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We've Always Been Queer

The podcast is Books That Burn because the original idea was "books that burn you", discussing fictional depictions of trauma. It's also an intentional reminder of the pile of burning books, you know the photo I mean, the one from WWII. It's a pile of books about queerness, gender, and sexuality. Just in case you don't know, the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (Institute for Sexual Science) was headed by Magnus Hirschfeld.  It was a resource for gay, intersex, and transgender people, both of knowledge and medical help. It also helped the community with addiction treatment and contraception. It wasn't perfect and some of the ideas they had seem out of date now, the ones we know about anyway. But they were trying to make queer people's lives better, and they were a community resource at a time when people really needed it. Which is all the time, we always need these accesses. And the Nazis burned the whole library. It took days, they had to drag the books ou
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Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed (The Crescent Moon Kingdoms, #1)

Throne of the Crescent Moon features a city stalked by nightmarish creatures, protected by the weary and the young, brave in the face of monsters the officials deny. Excellent ensemble, thrilling action, and much conversation.

The characters are well-balanced, the mix of the two young warriors with several older comrades/mentors is a nice mix of zeal and experience. The monsters are suitably creepy when shown and menacing when half-viewed. There are several antagonists, operating at different levels in the story. It's enough to mean that the heroes keep facing danger without constantly running into the exact same villains/obstacles at every turn.

I like the pacing, the beginning was exciting, the middle was tense in a "need to figure out how to manage this, many fetch-quests" kind of way, with a few confrontations and an action-heavy conclusion. The slower middle sections were well managed and never were boring, just as one person's goals were stymied we followed a different member of the group as they solved their piece of the whole situation. It made it feel a bit like a mystery without really being a mystery story, and the overall effect worked well.

Stories that have a lot of discussion, a lot of "figuring out", and complicated politics to navigate are a particular favorite of mine, and this has all of that. I care about that stuff more than the action scenes, usually, so to me this book feels dialog-heavy. But as I flip back through the book to refresh my memory, I keep coming across action scenes so I suspect that it's more balanced and will appeal to people who like more action than conversation, as well as people like myself.

CW for murder, body horror, mutilation, death.


A bearded man in white, a robed man with a sword, and a clawed girl fight ghuls
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