asexualbookbird:

howlsmovinglibrary:

anassarhenisch:

maradanewrites:

clearlyromance:

helloo do any of y’all happen to have epic fantasy recs that aren’t… sexist? bonus points if they feature lgbt characters and/or poc. i really want to read some adult fantasy but i’ve ended up taking a lot off my tbr because they feature gloriously sexist and rape-y settings or just don’t have any female characters at all which… I’m sorry but my enjoyment of a fantasy book is almost contingent on there being some female characters

although i’d prefer sexism to be absent, i’m also alright with sexist cultures as long as they aren’t glorified or seen as nonissues of the book and as long as the female characters’ arcs aren’t built on “proving themselves” to be as good as the male characters

I HAVE SOME RECS FOR YOU! 

The Palace Job by Patrick Weekes – D&D meets Oceans 11 in a truly funny epic fantasy heist novel. The lead is a WOC, plenty of empowered female characters in the crew, and if you stick with the series, some LGBT representation. Weekes’ “day job” is writing for Bioware, so if you dig the dialogue in Dragon Age or Mass Effect, this will be your jam.  

City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett – An engrossing epic fantasy / murder mystery set in a second world reminiscent of Russia and India. The protagonist (also a WOC) seems like a low level bureaucrat sent from Saypur to investigate the death of a historical researcher in Bulikov. But nothing is what it seems. 

The Rook by Daniel O’Malley – This is not epic fantasy, but it’s urban fantasy and pretty epic? If you took X-Men, the X-Files, Men in Black, Kingsmen, and James Bond, threw in a dash of H.P. Lovecraft and made the protagonist a woman who is faking her way through the most complicated job in existence, aided only by a truly encyclopedic set of letters she wrote to herself after discovering her memory was about to be irrevocably erased. It starts out tense thriller, and eventually becomes a raucous, hilariously over-the-top action adventure.  

The Silvered by Tanya Huff – early 19th-century Russia but with male werewolves and female mages, and a Napoleon figure trying to eradicate magic. Protag is a young noblewoman who sets out to save her town’s wolves from an attack despite having no magical talent and then everything … snowballs.

If you’re up for urban fantasy, Seanan McGuire’s October Daye books are excellent. A half-fae PI in San Fransisco working thefts, murders, kidnappings, amidst court politics. Themes of kindness, acceptance, and “omg no, why would you think that was okay, NO.” Reasonably racially diverse and most of the fae characters are at least a little queer (word of God but also on the page in at least two cases I can think of).

Take a look at Lois McMaster Bujold’s fantasies—The Curse of Chalion, the Sharing Knife quartet, a few others. I’m mostly familiar with her sci-fi but that’s pretty darn feminist (though dodgy on the LGBT at times). The Sharing Knife books were quite enjoyable, sort of a colonial America without the horrific racial stuff and a farm girl who’s swept into an ongoing battle against Darkness and proceeds to hold her own. The Curse of Chalion has a middle-aged woman spearheading the quest.

And look at N.K. Jemisin, who I haven’t read at all but I’d be surprised if she wasn’t feminist/pro-LGBT/racially diverse based on everything I’ve heard.

Can definitely second N.K. Jemisin – her fantasy is epic and feminist in equal measure!! The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is good if you like court intrigue, and The Fifth Season if you are a grimdark fan (although both are just good).

The Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan is epic fantasy, but through the lens of a female scientist. It’s about Lady Isabella Trent overcoming the prejudice of the academic world and become a world renowned dragon scientist.

Juliet Marillier’s Sevenwaters series is a little dated, but it is basically a series following the lives of the daughters of a particular family, which are intertwined with the fairfolk and the future of Celtic Ireland (TW: rape in the first book of the series).

Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb – I nominate this series because it is slightly more focused on female characters than the Assassin’s series. A lot of the action is domestic, but there are female pirates, and matriarch’s of families trying to struggle through, and teenage girls fucking things up for drama. And the later books, The Rainwild Chronicles, do a lot more with gender than earlier instlaments.

(this is just a few recs there are plenty more – hopefully!!)

I definitely do recommend CITY OF STAIRS, it’s a lot of fun and the main character is bad ass, but it falls into the Bury Your Gays trope, so be warned. Every other aspect was great though (shameless review plug here).

sespursongles:

100 Non-Fiction Books by Women on Women

The links redirect to OpenLibrary, for the books that are available to be read there.

Language, Writing, Reading

• Women and Autobiography in the Twentieth Century, Linda R. Anderson
• Women and Writing, Virginia Woolf
• Women in the Language and Society of Japan: The Linguistic Roots of Bias, Naoko Takemaru (also: Womansword: What Japanese Words Say About Women, Cherry Kittredge)
• Man-Made Language, Dale Spender
• Edging Women Out: Victorian Novelists, Publishers and Social Change, Gaye Tuchman
• Women’s Reading in Britain, 1750-1835, Jacqueline Pearson
• Black Women Writing Autobiography: A Tradition Within a Tradition, Joanne Braxton
• Diaries and Journals of Literary Women from Fanny Burney to Virginia Woolf, Judy Simons
• Between Ourselves: Letters Between Mothers & Daughters, Karen Payne
• How to Suppress Women’s Writing, Joanna Russ
• Chloe plus Olivia : an anthology of lesbian literature from the 17th century to the present, Lillian Faderman
• Reading Women’s Worlds from Christine de Pizan to Doris Lessing: A Guide to Six Centuries of Women Writers Imagining Rooms of Their Own, Sharon L. Jansen
• The Hidden Writer, Alexandra Johnson
• Women in Chains: The Legacy of Slavery in Black Women’s Fiction, Venetria K. Patton
• Embodied Shame: Uncovering Female Shame in Contemporary Women’s Writings, J. Brooks Bouson
• The World Split Open: Four Centuries of Women Poets, ed. Louise Bernikow

History

• Fearless Wives and Frightened Shrews: The Construction of the Witch in Early Modern Germany, Sigrid Bauner
• Women, the Family and Peasant Revolution in China, Kay Ann Johnson
• A Quiet Revolution: The resurgence of the Veil in the Middle East and America, Leila Ahmed
• The Encyclopedia of Amazons: Women Warriors from Antiquity to the Modern Era, Jessica Salmonson
• Hearts And Minds: The Untold Story of the Great Pilgrimage and How Women Won the Vote, Jane Robinson
• Memoirs of Victorian Working-Class Women, Florence S. Boos
• Sisters in the Struggle: African American Women in the Civil Rights / Black Power Movement, Bettye Collier-Thomas
• Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times, Elizabeth Wayland Barber
• Divorced, Beheaded, Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII, Karen Lindsey
• A Train in Winter: An Extraordinary story of Women, Friendship, and Resistance in Occupied France, Caroline Moorehead
• ‘Criminals, Idiots, Women, and Minors’: Victorian Writing by Women on Women, Susan Hamilton
• The Creation of Feminist Consciousness: From the Middle Ages to Eighteen-Seventy, Gerda Lerner
• Women’s Work: An Anthology of African-American Women’s Historical Writings from Antebellum America to the Harlem Renaissance, ed. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp and Kathryn Lofton
• The Girl With 7 Names: A North Korean’s Defector Story, Hyeonseo Lee
• Seeing and Knowing: Women and Learning in Medieval Europe, Anneke Mulder-Bakker
• To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done For America – A History, Lillian Faderman,
• Women in the Holocaust: A Feminist History, Zoë Waxman
• The Undaunted Women of Nanking: The Wartime Diaries of Minnie Vautrin and Tsen Shui-fang, ed. Hua-ling Hu and Zhang Lian-hong
• Gentlemen and Amazons: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861-1900, Cynthia Eller

Modern, Contemporary

• Women’s Lifeworlds: Women’s narratives on shaping their realities, ed. Edith Sizoo
• Writing Women’s Worlds: Bedouin Stories, Lila Abu-Lughod
• Femicide in Global Perspective, ed. Diana Russell
• Silenced No More: Voices of Comfort Women, S.J. Friedman
• Practicing Feminism in South Korea: The women’s movement against sexual violence, Kyungja Jung
• Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues, Catharine MacKinnon
• Women’s Voices from the Rainforest, Janet Townsend
• Women, Resistance and Revolution: A History of Women and Revolution in the Modern World, Sheila Rowbotham
• Dictionary of Women Worldwide: 25,000 Women through the Ages, ed. Anne Commire and Deborah Klezmer
• The Disappearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture, Bonnie J. Morris
• Contested Voices: Women Immigrants in Today’s World, Mariane Githens
• The Hidden Face of Eve: Women in the Arab World, Nawal El Saadawi
• Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera, Alicia Gaspar de Alba
• Dislocating Cultures: Identities, Traditions, and Third World Feminism, Uma Narayan
• Free Women of Spain: Anarchism and the Struggle for the Emancipation of Women, Martha Ackelsberg
• With All Our Strength: The Revolutionary Association of the Women in Afghanistan, Anne Brodsky
• Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China, Leta Hong Fincher

Religion, Spirituality, Myth

• Women and Mystical Experience in the Middle Ages, Frances Beer
• The Wisdom of the Beguines: The Forgotten Story of a Medieval Women’s Movement, Laura Swan
• Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate, Leila Ahmed
• Wandering Women and Holy Matrons: Women as Pilgrims in the Later Middle Ages, Leigh Ann Craig
• Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives, Nancy Auer Falk
• Women and Indigenous Religions, ed. Sylvia Marcos
• Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, Kathryn Joyce
• Beyond God the Father, Mary Daly
• Convent Chronicles: Women Writing About Women and Reform in the Late Middle Ages, Anne Winston-Allen
• Immortality and Reincarnation: Wisdom from the Forbidden Journey, Alexandra David-Néel
• The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology, ed. Irena Klepfisz and Melanie Kaye Kantrowitz
• Women Living Zen: Japanese Soto Buddhist Nuns, Paula Kane Robinson Arai
• Spiders & Spinsters: Women and Mythology, Marta Weigle
• The Dancing Goddesses: Folklore, Archaeology, and the Origins of European Dance, Elizabeth Wayland Barber
• The Female Mystic: Great Women Thinkers of the Middle Ages, Andrea Dickens

Science, Medicine

• Blazing the Trail: Essays by Leading Women in Science, ed. Emma Ideal & Rhiannon Meharchand
• Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race, Margot Lee Shetterly
• Soundings: The Story of the Remarkable Woman Who Mapped the Ocean Floor, Hali Felt
• Complexities: Women in Mathematics, Bettye Anne Case
• The Mercury 13: The True Story of Thirteen Women and the Dream of Space Flight, Martha Ackmann
• Nobel Prize Women in Science: Their Lives, Struggles, and Momentous Discoveries, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne
• Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA, Brenda Maddox
• The Madame Curie Complex: The Hidden History of Women in Science, Julie Des Jardins
• Women and Madness, Phyllis Chesler
• The Fossil Hunter: Dinosaurs, Evolution, and the Woman Whose Discoveries Changed the World, Shelley Emling (for a fictionalised version: Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures)
• Women in Science: Antiquity through the Nineteenth Century, Marilyn Bailey Ogilvie
• Feminism & Bioethics, Susan M. Wolf
• Chrysalis: Maria Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis, Kim Todd
• Lifting the Veil: The feminine face of science, Linda J. Shepherd
• The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, Kate Moore
• Mary Somerville: Science, Illumination, and the Female Mind, Kathryn A. Neeley
• Pandora’s Breeches: Women, Science and Power in the Enlightenment, Patricia Fara

Economics, Politics

• Women and Economics, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
• The Political Economy of Violence against Women, Jacqui True
• Toward a Feminist Philosophy of Economics, Drucilla Barker (also her Liberating Economics: Feminist Perspectives on Families, Work, and Globalization)
• Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World, Hester Eisenstein
• The Poverty of Life-Affirming Work: Motherwork, Education, and Social Change, Mechthild U. Hart
• Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International Politics, Cynthia Enloe
• Visionary Women: How Rachel Carson, Jane Jacobs, Jane Goodall, and Alice Waters Changed Our World, Andrea Barnet
• Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism, Melissa W. Wright
• Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?: A Story of Women and Economics, Katrine Marçal
• The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’S Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience, Kirstin Downey
• If Women Counted: A New Feminist Economics, Marilyn Waring (also her Counting For Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth)
• Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive Accumulation, Silvia Federici

A lot of the books that aren’t available on OpenLibrary can be found here, if you have no morals and don’t mind piracy.

rob-anybody:

hiddencait:

rob-anybody:

If you’re like me and love stories about monsters living interesting lives and finding a family amongst themselves and a small group of humans who care for them, please consider reading Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw. It has:

• A human doctor who exclusively takes care of monsters and keeps their secrets so they can be safe. She also works with a witch and a russalka.
• Has vampires from actual literature show up to be moody and lonely, aka Varney the Vampyre and his blatant self-loathing.
• Actual discussion of physiological differences between each supernatural creature.
• Monsters with mental illness/chronic pain and their struggle to deal with these things while Greta helps them.
• Murderous monks on a killing rampage at the behest of a possibly Lovecraftian god.
• A 400-year-old vampire with fabulous hair who shelters everyone in his giant mansion and walks around in tiny fancy dressing gowns while mothering over everyone and being really into technology.
• A Black historian whose family has been associated with the 400-year-old vampire for centuries and who gets drawn into this whole mess and ends up talking theology with a demon on a regular basis.
• Said demon is also a second father to the doctor and has bronchitis and lives like he’s a character in Russian literature. Also makes jokes about living like he’s in Russian literature.
• Ghoul clans, ghoul families, ghoul language. They’re lovely and also heartbreaking.

I’m reasonably certain that this is a series now, so if you love this book, she has more stories about monsters and the doctor that cares for them. I’m definitely buying the second one once I’m done this one.

HARD AGREE!! I stumbled on the audiobook of this and loved it and have now preordered the second one coming out end of July, I think? It manages this impressive balance between fairly gruesome horror scenes (mostly with the aformentioned monks) and very delightfully British domesticity. All I can think to describe it as is every horror novel ever, but crossed with ALL CREATURES GREAT AND SMALL if James Herriot was treating supernatural creatures that could talk back at adopt him. Seriously it was just fun, y’all.

Please read this review, which is the best, because “All Creatures Great and Small, BUT WITH MONSTERS” is the greatest description of exactly the kind of thing I am into.