Tag Archives: Asexual

One Day at a Time: A Review of Unloveables

Book cover for Unloveables by Liz Boysha. Image on cover is a chalk drawing of a rat who is standing on its hind legs and has a sad expression on its face. This is a simply drawing, like something a child or an adult who is not an artist would draw. The background is black and looks like a chalkboard. Title: Unloveables

Author: Liz Boysha

Publisher: Self-Published

Publication Date: August 18, 2024

Genres: Science Fiction, LGBTQ+, Romance

Length: 98 pages

Source: I received a free copy from the author.

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

After the apocalypse, after the Megadrought, the Great Floods, after the Water Wars, the TriPlague, the Midwestern Firestorms; after the Superricane that wiped out the entire East Coast, after the Refugee Crisis and the Great Migrations and whatever wars they fought over that… In a remote corner of what was once Colorado, some people are still just trying to survive.

Content Warning: A fatal car accident. Homophobia. A character who has migraines but no medication for them.  Climate change that makes finding enough food, water, and shade difficult. Brief references to childhood abuse, a past rape, and violence.

Review:

Survival is the name of the game.

A lot of post-apocalyptic fiction focuses on strong, able-bodied adults who either already have the skills they need to survive or are able to quickly learn what they don’t already know, so it was refreshing to read about teens, one of whom is disabled, managing to survive in such an environment for so many years. There were other aspects of the two main characters’ identities that are also underrepresented in this genre, although I think it’s best for other readers to discover most of them gradually just like I did. I enjoyed getting to know Rat thought this was pretty realistic sketch of what kids who grew up in such a dangerous and unpredicatable environment could be like.

With that being said, I would have liked to learn more about the unnamed protagonist. He wasn’t even willing to share his real name with Rat or the audience, much less answer the multitude of other questions I had about his personality and upbringing. While this made sense when I considered how traumatized he was, it also meant that this reader never got to know him as well as I hoped I would. He always flitted around the edges of the conversation and was happy to share tips for finding food or water but never wanted the conversation to drift into anything deeper than that. It would be nice to learn more about him in any sequels that might be written in the future as I only felt like I could describe him in the most general terms by the time I finished reading this.

The romance was subtle and handled nicely. I have not read many romances about two asexual characters before, so I gently stepped away from my preconceived notions of what that might be like and waited to see what would happen. I appreciated the fact that both characters were willing to talk about such things openly and knew what they wanted out of a relationship even though neither one was at all expecting to fall in love when they first met. That’s exactly how I like romance tales to unfold.

Unloveables has left me eager to read more about these characters.

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Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Liked About Asexual Characters


Hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl

A photograph of 18 heart-shaped sugar cookies. They are frosted with various combinations of green, yellow, orange, purple, white, and blue frostings as well as thinner frostings that have written X’s and O’s on them or left romantic messages like “hugs and kisses” or “forever” on them. Happy Valentine’s Day to everyone celebrating it!

For today’s Valentine’s Day freebie, I’ll be sharing a list of books I’ve read and enjoyed about asexual characters.

I’m actually on the asexual spectrum myself, so it’s been wonderful to see such an explosion of stories about people who are like me or similar to me.

This is a complex topic that could easily take up its own blog post, but go to this link if you’re curious about the wide variety of identities that exist within the asexual spectrum.

In the meantime, here’s my list.

Book cover for “Loveless” by Alice Oseman. It is a warm purple colour and has a black and white drawing of a slim person who has straight shoulder-length hair and is wearing jeans, a sweater, and a pair of sneakers. They are standing up but their neck and head are bent over as they look at a large heart they are holding in their hands. The heart is steadily releasing dozens of tiny little hearts into the air, and the little hearts are floating up and away from the person.

1. Loveless by Alice Oseman

 

Book cover for Let's Talk About Love by Claire Kann. The image on the cover shows a radiant dark-skinned black woman with an Afro. She’s wearing a sleeveless white blouse with ruffles near her neck and his holding both arms up in a triumphant pose as she grins and closes her eyes.

2. Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kann

 

Book cover for Finding Your Feet (Toronto Connections, #2) by Cass Lennox. Image on the cover shows a background drawing of the famous outline of Toronto that includes the CN tower. In the foreground, you can see a drawing of two people’s legs as they dance together. One has light skin and appears to be Caucasian while the other has dark skin and appears to be African.

3. Finding Your Feet (Toronto Connections, #2) by Cass Lennox

 

The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz book cover. Image on cover shows a steaming cup of tea in a white mug that has fancy ridges and floral patterns on it.

 

4. The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz (My Review)

 

If you’ve read any other good books about asexual characters, I’d love to hear your suggestions.

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A Review of The Cybernetic Tea Shop

The Cybernetic Tea Shop by Meredith Katz book cover. Image on cover shows a steaming cup of tea in a white mug that has fancy ridges and floral patterns on it. Title: The Cybernetic Tea Shop

Author: Meredith Katz

Publisher: Soft Cryptid (Self-Published)

Publication Date: July 30, 2019

Genres: Science Fiction, LGBTQ, Romance

Length: 118 pages

Source: I borrowed it from the library. Thank you to Berthold Gambrel for reviewing it and bringing it to my attention!

Rating: 4 Stars

Blurb:

Clara Gutierrez is an AI repair technician and a wanderer. Her childhood with her migrant worker family has left her uncomfortable with lingering for too long, so she moves from place to place across retro-futuristic America.

Sal is a fully autonomous robot. Older than the law declaring her kind illegal due to ethical concerns, she is at best out of place in society and at worst vilified. She continues to run the tea shop previously owned by her long-dead master, lost in memories of the past, struggling to fulfill her master’s dream for the shop while slowly breaking down.

They meet by chance, but as they begin to spend time together, they both start to wrestle with the concept of moving on…

A F/F retro-future sci-fi asexual romance. A story about artificial intelligence and real kindness, about love, and the feeling of watching steam rising softly from a teacup on a bright and quiet morning.

Review:

Content Warning: Arson.

It’s never too late to try again.

Some of my favourite scenes were the ones that explored how Sal’s programming nudged her to make decisions that many humans would not. For example, her idea of terms like lifespan or forever were not the same as they were for Clara. The author did an excellent job of digging deeply into the psychology of artificial intelligence and showing the audience how a robot might really think about and interact with those around them.

I did find myself wishing for more world building in this story. This was set at least three hundred years in the future, yet most of the technology and culture was fairly similar to what we have today. That struck me as odd and pulled me out of the plot. It would have been helpful to either have a good explanation for why things had advanced so slowly or to see more examples of how their world was different from ours.

This was such a refreshing take on the romance genre. Whether you read a ton of romance novels or tend to avoid that genre altogether, I suggest going into this one without any assumptions about what’s going to happen next. It broke so many of the rules about how falling in love is supposed to look that I honestly couldn’t say for sure what would happen from one scene to the next. That’s the sort of thing I love to discover when trying out new authors, so I will definitely be keeping an eye out for what Ms. Katz comes up with next.

The Cybernetic Tea Shop was a cozy and romantic read.

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