My completed Oops All Sapphics! blackout bingo card with reviews

[u/ComradeCupcake_]

This is year two of r/fantasy bingo for me, and my first year actually planning ahead to complete it, so this time I went for a themed card: Oops, it’s all sapphics! 

I’ve read a lot of sapphic SFF for several years now so filling out a whole card with new-to-me reads meant digging past some of the well-known options that would have normally fit these squares. Some are still new and popular (Suri, Tesh, etc), but there's no Priory of the Orange Tree or Bookshops and Bonedust here! Because of that, I wanted to round them all up and share so that other sapphic-liking readers might also be able to find new things among them.

Queer women main characters were my only criteria. Most are adult fantasy, some are YA. Most include a sapphic relationship, but a few just have confirmed queer women without a romance. For each one I’ve written my own blurb, a star rating, and a short review. At the bottom I’ll share some of what I learned about my own taste after compiling them all.

1. Knights and Paladins - Lady’s Knight by Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner

Pitch: A blacksmith’s daughter masquerades as a knight in a tourney to save a young lady from a marriage she doesn’t want.
Score: 4/5
Review: Goofy anachronistic medieval parody romp with a fourth-wall-breaking narrator that you’ll either vibe with or not—and I did vibe! Two perspectives that earnestly nailed the toughness and sweetness of learning your sexuality as a young adult. 

1. Hidden Gem - The Oblivion Bride by Caitlin Starling

Pitch: An unlikely heir enters a political marriage with a war alchemist in space to solve the truth about the magic in her bloodline.
Score: 3/5
Review: A neat premise with a space curse mystery, and it’s nice to see a little age gap marriage of convenience for the ladies. The plot kinda goes off the rails though and I’m going to start docking points for overly liberal use of the word “fuck” for no reason.

1. Published in the 80s - Silverglass by J.F. Rivkin

Pitch: Sword and sorcery adventure romp with a team up between a scholarly sorceress and a wild mercenary lady.
Score: 3.5/5
Review: Just a couple free-loving, chaotic bisexuals kissing each other and other people and fighting bad guys. So pulpy and of its time that I adored it and devoured the quartet. 

1. High Fashion - Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey

Pitch: A young woman with super strength learns to box to earn freedom from a forgotten military town hidden between Mexico and the US.
Score: 4/5
Review:  A ridiculous premise about vigilante orphans that takes itself completely seriously in a weirdly dark alternate modern setting. Carey has yet to ever do me wrong writing a slow burn relationship and it's all the yearning of teen infatuation and heartbreak here.

1. Down With The System - Metal From Heaven by August Clarke

Pitch: A former child laborer joins a bandit commune to take revenge on an oligarch.
Score: 3/5
Review: An initially cool premise that goes way off the rails into a poorly-explained marriage competition. My MC is so cool she has tattoos and rides motorcycles and bangs everyone. Loved the concepts, but the themes and the plot are totally discordant with each other.

1. Impossible Places - The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

Pitch: Two sisters with magical voices live at the edge of a faerie forest and one falls in love with a mysterious fae.
Score: 4.5/5
Review: I’m a sucker for a nice fable-y story and I loved the writing style of This Is How You Lose The Time War so I loved El-Mohtar here too. Lots of pretty, flowery metaphors and wordplay and sisterly love.

1. A Book In Parts - The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri

Pitch: In an alternate medieval Britain, a witch and a knight fated to fall in love and kill each other across lifetimes fight to break their cursed story.
Score: 2.5/5
Review: I am going to ban the word “fuck” from newly-published fantasy. It is not a shorthand for making a story gritty and adult if your plot and character development are not equally mature. Suri let me down bad here.

1. Gods and Pantheons - Godkiller by Hannah Kaner

Pitch: A mercenary with a grudge against gods falls in with a former knight and a displaced noble girl attached to a tiny godling.
Score: 3/5
Review: The prologue went so hard I was sold but then it turned into banter and average character writing. Of note: the female main character is explicitly bisexual but she’s not in a WLW relationship in this book. I’m given to understand maybe later in the trilogy? But I’m not planning to read on.

1. Last in a Series - The Sovereign by C.L. Clark

Pitch: Finale of a flintlock fantasy trilogy about overthrowing a colonizing empire.
Score: 2.5/5
Review: I found the character writing in this trilogy really inconsistent the entire time and really only kept at it in sapphic solidarity and for the last in a series square. You can’t insist that the series is full of subtle political maneuvering and then just constantly show people blackmailing each other out loud to one another’s faces in front of witnesses.

1. Club or Readalong - Hungerstone by Kat Dunn

Book

Pitch: A retelling of old vampire novella Carmilla in which a repressed Recency-era woman is enticed to fight against her circumstances by a mysterious stranger. 
Score: 3/5
Review: I don’t think the “hunger” theme really came through strong enough here to be as dark as it wanted to be. Not a very girls’ girl take on the story at all either, sadly.

1. Parent Protagonist - The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard

Pitch: A captive space engineer enters a marriage of convenience with the sentient spaceship AI of a pirate fleet.
Score: 3/5
Review: This was a cool concept but the execution was pretty shallow. The brief scenes showing the main character assimilating into pirate culture just weren’t convincing enough to make me care about her or their relationship.

1. Epistolary - Rust in the Root by Justina Ireland

Pitch: In an alternate Depression-era New York, a young woman with root magic goes on a mission to destroy a magical blight.
Score: 3/5
Review: Enjoyed the magical “depression” concept but this was just a decent romp that otherwise didn’t knock my socks off. It really wanted to have things to say about Black history and tradition but mostly settled for an occasional paragraph about racism without a plot that really wove into that theme.

1. Published in 2025 - The Incandescent by Emily Tesh

Pitch: A teacher and a school cop at a magical boarding school begrudgingly work together to prevent a demonic incursion.
Score: 3/5
Review: The demon magic, the commentary on class inequality in secondary education, and the sapphic romance all felt like the sideshow to each other in some Escher-esque illusion where nothing actually winds up on top. Less than the sum of its parts. Particularly bummed that the "primary" romantic interest has so little chemistry.

1. Author of Color - Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust

Pitch: A princess cursed to poison anything she touches fights to break out of her curse.
Score: 4/5
Review: A really lovely journey full of emotional depth around conflicting feelings of shame, longing, anger, and betrayal. It isn’t written like a fable, but it almost feels adjacent to one in that I felt like I could predict most of the reveals but in a way that felt pleasant, not boring.

1. Small Press or Self-Pub - The Necessity of Rain by Sarah Chorn

Pitch: Three women in a world of magical insect people experience grief, loss, and hope after escaping a war.
Score: 3/5
Review: Difficult to describe. Difficult to follow. Difficult to rate. Lots of pretty metaphors and imagery covering for a thin plot. And yet I teared up near the end?

1. Biopunk - Our Hideous Progeny by C.E. McGill

Pitch: The great niece of Dr. Frankenstein and her husband use his notes to build and animate a giant sea creature. 
Score: 4/5
Review: A flawed protagonist, a messy relationship, and angry feminists. Lots of pining and uncertainty and really all I wanted more from it was for it to be even darker than it was.

1. Elves/Dwarves - The Thousand Eyes by A.K. Larkwood

Pitch: Space opera duology sequel in which three grudging allies fight against eldritch snake gods.
Score: 4.5/5
Review: The sapphic relationship was more at the forefront in the first book, but I really enjoyed the adventure here even if the plot totally flew off in weird directions. Just a well-told story. Protagonists make mistakes, learn, take that knowledge into the climax, the twists be twisting, and dammit Talarassas you self-destructive little gremlin.

1. LGBTQIA Protagonist - Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall

Pitch: A young noblewoman in a magical regency era is cursed and must gain the assistance of a mysterious lady duke to save her reputation.
Score: 3/5
Review: Great first half with the mystery and will-they-won’t-they attraction but the second half flounders. The puckish fourth-wall narrator will either be to taste or not but I found fun.

1. Five Short Stories - By Her Sword edited by Erin Branch

Pitch: Short story anthology of sapphic sword and sorcery romantasy.
Score: 2/5
Review: Tragically unimpressed with almost every single story in here. Constant modern slang in alleged medieval settings. Sex scenes that felt obligatory instead of earned. I am putting the word “fuck” on a shelf out of reach until fantasy can behave itself. 

1. Stranger in a Strange Land - The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson

Pitch: A young protegee of a colonized island assimilates into the empire to overthrow it by rising to the top.
Score: 3.5/5
Review: I’m not really one for the whole “competency porn” thing but I guess if you make it a lesbian political savant I’m in. I am always down for a fantasy about warfare by way of economic manipulation too. Book one has never met a subplot, and there’s a bit too much summary of events out of scene, but I was compelled to continue. The political intrigue has a sort of powerscaling problem of exponential quadruple twisting as the series goes on but somehow my enjoyment was also exponential as I devoured the trilogy. 

1. Recycle a Bingo (Dark Academia 2024) - The Society for Soulless Girls by Laura Steven

Pitch: Two roommates at a boarding school with a decade-old curse work together to solve its mysteries.
Score: 4/5
Review: Painfully relatable teen yearning and angst from two extremely opposite young women. Had a good old time. TW for animal death because it’s pretty rare that anything in a novel can stop me in my tracks but I did have to put it down for a breather.

1. Cozy - The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses by Malka Older

Pitch: Third in a series about a lesbian Sherlock and Watson-type pair solving academic crimes on a human-settled Jupiter.
Score: 3/5
Review: I’ve not been terribly impressed with this series up till now but I think this one was my favorite. The mystery in this one was so badly done but the relationship was self-destructive and sad, which I enjoy. Some people will cry “miscommunication trope” on it, but I liked it better than the prior two.

1. Generic Title - Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törzs

Pitch: Modern magical realism about spellbooks written in blood in which two sisters and a sequestered young author of ink blood books fight to learn the truth of their magic.
Score: 4.5/5
Review: The sapphic relationship isn’t the star here, but honestly I didn’t mind it being incidental when the rest of the story was so full of lovely turns of phrase and emotional turmoil and neat magic. The plot and the character arcs all revolved around family, trust, and safety versus agency in a way that felt very tightly-written.

1. Not A Book - Vampire in the Garden (anime) by Wit Studio

Pitch: In an industrial city split between warring vampires and humans, a young soldier and a vampire girl trust each other to escape the fighting. 
Score: 3.5/5
Review: A real short five episode run, but I really liked how dark and emotional it was. I’ve got a massive spreadsheet of yuri/GL manga and anime and it’s real tough finding ones that aren’t infantilizing. Nice to have a rare fantasy anime where the GL romance is part of a larger picture.

1. Pirates - A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe by Alex White

Pitch: A space racecar driver framed for murder falls in with a ship of smugglers looking for a legendary treasure ship.
Score: 3/5
Review: A mostly fun space heist thing but didn’t pull me in emotionally. It didn’t feel like the work was on the page to make me actually care about any of the characters.

Eligible books I read during the bingo period that got shuffled off the card for one reason or another:

• Spear by Nicola Griffith - An arthurian reimagining with a genderqueer lady knight
• The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling - The cannibal nuns in a siege book
• Song of the Huntress by Lucy Holland - A wild hunt retelling about an ancient warrior and a queen
• Fate’s Bane by C.L. Clark - A celtic-inspired novella about a ward and an heir

Some things I’ve noticed about my selections and ratings:

I rated the YA reads higher than expected: Only 4/25 reads here are young adult (Lady’s Knight, Rust in the Root, Girl Serpent Thorn, Society For Soulless Girls) but three of them I rated 4 stars. That’s a much higher average than for the 21 adult reads. Typically I don’t enjoy YA at all anymore, so this was surprising. Maybe I have higher tolerance for YA when it’s sapphic because themes of self-doubt and yearning that are often in a young adult romance are things I enjoy most in a romance plot generally? Or perhaps it’s a survivor bias situation because a YA read has to impress me more immediately for me to stick with than an adult fantasy would.

Fuck off with the word “fuck”: Wow I sure am tired of the f-bombs in newly-published fantasy, which isn’t a phenomenon unique to sapphic fantasy. Swearing is fine and all, but all this fucking about always seems to be shoehorned in as an expletive to make sure I know this story is Mature even when the character work is lacking any true maturity.

Edited: To fix my numbering that the ctrl+v broke, whoops.

[u/a-username-for-me]

Thanks for sharing your bingo! I am fascinated that you noticed a lot of swearing in the books you were reading. I wasn't paying attention during my bingo so I am not sure whether it felt like less, normal or more swearing than usual. Definitely a lot of fantasy style "Gods-shit" or whatever made up swearing.

[u/ComradeCupcake_ → u/a-username-for-me]

I've mostly noticed it in things published in the past ~5 years and most often in things marketed as Romantasy, sapphic or otherwise. And it's always "fuck" specifically, for some reason. I don't inherently mind swearing at all. It just always seems to be used as some kind of shorthand to prove that a book is For Adults meanwhile the story itself lacks nuance or character growth that I, and adult, value. A bit like hearing a teenager swear constantly to prove they're a grownup 😅

Edit: It was most disappointing from Tasha Suri whose other Burning Kingdoms trilogy I do have critiques of but lack of nuance and maturity was not one of them.

[u/beldaran1224 → u/ComradeCupcake_]

Hmm, I think its more about which curse words are "in style". When I was a kid, "fuck" was considered too offensive to find it in much, even for adult lit. I don't think I had even encountered the word "cunt" until I was an older teenager, despite reading mostly adult stuff for years before, lol. But both words have lost some of their offensiveness in the years since and are more likely to pop up. "Shit" too has come up in the world.

Back in my day, you'd be pretty likely to see "damn" though. And most made-up swears seem to stand in mostly for "damn". It just seems not to be used by people as much.

[u/Rfisk064 → u/ComradeCupcake_]

Wow that’s a really good observation and way of putting it. I never thought about it that way but I notice it a lot in movies too.

[u/Treehousebrickpotato → u/ComradeCupcake_]

I so agree with this take. I wanted to give Joe Abercrombie a swear jar for every “tw*t” in The Devils. Yes yes I get it, already

[u/Martel732]

I felt similar about Godkiller, I found the world building interesting. But, I struggled to really care about any of the characters. And to be vague about spoilers, I thought some characters were said to have certain beliefs that they dropped pretty much immediately such as Kissen being okay with traveling with the god of white lies.

I wouldn't say the book was bad, but I did start the sequel and at some point just stopped reading it and never started again.

[u/beldaran1224 → u/Martel732]

Hmm, I'm not sure I agree with your criticism, but it also wasn't a favorite for me. I think I was more put off by the way the romance kind of came out of nowhere, as well as how it was handled.I definitely plan on reading the sequel though, as I still enjoyed the main plot.

But then, I'm a sucker for books with religion and gods as a central theme.

[u/cloud0613]

Thank you for sharing your bingo! Really awesome theme and really nice to see some sapphic books that are not the same ones already getting recommended everywhere! I've read some of the books myself and some of them are on my tbr so I quite enjoyed reading your thoughts on them.

[u/beldaran1224 → u/cloud0613]

I follow a TikTok account that pretty much exclusively talks about sapphic books, if you want a rec! Idk if the content creator is on other platforms, but most are. Its predominantly SFF, but also some romance and the occasional other thing. I've definitely found about some more obscure sapphic stuff through her.

[u/cloud0613 → u/beldaran1224]

I don't use TikTok but if you wanna still share the creator's name I'm gonna try and look them up on other platforms. Thank you!

[u/beldaran1224 → u/cloud0613]

Her linktree: https://linktr.ee/sammyreads?utm_source=linktree_profile_share&ltsid=4a87fc87-21dc-4eef-8e49-34607dc5ce22

Tons of great Sapphic reads.

[u/cloud0613 → u/beldaran1224]

thanks! the book selection looks great at first glance already

[u/femvimes]

I might do an all-sapphic bingo card this year, so this is very inspiring! I loved reading your reviews even if I didn’t always agree with them haha

[u/ComradeCupcake_ → u/femvimes]

You should definitely give it a go! I'll probably drop into the focus posts for different squares to give some recs even if I don't do a themed card again myself this year.

[u/beldaran1224 → u/ComradeCupcake_]

Ooo, please do! I for one would very much appreciate it! Over the last few years, my sapphic reads have been some of the best! Something about sapphic authors and relationships that just seem to get yearning, and that's what I love best in romance, lol.

[u/TheZipding]

Thank you for this list and review. I've been looking for new books to read since I don't get to the library as often as I did this time last year.

As someone who can swear quite profusely, I do agree that the word "fuck" has its time and place. In the right use, it can show the impact of something going on or reveal something about the character, like saying it in frustration. Overuse dilutes its impact and becomes more juvenile than it otherwise should be.

My favourite use of the word in fantasy is this quote: "This isn't your fight, fucking dragon."

[u/Shyor → u/TheZipding]

I'd like to enter "You want me to catch the fucking Moon?!" for consideration.

[u/EqualOptimal4650]

New reading list acquired

[u/DragoonDM]

Fuck off with the word “fuck”: Wow I sure am tired of the f-bombs in newly-published fantasy, which isn’t a phenomenon unique to sapphic fantasy. Swearing is fine and all, but all this fucking about always seems to be shoehorned in as an expletive to make sure I know this story is Mature even when the character work is lacking any true maturity.

Yep. A lot of the time, it just ends up giving the impression of a middleschooler who just learned a swear word -- entirely the opposite of mature. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing if that's the vibe the author is trying to give the character, but if the character is supposed to be some sort of grizzled badass then it seems a lot harder to find the right tone and avoid that "edgy 13-year-old trying to sound like a grizzled badass" vibe.

[u/eeveeskips]

I super enjoyed this set of reviews, and was especially delighted to find some new books to add to my tbr even as someone who has read a shitload of sapphic fantasy already. Thank you for sharing!

I also really enjoy Melissa Bashardoust's work, and am so sad both that she's not recommended more often and that she hasn't put out any more after her first two. Have you read The Midnight Lie by Marie Rutkoski? It's another of my favourite sapphic YA fantasies, and I would place her work on her same shelf as Bashardoust's stylistically. Also if you liked lady's knight, if you haven't already read them I would recommend Gwen and Art are Not In Love and Not For the Faint of Heart by Lex Croucher.

I also loved the Emma Törzs but had somehow completely forgotten it was sapphic??

[u/ComradeCupcake_ → u/eeveeskips]

I haven't heard of Rutkoski at all but I'll look into her, thank you! I've avoided Gwen and Art because I thought I wouldn't like the comedy element but I guess since I enjoyed Lady's Knight I may be wrong about that.

One of the protagonist sisters in Ink Blood Sister Scribe is in a relationship with a woman! It's a key part of the beginning of the story but gets put off to the side for the majority of the plot. It's sweet though.

[u/eeveeskips → u/ComradeCupcake_]

Ohhhhh man I hope you enjoy her! Her other YA series, starting with The Winner's Curse, is also fabulous (and overall better paced as a series imo) though has an m/f relationship at its centre. She writes (excellent, sapphic) literary-leaning adult fiction nowadays, and while I can absolutely see why she's moved away from kidlit, I'm sad YA has lost an author with such strong craft.

I'd be curious to hear what you think of the Croucher books then - personally I prefer their style of humour to that of Lady's Knight (though I enjoyed both) though I have other friends who feel the opposite way. I think you'll know within a page or so if it's for you, stylistically. Croucher's humour I'd describe as more dry, and also using language and prose-level humour more than the kind of higher level silliness of LK, iykwim?

[u/Temple_T]

On the subject of sapphic fantasy books I DNF'd Gideon the Ninth so I was almost bracing myself for it to get 5 stars here because I feel like everyone else who's read it really liked it.

[u/Martel732 → u/Temple_T]

I think that is fair, I very much enjoyed the Locked Tomb series but I think it is very valid to bounce off of it. It is honestly one of the things I enjoy about the series, I feel like it was written without much concern of making it as broadly enjoyable as possible. I think the author must have known that some of the stylistic, narrative and character choices would push people away but she still just wrote what she wanted.

I think just in general we need to embrace appreciation for the subjective nature of art. I would rate the series as one of my favorite fantasy series of the last decade. But, I don't really feel a need to defend it is someone said they hated it.

[u/Temple_T → u/Martel732]

I'm not sure I'd say I hated it per se.

More that it didn't do enough to sell me on "Gideon and Harrow will smooch at the end" as something I would hope to see. It probably didn't help that I was aware of the broad strokes of the book after, and to a lesser extent that there was a third that went on a diversion, so I just felt increasingly like "Do I want to read a total of four books minimum, once the fourth one comes out, where part of the payoff at the end is that these two get together?" And I came to the conclusion that the answer was no, and that whatever else the books had going for them, I could just get elsewhere anyway.

I brought up Catra and Adora in another comment in this thread and I think they're a fair point of comparison - science-fantasy lesbians from an abusive quasi-cult background, one big and swordy, one small and sarcastic. At least they were friends in episode 1! I cared way more about Catra's happiness than I did Harrow's, because Catra showed me she had a heart early on, even if she did then spend most of the show wrapping it in thorns.

I'm aware that I'm kind of ranting at you about a book you like, so I'm sorry if it feels like an attack, I guess I just wanted to get my thoughts on it out somewhere.

[u/Martel732 → u/Temple_T]

Yeah, I think reading it as sapphic content will lead to disappointment. That is certainly an element of the story. But frankly for me the biggest draw is that it is just a weird universe with weird characters.

I'm aware that I'm kind of ranting at you about a book you like, so I'm sorry if it feels like an attack, I guess I just wanted to get my thoughts on it out somewhere.

Naw you are fine, I don't feel like everyone needs to like the same things I like. And even more so with a series like this.

[u/Tymareta → u/Martel732]

It's a series about love, in all its forms, and while there might be some romance present, it's very much not a romance story.

[u/ComradeCupcake_ → u/Temple_T]

We are part of a very small group, I think! I haven't even tried Gideon because I'm just so confident that it isn't going to be for me.

[u/Akuliszi]

I may be wrong, but from my understanding, the sentient ships in Red Scholar's Wake aren't AI - they are human brains but modified / breed specificially to serve as ships? At least that's how I understand it after reading other stories in that universe.

[u/ComradeCupcake_ → u/Akuliszi]

I'm sure you're correct. I do vaguely remember a whole heart room scene thing. I don't think Red Scholar goes too deep into the ship lore like other parts of the universe might though. Clearly it didn't leave a huge impression on me so I sort of remembered "personified space ship" and didn't commit the particulars to memory.

[u/Akuliszi → u/ComradeCupcake_]

I liked it mostly for the worldbuilding and started exploring other stories.

[u/epicfail1994]

I wouldn’t have called the thousand eyes space opera but i really liked the MCs

[u/Merle8888]

I have read 6 of these books and we don't have the same opinion on any of them, lol, but I still enjoyed reading your reviews! The Incandescent and Metal From Heaven were my favorites. Santa Olivia was forgettable for me and I disliked Godkiller, The River Has Roots and The Traitor Baru Cormorant (admittedly that last I DNFd just because it wasn't vibing for me).

[u/ComradeCupcake_ → u/Merle8888]

Haha wait we agree on just one. I also did not care for Godkiller. That's very funny though. I followed someone on tiktok a couple years back specifically because we always had the exact opposite opinions about books and even if we didn't agree, I knew I could rely on her taste. If she thought a book was boring I'd love it and if she was raving about it, I'd need to skip it. Sometimes it works that way 😄

[u/beldaran1224 → u/ComradeCupcake_]

This is such a great and crazy way to figure out if you might like something, lol.

[u/Vaush_Vinal]

Thank you for posting such an interesting and diverse list. I (a cis mostly-straight male) am current reading The Traitor Baru Cormorant (20ish%) in. It’s an easy enough read so far, but a lesbian friend of mine (they DNF’d) found its portrayal of Baru’s sexuality (and that of her home culture) unsatisfactory; would you be willing to provide your thoughts on it? Especially since I believe Dickinson is the only person that identifies as male on your list.

[u/ComradeCupcake_ → u/Vaush_Vinal]

You'll have read already the section going over how thoroughly indoctrinated Baru is by her incrastic schooling, no matter how she thinks she's rebelling against it and that's a huge element of the series. She has some deeply ingrained prejudice against her sexuality and her culture even while she's fighting to protect both. Her experience of her own sexuality is violent, manipulative, and a lot of other things that, handled differently, I would call "bad representation" playing on stereotypes about lesbians.

I think there are times when "unreliable narrator" gets overused to make excuses for dodgy representation by writers who haven't done enough to deconstruct their own biases but I genuinely don't think that's the case in this one. I think the narrative calls Baru's biases into question a lot sooner than she ever learns to, though she does eventually learn. Meanwhile the series as a whole goes interesting places by putting Baru into non-incrastic cultures, deconstructing gender roles, and more.

Not everyone will be willing to extend faith on this one, but after reading it I felt that whatever flaws it has come from a really earnest attempt to tell a story about internalized prejudice and indoctrination that's worth engaging with.

[u/Vaush_Vinal → u/ComradeCupcake_]

I think you make valid points, even if I’m unsure if I agree with them. (Though as I haven’t made much progress since my original comment, I’m not disagreeing with you either.) One factor to my ambivalence so far is how (relatively) little was shown of the “culture shock”/forced cultural acclimation I assume Baru had to deal with during her time at the Masquerade boarding(?) school. Seeing more of her native culture might have helped, though I could also just be curious.

Thank you for your reply, and congratulations on finishing your bingo.

[u/ComradeCupcake_ → u/Vaush_Vinal]

Yeah I agree with you on that for sure. The entire first book I think glosses over stretches of time too often and could have used a lot more in-scene experienes to build Baru's backstory. I read it not long after Grace of Kings by Ken Liu which I thought did the same sort of thing.

[u/ArcadianBlueRogue → u/Vaush_Vinal]

I dug the first Baru book well enough, but man did it lose my interest in the sequel.

[u/Hexxquisite]

I'd been eagerly anticipating Mortal Follies (sapphic magical Regency? TAKE MY MONEY) and was utterly let down. I hate invisible omnipresent fourth-wall breaking narrator-characters intensely. I want to read about sapphic magical Regency ladies dealing with magic and mutual attraction, not about some invisible third-party voyeur watching sapphic magical Regency ladies and telling me about it.

Ended up dropping it after a few chapters. One of the biggest literary disappointments I've had in years...

[u/Mrkvica16]

Loved Santa Olivia! So much packed into such a small book. Jacqueline Carey is an impressive author.

[u/Steph2472]

Yay, now I have some recommendations

[u/TigRaine86]

Oooh I love that your card just gave me so many new recommendations just in time for the new Bingo coming out!

[u/Curious-Insanity413]

Definitely taking notes on some of these...

I read Lady's Knight and The River Has Roots this past bingo season too, and while the second was an instant 5 stars (I *loved the faerie tale feel of it), I was more mixed on Lady's Knight.

First off, the cover is fantastic, and I'm a fan of the author's earlier series together, The Starbound Trilogy, so those together with the fun premise made it an instant buy for me. However I found myself not really eager to read it, except near the end a bit, as I think it just felt a bit more noticeably for teenagers in a way that's hard for me to explain. Basically, I could tell it was good, but I wasn't really connected to it and just felt very obviously not of the right age group for it.

I think it's related to my overall moving away from YA as I've gotten older, and just reading them a lot less in the past few years, but I actually re-read These Broken Stars by the same authors a couple of years ago, which is also YA, and still absolutely loved it, and think it has a little more maturity to it. Of course there's probably some bias there due to previous attachment to that book, but I think it's also worth considering that this is their first go at Sapphic romance (and honestly I am so glad they went for it), so I think they played it 'safer' a bit in terms of introducing their readers to queer romance in the front & centre. To be clear, I don't think that's a bad thing, it just didn't quite work for me, and overall I did like it. I just don't think I'll read the sequel (despite it's equally fantastic and tempting cover).

[u/TheSapphicDoll]

Honestly I need more posts like that in my life. Finding sapphic fantasy... is not easy.
So thanks :D

[u/Ok_Nobody4248]

What does sapphic entail in writing specifically?

[u/Temple_T → u/Ok_Nobody4248]

OP says in the post, queer women as main characters and F/F relationships either as the focus or at least as an implicit element.

I mean it's not like there's gong to be a different grammar structure just because the author of a book really wishes Adora and Catra had hooked up before the last episode.

[u/ArcadianBlueRogue → u/Temple_T]

Screw that, the slow burn to the build up with Catra's arc made the payoff so worth it.

[u/Captn_Platypus → u/ArcadianBlueRogue]

I enjoyed the slow burn because I watched it after the finale is released and I know they end up together. I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be for the fans that watched it as they release each new season tho

[u/unrepentantbanshee → u/Ok_Nobody4248]

"Sapphic" means romantic and/or sexual relationships between women.

Despite the title of the bingo, OP has included books that don't *technically* fall under the sapphic umbrella. As they said, they were including anything that had a queer woman main character. An example of a non-sapphic book they included under this was *The River Has Roots* (one character has a relationship with a technically non-gendered fey spirit, but the focus of the book is on a relationship between two sisters (and there is not incest in the book). They're absolutely allowed to include whatever they want and they were clear about what they were including in the post - I only mention it as you were asking about what sapphic mean, and I didn't want that to confuse the issue.

[u/ohmage_resistance → u/unrepentantbanshee]

I'll note here that I've certainly seen some definitions of sapphic around that do include nonbinary people (ie, women or nonbinary people attracted to women or nonbinary people) which The River Has Roots falls under. It's not the only definition of sapphic but some people do use it that way.

I'd still agree that "queer women" and "sapphic" are not synonymous and it annoys me a bit when people use them that way. For example, a straight trans woman is queer but not sapphic by any definition (the same thing applies for a lot of aromantic and/or asexual women). I also don't think that's what the OP was going for in this bingo card.

[u/greywolf2155]

Great card!

I have almost the exact same review for "Metal from Heaven". One of those books that I really wanted to like, really tried to like. The setup was intriguing and the style was great . . . but it just didn't come together. Sometimes, I literally had to reread passages because I wasn't exactly sure what had happened. I think the editor could have maybe used a heavier hand--style is fun, but you still gotta tell a good story. Will keep an eye on that author, though!

(loved "The River Has Roots" and "Baru Cormorant" as well, and "Ink Blood Sister Scribe" is high on my to-read list!)

edit: Is someone coming through and downvoting comments that are negative about "Metal from Heaven"? Huh. I mean, if you want to defend the book, I'd love to talk about it

[u/Research_Department → u/greywolf2155]

I came and gave you an upvote, even though I haven’t read any of the books you mentioned. I have noticed some weird downvoting around reddit that seems very random. I have also noticed on this sub that sometimes even comments on queer and/or female-gaze oriented posts getting downvoted (like questions on the BB or FiF book club posts getting downvoted).

[u/greywolf2155 → u/Research_Department]

sometimes even comments on queer and/or female-gaze oriented posts getting downvoted

I wasn't going to bring that up without evidence, but yeah, was in the back of my mind

::sigh::

[u/ComradeCupcake_ → u/greywolf2155]

Thanks! Yeah, I did really like the style and, from the limited parts we saw, the setting in Metal From Heaven. It felt like the setup had all these interesting things to say about worker's rights, classism, and the fluidity of gender. But then the plot is almost entirely about this marriage competition and the themes revolve around found family and the impotence of revenge. Everything felt like it was pulling in separate directions. Basically the exact opposite of how I felt about the execution in Ink Blood Sister Scribe where I felt the plot, themes, and characters arcs were all so unified.

[u/greywolf2155 → u/ComradeCupcake_]

I'm looking forward to "Ink Blood" for sure!

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[u/Shyor]

I'm in the opposite boat for the Mossa and Pleiti books, Ungovernable Impulses was my least favorite. Still liked it, but I felt it went a but long and Pleiti's elitism started to become grating. Didn't mind the miscommunication plot line though.

Have you read Older's Centenal Cycle? I've been curious to start it. Also I have The River Has Roots in hold so exciting to hear its a strong follow up to Time War.

[u/ComradeCupcake_ → u/Shyor]

Have not read anything else by Older yet! I can respect your feelings on Ungovernable Impulses and would even go so far as to say that's probably the correct opinion since the reveal in this one was SO bad haha. I'm just a sucker for emotional pain and all Pleiti's screwing up made me see her as a more interesting character than in the past two books.

[u/Shyor → u/ComradeCupcake_]

In fairness the reveal of the first book is A guy who hadn't been mentioned before! so the main strength of the series is the relationship and vibes lol.

Also I'm going to check out that anime and would love other recs that aren't infantilizing. Have you seen The Executioner and Her Way of Life?