#Notes from a Regicide

[torpublishinggroup]

The Library at Hellebore by Cassandra Khaw

The Hellebore Technical Institute is for the gifted: Anti-Christs, Ragnaroks, and monsters in the making. But on graduation day, the faculty feast on their students. Trapped in the school’s vast library, Alessa Li—kidnapped and forcibly enrolled—must lead her classmates in something they were never taught: how to survive.

Out July 22, 2025!

Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil by V. E. Schwab

From V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: a new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger.

Santo Domingo de la Calzada, 1532.

London, 1827.

Boston, 2019.

Three young women, their bodies planted in the same soil, their stories tangling like roots. One grows high, and one grows deep, and one grows wild. And all of them grow teeth.

Don't Sleep with the Dead by Nghi Vo

Nick Carraway has built a quiet life in 1930s New York. He's good at watching high society and pretending: pretending to be straight, to be human, to have forgotten the summer of 1922. But when a familiar face appears one dark night, he realizes Gatsby, dead or not, isn’t finished with him. In all paper there is memory, and Nick's ghost has come home.

Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame by Neon Yang

With an armored, oath-bound hero reminiscent of The Mandalorian and the Asian-inspired epic fantasy of She Who Became the Sun, Neon Yang’s Brighter than Scale, Swifter than Flame is a stunning queer novella about a dragon hunter finding home with a dragon queen.

Infinity Alchemist by Kacen Callender

Only an elite few are legally permitted to study the science of magic—so when Ash is rejected by Lancaster College of Alchemic Science, he is forced to learn alchemy in secret. Caught by brilliant apprentice Ramsay Thorne, Ash is sure he's about to be arrested—but instead she makes him an offer: help her find the legendary Book of Source, a sacred text that gives its reader extraordinary power, and she’ll keep his secret.

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

In the small town of Thistleford, the Hawthorn family tends enchanted willows and honours an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. Sisters Esther and Ysabel are devoted to the trees, and even more to each other. But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor for a lover from Faerie, the bond between them—and their lives—are put at risk.

Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman

After losing the parents who saved him from an abusive home, Griffon Keming is left with a single journal—his father’s, written from death row. Bloodstained and grief-soaked, it tells a love story between two artists on fire. Notes from a Regicide is a heart-wrenching tale of trans self-discovery with a sci-fi twist from award-winning author Isaac Fellman. 

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends, and her life has spiraled since. Memories of that night torment Alice, but when asked to return to the House, she knows she must go. Alison Rumfitt’s Tell Me I’m Worthless is a dark, unflinching haunted house story that confronts both supernatural and real-world horrors through the lens of the modern-day trans experience.

Not enough books? Check out our other list!

[lgbtqreads]

Happy Trans Day of Visibility 2025!

Children’s Just Like Queen Esther by Ari Moffic and Kerry Olitzky (text) and Rena Yehuda Newman (illustration) Atara loves to wear her crown – to the library, to the dentist, even to her swim lessons. It gives her confidence, and shows the world that she is a girl, not a boy, like everyone thought at first. But when Atara reads the story of Queen Esther, on the Jewish holiday of Purim – she…

[transbookoftheday]

Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman

Notes from a Regicide is a heartbreaking story of trans self-discovery with a rich relatability and a science-fictional twist from award-winning author Isaac Fellman.

When your parents die, you find out who they really were.

Griffon Keming’s second parents saved him from his abusive family. They taught him how to be trans, paid for his transition, and tried to love him as best they could. But Griffon’s new parents had troubles of their own – both were deeply scarred by the lives they lived before Griffon, the struggles they faced to become themselves, and the failed revolution that drove them from their homeland. When they died, they left an unfillable hole in his heart.

Griffon’s best clue to his parents’ lives is in his father’s journal, written from a jail cell while he awaited execution. Stained with blood, grief, and tears, these pages struggle to contain the love story of two artists on fire. With the journal in hand, Griffon hopes to pin down his relationship to these wonderful and strange people for whom time always seemed to be running out.

In Notes from a Regicide, a trans family saga set in a far-off, familiar future, Isaac Fellman goes beyond the concept of found family to examine how deeply we can be healed and hurt by those we choose to love.

[wearethekat]

May Book Reviews: Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman

One of my anticipated new releases for this year. In Notes from a Regicide, Griffon retells the story of his adoptive parents' tempestuous lives in the insular city-state of Stephensport, interspersed with musings on his complex relationship with them. Also, all three are transgender and the plot is set a thousand years in the future.

This is a very odd and original little novel. On the one hand, it's determinedly litfic in its outlook. It's about Griffon reading through his father's memoir, and reflecting on what he saw of his parents as compared to who they were decades ago, and about Etoine's struggles with alcoholism and Zaffre's with schizophrenia. But on the other, this is a book with a complex and delicate framework of SF worldbuilding just below the surface. I won't spoil it all, since half the fun is piecing together what's going on from offhand references, but it's set a thousand years in the future in isolated Stephensport, which is determinedly neo-Baroque, and most sophisticated technology has been lost.

One of the quirks of Notes from a Regicide is that so much of the novel is centered around the building revolution in Stephensport, but the story itself is filtered through Etoine, who is ruthlessly apolitical and is simply not paying attention. Yes, he created the portrait that became the center of a movement, but he doesn't refer to the revolution except in the most offhand asides, despite the fact that Zaffre obviously is knee-deep in it. The focus on the personal and the intimate rather than larger political movements is one of the things that gives the book a distinctly litfic flavor. The reader gets in-depth reflections on Zaffre, Etoine, and narrator Griffon's transitions, but little more than a glancing mention of riots in the streets.

Utterly original, melancholy and intimate. Highly recommended, particularly for fans of Ray Nayler, Jinwoo Chong's Flux, or Premee Mohamed's The Siege of Burning Grass.

[hpowellsmith]

I don't know why I sometimes look at the inane negative goodreads reviews of books I've loved, but regardless: Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman is just absolutely stunningly good, brilliantly put together, and made me cry

[haveyoureadthistransbook]

Notes from A Regicide by Isaac Fellman

goodreads | storygraph

When your parents die, you find out who they really were. Griffon Keming’s second parents saved him from his abusive family. They taught him how to be trans, paid for his transition, and tried to love him as best they could. But Griffon’s new parents had troubles of their own – both were deeply scarred by the lives they lived before Griffon, the struggles they faced to become themselves, and the failed revolution that drove them from their homeland. When they died, they left an unfillable hole in his heart. Griffon’s best clue to his parents’ lives is in his father’s journal, written from a jail cell while he awaited execution. Stained with blood, grief, and tears, these pages struggle to contain the love story of two artists on fire. With the journal in hand, Griffon hopes to pin down his relationship to these wonderful and strange people for whom time always seemed to be running out.

Mod opinion: I haven't read this book yet, but I am looking forward to getting around to it!

[gender-under-construction]

Since it's Pride Month and I just finished a book, I decided to go looking for queer sci fi books to read and have just downloaded "Notes from a Regicide" by Isaac R. Fellman, a trans author.

No idea if it's any good, but there's trans (masc) representation both in the author and the main character, so I'll give it a chance.

Will update when I've finished.

[rheadionne]

Check out my review of Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman 

[solreads]

Notes From a Regicide - Review

Title: Notes from a Regicide

Author: Isaac Fellman

Genre: Science Fiction

Audience: Adult

Format: Novel

Representation: Trans men POV characters

  Trans woman and trans man love interests; trans women side characters

Summary: A thousand years in the future, from a flooded New York City, Griffon Keming reckons with his adoptive parents’ death by endeavoring to tell the story of who they were. Working from the journal his father wrote while awaiting execution, the fragmented stories they told him, and interviews with others who fled their homeland, Griffon traces Etoine and Zaffre’s stumbling path from artists to revolutionaries to refugees, the traumas that hounded them, their desperate love, the pain and joy of self-discovery. 

Griffon weaves his own story through with an impression of his parents achingly, lovingly familiar, and yet held at a distance from the life they had together. From the moment he recognized himself in Etoine, the first other trans man he’d met, to the uncertain early days after he found refuge from an abusive home with them, up to his care for his father in his last days, Griffon reveals the healing and the hurt they found in becoming a family, a love deep but troubled. 

Reflections: Despite the strange, futuristic setting and the slowly revealed backstory to the titular regicide, this was much more a literary character study than a sci-fi or an epic story of revolution. All three of the central characters — Griffon, Etoine, and Zaffre— were pulled apart to expose their flaws, their rage, arrogance, and indifference, their struggles with addiction, mental illness, trauma, and repression, their strain and fumbling but earnest attempts to be a family, their tragedy and how they kept living through it.

The two aspects that grabbed me the most were the reflection of Griffon as an adult on Etoine and Zaffre’s parenting of him -- the difficulty and in some ways failure to fit a certain idea of family, and the complexities of all three’s experiences/journeys with gender and transition. As Griffon grew from a teenager to an adult, his understanding of his parents and himself deepened, becoming more empathetic, but also unforgiving in a way. There was no doubt to the love within their family. Still, their relationships were also so much them desperately clinging to each other to stay upright, a necessity as much as a choice. And there was no shying away from the difficulty of parenting just because they chose to be a family, especially with all of them fighting so hard with their own struggles and trauma.

Then with their transitions and understanding of being trans -- I enjoy the way they navigate societies with different norms for trans people. Stephensport's "acceptance" for trans people that allows for social transition but not medical transition touched on some interesting commentary around policing how people can be trans. Zaffre's and Etoine's different responses to this edict and the effects it had on their journeys were integrated into their characters so well.

I wish Zaffre’s perspective could have been incorporated somehow. She’s fascinating through others' eyes, but I longed for her story through her own. There must have been so much unseen.

Warnings: Depictions of misgendering, transphobia, deadnaming, dysphoria

Notes on Rep: Characters identify on-page as trans men.

[pheedraws]

WIP wednesday

Spring has sprung and these clowns continue to bewitch me wholly 🌸

“I think,” Heinrix spoke lowly as he settled back against the wall, his head turning to look upon the flowers colouring the courtyard, “you might surprise even yourself.” You certainly surprised me. A pleasant breeze, swept upwards from the capital below, danced amongst the leaves of the acers and drew ripples through the lawns. Upon it, the scent of orange blossom carried memories of a different time, a different life, on a planet so very far away from here that Heinrix was not sure he would ever be able to chart his way back home, even if he could. Were they so dissimilar, truly? Cast from the only world they had ever known, fated to forever carry the weight of a family’s disappointment, their resentment? Lost within such echoes of the past, Heinrix did not feel Livea’s gaze upon him until he turned to meet it in gentle surprise, ushering in a smile that widened with the one she returned so effortlessly. “Thank you.”

[torpublishinggroup]

Celebrate Pride Month with Tor Publishing Group! 

Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman

After losing the parents who saved him from an abusive home, Griffon Keming is left with a single journal—his father’s, written from death row. Bloodstained and grief-soaked, it tells a love story between two artists on fire. Notes from a Regicide is a heart-wrenching tale of trans self-discovery with a sci-fi twist from award-winning author Isaac Fellman. 

Tell Me I’m Worthless by Alison Rumfitt

Three years ago, Alice spent one night in an abandoned house with her friends, and her life has spiraled since. Memories of that night torment Alice, but when asked to return to the House, she knows she must go. Alison Rumfitt’s Tell Me I’m Worthless is a dark, unflinching haunted house story that confronts both supernatural and real-world horrors through the lens of the modern-day trans experience.

[battyaboutbooksreviews]

🩵 Trans & Nonbinary Books to Watch for in 2025

🏳️‍⚧️ I'm so excited for these trans and nonbinary books that are coming out over the next few months! These stories are diverse, heartfelt, and important. Let's all support and amplify trans, nonbinary, and queer voices in 2025. 🏳️‍🌈

💜 Please remember that we see you, and love you exactly for who you are.

❓Which of these books caught your eye first?

🩷 Please help me by liking and reblogging this post to ensure it reaches people who need it now more than ever!

🩷 We Are Villains - Kacen Callender 🩵 Notes From a Regicide - Isaac R. Fellman 💜 So Many Stars - Caro De Robertis 💛 In Case You Read This - Edward Underhill 🩷 Hot Girls With Balls - Benedict Nguyễn 🩵 Glitch Girl! - Rainie Oet 💜 These Vengeful Gods - Gabe Cole Novoa 💛 A Gentleman's Gentleman - TJ Alexander 🩷 The In-Between Bookstore - Edward Underhill

🩵 My Best Friend's Honeymoon - Meryl Wilsner 💜 Costumes for Time Travelers - A.R. Capetta 💛 Paper Doll - Dylan Mulvaney 🩷 Marsha - Tourmaline 🩵 Trans History - Alex L. Combs & Andrew Eakett 💜 And They Were Roommates - Page Powars 💛 Beyond They/Them - Em Dickson & Cameron Mukwa 🩷 Stag Dance - Torrey Peters 🩵 The Build-a-Boyfriend Project - Mason Deaver

[myriad--starlings]

Of course it was bad, but I thought it was normal. I still understand only intellectually that it wasn’t normal, and I still have to check myself—at literary dinner parties, or even at the houses of friends—from telling the whole story of a blow. Instead I put a dull edge on it. I add a guard of rubber, the way you do for an ice skate.

— Notes from a Regicide, Isaac Fellman

[onwesterlywinds]

I've been thinking a lot again about the implications of the title of "viator" translating to "traveler" (prompted by Writing Things), and while there's been a lot of discussion about its relation/parallels to Azem, I feel like I've seen a lot less, if anything, on how "viator" plays into the overarching narrative of Garlean imperialism as well. For a relatively small detail, it's honestly one of the things I really think Endwalker did really well in its portrayal of Garlemald and Zenos.

Throughout XIV's history, we've been shown countless perspectives for why the Garleans invade and occupy other nations, whether it's [insert Nael's Bahamut tempering], Gaius' claims that peace can only come from a strong leader, the racism we see entrenched in Garlemald's colonial rule in Stormblood, etc. Endwalker, however, doubles down on the role of Corvos in Garlemald's history and elevates it to a founding narrative: the idea that the Garleans are justified in invading other nations because they themselves were driven from their own ancestral land thousands of years ago.* This is by no means the full scope of Garlean history (as just one example, Return to Ivalice posited that many other Garleans are likely descended from the technically-minded people of Goug), but it's still very consistent lore-wise and thematically for Endwalker to present the Garlean people's expulsion from Corvos as a creation myth for their empire, and the way this plays out in 6.0 MSQ lets us see the extent of the damage that that myth has done to those who have made it their worldview.

And introducing the term "viator" at the end of that arc as the name for the Empire's most loathed, reviled, and shunned class - the exile - ties into this idea so well: the greatest punishment the Garleans can give for one of their own is to make them a wanderer - to ensure that person is forever denied the home that they prize so highly in their society. This is a classic example of scapegoating, which has deep connections to empire throughout history and Western literature.

It's also such a fitting conclusion to Zenos' relationship with the Garlean Empire, too! One of the reasons I've loved Zenos as an antagonist since 4.0 is that despite treating the workings of imperialism as beneath him and irrelevant to his true desires ("Ala Mhigo and Doma and Garlemald be damned!"), he has a sense of entitlement to the peoples and lands of Ala Mhigo and Doma - and to you, the Warrior of Light! - that is extremely Garlean. The fact that (to paraphrase Lyse) he did all that just so he could feel something is what makes him such a perfect antagonist for Stormblood in my book. But to the Garlean people, that lack of care for his homeland - be it because (their own) people were tempered/killed from his actions, or the very sexy patricide/regicide, or that he caused the Empire itself to fall into ruin when he "should have" succeeded Varis - was to them the greatest crime he could commit. To put it another way, he probably would not have been named Zenos viator Galvus if he had first been Zenos zos Galvus.

And despite me forever lamenting the fact that the 5.X-era plot thread of Zenos having dreams about Amaurot never actually went anywhere, even that ties into his eventual role as viator: the only place with which he has ever had any real connection is gone forever.

Which makes a grave at the end of the known universe feel almost fitting in its tragedy.

(*On a serious note: While I do think the writers were intentional - and, mostly, thoughtful - around leveraging imperialist rhetoric, the fact that this particular framing is often used to justify an ongoing genocide is one of many reasons why I would be very happy for future Garlemald stories to stay on pause for the next few years.)

[dontlookforme00]

Tridental regicide,

I won't hesitate to kill my Heart and Mind.

MY 300 FOLLOWER DTIYS IS FINALLY HERE!! Info and alt versions below the cut!!

Helloo!! I hit 300 followers a good while ago now but I'm only getting to the DTIYS now lmao. About half of those were ninjago followers, and the other half were chonny jash followers, so I was gonna do a sort of mix between the two fandoms, but just decided on plain old HMS, sorry!!

If anybody at all entered I'd be honoured :] because last time I did this I only got one (admittedly amazing) entry lol.

> also this took me thirteen hours jfc. I haven't spent this long on a drawing for monthssss.

Here's some notes if you plan to join!!:

You can use any iteration of any HMS designs, it doesn't have to be my ones.

But by all means, if you do wanna use mine/my colour schemes, there's some clearer images below.

The text in the background says "Tridential Regicide". It'd be nice if you included it!!

What the entry does have to have is Heart, Mind, and Soul, with Soul threatening the other two.

I once saw someone enter a dtiys by making a plushie lmao??? So just gonna put down that ur entry can be whatever

If you have any questions or wanna extend the deadline, send me an ask.

Feel free to change any details not mentioned, or the poses that they're in.

Tag me in any submission!

Use the tag #donniesDTIYS300

Prizes (??) and deadline:

The deadline will be (checks watch) two months from now, so, the 14th of July.

Again, if anyone needs more time for an entry they wanna do just send an ask.

Uhhh I have no idea how many people will actually enter, and I've never actually drawn DTIYS prizes.

So I suppose I'll go with the standard??

1st (chosen by me) fully rendered drawing of any character or OC.

2nd, just coloured in drawing of any character or OC.

3rd, doodle or lineart of any character or OC.

(Keep in mind the characters have gotta be sfw though!)

Here are some other versions of the image:

Thanks for reading!! :D

[librarycards]

Mid Year Book Freakout Tag

I got tagged by my transMad reading-comrade @podcastlesbian <33

1. Number of books you've read so far

123

2. Best book you've read so far in 2025

novel - The Safekeep by Yael Van Der Wouden

stories - Stag Dance by Torrey Peters

poetry - Girl Work by Zefyr Lisowski

nf - One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad

academic - Carceral Capitalism by Jackie Wang

3. Best sequel you've read so far in 2025

Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao. orders of magnitude better than the first book in the series!

4. New release you haven't read yet but want to

ASL by Jeanne Thornton! It's the next book I'm going to sit down and force myself to stop dilly-dallying on. ++ Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman, as I have an ARC and now it's actually published but I still haven't read it. story of my life.

5. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year

Black Flame by Gretchen Felker-Martin and Hot Girls with Balls by Benedict Nguyễn!!

6. Biggest surprise favorite author

Sung-il Kim, author of Blood of the Old Kings, and Anton Hur, who translated it from the Korean, impressed me so much. I so rarely like second-world fantasy, but they both nailed the storytelling, cadence, everything.

Also, Hazel Jane Plante! I read Any Other City this year after being recommended her work by a number of people. I didn't think I'd fall quite so hard in love with her prose.

7. Newest fictional crush

N/A, I don't really do fictional crushes <- same, Sam!!

8. Book that made you cry

I don't generally cry at books. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This came close.

9. Most beautiful book you've bought or received this year

The most beautiful one I've both bought and read this year so far is the anthology The Blaft Book of Anti-Caste SF, which was pretty hit/miss as most anthologies are, but the design was 11/10.

10. Book that made you happy

Hahaha, so i seldom read 'happy' books per se, but Tori Amos Bootleg Webring by Megan Milks (about exactly what it says on the tin) and Phoebe's Diary by Phoebe Wahl both delighted and compelled me toward a nostalgic 90s childhood I actually wasn't alive for!

11. What books do you need to read by the end of the year?

this is a mix of friend books, ARCs/publicity copies, and general priorities

ASL by Jeanne Thornton

Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman

Compound Fracture by Andrew Joseph White

Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders

Songs of No Provenance by Lydi Conklin

Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (I knooooooowwwww i'm so bad at this!!!)

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel R Delany (buddy reading this with my friend asap)

My Lesbian Novel by Renee Gladman

there are so many more but i'm going to stop there to preserve whatever remaining vestiges of my """""sanity"""""" may at least sometimes occupy my brain lmao

i tag - @aldieb @fluoresensitives @sawasawako @lormaggot @capricornpropaganda @lesbianlizzybennet @punkkwix @campgender @heavenlyyshecomes @oaluz @fatehbaz and anyone who wants to!!!! please do it and tag me, i want to see!