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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 It wasn't perfect and some of the ideas they had seem out of date now, the ones we know about anyway.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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The Last Olympian by Rick Riordan (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #5)

The Last Olympian ends this series well while opening up the possibility (now fulfilled) of more works in this universe. The twists feel clever and appropriate to the earlier books, the battles are gripping, and I'm not ready for it to be over.

This book accomplishes a very tricky thing (and, frankly, does it quite well): It has to cap off a series which is literally the stuff of gods, have stakes to match, pull off an appropriate resolution, and successfully make the pivot to explain the state of the world after the battle when the prophecy is fulfilled while still leaving room for more books in this universe. Speaking of the prophecy, that is handled well: It feel appropriately tricky in the pattern of mythic prophecies, the resolution defies expectations without feeling cheap, and there's enough groundwork laid in this book to match up the final resolution with the expectation laid by the earlier books. Without spoiling anything, I like how it was handled, and it worked out better than if it had been as was expected based on assumptions made early in the series. This assessment applies to one big thing and several smaller plot points. Tldr: having the twists made it more powerful instead of feeling cheap.

I wasn't expecting to be blown away by this series, but this final book feels better than how it started. I was worried that the casual affect and quippy nature of the main character, Percy, would be grating after a while, but around book three I stopped worrying about it and just enjoyed the story.

I like this book, I would recommend the whole series, and I'll definitely put the other books in this universe in my queue to get to someday. I want to spend more time in this world, and I wish I'd done so sooner.

CW for violence, major character death.

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