The Shadowbound King: Realms of the Covenant, Book 2

The Shadowbound King: Realms of the Covenant, Book 2 by Amy Pennza

There are elves and humans. A girl lives close to the Elf kingdom. The capture her because they want something for her father. Instead they end up falling in love. It didn't seem to matter that there were two guys that were already in love with each other, they freely add the girl also. And in an epilogue there is child. The bit of plot is just enough to provide endless gay and straight erotic scenes. Sex becomes just an activity done for pleasure. Being parents or reproducing seems just incidental. This attitude could explain why people are just not having kids. Why bother doing the hard work after the pleasure? Will humans eventually bread out the desire to reproduce? 

One Last Stop

One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston

A girl, August, moves to New York City and gets an apartment with roomates and job at a diner. She sees another girl (Jane) on the Q line and is attracted to her. They always seem to ride the same line. They spend some time together. However, when August invites her out, she refuses.

Later August, with the help of her psychic roommate, determines that that girl may is in a weird state. She has been stuck on the train since the 1970s. As they dig further, they help Jane find out more about herself. They discover that she is connected to August's uncle that disappeared nearly a half century ago. They also learn that Jane had saved a diner worker who fell on the tracks and likely got shocked into limbo during a great blackout of the 1970s. They hatch a plan to free her from the realm.

This book tells a compelling story that adds on some lgbt romance. (e.g. making out helps her remember.) It is also firmly rooted in normal society. Though it does borrow some elements from romantic fantasy, it is much better written.

Girl Haven

Girl Haven by Lilah Sturges, Meaghan Carter, Joamette Gil

The book starts out with three girls in a queer club at school. One boy, Ash, joins them. They go to his house and look through his mom's old stuff. Then they are teleported to the girl kingdom that his mom had dreamed up. It only has girls in it. they run into the scourge, which is the kingdom of boys. Ash gets proclaimed the king. He is trying to get his mom back. He also feels he is more comfortable in a dress and doing girl things. Now Ash is a girl. She learns that her mother is dead. She helps make peace in the kingdom by given a hug. They return back to the normal world. They have all been gone for multiple days. Ash's father mentions that this happened before with Ash's mom. The kids all go back to school and go on with their lives, with Ash now identifying as a girl. It is a weird bit of fantasy and reality that has a mix of feminist and queer values.

Drama: A Graphic Novel

Drama: A Graphic Novel by Raina Telgemeier

This graphic novel is set in middle school, but feels much more like high school. It centers around a drama production at the school. The protagonist, a seventh grade girl, is in charge of set design. She likes a baseball player, and kisses him when he says that he broke up with her girlfriend. But, then he doesn't want to have much to do with her. For the play, a set of twins come to try out for the play. They are both good singers. One is outgoing and willing to try out. The other is shy and ends up on crew. The outgoing boy is out gay, The girl gets a crush on both of them. She hopes the other will invite her to the 8th grade formal. The protagonist spends a while trying to get a cannon to work on stage. The performance seems to go well until the final show. The lead female broke up with her boyfriend and got tripped up on stage in the middle of the performance. The alternates are nowhere to be found. Suddenly, the shy twin ends up in drag in the leading lady role. (He had practiced the female parts with his brother when trying out.) He completes the part, even kissing the leading man at the end. Later at the formal, the girl goes with the boy, but he ends up ditching her to go with another boy. She later finds another drama boy that really likes her. It can be difficult keeping the characters apart. Some of them look and act quite similar. It does feel like way to much relationship drama for middle school.

Without the Mask: Coming Out and Coming Into God's Light

Without the Mask: Coming Out and Coming Into God's Light by Charlie Bird

The artist was a the mascot at BYU. He also came out as gay while remaining active in church. He looks at his history. As a child in rural Missouri, he found he had many "female" interests. He was empathetic, artistic and liked gymnastics. He was not a big fan of the typical "jock" boy activities. (The question remains - why are the preferences typecast as male or female?) His parents divorced, leading him to become closer to his siblings. He was willing to come out to his sisters first, but it was more challenging to come out to his brothers. He found the challenge of being gay and religious. The LGBT contains people with similar orientations, but also tends to be open to substance and sexual experimentation. Trying to be faithful can be challenging with regards to relationships. He had some experiences where he went out with women, but refused to try to enter a relationship. He did mention there were some people that had working relationships like this. (I wonder if this was more common in the past.) It must be a challenge to remain faithful in religion that condemns the expression of the attractions you feel. (Would it be such a challenge if things were not considered so binary?) The theme of the book is love for people, especially as they work through challenges.

Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good (Emergent Strategy Book 1)

The author encourages people (primarily black lesbians) to be activists for hedonistic pleasure. She wants people to consume sex and drugs as they desire. They should be fre to engage in any hedonistic activity they want. They are advocating for their pleasure at the expense of the white, male patriarchy. The book encourages exclusion of various disadvantaged people and encourages everyone to seek their pleasure. However, it also has guidelines for what should be sought. (People shouldn't support many institutions of the hierarchy.) The book was published by an anarchist press in the bay area and it shows. It feels that somebody is looking over the fence and seeing rich people with pleasure and deciding that they deserve it to. Supporting oneself in the seeking of pleasure is not given much thought. Reparations for the war on drugs was mentioned as were a few people that held jobs (mostly related to seeking pleasure.) The author herself has black and white parents and identifies as mixed race. (Why does it seem that most racial advocates must have enough privilege to be able to advocate?)  Underneath the bacchanalian activism, there are some good points. Pleasure needs to be sought in appropriate moderation so as not to destroy one's life. There is a desire that people have for companionship and feeling good. How to find it can be challenging. 

The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide

The Viral Underclass purports to explore how inequality leads to negative societal outcomes when diseases hit. In actuality, it takes advantage of interest in racism and COVID-19 to talk about AIDS. The arguments both overreach and contradict themselves. On one side, there is sympathy for essential workers, sex workers, trans and people of color because they cannot work from home during an epidemic. On the other hand, anti-maskers that cannot work from home are criticized. They are lumped together with wealthy white anti-vaxers. He bemoans poor states for the high rate of COVID deaths. Is because the poor don't have access to prophylactics? Or is it that they don't want to?

The bulk of the book discusses gay culture and AIDS. The author covered a case where a gay black man was convicted for spreading AIDS to others. He legitimately criticizes the stigma and approach to testing. If somebody never tests, then they cannot be convicted. Testing is beneficial to society, yet a positive test can lead to somebody being subjected to penalties.

Beyond AIDS, the author reaches for strings for just about anything to make his argument. Racism, Speciesism, Ableism. Any group that "others" discriminate against is part of the viral underclass. It is not their fault they get sick, they are just victims of society. The argument is weakened by cherry-picking facts based on a certain worldview.

Capitalism is attacked for producing this underclass. It is also criticized for charging money for vaccines and other prophylactics. (Missed is the fact that capitalism was able to quickly produce COVID-19 vaccines. A few companies succeeded and made a lot of money. Many other companies tried, yet failed to produce working vaccines.)  Anarchy is viewed as the solution that would resolve this. Everybody would just work together nicely without big government and business in the way. In the ideal world, maybe. But with billions of people? Small scale communes have broken down. Could earth survive? 

This could have been a good book about the stigma of AIDS and the need to balance punishment of bad behavior with public health. Instead it tried to cast a wider net and failed miserably.