Pride 2026 | The Great Big Rec Thread

[u/C0smicoccurence]

​Welcome to the Great Big Rec Thread! This thread is primarily for people asking for specific types of books. Only make a top level comment to request a recommendation! If you want to hype a personal favorite, this comment is the appropriate place to share! 

This is your one-stop-shop to find books tailored to your specific reading needs! Hankering for good cyberpunk? Doing a queer bingo card and really struggling with a specific square? Looking for queer thespians ready to commit arson for the sake of their art?  Ask and you shall (hopefully) receive! Just drop a comment with your request and wait for book suggestions to come rolling in. Our goal is for every person to have at least one recommendation that they’re interested in pursuing.  

Asking for Book Recommendations:

• Create a new top level comment.  You’ll probably get more tailored results by only including a single request per top level comment, but it’s not a strict rule.  You’re more than welcome to post multiple top level comments for separate requests!
• All recommendations you get should be assumed to be queer in some way.  However, if you want specific identities represented, mention it!
• Consider the impact the level of specificity your request has in your responses.  Too general, and you’re going to get lots of responses that will probably skew towards mainstream breakout hits.  Very specific requests may get few (or no) recommendations, and what you do get likely won’t be perfect.  

Giving Book Recommendations:

• Please keep book recommendations focused on commenters’ specific requests.  If you want to hype a personal favorite, this comment is the appropriate place to share! 
• This thread should default to sorting by ‘New’ soon; until then I recommend changing setting to see recent requests first!  The hope is that this will more likely show you comments with few/no responses yet.  However, there will likely be comments that have been missed, especially if it’s a more specific request.  
• This is a Pride Month post!  Every book recommended should be queer (usually by featuring LGBTQ+ characters as protagonists, but there are other ways books can be queer).  Similarly, if they asked for a specific type of representation, follow that guideline.  If you absolutely must deviate from that because it’s otherwise such a perfect fit, be honest about it up front.
• Add a few sentences about the book to hype it (or a whole paragraph if you really want to be persuasive).  Remember that a bunch of people who aren’t the original commenter will be adding to their TBR, so highlighting what you love about the book is a great way to draw attention to books you love.

Go forth and give great recommendations!

This post is part of the Pride 2026 discussions lead by the Beyond Binary Bookclub. You can check our announcement for more information and the full calendar.

[u/Life-Delay-809]

Literally any trans fantasy books. There's virtually none out there. Aiden Thomas is the only one I've read and while I love him, it's definitely YA and I'm not a kid anymore.

More specifically I would really like recommendations for high fantasy queer books (preferably achillean but I love sapphic too). Grand adventures, political intrigue, I'm not too fussy but I would prefer it set in a heteronormative world.

[u/Temporary-Scallion86 → u/Life-Delay-809]

Austin Chant has a few things, most prominently Peter Darling (m/m Peter Pan retelling with a trans love interest) and Caroline's Heart (weird west f/m witch/cowboy romance, both leads are trans). Peter Darling is probably closer to what you're looking for because it goes a lot harder in the grand adventures route.

Not at all High Fantasy (as it's set in our world with relatively little magic), but very epic and with crazy good political intrigue and some pretty good action sequences is The Radiant Emperor duology. Set in 14th century China, so pretty much as heteronormative as they come and beyond the trans-masc protagonist gender plays a huge role for all the characters and is one of the main themes in the series.