#also great book recs

[hopeless-eccentric]

i dont do a lot of book recs on here (i think ive done one before?) but the Henry Rios books by Michael Nava are so criminally underrated!

They're these mystery novels from the 1980s-1990s about a gay, Latino lawyer (Henry Rios, our protagonist/narrator) solving mysteries--usually while trying to prove his client's innocence. He's a long-suffering idealist written as this kind of hard-boiled detective.

This is actually something the whole series tackles, subverts, and deconstructs in a really interesting way! Instead of being this stoic detective, the archetype gets broken down in a lot of really fascinating and human ways earnestly discussing love, grief, intergenerational trauma, racism, homophobia, illness/disability, toxic masculinity, and substance abuse.

What I love is that these books realize that the hard-boiled detective is stuck in a point of hurt and trauma, and so the Henry Rios series makes a big deal out of fighting tooth and nail to GET BETTER--whatever it takes to improve yourself and your surroundings. While the books maintain a lot of the dark and morose vibe of the original genre (especially given the looming, perpetual grief of AIDS-era queer lit), they always come back to a death match against apathy. It's really moving stuff, especially as the books take this approach to Henry's recovery from alcoholism.

if you're interested in queer history, the books are in touch with queer legal/political history during the HIV/AIDS crisis. The first few books have been rewritten/published as well since Michael Nava's retirement, so I think a comparative reading could be really interesting. For the record, Nava was a civil rights lawyer, so this is all done REALLY well (not to mention the legal drama is engaging, theatrical, petty, gutting, and sometimes hilarious).

if you're interested in detective fiction, they're brilliant deconstructions of the genre. instead of taking the depressed alcoholic white guy with repressed desire for male companionship at face value, the series considers a gay Latino man struggling with machismo, racism and homophobia, intersectional identity, and processing/recovering from grief, childhood trauma, alcoholism, and Catholicism.

Stylistically, the books are smart, poetic, introspective, dark, and witty. There's a lot of suffering, but there are also a lot of intense moments of joy and catharsis that feel really earned.

Also, if you read the rewrites. uh. there's a lot of smut! Happy retirement, Mr. Nava!

[mintmentos]

Does anyone have recs for historical romance books with a fantasy element? I’m really enjoying the historical society with magic genre at the minute (not really sure if this has a name or not!) and loved the Meddle and Mend series by Sarah Wallace and am currently reading A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske

All recs are appreciated :))

[mermaidsirennikita]

Lord of Danger may be my new favorite Anne Stuart.... Just need to see if it sticks the landing.... but girl the dark wizard is railing the heroine on the parapets of the battlements in the middle of a lightning storm..................... licking her tears off her face during.......................... being a cunning linguist..................

and like..................................................................

girl..........................................................................................................

[callisteios]

9 books to read in 2025

thank you for the tag emma @hauntedbythenarrative <33

tagging @mashmouths @waltzingbi @theflowerunicorn @superhell @soupteeth @apeirotilio and everyone else i missed

[oldtvandcomics]

Book Shout-outs for Pride Month #1:

Ever wanted a series of lesbian superhero romances, all stand-alone, but set in the same universe and building off of each other (think Phase 1 MCU)?

Hearts of Heroes series by Molly J. Bragg. They're more romance than superheroes, but once you know what to expect it's GREAT.

Scatter is about a US Deputy Marshal who gets promoted to work with the team around the superhero Focus. From the first moment on, there is something strange between her and Focus, but only when she accidentally time travels back to the early 90's begins she to realize that she may be Focus' mysterious long-lost partner, Scatter.

Transistor is about a woman who gains superpowers because the doctors forget to deactivate the supercomputer used in her gender-affirming surgery. It only really becomes an issue when an angry angel comes after her neighbour and long-term crush, very determined to kill her.

Aether has a disabled protagonist, who dies when the building blows up during an experiment. Luckily for her, her consciousness gets somehow preserved, and she gains extremely strong powers. Now she just has to stop the guy who caused the accident from doing it again...

Rhapsody isn't out yet, but based on the summary, it is going to go more into the dragon side of the lore.

[cheeseburgersinparadise]

started a new play through of hades and I’m now remembering all the hot feedist fantasies I have for all of the gods

[hussyknee]

Song of Achilles did make me cry and there are some beautiful, extremely quotable turns of prose. But honestly? Even without being a classicist or a Greek mythology enthusiast— it really kind of sucks. There's no substance or complexity to it, the characters are one-dimensional and it's painfully YA. It's written for a Booktok audience who doesn't give a fuck about Homer's poems or Greek myths as a genre. I mean I'm also largely disinterested but I hate books that loses everything that defines a genre in order to appeal to people who don't care for it.

Idk if you want an incredible reimagining of the Trojan war for an audience who doesn't care much about the Illiad, read The Troy Trilogy by David Gemmell. It makes no pretence of being faithful to the Illiad and takes out all mention of gods and magic, and sadly doesn't have a lot of gay in it, despite the protagonist being one of the most badass bisexual women in fantasy fiction (Andromache in the Old Guard can't hold a candle to this Andromache). But for all that, it has very complex and vivid characters, cinematic battle scenes and is an emotional rollercoaster that makes you blow through all three books in one sitting. It's very much about how war and pride and honour can make people you like and believe in do horrific things, how morality is informed by culture and era, how you can feel pity for even the worst characters, and how desolation lives hand in glove with glory. Once you read that you'll realise how hollow Madeline Miller's work is.

[penumbralwoods]

sighs. anyone got some book recommendations

[bloody-wonder]

Top five mangas?? 👀👀

thanks i'm gonna include manhwa too tho bc i read it more often :)

semantic error made me unlock hitherto undreamt of levels of fun that can best be compared to the profound enjoyment a hetero woman experiences when watching a really good self-indulgent romcom. i previously thought i'm only into exceptionally fucked up bl but this manhwa taught me i'm not above very basic romance if it's well-written, hilarious and sexy and frames weirdness as something that can be appealing and awaken desires

killing stalking was the first bl manhwa i ever read and what an introduction to the genre it was! it's very good but very dead dove do not it so i wouldn't rec it to just anyone. for me, it was very fun binging the whole thing overnight bc why sleep when you can instead plunge deep into the darkest corners of human psyche while scrolling cartoons

twittering birds never fly has the audacity to maintain that slowburn since *checks wikipedia* 2011?? what the fuck?! if semantic error is a romcom twittering birds is a soap opera with no end in sight - and it has me in a chokehold. yashiro is one of the most characters of all time, i hope he admits his feelings for doumeki sometime before i turn 50 but it's still fun to watch him get into increasingly dramatic situations in order to avoid doing just that lol

painter of the night is just self-indulgent. i don't think the plot is any good at all and i don't particularly like the main character but i'm sufficiently compensated for these flaws by the historical setting and yoon seungho. the joseon period costumes are just so fun to look at - at one point i went down a rabbit hole researching those fascinating gat hats. more bl should be set in the past tbh but it probably takes more time and research for the creators. and yoon seungho is just your classic bad boy you want to fix and do in fact fix. the drrrrama of it tho!

the cornered mouse dreams of cheese / the carp on the chopping block jumps twice is probably the least well-known on this list? this short two volume manga was recced to me by a friend and i really liked it bc it features a protag struggling with his sexuality in a way that to me read very aro. it's also about the quarter-life crisis so. all the themes very near and dear to my heart lol

[bookwyrminspiration]

do you have any scifi recs (hard scifi or otherwise)? i’ve been currently reading ball lightning by cixin liu which is also hard scifi which is why i was reminded after seeing ur ask abt the martian. but anything is appreciated!

Certainly! My pool of sci-fi knowledge is lesser than fantasy, but here's a few:

The Expanse by James S.A. Corey: book and show, hard sci-fi, follows a rag-tag crew of people set in the future where we've colonized Mars and the Asteroid belt as the existence of a freak new organism decides the laws of physics are optional <- not at ALL a good summary, but I actually have yet to read the books, but I have it on good authority they're phenomenal

The Insignia Trilogy by S.J. Kincaid: Tom Raines is bad at school and real good at video games, and what do you know! The U.S. military thinks that the perfect skill set to recruit him for cyberspace war against China and Russia. Surely nothing can go wrong when he signs up and gets a computer implanted in his brain! I recently described it as "deep critique on surveillance states except we view it all through a 14(?) yo boy who thinks about boobs half the time"

The Last Cuentista by Donna Barbara Higuera: middle grade soft fantasy. Petra's family is one of those selected to flee Earth so life can continue, since there's an asteroid coming, but when she wakes up from cryosleep a couple centuries later, the people assigned to watch over them through generations have...had a change of plans. Now she's on her own and their programming hasn't worked on her, and she needs to figure out what to do.

If you're open to more like science fantasy, I've got a couple I'd rec as well--Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin, Memoirs of Lady Trent by Marie Brennan, etc.

This is a limited list, but hopefully there's something here you'd like. My reading pool skews heavily towards fantasy, so I'm trying to branch out :)

[kitausu]

[corvidaedream]

sometimes i get very passionate about my job and how important it can be to give an accurate history of a moment in american history that's frequently referenced but which the general public in america has a lot of misconceptions about

and other times i spend an unproductive day trying to explain outdated tax law to a child who isn't equipped to understand, but who is very intent on asking "why?" repeatedly and i think maybe i understand why this protest specifically gets misrepresented and glossed over in schools.

[the---hermit]

The Priory Of The Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

I gave a few updates while I was reading the book in daily posts as well as in this ask and this post. It's a pretty long book and I felt a lot of feelings and I will definitely forget about mentioning some stuff, but I really want to talk about it for a bit now that I finally finished it.

This book is an amazing epic fantasy story that takes place in a world divided in two main continents, east and west, that are not only separated by a great sea but also by very different cultures and religions. The east worships dragons as gods, while the west fears them like monsters. We are following differnt characters scattered across this world, and eventually we learn a bit about the history, cultures and myths of these places. In the west a queen needs to have a child to continue her line and keep her reign safe, while being in constant danger for her life. In the east a young woman is trying her best to become a dragonrider, and an exiled alchemistis is trying to discover the secret of immortality in hopes of seeing his homeland one more time.

This is incredibly reductive, but it gives you a base about the story. The world-building of this novel is incredible, you can tell the author had very clearly in mind the history of these places as well as their customs and traditions. There's definitely some historical/mythological inspiration, the main one being the myth of saint George and the dragon, and I adored this particular take on the myth. There's so much detail put into this work, while you see different characters and regions you can perfectly picture the landscapes, the colours, the smells you'd find if you were there too. The characters are complicated, they are all trying their best according to their own values and beliefs. I went into this novel knowing very little, I knew there were two main regions, drangons and some queer representation. I had a great time with the book knowing this little, and so I would recommend going into it without knowing much. The size of the book can seem intimidating, it surely was for me, but once I started reading this I couldn't stop. The writing is absolutely amazing, and the author did a great job at making everyone clear to remember about, I could tell the characters apart pretty quickly, and didn't have any problems with the switch of perspective. I never felt like the west or east chapters were more interesting that the other, I wanted to know everything about everyone all of the time. I cannot wait for the prequel to be published here as well. This is apparently my year of fantasy reading and I am very happy about being back into a genre that has followed me ever since I can remember and that has never failed to bring me comfort.

I read this book for the high fantasy prompts of both the jumbo reading challenge and the fantasy reading challenge.

[whatswiththemustache]

okay fellow tumblrites pls help. i've read too many mediocre books in a row and i really need a good one to give me that 10/10 blorbo brainrot. someone pls give me some recs!!

[optimistpax]

Comics by Black Cartoonists

It's Black History Month y'all! Go support your local (and international!) Black cartoonists because they're out here making fantastic work.

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but here is a list of some of my favourite comics by Black cartoonists, artists, and/or writers:

Clock Striker by Fredrick L. Jones and Issaka Galadima (Steampunk/Fantasy)

Barda by Ngozi Ukazu (Sci-fi/Romance)

Brooms by Jasmin Walls and Teo DuVall (Fantasy/Sports)

Bunt! by Ngozi Ukazu and Mad Rupert (Sports/Slice of Life)

The Unlikely Story of Felix and Macabber by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou and Juni Ba (Fantasy/Sports(?))

The Last Session by Jasmin Walls and Dozerdraws (Slice of Life)

Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur by Amy Reeder, Brandon Montclare, and Natacha Bustos (Superhero/Fantasy)

CHEW by John Layman and Rob Guillory (Fantasy/Mystery/Horror)

Far Sector by NK Jemisin and Jamal Campbell (Superhero/Sci-fi)

Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro (Dystopian)

Artie and the Wolf Moon by Olivia Stephens (Fantasy)

Check, Please! by Ngozi Ukazu (Sports/Slice of Life/Romance)

[explosionshark]

top 5 horror book recommendations? it's spooky season and i need to get my read on...

Hell yeah! Gonna break this down a little. First an obligatory rehash of books I always recommend for this, these are like all-time faves for me

Wounds/North American Lake Monsters by Nathan Ballingrud - can't choose between these two, so they're tied for my favorite single author short story collection. Nathan Ballingrud is one of my favorite writers of all time

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado - a very very close second for my favorite single-author short story collection. Machado is a beautiful writer and finding an author writing such powerful horror from a queer woman's perspective was world changing for me.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - COME ON!!!! You might have already read this but consider reading it again! Absolute classic.

The Cipher by Kathe Koja - dark, fucked up meditation on art and addiction and toxic relationships. I think about this book all the time. A guy finds a weird hole in his apartment basement and then everything goes wrong (first slowly and then very very quickly)

Red X by David Demchuk - talked about this a lot before too but I really do love it. Fictional story inspired by real life serial killings that took place in Toronto's gay village over decades. The author inserts essays throughout the book that makes it part memoir as well. A supernatural story about real queer trauma.

--

Okay with that out of the way, here's some recommendations for stuff I think would be fun for Halloween specifically

Echoes edited by Ellen Datlow - OKAY CHEATING I ALSO RECOMMEND THIS ALL THE TIME BUT IT'S A PERFECT OCTOBER BOOK!!! Fuck-off huge ghost story anthology. Huge range of tones, pretty diverse group of contributing authors, it's my all-time favorite anthology.

Slewfoot by BROM - this one's got major autumn vibes. It's a story of a woman in Puritan New England who's accused of witchcraft. It's also a story about the devil. Kind of. The print version has really amazing paintings by the author, but I've heard this is also good in audio.

Come Closer by Sara Gran - this is a great little novella. Possession story that really packs a punch. I can't really say much more than that, but it's not a huge time investment and I think it's really worthwhile.

Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu - if you can, get the version edited by Carmen Maria Machado (she adds in some great footnotes and it has some neat art too). This is a classic and also quite a brisk read. The original lesbian vampire story.

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia - here's a new release for you! I always watch a ton of horror movies in October, and if you're anything like me maybe you'll want to read a horror novel about horror movies. This story follows a female film editor in 90s Mexico and her washed up actor friend as they help a retired filmmaker complete his famously unfinished last film, which he had been making with a former Nazi occultist before strange misfortunes and the occultist's mysterious disappearance forced production to shut down.

Okay that was double the amount of recommendations requested so I'm stopping here. Haha don't look in the tags don't worry about it there's nothing there you're crazy