Wizards Vs. Lesbians

It's a girls' boarding school in the 1920s - a time and a place that might cause a reader to indulge in flights of romantic fantasy, which this book first indulges and then dismantles. Whenever and wherever we are, the question remains: who gets to be final girl?

Lee joins us to discuss the latest Raadchaii book. (Our policy remains: if there are Raadchaii, there are lesbians.) This is a hearty meal (ironically) if you're interested in religion, colonialism and/or political power - and, of course, there's cannibalism.

We were promised Moby Dick in space with lesbians, and that's what we got. It's kind of a thankless task, being Moby DIck in space with lesbians - particularly if you're not playing it for laughs, which this book isn't - because the best you're ever going to do is "better than expected." On the plus side, this one is better than expected.

HELL'S HEART - ALEXIS HALL

This book is about struggling with your terrible family while eating lots of lovingly-described food, which means it's the kind of thing we're supposed to like. This episode is mostly dedicated to figuring out why we don't.

The Subtle Art of Folding Space - John Chu

Lee joins us to talk about a book which is difficult to boil down to a paragraph - it's about power, and the means by which power is acquired and lost, and it examines this on a multitude of scales, from the granular to the metaphysical. Also it's set in a world where every inch of available territory is covered by a city which generates its own geomantic power and humans (and mutants) are barred from space travel by a giant atmospheric shield. Fundamentally, though, it asks the question: what if there was a hot guy who sucked?

City On Fire - Walter Jon Williams

A cyberpunk colonial parable from one of our favorite authors - or, at least, the author of one of our favorite books. This one is not quite Divine Endurance, but it's certainly something. It's not a pleasant read but it sure is full of historical interest.

ESCAPE PLANS - GWYNETH JONES

A book about drugs that make you see god. It's day-after-tomorrow SF from the day before yesterday, and it gets all of its predictions so catastrophically wrong that its primary use case is as a time capsule from the war on terror. Also preserved: jokes we thought were funny ten years ago.

Afterparty - Daryl Gregory

It's Little Shop of Horrors but with lesbian Irish millennials! That's the whole pitch. It fulfills the brief, and arguably overdelivers.

Eat The Ones You Love - Sarah Maria Griffin

It's gay, it's magic, it's a literary classic. Featuring our old books correspondent Kat Weaver!

Orlando - Virginia Woolf

A charming little novel from 1926. We're normally pretty relaxed when it comes to spoilers, particularly for a book that's a century old, but we think the less you know about this one going in the better.

Lolly Willowes; or The Loving Huntsman - Sylvia Townsend Warner