Review: Only A Chapter by Heather Tracy

CW: Cancer, death of a parent

This book takes a bit of patience, not because of anything related to the writing or the talent of the author, but because it appears at the start not to really be spec fic. The feel is much more like contemporary fiction, and the author's dreams...are they supernatural or not?

I won't say more, but don't worry, this is a fantasy romance, and an interesting one. This book's conceit is two versions of the same woman. One of them has cancer, the other does not. And they end up with two different people, but both couples get their HEA.

So I would count this as a romance, albeit an unusual one. It's also a queer romance...our bisexual protagonist ends up with a man in one world and a woman in the other, resolving that ancient dilemma in a fun way.

I will give a third content warning, though. The author apparently loves cheese. The loving description of a fancy grilled cheese was particularly hunger-inducing. Don't read this book when hungry. (I...did...and just typed "don't eat this book" that's how bad it is).

And the first CW is pretty serious. The author admits she wrote this book to process her own experience with cancer, so she knows what she's talking about...and sometimes goes into detail. If you can't handle gnarly medical stuff, may want to skip this.

But if you want cute queer people in adorable relationships - and cheese - check it out. It's also a good book to hand your queer romance fan friend who wants to try something with a bit of fantasy in it.

Review: Corruption by Alexander Verbeek-Van Den Toren

At one level, Corruption is the typical Divergent-style YA dystopia. People live on an archipelago of islands in a sea of lava, in giant skyscrapers. These people are born with crystals on their chest, and which crystal lights up dictates your fate.

Revan is Othercrystalled - he has a skill crystal, which dictates learning magic, but also a calm crystal. Only his family know this, because the common wisdom is that Othercrystalled are useless and should die. And he's a student at, of course, the magic school.

Centuries ago, a religious leader named Samillan changed the Flow so all magic can do is transport people. Magicians, thus, are basically bus drivers. Samillan is considered a hero at minimum, often a god (although I suspect he's not the hero, at all).

Then we get to the more interesting part of the dystopia. At the age of 15, all kids are expected to choose a Koden, another kid to have sex with. Yes, at 15. You're only allowed to have sex with your Koden and when you enter an adult relationship (which can be with your Koden), you are then only allowed to have sex with them. But you are expected to have sex with them. There's only one unpartnered character, and he's older, perhaps indicating older people are less pressured to repartner. And while the monogamy is strict, nobody cares what gender your partner is and there's indications surrogacy is allowed.

In other words, this is an incredibly sexually repressive society, just not in the way you would expect. This society has no room for asexual people, or for simply choosing to be celibate. One small indication of how things got this way is when the narration tells us that any time you repartner you have to take STD tests. I suspect that there was a plague involved, and possibly the expectation to partner has to do with a drop in the population.

After all, this is a post apocalyptic world...or is it? There's a lot going on here. Our protagonist, Revan, doesn't face prejudice for being bisexual, that's normal. He faces it over his crystals. As does Arana, who hides from everyone that she is "supposed" to be an artist.

And then the magic stops working and everyone's trapped at the magic school. (Which is a perfectly sane magic school, unlike others, it really is just a regular school where you also take classes in magic, although I'm not convinced it's actually magic at all).

This is a book about prejudice, ultimately, but also a book about relationships. Anything more than that is a spoiler.

Recommended to readers who like those Divergent-style YA dystopias - because it's a pretty good example of the type (better than Divergent, in my opinion).