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Queen Sabran and Ead, from the Priory of the Orange Tree 🍊🐲🔥

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new covers for graceling, fire, bitterblue & winterkeep

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Upcoming sci-fi & fantasy books with lesbians / lesbian relationships in 2020

Marketed for teens: The Queen of Coin and Whispers, The Winter Duke, The Midnight Lie, The Scapegracers, and Ruinsong

Marketed for adults: Harrow the Ninth, Shorefall, Lady Hotspur, The Unspoken Name, and Seven Devils

Harrow the Ninth is the sequel to Gideon the Ninth, and Shorefall is the sequel to Foundryside. All the other books are either standalones or the first in a series.

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Things Simon Snow Misses Most About Watford:

No. 1—Sour cherry scones

We have tea in the dining hall after our lessons, before clubs and football and homework... I’m the only one of us who ever eats the scones. Sometimes I dream about them.

No. 2—Penelope

She befriended me in my first week at school, during our Magic Words lesson... Brown skin and...pointy spectacles, the kind you’d wear if you were going as a witch to a fancy dress party.

“...Everyone’s thick,” she replied. “I’m helping you because I like you.”

No. 3—The football pitch.

“It’s a perfect pitch: Lovely grass... Nice, shady trees nearby that you can sit under and watch the matches...

“Baz plays for our school. Of course. The tosser. He’s the same on the field as he is everywhere else. Strong. Graceful. Fucking ruthless.”

No. 4—My school uniform.

When I got my first uniform...I felt tall all of a sudden, and posh. Until Baz walked into our room, much taller than me—and posher than everyone.”

No. 5—My room.

Maybe the crucible felt bad about casting Baz and me together because we’ve got the best room at Watford. It’s a four-and-a-half-story building, stone, and our room is at the very top, in a sort of turret that looks our over the moat.

No. 6—The Mage.

There’s been plenty of times when I thought I should take him off.

He’s not my anything... but he’s the closest thing I’ve got... He’s always told me — that’s I’m the most powerful magician the World of Mages has ever known. And that all my power is a good thing.

And he always remembers my birthday in June.

No. 7—Magic.

Not my magic, necessarily... Just being around magic. Casual, ambient magic.

When I’m by myself, Magic is something personal. My burden, my secret. But at Watford, magic is just the air we breathe. It’s what makes me a part of something bigger, not the thing that sets me apart.

No. 8—Ebb and the goats

Ebb’s the nicest person at Watford. Younger than the teachers. And surprisingly powerful for somebody who decided to spend her life taking care of goats.

I don’t have much time to spend with Ebb anymore.

No. 9—The Wavering Wood

I should take this one off the list. Fuck the Wavering Wood.

No. 10—Ágatha.

Maybe I should take Agatha off my list, too.

... I don’t know, maybe Agatha is too good to be true, at least for me. I’m not even sure whether I’ve missed her.

No. 11—

(If Baz were here, I’m sure he’d make a list of all the spells I could use in this moment.)

(Baz isn’t here yet.)

(The figure shifts, and I think it’s Baz. Then I decide I’m dreaming and fall back into sleep.)

(Maybe Baz will miss the picnic; he’s never missed it before, but it’s a nice thought.)

(I don’t see Baz, but there are so many people, it’d be easy for him to avoid me if he wanted. Baz normally makes sure I see him.)

(I keep bracing for Baz to show up and ruin everything.)

(I wake up a few hours later, and I think Baz must be back.)

(Baz isn’t in our room when I wake up. I look for him in the dining hall at breakfast, but he’s not there either.)

(Baz isn’t at breakfast the next morning. Or the next. He isn’t in class.)

(Baz hated me before he even met me.)

(“Where’s Baz?” I say.)

(I stop looking for Baz anywhere he’s supposed to be.)

(I stop looking for Baz anywhere he’s supposed to be...)

(But I don’t stop looking for him.)

(If he weren’t a vampire, Baz’d be bloody perfect.)

(Baz.)

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All of these books are queer, but they all have back blurbs that don’t say they’re queer. While this can be a pain if I’m scouting for queer SFF, it can come in handy for people in a situation where they don’t want to be reading queer books openly. 

Please do note that I don’t have hard copies of the books on hand so it’s possible that an author quote or something mentions one being queer (I feel like this isn’t super likely, but I don’t want to rule it out). Some might also have author biographies mentioning that the author is queer. Also, some may be shelved as LGBT on Goodreads or categorized as queer on Amazon. So if you’re planning on asking for any of these as holiday gifts, I would suggest going to the Amazon page or where ever your relative is likely to buy it from and double check that it’s something you’d be comfortable with sharing openly. 

I wish I had more pansexual books, but the ones I know of tend to mention queerness in the back description. 

With the exception of The Spy with the Red Balloon, these are all books I have read or are currently reading. If you want to recommend others, feel free to do so in the replies!

You can find my other queer book recommendations here.

Links to the queer books database (or Goodreads if the book hasn’t been added yet) are available below the cut. You can find information on content warnings there.

Keep reading

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Hi and welcome to this alternative Wayward Son dimension in which everything is the same except Simon Snow still has an undercut and Penelope Bunce has always had purple hair.

(I´m sorry but Rainbow will have to pry that headcanon from my cold, dead hands.)

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all of us who read wayward son: there’s for sure gonna be a third book

rainbow rowell: any way the wind blows. coming soon.

all of us: OMG THERE’S GONNA BE A THIRD BOOK OMGHALSHAKNA

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THIS IS OUR INEJ

SHE IS PERFECT

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simon snow has fucking dragon powers or some shit and this is my goddamn proof

Whilst you people were having a meltdown over Baz and Simon not hashing it out (Simon’s not in a place of understanding his self worth enough for that yet.), I was having a meltdown about Simon Snow The Literal Fucking Dragon. 

Now, this is obviously going to have major spoilers for Wayward Son. I’m going to assume you’ve read it if you’re reading this. I’ve put a lot of thought into this theory and this is a long ass post so I’m putting it under the cut. Now. Let’s go, lesbians!

Keep reading

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wayward son be like

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September 21, 2019: I fixed it.

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I just really wanted to draw Simon’s wings and tail tbh

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this tweet both terrifies me and comforts me at the same time

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please reblog if you like six of crows it’s for science

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I can’t believe I’m doing this here instead of twitter because it’s TWITTER that’s the firestorm now but like, i have a very soft spot for grisha and i think the ending of the trilogy is good and appropriate for That Story. And/ergo i think the root of the grisha trilogy ending discourse is not as simple as “people didn’t like the ending” but people didn’t like That Story and thought it was or wanted it to be a different one, and then the ending wouldn’t let them. And it’s very easy to be mad about how objectively wrong they are, or be smug about them willfully misinterpreting/ bending a story to be the power fantasy they wanted and thus victims of their own lack of reading comprehension, but given my ongoing life’s mission to figure out why SJM’s stuff is so popular/ What We Want Out Of Our YA Fantasy, Really, I think it’s a really interesting! And kind of depressing! Case study!

Why do we so wholly reject a heroine who wants nothing but some Peace and Quiet slash why do we demand GIRL HAV SWORD, GIRL IS KWEEN surface-level empowerment? Have we somehow failed a generation of young bookish women by boiling down the fight for female agency to this single option, or is there something about the powerlessness of our current culture that inherently pushes so many of us to crave those no-strings-attached, step-on-men’s-throats-but-never-question-the-systematic-misogyny-in-your-worldbuilding SJM-esque power fantasies? Is it morally irresponsible to prioritize catharsis for your (presumed white, presumed cisfemale) readers (or self) over telling a complex, sensitive story?

Maybe I’m galaxy-braining here, but as someone who grew up on the quintessential portal fantasy structure where the girl goes home to her normal life at the end, I love the very broad idea that we reject that, that the dominant opinion is to want stories where the girl demands a rich, complicated, sexy, powerful life in the fantasy world she has just saved and made friends in. But looking at the grand scope of GIRL HAV SWORD, GIRL IS KWEEN YA from 2010-now, it’s so often shitty and homogenous in execution (not 2 mention comes with that whole host of ‘NOBDOY EVER ADDRESSES THAT IMPERIALISM IS BAD AND RACIST AND MONARCHY IS A SKETCH AF INSTITUTION BUT SURE WATCH THE QUEEN CONQUER I GUESS’ issues’).

As with most complaints about this industry and its crutches, the only “solution” here is to have MORE stories, a broader range of well-written and well-publicized books that both do this and don’t, so that each of us stops feeling so viciously starved of the thing that speaks to us, less willing to fight over scraps of it or see it where it doesn’t exist. But in the meantime, I also don’t know what to make of this seeming truth of what so many people want.

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The real reason they got the cabriolet was because Simon’s wings can’t fit in regular cars

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UK! You’re getting your own cover for Wayward Son! Woot!!!