#S Qiouyi Lu

[godzilla-reads]

👁️ In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

“You can’t save everyone,” Enigma says. “In the end, the only person who controls what someone does is that person themself.”

Anima is an extrasensory human tasked with surveilling and protecting Ora’s citizens via a complex living network called the Gleaming. When a mysterious outsider enters the city carrying a cabinet of stories, Anima’s world expands beyond the borders of Ora to places- and possibilities- æ never before imagined to exist.

Oh boy. This is a short book at 189-pages and yet I took such a long time to read it because it felt… important? I felt like this was a story meant to be shared, a story full of stories with commentaries on society, surveillance, consent, and our own personal stories. Oof, when I got to the end, I wasn’t sure if I really “got it”, but after reading the Acknowledgements, it was fun to see the author’s inspiration for ær writing.

I LOVED the fact that this was written with so many types of pronouns and identities. It really made my reading experience great. Also, thank the author for putting a list of potential trigger warnings in the beginning of the book for those who might be sensitive to self-harm and suicide.

[rhetoricandlogic]

In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu

DNF at 25%.

Maybe it's just me, but I recently read a couple of novels with custom-made neo-pronouns which were completely pointless (because they never really signifiy for the plot The Genesis of Misery The Keeper's Six); but this one takes the cake. We have "æ/ær", "se/ser", "e/em" and only one character of each - so not even by comparing them do I get to know the difference. Could be, the rest of the book clarifies that, but what I gather from other reviewers, it doesn't. Why not use "they/them" and be done with it? Why put such an emphasis on neo-pronouns, if you neither explain nor give them any significance storywise?

wedonotknow.jpg

[weltenwellen]

S. Qiouyi Lu, from "momentane"

[remnantglow]

hi! i was wondering if you know of any nonbinary sci-fi authors? i'm taking part of a storygraph challenge and one of the challenges is to read a scifi novel by a nonbinary author so i thought maybe you'd have a rec! thank you and hope you have a great day <3 (btw do you still have the link to the doc you had of all the vintage lgbt scifi novels? thanks again!)

DO I!!!! :DDD

Sarah Gailey - The Echo Wife (domestic scifi thriller with gone girl vibes)

Ada Hoffmann - The Outside (cosmic horror)

S. Qiouyi Lu - In The Watchful City (mosaic novella with stories that range from scifi to fantasy)

Ness Brown - The Scourge Between Stars (scifi horror ala Alien, good for some low brainpower horror thrills) CORRECTION: while ness brown goes by they/them pronouns, i don't think they've actually confirmed if they identify as nonbinary, my bad!

Avi Silver - Pluralities (bit hard to categorize but i'd recommend this one if you'd like a weird scifi novella with gender and transness as a main theme!)

Neon Yang - The Genesis of Misery (science fantasy with mechas) (i haven't read it yet, but i'm a huge fan of neon yang's other work!)

Rivers Solomon - An Unkindness of Ghosts (generation ship scifi) (another one i haven't gotten around to yet, but it's by all accounts exceptional - though, note, very heavy from what i've heard - and i really enjoyed the author's fantasy novella The Deep)

and a couple more whose work I haven't read, but who are pretty high on my to-read list:

Emma Mieko Candon - The Archive Undying

Nino Cipri - Finna

Merc Fenn Wolfmoor - So You Want to be a Robot and Other Stories

Xiran Jay Zhao - Iron Widow (tbh i've heard some mixed opinions abt this one, but it is also undeniably the most popular book on this list)

Bogi Takács - The Trans Space Octopus Congregation: Stories, Power to Yield and Other Stories (i also wanna shout out eir reading blog, which has an absolutely incredible list of resources, including the trans and intersex fiction and poetry timeline and the neopronouns in fiction timeline!!!)

as for the vintage LGBT scifi doc: why yes of course. here it is in all its 150+ book glory <3

[lgbtqreads]

Hi! I’m working on a project at work, and we’re looking for books featuring nonbinary characters/characters who use neopronouns where their queerness isn’t a main focus of the book. Do you have any recs?

Hmm, I think In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu and The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley would fit that nicely, as would The Unraveling by Benjamin Rosenbaum, though maybe the latter is a little more gender identity-centric. I'll also throw The Lifeline Signal by RoAnna Sylver out there - it's technically the second in the series, set in the same locale as the first, but I don't think you need to have read the first one, seeing as they have different casts.

[shark-myths]

do you have any book recs for books about girls that feel like girl out boy. i want to read about girls but i don't want to read about fall out boy yk

I love this question! I am constantly seeking for books that feel like Girl Out Boy because I want to live in that muggy girlspace at all times. These cut a wide swath of genres and probably only 2 of them are genuine read-alikes in tone; the rest share a headspace or ethos or were otherwise important in shaping that world. I would love to collect other peoples’ recommendations on this question, so please chime in!

Nonfiction:

Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl by Carrie Brownstein

Any book by Melissa Febos

Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers by Sady Doyle

The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic by Jessica Hopper

The Riot Grrrl Collection ed. by Lisa Darms

Fiction:

The Scapegracers series by H.A. / August Clarke—the most GOB thing I have ever read in my life!

Supper Club by Lara Williams

Anything Resembling Love by S. Qiouyi Lu

We Were Witches by Ariel Gore

It Goes Like This by Miel Moreland

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo

You Know I’m No Good by Jessie Ann Foley

When We Were Magic by Sarah Gailey

The Summer of Jordi Perez by Amy Spalding

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

Pages for You by Sylvia Brownrigg

The First Rule of Punk by Celia C. Perez

Moxie by Jennifer Mathieu

Ramona Blue by Julie Murphy

We Are Okay by Nina LaCour

Girl Mans Up by M.E. Girard

Passing Strange by Ellen Klages

Girls on Fire by Robin Wasserman

Post-Traumatic by Chantal V. Johnson

Comics:

Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick

Squad by Maggie Tokuda-Hall

Man-Eaters by Chelsea Cain

Paper Girls by Brian K Vaughn

Girl Town by Casey Nowak

The Deep Dark by Molly Knox Ostertag

Okay, I'm stopping myself now, because this is clearly just becoming a "Book About Women Sharks Want You To Read". And I could go on, and on, and on. Please let me know if you read and like any! Reading and talking about reading are my favorite things in the world.

Go forth and read about girls!

[transnovelsbracket]

This is the randomly-generated bracket for adult (i.e. non-YA) novels by trans authors! The books are as follows (in order of when I thought of them). Please boost this post! The first round will begin tomorrow, or as soon as I get at least a couple of reblogs on this.

Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars, Kai Cheng Thom

Little Fish, Casey Plett

Small Beauty, jia qing wilson-yang

She Who Became The Sun, Shelley Parker-Chan

An Unkindness of Ghosts, Rivers Solomon

Future Feeling, Joss Lake

Confessions of the Fox, Jordy Rosenberg

Light From Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki

In The Watchful City, S. Qiouyi Lu

Detransition, Baby, Torrey Peters

Nevada, Imogen Binnie

Freshwater, Akwaeke Emezi

Summer Fun, Jeanne Thornton

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, Andrea Lawlor

Yemaya's Daughters, Dane Figueroa Edidi

Manhunt, Gretchen Felker-Martin

The Thirty Names of Night, Zeyn Joukhadar

Machineries of Empire series, Yoon Ha Lee

The Tensorate series, Neon Yang

Sea Witch, Never Angeline Nørth

The Subtweet, Vivek Shraya

The Story of Silence, Alex Myers

Wrath Goddess Sing, Maya Deane

Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel, Julian K. Jarboe

Upright Women Wanted, Sarah Gailey

Darryl, Jackie Ess

The Four Profound Weaves RB Lemberg

Little Blue Encyclopedia, Hazel Jane Plante

Otros Valles, Jamie Berrout

the earthquake room, Davey Davis

The City in the Middle of the Night, Charlie Jane Anders

Running Down, Al Hess

[duckprintspress]

25 Book Recommendations for International Pronouns Day

Today is International Pronouns Day, and in honor of the occasion, we’ve put together a rec list, as is our wont. We focused on books that use neopronouns, they/them or it/its characters, and books that did interesting things with pronouns, such as avoiding them completely, changing them between scenes, etc. Basically, if something about the pronouns in the book stood out to us, we considered it for inclusion in this list! Nine Duck Prints Press contributors suggested titles for this blog post. And now…the books!

I Wish You All the Best by Mason Deaver

In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu

Phoenix Extravagant by Yoon Ha Lee

Translation State by Ann Leckie

The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang

The Black Tides of Heaven by Neon Yang

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison

Gamechanger by L. X. Beckett

All Systems Red by Martha Wells

What Are Your Words?: A Book About Pronouns by Katherine Locke

She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan

The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin

Victories Greater than Death by Charlie Jane Anders

Meet Cute Diary by Emery Lee

The Passing Playbook by Isaac Fitzimons

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon

Spell Bound by F. T. Lukens

Your Shadow Remains Half by Sunny Moraine

Lock In by John Scalzi

The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe

They/Them by Stuart Getty

The Sunbearer Trials by Aiden Thomas

The Light of a Thousand Stars and You by Nicola Kapron, published in Bleed Error Issue 1.

Do you have any favorite books that use pronouns other than he or she, and/or that do interesting things with pronouns? Tell us about them!

[executeness]

Tagged by @voxofthevoid

Last Song: Home to Me by Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. Got the whole album after hearing it on @words-writ-in-starlight's Kencyrath playlist!

How dare you love me like you've never known fear When you've got more troubles than minutes in the year And a voice like your father's tells you nothing good's for free Well that may be, but you're walking home to me

Currently Watching: Brain not currently accepting video input? Really wanna finish Spy x Family and watch Nimona tho. And Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Currently Reading: Uhhh. Uhhhhhhh.

Non-fiction (Academic)- Collecting, Preserving, and Interpreting the History of Electronic Games by Jon-Paul C. Dyson for an essay I should be writing about the "discourse community" around archiving video games and connected materials

Non-fiction (Leisure)- Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries by Kory Stamper and The Billionaire's Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace (it's about wine fraud)

Fiction- direly tempted to, instead of writing my essay, start either In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu (an extrasensory human, Anima, starts to question ær job maintaining and protecting ær city when a cabinet of curiosities comes to town) (FUN PRONOUNS) or Tentacle by Rita Indiana (trans masc protagonist in the Dominican Republic tries to get transition drug and also prevent environmental disaster with time travel)

Fanfiction- where are they fucking hiding the Star Wars clone shenanigans. This fandom is massive why can't I find more CLONES and (this is important) co-dependence and polyamory. Anakin is a background character unless it gets me more Padme and Obi-wan being considerate and kind translating directly to bottoming has gotten old fast

Current Obsession: I have brainworms about GrimmIchi and have recently been consumed by Don't Starve Together (game).

Tagging: Gabe (above), @aethersea @tanoraqui @smallblueandloud @thesuninperigee @starcloud-nova @firecoloredwater and @mothman-etd

[anntickwittee]

Library Reads

Books checked out:

Twisted Shadows by Allie Therin

More than This by Krystal Marquis

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells

System Collapse by Martha Wells

The Forbidden Book by Sacha Lamb

I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle

Doctor's Orders by Diane Duane

Salsa Magic by Letisha Marrero

A Coup of Tea by Casey Blair

Books on Hold:

The Diablo's Curse by Gabe Cole Novoa

The Imposition of Unnecessary Objects by Malka Older

In the Watchful City by S. Qiouyi Lu

Someone You Can Build a Nest in by John Wisewell

Tuyo by Rachel Neumeier

Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie

Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

The Girl in the Tower by Katherine Arden

How to Get a Girlfriend When You're a Terrifying Monster by Marie Condo

Books I'm waiting to be Notified:

Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett

The Tomb of Dragons by Katherine Addison

When the Tides Held the Moon by Venessa Vida Kelley

The Spell for Unraveling by Rachelle Hassan

Idolfire by Grace Curtis

[godzilla-reads]

Trying to keep up on books for Pride Month so I’ve been reading IN THE WATCHFUL CITY by S. Qiouyi Lu, which is a story within a story and the characters use neutral pronouns, like æ, se, and ær.

[rhetoricandlogic]

Beneath the Rising by Premee Mohamed

By: S. Qiouyi Lu

Issue: 24 February 2020

Nick Prasad has always been Joanna “Johnny” Chambers’s sidekick. Friends since a young age, Johnny has rocketed into an early and brilliant career as a child prodigy scientist, while Nick has lived a quiet, mundane life in which his biggest concerns are work and family. But the two of them still have a regular, teenage friendship, one filled with banter and misadventures. So when Johnny comes up with a new invention that could change the world, Nick doesn’t think much of it at first: after all, this is the seventeen-year-old girl who has already fitted the world with solar panels, created lifesaving medications, and perfected tools that assist millions of people’s lives—to name just a few of her accomplishments.

When strange things start to happen, Nick soon realizes that this invention isn’t like the others. An aurora borealis that shouldn’t be visible from their latitude heralds the coming of monstrous creatures, relentless in their pursuit of Johnny and her new invention. Bit by bit, the scale of what’s happ­­ening comes together: there are other realms beyond ours where terrible evil lurks and waits for its opportunity to trigger the next apocalypse. Those beings, “The Ancient Ones,” are responsible for the annihilation of civilizations ranging from Carthage to Cahuachi to Çatal Hüyük to Atlantis. And now, they’re after Johnny’s invention and the power it can unleash to destroy the world again.

But that’s not all. Suspicious of how much Johnny knows about the origin of these monsters, Nick pries the truth out of her and discovers that she’s made a covenant with the Ancient Ones. One of their terrifying pursuers, Drozanoth, is here to uphold that covenant, and will do anything to make Johnny hand over the invention responsible for calling the Ancient Ones back to Earth. Now, only she has any idea how to close the gates that are opening between realms. Determined to help stop the apocalypse, Nick embarks on a wild scavenger hunt with Johnny across the Maghreb and the Middle East to gather the items they need to put an end to the invasion.

Beneath the Rising, Indo-Guyanese author Premee Mohamed’s debut novel, is a rollercoaster of an experience. Although Mohamed draws from cosmic horror tropes as classic as Lovecraft’s, she challenges the oppressive foundations on which Lovecraft built his career. The novel is set in an alternate history shortly after a failed terrorist attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. The impact of September 11 doesn’t go unnoticed: instead, it, and the period setting of the early 2000s, deeply inform the characters’ every movement through the world and the global context around them. Nick, who is Indo-Caribbean and often refers to himself as “brown,” details the various ways in which his racial and class background affect how he sees the world, and how the world sees him. Unlike Nick, Johnny, the wonder-kid know-it-all seemingly blessed with endless genius, is White and rich. Although the sexism she faces is made clear, her privilege on other axes is called out in a way that feels natural to the characters and important to the narrative.

Lovecraft’s work often relies on racism to fuel its narrative and to lend horror and dread to cosmic horror elements. Mohamed, on the other hand, lays out the intersecting foundations of that marginalization and shows how those systems of oppression are the all-too-mundane backdrop against which otherworldly cosmic horror can play out. On top of that, Mohamed brings a genuinely global scope to her doomsday narrative. It is not just the West that faces an imminent catastrophe in Beneath the Rising. Rather, most of the main events occur in the Maghreb and across the Middle East. The rise and fall of civilizations across a broad set of cultures at the hands of the Ancient Ones feels like a smooth integration of all parts of the world, creating a truly global and historically linear scope of events that adds urgency to the narrative.

When it comes to the technical details of craft, Beneath the Rising shows Mohamed’s masterful command of description, pace, and emotion that renders powerful characters and settings. The prose is lean and deliberate, a short story writer’s novel. Mohamed, who also has several short fiction publications to her name, makes sure that every sentence, every paragraph, every simile serves multiple purposes. A sentence can reveal period- and character-appropriate details while also being embedded in an unusual, yet apt, metaphor that vividly describes and furthers the events of the story:

[Johnny] was trembling so hard she was almost flickering, like a poorly-tracked VHS tape. […] This [fear] felt more like something from outside of me, like secondhand smoke, greasily invisible, sinking into my pores, blown from someone unseen. (pp. 56–58)

Mohamed’s command of the rhythm of a sentence shows through in her control over the pace of the story as well. When Nick and Johnny have room to breathe, the prose is denser and slower as it lingers on fuller descriptions.

In the moment of relative safety I craned my head to try to take it all in, wishing I had sunglasses or a hat—it was so bright it just seemed like a spangled kaleidoscope of car windows, men in suits, tiny booths hawking electronics, sunglasses, clothing, CDs, food, tiles, everyone gabbling around me in languages I didn’t know, plus blessedly recognizable if not actually comprehensible French and English. People bumped and buffeted me apparently without even noticing. I had been picturing … I don’t even know what. Some mud-brick city from Raiders of the Lost Ark? Flowing white robes? Tintin books, for absolute sure. (p. 144)

But when Nick and Johnny are on the run, Mohamed’s prose goes into fight-or-flight mode, highlighting only the barest of actions, reactions, and sensory details. The reader barrels along, breathless, with the characters.

I shut the closet door, hearing first a bang, and then—oh shit—the musical tinkle of falling glass from the living room. A multilegged shadow, all spikes and floppy appendages and translucent nodules, firmly struck the hallway wall, like an ink stamp. I cast about, left, right, left, right. Kids. Bedroom. Two quick steps: empty. (p. 103)

At the same time, Beneath the Rising isn’t just an action-adventure chase after a string of McGuffins against a backdrop of tentacles, shadows, uncanny eldritch pawns, and imminent apocalypse. It’s also a slow tale about a different kind of unrequited love between two teenagers who were forced to grow up too early, and who have never had the space to address their lingering PTSD after surviving a shooting during a hostage crisis. Woven between the multidimensional chaos of the Ancient Ones’ return is a poignant, melancholy tale of what growing out of childhood ideals means and feels like. As Nick confronts the codependent nature of his love for Johnny, who turns out not to be the person he thought she was, he shores up memories and emotions that illustrate the processing he’s doing internally while also showing his growth as a character. The vindication of his fury and betrayal feels both earned and deserved.

The biggest strength of the novel, however, comes from the shocking reveal toward the end of the book that explains the true nature of Nick’s “friendship” with Johnny, and why he was even dragged along on such a dangerous journey he had no hand in creating. I’ll be including spoilers from here on in order to fully discuss the impact of the ending.

Instead of being a magnanimous scientist who simply wants to help the world, Johnny practices “altruism” as a reflection of her own need for power and worth. She may be doing good with her work, but that doesn’t mean that she can’t channel great evil and also be a villainous mad scientist. Her prodigal power and inhuman brilliance stem from a covenant she struck with the Ancient Ones. In exchange for time off of her life, Johnny can speed up her mind, like a supercomputer’s processing power getting a boost, to do what she does. But with that covenant came another clause that Johnny only reveals to Nick when she can no longer hide it. Afraid that her unbelievable talent would alienate her from the rest of the world, leaving her alone forever, Johnny bargained for Nick to be forever by her side as a companion. Nick’s true relationship to Johnny is as a slave.

This Faustian covenant, however, didn’t have to take place. Johnny admits that, if she’d refused the covenant, she would have still lived a comfortable, successful life, and would have still been a great scientist. But, lured in by power and the opportunity to influence the world, saving millions of lives in the process, Johnny agreed to a deal with the Ancient Ones. She justifies her actions with all the good she’s done���but Beneath the Rising is, at its heart, a novel about the true cost of power, and whether the ends can justify appalling means. After all, the Ancient Ones would never have been attracted to the world if Johnny had refused the covenant in the first place. The millions of lives potentially lost in a global apocalypse don’t factor into Johnny’s calculations of how much good she does and her positive impact on the world.

Therein lies the extended metaphor that forms the secret crux of Mohamed’s narrative: Johnny’s covenant, and Nick’s role as her “companion,” are tools to critique the legacy of colonialism; in particular, slavery. In a key character turning point, Nick reminds Johnny that his family, of Indian descent and from Guyana, descends from indentured servants who were exploited for the sake of the British Empire. Nick takes deep offense at the way Johnny doles out money, as if to buy people and solutions to her problems. Johnny’s race is actually the most insignificant reflection of her position as a symbol for colonization and empire. It is her utilitarian attitude toward people and her perceived self-importance as a representative of “the greater good” that motivate the true horrors that Johnny commits. Loyalty can always be bought. Nick’s loss of agency, the loss of his potential livelihood, and the psychic toll of not being a genuinely free individual, never enter into Johnny’s mind. Nick isn’t truly a friend, an equal, or even a person to her. He is a sidekick, a person to be uprooted from place to place so that Johnny can always have someone to carry her when she is weak, provide strength when she has none, and sacrifice his life if she needs him to. Nick is merely a resource she can exploit as an extension of herself. How many families, societies, and whole cultures have similarly been torn apart to support the advancement of Western civilization?

No matter how euphemistically slavery is named, whether as “indentured servitude,” “incarceration,” or “debt bondage,” it is ultimately the real covenant that robs people of their time and life force. The lasting socioeconomic impact of slavery, too, oozes through Beneath the Rising as the gulf in wealth between Nick and Johnny, as well as the gulf in opportunity and attitudes toward self-worth between them. No eldritch covenant needs to be made for oppressors to keep subjugating the oppressed. Through Johnny, the whole empire of colonization is laid bare and exposed: for all the “advancement” purportedly created by colonizers, for all the status colonizers lay claim to, millions of people whom colonizers considered as second-class were sacrificed. When Johnny sets out to “save the world,” what she is truly saving is the status quo of her own world of privilege. Nick’s world, the world of the subjugated and oppressed, has long since been lost.

On a micro scale, Beneath the Rising is the best inversion of the sidekick trope I’ve ever seen. The effect of a reckless superhuman crashing through the world are called out early: who will clean up? Who will pay for property damage? Who will handle witness protection? Insurance? Jobs? How will people recover from the trauma of such a disruptive event? Then, when the true nature of Nick’s slavery is revealed, we see the rare story of a sidekick walking away—of codependency not being romanticized, but called out for the real destruction it can cause. Nick’s anger and betrayal are validated narratively as he sets boundaries at last and recovers from Johnny’s exploitation. The scale of Johnny’s betrayal and the evilness of her act are never downplayed, even as Johnny herself, like many benefitting from the legacy of colonization, remains clueless of her impact, even going so far as to still believe that she is doing good, and that all the devastation behind her can be a footnote to her altruism.

Beneath the Rising is a near-flawless debut novel. While it works well as a standalone, the story and worldbuilding leave room for sequels as well. Multilayered and richly rendered, Beneath the Rising is a darkly humorous romp through unspeakable cosmic horrors that also paints a portrait of two hurt teenagers grappling with their place in the world and their relationship with each other, all while navigating complex inner worlds impacted by the legacies of colonization, slavery, racism, and sexism. Like a doomsday device, Beneath the Rising is compact, powerful, and devastating as it hurls the reader through a brilliantly crafted narrative. Prepare for an epic journey, and don’t forget to bring a barf bag for the turbulent ride.

[can-i-make-image-descriptions]

[Image ID: Tweet from S. Qiouyi Lu (@/ sqiouyilu) on 2023-05-25 reading: I can't believe pandas all still have carnivore digestive tracts and *can* eat meat but they are like "nah I'm vegetarian and I choose this one plant that my body can't actually digest. but nomNomNom"

if pandas were human they'd be lactose intolerant and drink milk daily /End ID]

[millennial-book-review]

In the Watchful City

My review for the novella In the Watchful City is now live.

In the Watchful City is a 2021 science fiction novella by S. Qiouyi Lu. The novella was released in August 2021 and was published by Tor. It can be purchased here from Bookshop.org The city of Ora uses a complex living network called the Gleaming to surveil its inhabitants and maintain harmony. Anima is one of the cloistered extrasensory humans tasked with watching over Ora’s citizens. Although…

[transnovelsbracket]

Trans Novel Bracket Round 1

[yourdailyqueer]

S. Qiouyi Lu

Gender: Non binary (æ/ær, e/em, they/them)

Sexuality: Queer

DOB: N/A

Ethnicity: Chinese

Nationality: American

Occupation: Writer, artist, translator