Return of the Book: Cake Gay edition.

Books books books... Love a good book! It's my Cake Day, so I'm doing something special. This one goes out to all my homo homies who are craving some representation in their fantasy and sci-fi. That's right, I'm featuring Gay Male Protagonists, baby! Come get some!

( Art sauce: patreon.com/redizak )

((There's a whole subreddit for this kind of art! Who would've thought... https://www.reddit.com/r/dragonsreadingbooks/ ))

NATO is a big organization, and keeping the peace takes a lot of different people. In the Irregular Affairs Department, sometimes that means making sure someone's next meal isn't a bag of tainted blood...

Keith Curry works as a food inspector, scoping out restaurants, checking thermometers, and making sure the menudo isn't served with "long pork." Sometimes the job calls for chatting with vampires, sometimes it's drinks with shapeshifters. It often puts him in harm's way, but at least it's never boring! And when the going gets tough, he has his partner to pull his fat out of the fire...

"Grilled Cheese and Goblins" is a collection of novellas, tales of fantasy hidden behind the curtain in the modern world. Although the stories are all complete in themselves, they come together in an arc with a satisfying conclusion.

So. Atlantis? Real. Or at least it used to be...

Rune Saint John is the last survivor of the Sun family, a once great noble family of Atlanteans. Now he works as mercenary and investigator, taking his paychecks where he can. When a nobleman of another house goes missing, Rune and his bonded companion Brand must find him quickly, or else the forces that destroyed Rune's family might catch up with him again.

Edwards spins a tale of Urban High Fantasy, set in the city of New Atlantis. There are three books in the series so far, and while the first is a good read, the second and third each improve on the previous. The third, IMO, is where Edwards really finds his voice.

Ashleigh Trine didn't think his life would turn out this way: thrown into a prison in the middle of nowhere and brutally experimented upon. But when you write subversive material for the resistance, totalitarian theocracies tend to get upset!

Kieran Trevarde figured his life would turn out this way. After all, a life of gunslinging and running with gangs usually ends up with a guy either behind bars or dangling from a noose.

When the two are thrown into the same cell, the hardened Kieran must decide if he'll risk protecting the soft Ashleigh. And Ashleigh must see beyond the grim face of his cell mate to discover what lurks behind his facade.

Another high fantasy book set in a conquering nation, this is a story of overcoming the past, of finding ways past generations of tradition and trauma.

Nathan is a real son of a witch. Not only that, his father is the most powerful Black witch ever. But his mother was a white witch! That enough to spare him a death sentence, but not to keep him out of the steel cage he lives in.

As he gets older, Nathan learns the White witches have plans to use him. To what ends, he doesn't know, but a life on the run is better than a life in captivity...

This book is the first of a trilogy. I enjoyed the second, but the third is always checked out when I go looking.

Cities are alive. They breathe with the flow of traffic, their hearts beat with the pounding of feet. But someone (something) doesn't want it that way...

New York is on the cusp of being "born," it's many lives and histories about to be reified into an avatar. But as Sao Paulo (another city) warns the one about to become NYC, every new avatar is troubled by a sinister presence that will do everything it can to make sure the city is stillborn. It's a fight to keep the bright, distinct soul of New York City from being overwritten by the banal and average.

Jemisin knocks it out of the park AGAIN with her blend of sci-fi/fantasy writing and pithy social commentary.

A long, long time ago dragons used to be everywhere! Now it's down to one who must escort her serpent kin along an ancestral path upriver to where they might one day hatch and be reborn...

When the hatching finally happens, the people of the Rain Wilds are dismayed and disappointed. The newborn dragons are horribly malformed! They are unable to fend for themselves, but the council will honor their pact and look after the newborns. Trouble is, they won't stay newborns for long...

Robin Hobb is an amazing (and prolific!) storyteller. I'm pretty sure this five book series is linked to another one of hers, but I haven't been able to get my hands on those books yet.

The land grows cold as winter approaches... The time of trolls.

When the men of the wolfheall come looking for fresh recruits, Isolfr, heir to a nobleman, is the only suitable tithe. Whether he becomes a wolfcarl, a fierce warrior bonded to a lupine compion, or finds himself in an early grave depends on learning the ways of his new pack, and the men who fight beside them.

Gonna be real, this one is straight up smut. I mean, it's got a great plot attached to it, but it's smutty. Dirty, filthy, sexy smut :) And when I went looking for the cover art, I found out it has two sequels, so score!

You can't talk about queer sci-fi without talking about Le Guin, and you especially can't leave out "Left Hand." Written FIFTY-FOUR years ago, Le Guin's message is still timely, deep, and resonant.

Genly Ai, a human from Terra, is sent to the world of Gethen. His goal: to recruit them into the Ekumen, a loose confederation of spacefaring races. His problem: an enormous cultural mismatch.

Gethenians are ambisexual. Rather than being male or female, Gethenians go through a cycle at the end of which they could be either. Because of this, they have no concept of gender, a fact which shapes their whole society.

Genly struggles to understand this part of them, as they struggle to understand his "maleness".
"My efforts took the form of self-consciously seeing a Gethenian first as a man, then as a woman, forcing him into those categories so irrelevant to his nature and so essential to my own." In other words, Genly has to come to grips with his understanding of his own sex and gender before he can begin to understand Gethenians.

More than five decades ago, and "Left Hand" is still hitting the hammer on the head. It's a book about dichotomies, and (paradoxically) not about those dichotomies. It's about how dualities exist, but also they only exist because we continue to insist on these lines drawn in sand. There is so much I could say about this book, but the book itself will speak so much more to you.

Tax cat. Meet Criminal! That's not her "real" name, but I had to throw her in kitten jail so many times that, to me, that's her name now.

Hope you found your next read!

P.S. Some time last year a helpful imgurian gave me a list of sci-fi/fantasy books with gay protagonists. I lost the list before I had the chance to read everything on there. So if you know how I can search my comment history, or have recommendations of your own, please leave a comment!