This book shows up with a fistful of pain and a fistful of silliness and hits you with the ol' one-two. It's like anime in that respect. You can fit all the symbols and ideas you want into an anime, and they don't necessarily have to work together - in the end, it's all about the spectacle.

Our hero Tam Lin has to orient herself in a massively complex network of privilege and power and family ties while horrible things will not stop happening to her, even for a second. It's been like this since she was six. Ready to join her?

If your father writes a bunch of books about fatherlessness and faithlessness, and you read them under the covers when you're ten because you love your very-much-present dad, what happens when you try to continue his work as an adult? We're very glad @byzantienne.bsky.social brought us this puzzle.

All the stories we cover in this one are available to read online - click through for the links. Our major takeaway is that you should keep an eye on Lowry Poletti, both to read what she writes next and in general.

Last time Kat brought us Pale Fire (20th c, short, meta) - this time she brings us Middlemarch (19th c, long, Major.) Next time we're going to make her do Story of the Stone (18th c, 5 vols, CLASSIC OF CHINESE LITERATURE.) In the meantime, enjoy our discussion of what turns out to be a horror novel.

This book came out four years before The Matrix and nailed the gender/power/information/sexuality/control thing so hard that the rest of the genre is still catching up. Thanks to a recent translation, we English speakers finally get to find out where all of this is going.

There are no wizards and no lesbians in The Commodore. It's not even the best book in this beloved series. But there is a little girl with 19th century autism in this one, and that's one of our favorite secondary subjects: monstrous children, and whether they can be cured by becoming Irish.

A deconstruction of wizard school stories, a deconstruction of competence porn, a deconstruction of one particular person's understanding of herself, and a really entertaining fantasy novel to boot. Heartily recommended.

sometimes I think about the "eternal friends" xena trading card. just gals being pals

Naked Bee joins us to discuss the Vows and Honor books, which are about a swordswoman and a sorceress who aren't dating but are married. We ask why that is, and why the author thinks that is, and then we ask whether there was always this much rape in these kinds of stories, and the force-femme, and

150-odd years of built-up curses - race curses, class curses, sex curses, gay curses, curses direct from the last of the four great novels of China - may seem like a lot to surmount, but there's always the possibility that this generation will finally get it right (if they're lesbians.)

Strange Horizons invariably serves up peak Wizards vs Lesbians short fiction. Discounting all other reasons, for this they deserve your support

I love Strange Horizons - endlessly one of the most inventive and important magazines in the field. Support their next year!

When I was thinking about starting a podcast about speculative fiction, an honest question I was wrestling with was "should I just do a Cherryh podcast?" One year in, really psyched to talk about Cherryh's whole deal with the ever-insightful Arkady Martine:

Also, if you're interested in lesbians, historical lesbians, and lesbians in historical fiction - and if you're here, I can't imagine you aren't - do check out the Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast.

We were mixed on The Valkyrie (the last book of Kate Heartfield's we covered) and so we're grateful to our guest Heather Rose Jones for bringing us this one. It's tragic and hilarious and alien and familiar by turns.

This is one of those cases where we reluctantly conclude that the book might have been better without the supernatural elements - it's a story about life and love in a small town which leaves the sff-inclined reader thinking about the mechanics of selkie-human hybridization.

This book delivers the "young hero goes to magic school" experience, but the magic school is a women-only boot camp in the woods. So there's a lot of grappling with feminism and sex and gender (and land reform?) but the plot of a pretty standard wizard kid YA novel is happening at the same time.

All the books we read are either about kissing girls or going to grad school and there's no kissing in this one.

This one's not even SFF, probably. At least two of the people I forced to read it developed migraines. Beware the color yellow. But if you're the kind of person who thinks the revolution ought to include universal basic sachertorte, do I have a treat for you.

What we have here is a well-paced and entertaining fantasy novel which moves briskly from one compelling set piece to the next. This is such a rare quality that it doesn't need any ideas, so it's cool that it has some anyway.

So this is a coming of age YA novel about a girl from Nebraska who writes not-Harry Potter fanfiction. It's hilarious and devastating and well-crafted and it took us completely by surprise.

We took the most lesbian pieces of short fiction from the Nebula nominee pool this year (factor of lesbianism determined by vibes) and talked about them.

In this post-scarcity future the only question is who gets the femme; the classic butch ace reporter/artistic genius lesbian or the modern business lesbian in the sharp suit. Maybe they'll erotically wrestle about it. Wait, weren't we supposed to be blowing up the sun?

Lianyu Tan brings us another helping of Xena Uber. This one's a Pratchettesque satire on nobility, featuring our Gabrielle stand-in as the world's brattiest power bottom, insisting that she has to be chained to the mast by a pirate queen so Xena better get busy becoming one.

wizlez.libsyn.com/feast-while-... This is the best contemporary book we've done in a good while. Night in the Woods vibes but set in a little Italian (ITALIAN) town in the dying days of the 20th century. It's rich, deep, complex, funny. Isaac may unfortunately have become a little overexcited.

This pinned post is simply a link to another pinned post. We commit this algorithmic sin joyfully and intentionally, in the hopes that we may lead you away from error and back into the arms of the only good social media website.

We continue our author's choice bonus series with Isaac Fellman, who has brought us our first-ever piece of non-fiction. (Mostly.) Following the thematic lead from The Ministry of Time, this is another book about the consequences of becoming parasocially attached to dead arctic explorers.

It's our longest episode yet - and, fittingly, it's on a book about the biggest animal ever, the sperm whale. The sperm whale is big and it's real and it's my nemesis and I don't know what that emo kid's getting up to with my harpooneer over there but it sure smacks of lesbianism.

The author of the Fortunate Fall joins us to discuss a book which is about the internet (astonishingly prescient), desire (rather quaint) and dinner parties (terrifying, as usual.)

There is a big Israeli elephant in the room, and this book manages to describe it without acknowledging it, which is impressive but leads to some problems (throwing the state of Kentucky under the bus, for example.)

Four full years of Wizards vs Lesbians! Insane. For a full list of nominees and winners, check out www.tumblr.com/wizardsvsles...

I don't want to talk about this one. Stay tuned, next episode is on a book that is competent in its depiction of the jewish experience.

This is a fun sexy romp that is also trying to make a point. The less you think about the point and the execution thereof the better a time you'll have with it.

This isn't quite Steerswoman but with lesbians, but it's close enough that those who are jonesing might get a buzz. Give it a minute to get going.

Now that we've gotten Vajra on there is no stopping us. We talk about a very sad, very funny historical fanfic-turned-novel which posits that your life path is largely determined by which historical tragedy you learn about first.

Lee rejoins us to talk about a YA novel that takes place in past/future Brazil. We all like this book a lot, and, as is tradition, we spend the hour picking it apart.

A fascinating proto-wizlez book about the school where the princes and princesses of the post-apocalypse go to be held hostage by the lame nerdy AI who rules the world.

Fittingly, the audio for this one is screwed up in a way I can't readily identify or fix! It's probably fine. Thanks to everyone who sent in questions. We had and will continue to have a lot of fun.

OK, hear us out

Very funny that we got a helpful AI reacting to our review of this book in particular

A brief, annoying litfic novella masquerading as science fiction. The ideas are all decades old but the execution and lack of effort are thoroughly up to date. Stick around til the end for a state of the podcast update!

We are getting very close to episode 100. To celebrate, let's do another Q&A! You can send us questions about the podcast, books we've read, books we haven't read, life problems, relationships, baking tips, and so forth, via here, our tumblr or wizardsvslesbians at gmail dot com.

It's been a while since we've covered books that are pure fun to read - at least until the less pleasant BL tropes kick in, but of course that will also be candy for some. We had a good time.

The author sets out to demolish the lesbian separatist utopia genre by positing that women are also people, and are thus apt to make mistakes, become violent and territorial, go on vision quests and do qi gong.

This was so much fun. If it's not obvious, we'll cover any old book you love if you can talk it up the right way. wizlez.libsyn.com/bonus-pale-f...

Another Great Noticing of the ongoing twitter problem seems to have occurred, so I guess we're going to start using this account again. Here's the latest episode. wizlez.libsyn.com/daughters-of...

www.tumblr.com/wizardsvsles... Supplementary links for this episode can be found on our Tumblr page.

Something of a change of pace this week, as we head to the quintessentially American town of Carfax, TX to indulge in some trashy vampire hunting.

We go along despairing about the state of the publishing industry and bemoaning the lack of artistry and strangeness in modern SF and then in defiance of all logic someone drops a first novel like this. wizlez.libsyn.com/the-saint-of...