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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 It wasn't perfect and some of the ideas they had seem out of date now, the ones we know about anyway.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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River of Teeth by Sarah Gailey (River of Teeth, #1)

In the early 20th Century, the United States government concocted a plan to import hippopotamuses into the marshlands of Louisiana to be bred and slaughtered as an alternative meat source. This is true.

Other true things about hippos: they are savage, they are fast, and their jaws can snap a man in two.

This was a terrible plan.

Contained within this volume is an 1890s America that might have been: a bayou overrun by feral hippos and mercenary hippo wranglers from around the globe. It is the story of Winslow Houndstooth and his crew. It is the story of their fortunes. It is the story of his revenge.

TITLE: River of Teeth
AUTHOR: Sarah Gailey
PUBLISHER: Tor/Forge Books
YEAR: 2017
LENGTH: 192 pages
AGE: Adult
GENRE: Fantasy, Alternate History
RECOMMENDED: Highly

Queer Rep Summary: Bi/Pan Main Character(s), Genderqueer/Nonbinary Main Character(s).

River of Teeth is a dark and fun revenge caper/operation alternate history with hippo steeds and self-confident queer sexiness. If that doesn't make you want to read it immediately, I'm not sure what else would convince you. Check this one out.

I love heist stories, caper (sorry, "operation") stories, anything where we get the crew together for one very dangerous job. I also love alternate history, twisting the past into something a little bit different, a little more weird (or at least differently so). Unsurprisingly, I loved this book. The premise is weird and wonderful, everyone who wants to be sexy is very sexy, the revenge plot is established without weighing down the story... it hit all the right notes for me and I'll definitely check out the sequel. 

I don't think it goes quite as far as to have queerness as a default, but it gets most of the way there in very excellent form. Hero is great, their dynamic with Houndstooth is sexy and fun without distracting from the main plot. There's a lot of little things to appreciate and I don't want to spoil them, this just felt very good to read.

That the seed for this premise comes out of a real historical proposal is pretty great, but even if that weren't the case, this would still be a dark and fantastic story. 

It moves fast and has a lot of fun, but it's also a revenge story and it has some pretty bloody scenes. Not everyone is up for that, so please take care of yourselves. It somehow manages to be gruesome, edging up to explicit without quite getting there, all without having a dark tone. If you are up for that, go read this.

CW for racism (minor), fatphobia, transphobia (minor), pregnancy, drug use (smoking), alcohol, fire/fire injury, blood (graphic), gore, violence (graphic), medical content, animal death, child death, murder, major character death, death (graphic).


Five figures ride hippos in a swamp
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