it’s all about the angst
It’s not that I never read light, sweet, fluffy, happy things! I do! I had a solid couple of weeks of bingeing contemporary sapphic romances, in September maybe? If you’re looking for that, I enjoyed Fly with Me (Andie Burke), Outdrawn (Deanna Grey), Reverence (Milena McKay, OK, it’s not fluffy at all, it’s really intense, I can’t help it, sorry), Falls from Grace (Ruby Landers), Bachelorette Number 12 (Jae), Stud Like Her (Fiona Zedde)…the list goes on (and on).
But I don’t find myself walking around thinking about them. I don’t find myself unable to let go of the characters. When a happy ending is reached, I don’t have that experience of putting the book down full of light and joy and incredible relief and a sense that everything is true and right.
That’s probably more about me than about the books, as every matter of taste is. And when I read sapphic romantic fantasy (my favorite genre) what makes me remember a book, and come back to it over and over, is angst. It’s all about the yearning. If you, too, love great fantasy novels AND sapphic love that fights for survival against all odds, here’s my list!
I’ll start with C.L. Clark’s The Unbroken/The Faithless, with Book 3, The Sovereign, closing out the trilogy in September 2025 (start reading now. Be ready.) Epic queernorm, in a colonialist world where you can taste the dust and blood. There’s so much I love about these books, but I think what gets me with the love story in particular is the emotional honesty about a relationship that has so much stacked against it from the start. Luca, Crown Princess of Balladaire, inherits the benefits of oppression, while Tourane, a conscript soldier from a conquered nation, inherits the trauma. Dialed up to 100. Luca’s good intentions will never not be edged with unequal power, and Touraine’s choices are shaped by a history that’s conquered her homeland, destroyed her childhood, and forced her to be a soldier for Luca’s empire. The tension and the risk makes every time they are near one another electric. Every bad decision is material for me to yell why, Touraine? Why? Luca! are you kidding me?
Love can be real, can perhaps change the future, but it can’t erase the deep unfairness: Touraine has already lost so much, and she only can choose to lose more – her sense of home, her family, her ideals – in order to love Luca. Luca does not have as much to lose: even if she doesn’t get the crown, even if at some point she gets executed or imprisoned, she’ll never lose her fundamental sense of herself, her previous life of wealth and privilege, her relationship to her home and culture and language. She’s freer to love where she wishes because she has more resources, of all kinds, to do it with. I cannot wait to see how it ends in The Sovereign.
I’ve written previously about my abiding love for The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir, so I’ll just leave the link here. There’s something about the particular dynamic of Gideon and Harrow that really draws me: two people with specific, interdependent, socially approved roles that are idealized but very much susceptible to abuse – necromancer and cavalier, in the Locked Tomb. The book I’m querying right now is centered on this dynamic – witch and magician – and the book I’m writing also has it – Surveyor and scholar-mage. And the next book on my list uses that dynamic so well!
The Forest at the Heart of her Mage (Hiyodori) is currently a finalist in the Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off. It’s set in a world where mages are resources of the state, and depend on their operators (or healers, or controllers) to keep their magic from sending them mad. Queernorm, in an incredibly creative setting: beautiful descriptions of deadly magical forests next to bureaucratic cities and nonprofits run for the benefit of refugee foresters, machines called chalices that kill their pilots after each flight, rare and mysterious individuals who can control a magical forest or become sacrifices to empower a mage, and the most purely evil villain I’ve encountered. Carnelian, a mage with a power far beyond the norm, constantly at risk of madness, and Tiller, an operator who’s fled the forest, are bound together out of necessity and accident to accomplish a single task – or so it seems.
It’s a single point of view (Tiller’s), so as she slowly uncovers Carnelian’s past and motives, the mystery of what binds them only deepens. Carnelian’s flamboyant, over-the-top interest in Tiller is met by Tiller’s restrained deflection, and offset by Tiller constantly refusing to let Carnelian die. (It’s all about the yearning, remember!) There were so many plot twists! And to the very end – partly because of Tiller’s emotional hiddenness, how much Tiller has denied herself freedom or joy – I didn’t know how it would end. It’s part of a shared universe of standalone novels that I’m definitely planning to further explore.
Finally, the one I’d qualify as “emotional damage” and absolutely heart-wrenching and therefore unforgettable: Clear and Muddy Loss of Love (Jing Wei Qing Shang). (Want a taste of the angst? Check out this video, and this one, and this one…) It’s a Chinese baihe (sapphic) webnovel by Please Don’t Laugh (Qing Jun Mo Xiao), which I read in translation by Melts. This is the purest version of enemies to lovers ever: Qiyan Agula, brought up as a boy to be a prince of her people, survives the massacre of her tribe ordered by the Wei Emperor. Still in male disguise, now as a Wei scholar, she’s unexpectedly chosen to be married to the daughter of the Emperor – after she has dedicated herself to destroying the Wei kingdom and the imperial family in revenge.
And. She. Does.
To add to the obvious trauma that’s going to go down when she and the Emperor’s daughter, Nangong Jingnu, fall in love, unlike the other novels here it is not queernorm. It’s historical (the fantasy element is very slight, mostly medicine and Qiyan Agula’s divine gift of speaking to horses), and the historical setting is so detailed, the court plots so intricate, the ways in which the characters are so heavily restrained by the requirements of manners, hierarchy, and patriarchy, make the story even more powerful. Qi Yan lives her life as a man at least partly because if she’s discovered to be a woman she’ll be executed – just for being a scholar, much less for marrying Nangong Jingnu under false pretenses. A woman who insists on being politically active is dangerous, and a relationship that won’t produce children can’t be allowed.
Being a webnovel, it’s long (the Chinese version is a million words, according to the translator’s note) and it is the ultimate slow-burn. It covers 35 years, from the characters’ birth to their final commitment together. And when I read it the second time through, I still couldn’t stop obsessively reading to get to the end. Qi Yan is an incredible character and Nangong Jingnu, young and innocent at the beginning, grows into her own strength and power to both love her and oppose her. There’s a lot of Qi Yan and Nangong Jingnu crying and honestly, you can’t blame them: they are caught in their history and their social roles and the dangers around them in a million ways. They hurt one another because they can’t not, even as their trust and dependence grows and the secrets come undone piece by piece. The tenderness they offer to one another is so delicate and yet so unbreakable.
That fundamental unfairness that history can’t be undone, and some people are hurt by it more than others: in the end, the author and her characters find a way out, into a new place beyond all of their social roles where they can begin again. (It’s not a spoiler to say it’s a happy ending – the author reassures you explicitly from the beginning that it’s happy ending, don’t give up! As a reader, I say: DO NOT stop when the book says it ends, you have to read the extras! The extras are the real ending!)
One of the great things about Chinese webnovels is that the authors leave notes to their readers in them scattered through the chapters, and I’m so glad Melts translated the author’s notes too. Please Don’t Laugh talks about her character development, her fear that the book won’t be popular and that it’s just much harder to get attention for a baihe novel than a danmei (MM) one (oh, my friend across the sea, I share your pain). I’ve never seen an author be as ruthless with her characters as Please Don’t Laugh, her determination to write out the story that these two had to have because of who and where and when they are, not cutting any corners or making anything easier.
And one of her notes is going to stick with me as an author for a long time, because it’s so completely true, and sometimes as an author you need to remember, and know that you’re not alone in this way:
“So many different characters had come from my pen…I feel that, it’s worth it. It’s worth it, everything that I had afforded was worth it. Even if this book flopped…I will laugh it off, because I had it before. That happiness that no amount of income could exchange for, that sort of indulgent happiness, the delight of being in the moment. Although I would worry over life’s necessities once I shut down the computer and leave the keyboard, as long as I am sitting before the computer, tapping my fingers swiftly, I am the happiest person in the world.” (Please Don’t Laugh, author’s note JWQS Chapter 268, translated by Melts.)
Thanks for reading this far! Go forth and enjoy the angst and queer love conquering all 🙂 and if you have a favorite recommendation for sapphic romantic fantasy, please share in the comments!