Queer SF - March 2027
March 2, 2027
Strange Promises — Jared Poon
Genre: Urban fantasy
Rep: Gay
Series: Book 2 of The DEUS Files
Return to a magical Singapore where every supernatural disaster generates paperwork, in Strange Promises, a new adventure in the DEUS Files, an urban fantasy series by author Jared Poon that is equal parts humor, action, and charm.
Benjamin Toh is a middle manager in the Division for Engagement of Unusual Stakeholders (DEUS), so he’s used to handling extradimensional incursions, dangerous demigods, and ambitious bosses. Routine, until a cargo ship crash exposes a cache of smuggled magical artifacts, and two crew members are found sealed in impenetrable pearl.
Senior Management is eager to close the case quickly, pin the blame, and move on. But the details don’t add up.
Old records reveal a decades-old smuggling pipeline, a paper trail of investigations leading nowhere, and signs that the city’s supernatural criminal underclass―the wulin―may be involved. Following the trail will mean dealing with people Ben’s boss would rather avoid. Saving the crew would come at a cost to the country he’s sworn to serve.
As rumors stir and old rivalries fester, tensions between wulin Sects threaten to spill into open conflict. To uncover the truth and stop the bloodshed, Ben and his coworkers (plus one boyfriend, plus one cat) must use all their wits to navigate underworld politics, survive esoteric martial arts duels, and reckon with systems that may be failing those who depend on them.
Piece of cake.
Link: Hachette
March 5, 2027
Godbutcher — Ben Alderson
Genre: Romantasy, mythology
Rep: M/M
GODS SHALL FALL. FATE WILL RULE.
In the world of Aetherion, everyone has heard whispers of the Godbutcher. To Mortals, he is a legend. To the powerful Exalteds, he is a myth. But to the immortal Celestials, he is something far worse: their finality.
His name is Mavros Ravenglass.
Hidden for years on an island ignored by the gods, Mavros has spent his life in the shadows after his mother fled there with him as a child, desperate to protect their secrets. But when a visiting dignitary is murdered inside Irton Manor, suspicion falls on Mavros and his family, forcing him to flee the only home he has ever known to protect them.
His escape sends him across the ocean and directly into enemy territory: a glittering city ruled by the Exalted, the powerful children of the gods. Disguised as a mortal, Mavros is forced into The Ascension Crucible, a brutal competition of deadly trials, political game play, and divine meddling, where only the strongest survive.
For Mavros, winning means vengeance against the Celestials who destroyed his life.
But survival becomes far more complicated when he is bound to two dangerous allies: Zyran Ouranous, his enigmatic and infuriatingly handsome Exalted sponsor, and Odith, the cursed Celestial of Death. As betrayal, forbidden magic, and ancient prophecies tighten around them, Mavros discovers that Fate may be the one enemy even the Godbutcher cannot kill.
This dark epic, Greek mythology-inspired fantasy, enemies-to-lovers romance, and slow-burn MM romantasy, GODBUTCHER is the first book in an action-packed fantasy romance saga filled with deadly tournaments, gods, false-heroes and monsters, political intrigue, fated mates, and morally grey heroes.
Link: Goodreads
March 9, 2027
True Love’s Quest — Alexandra Ammon Parthun
Genre: Historical romance with fantasy elements
Rep: Sapphic
Series: Book 2
Edith and Thomasin are on the hunt for the Holy Grail in this sapphic historical romance and follow-up to For the Love of the Quest.
Edith Darling and Thomasin Shaw are presumed dead. Without Worthing and the police breathing down their necks, they have their freedom, and most importantly, they have each other. But without Excalibur to chase, Edith finds herself haunted by the mistakes she made along the quest, and Thomasin wonders if she has what it takes to not be a criminal.
When Edith’s sister, Marigold, learns of their survival, she demands a meeting in London. Only as soon as they arrive, Edith and Thomasin are ambushed by a mysterious organization that claims to protect lost, magical artifacts. They want Edith and Thomasin to join their search for the Holy Grail, but first, the two women must prove themselves by acquiring Galahad’s Shield, without which they will not be able to reach the Grail.
From Glastonbury to France to the fabled island of Corbenic, Edith and Thomasin must make their way through treacherous grounds filled with mystical riddles and trials to ensure their survival. This new quest offers Edith purpose and Thomasin redemption, but with all their hopes set on finding the Holy Grail, they’ll both have to decide what matters most—their love or the quest.
Link: Penguin Random House
The Double Dorothy — Olivia Waite
Genre: Cozy science fiction mystery
Rep: Queer, sapphic
Series: Book 3 of Dorothy Gentleman
Becky Chambers meets Miss Marple in the third entry of this cozy sci-fi mystery series, helmed by a formidable no-nonsense auntie of a detective.
As the Fairweather approaches the halfway point of its journey, Dorothy Gentleman may have reached the end of hers…
It’s been a long lifetime, and Dorothy’s current body is on its last legs. With a new terminal diagnosis from Medical, she’s counting the days until her next reembodiment. But then a young man with someone else’s face sits down and claims he is Dorothy’s next embodiment—someone has triggered the system early, using the memory-book Dorothy last updated over a month ago.
Meaning that according to the laws, when Dorothy dies this time—it will be permanent.
Now Dorothy and her doppelganger must sift through that last month of memories, looking for a secret someone’s trying to erase. And all the threads lead back to the very first murder that happened on the Fairweather, five hundred years ago. A case which remains unsolved—and in which Dorothy was a witness, not a detective. All while an old enemy finally dares to step out of the shadows…
Link: Macmillan
March 11, 2027
The Ruthless Light — Cate Baumer
Genre: Gothic fantasy
Rep: Ace; transmasc; bisexual
Series: Book 2 of The Brilliant Soul Duology
Some baptisms are performed in blood...
Miracle worker Csilla has left the holy walled city of Silgard behind, hiding from the Church who are threatened by her existence. Unable to see suffering, Csilla uses her new divinity to heal the sick. But when word spreads of her powers, she finds herself reunited with the inquisitor-turned-sainted soldier Ilan, sent by the Incarnate to bring her to the frontlines of a holy war.
The Church fights against the Western territories, believing they can bring the creator god Asten back into the world. But their faith cannot stand against the Western army's magically corrupted soldiers, or the disturbing miracles they find. Csilla believes the angels have returned - but to their enemy.
Ilan fights to protect Csilla from the worst of war, but when the Incarnate pushes her to become a symbol of the Church's divine right, he is forced to watch as she is pulled into the violence. They soon realise the world is not as the Church taught it, the Incarnate cannot be trusted, and that no war is ever holy.
Link: Kobo
March 16, 2027
These Savage Stars — Kameron Hurley
Genre: Grimdark space opera
Rep: Lesbian
Series: Companion novel to The Stars Are Legion
Killing Eve meets Die Hard in a fast-paced, all-female suicide mission that leaves the lives of two whole planets in the balance in the latest novel by the Hugo Award–winning author of The Stars are Legion.
Kameron Hurley returns with a companion novel to The Stars Are Legion with this tale of revenge set in a decaying worldship that is set to crash into a planet in forty-one hours. A former spy, Reyka—left planetside in retirement—is asked to return to the decaying worldship Satvi to confront a terrorist that has kidnapped her Lord’s daughter.
Racing against time, Reyka is uniquely suited for this rescue/suicide mission, as she’s killed this terrorist once before—her wife.
Link: Simon & Schuster
Season of Steel — Maia Kane
Genre: Fantasy romance
Rep: Sapphic
Bridgerton meets Pacific Rim in this sapphic fantasy romance where a feisty noblewoman must team up with a disgraced mecha fighter to win her own hand and save her family from fortune hunters.
In an alternate Regency England where marriage to eligible noblewomen is decided by deadly mecha dueling tournaments, half-Chamorro bluestocking Lady Wilhelmina Applewhite will choose her own destiny, thank you very much. But when her father’s sudden death leaves Willa as his sole heir, her hand in marriage becomes the upcoming Season’s grand prize.
Determined to seize her fate—and protect her little sisters’ freedom—Willa shocks the ton by hiring a Bloodsworn fighter to compete for her own hand in the deadly gladiatorial duels of the Season. Except the only one mad enough to even consider fighting for Willa is rakish Thomasin Drake, the first and last woman to have ever fought in a Season... until her final duel ended in defeat and disgrace.
But if Willa isn’t careful, she might lose her most valuable possession—her heart—to Thomasin before the Season duels are over. And in a world where marriage is a matter of life and death, falling in love is the last thing she can afford.
Link: Penguin Random House
Tyrant in the Cracks — Hache Pueyo
Genre: Dark fantasy
Rep: Queer
Hache Pueyo’s first full-length novelis a dark fantasy of time rifts and what ifs, where two characters must face who they might have been only to find themselves bound to each bound by fate.
In a tropical island country brimming with magic, cracks appear in any surface, visible only to those with a natural and trained talent for the occult. Professor Cícero Dangeris—ascetic, beautiful, disciplined—is among the very few, and together with his quiet assistant Eco, he embarks on a journey to track said fissures and study their secrets.
The cracks show echoes to another timeline, one in which the brutal military dictatorship that oppressed the island never ended. There, a puppet general commands the nation, controlled by another version of Dangeris—debauched, excessive, hedonistic—who is obsessed with finding an elusive mirror of a girl he sees through fissures since he was a child.
As they travel the island through an underwater train, new realities appear, proving how easy it is for people and countries to change. What Dangeris finds in those images are his own secrets, from the past he tries to hide to the desires he would rather repress, and there’s only one common denominator between all his parallel lives: Eco herself.
Link: Macmillan
Heartsgrove — Allison Saft
Genre: Romantasy
Rep: M/M
Series: Standalone in established universe
In this queer folkloric romance from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Dark and Drowning Tide, set in that same world, a world-weary botanist must untangle three mysteries before his time runs out—a plagued grove, a dying dryad prince, and the curse slowly eating his body alive.
In the wake of a disastrous scientific expedition, life has gone on for all the surviving members—save for one. Ludwig von Meyer, renowned botanist and victim of a deadly curse, is slowly turning into a tree.
His body grows more alien by the day, and then there’s the matter of the blackouts, which have him waking inside an eerie, blighted grove.
Then, one night, he awakes on the doorstep of the grove’s keeper, a mysterious dryad prince named Alois, who offers a pact. Alois can lift Ludwig’s curse, on one condition: Ludwig must rid the sacred grove of its blight.
With the bargain sealed, Ludwig has only a handful of weeks to solve the mystery of the grove before his curse makes him a permanent part of it... and before the handsome dryad who increasingly owns Ludwig’s heart perishes along with his trees.
Link: Penguin Random House
A Mouth Full of Fins — Cho Yeeun, Lee Kyung Min (translator)
Genre: Dark fantasy, horror
Rep: Sapphic
From award-winning Korean horror sensation Cho Yeeun, an uncanny and profoundly moving tale about the beautiful obsessions and destructive delusions of love, and what it means to give a voice to the voiceless.
Something is strange about Seonhyung’s uncle’s death. All that’s left of him are bones: a skull, a ribcage, and a couple of teeth—each so pristinely white it almost seems as if someone has licked them clean. Seonhyung is still reeling from the loss of her band—and the betrayal of its heavenly-voiced lead singer, Gyeongju—when she returns home for the funeral. There, she’s confronted by a handwritten will that bequeaths to Seonhyung her uncle’s most prized possession: a dilapidated aquatic pet store.
On the surface, the store seems like nothing but a burden—one Seonhyung reluctantly agrees to take on. Then, searching for the source of the rotting stench in the air, she stumbles upon a trap door to a secret basement where she discovers tanks full of unimaginable horrors. Among them, near death but still unimaginably beautiful: a mermaid whose tongue has been cruelly carved from her mouth.
As she nurses the mermaid back to health, Seonhyung falls under the spell of her beguiling hum, until she can only think about one thing: hearing the mermaid sing. But there’s only one way to get the mermaid’s voice back: by satisfying her carnivorous appetite. Thrilling yet ethereal, A Mouth Full of Fins dares to tread the blurred line between our greatest dreams and our greatest nightmares.
Link: Penguin Random House
March 23, 2026
Mother of Night — James Bennett
Genre: Medieval horror
Rep: Gay
There are strange things in the mountains, my lord. Things older and darker than our Christian God. And hungrier.
1192 AD: Jean is a teller of tales meant to bring sense to a world emerging from the darkest of ages steeped in religious conflict. His weary companions are survivors of both miracles and massacres, weighed down by the secrets of their past, and desperate to return to England. When they are shipwrecked on unforgiving shores, the group begins the dangerous trek home and are hunted; both by vengeful men, and something primal and deadly—something not meant to walk in this world.
As the band of men fall victim one by one, Jean wrestles with suspicion of an unknown threat. His love for his master has already survived a journey of many years and miles; now it will see them both through the dangers ahead. For if they do not make it home a legendary king will fall, a priceless relic will be destroyed, and Jean will lose the person who holds his heart in his keeping. And for his master, Jean would walk into hell itself.
Soon, in the cold and dizzying heights of an isolated mountain road, these mortal men will discover that heroes are merely human, and monsters are very real.
Link: Penguin Random House
Black Star Line — William Lohier
Genre: Speculative short story collection
Rep: Black, queer
Black Star Line is a genre-defying story collection in the vein of Octavia Butler and Jordan Peele that fuses speculative fiction, Sci-Fi, and magical realism to explore Black life at the edge of collapse and possibility.
Spanning virtual worlds, haunted cities, and dystopian futures, the stories in this collection follow characters facing impossible conditions in their relentless pursuit of freedom and pleasure.
In “Drapetomania,” a mysterious epidemic causes Black people to run uncontrollably until their bodies give out, transforming a racist 19th-century pseudoscientific diagnosis into a chilling meditation on escape, exhaustion, and collective grief; in “Return Doors,” a couple’s unraveling coincides with the appearance of portals visible only to Black people; in “The Armillary Sphere,” a boy travels to Seoul to undergo a procedure that allows him to glimpse the future and relive the past; in “Lifeblood,” a woman seeks gender euphoria in a virtual reality under the watchful eye of a sinister corporation.
Electrifying and radically inventive, Black Star Line channels both blistering rage and profound tenderness, mapping the fragile, queer, ecstatic, and often perilous possibilities that emerge when we dare to imagine beyond the constraints of the present.
Link: Simon & Schuster
The Fall of Elvenesse — Kai Ashante Wilson
Genre: Epic fantasy
Rep: Queer
Award-winning author Kai Ashante Wilson returns with a bold new vision of fantasy. The Fall of Elvenesse transforms the genre of Tolkien in the image of N. K. Jemisin, Marlon James, and Simon Jimenez.
Elves have ruined the world.
From their high mountain, the cruel knights of Elvenesse range out to conquer. They pillage, they enslave, they wreak genocide. Always the Elves have taken, never considered when the bill for their crimes will come due.
That time has come. The fury of the world has awoken. The victims will have their vengeance.
A divine scourge of fire sweeps across the land toward Elvenesse, and the last free people of the Nations flee before it. As the mountains char, rivers boil, and savannas burn, the Free Nations rely on the muscle and magic of their strong and runt freaks. But as their one remaining Saint assumes his power, he receives a prophecy: the Nations’ only path to survival runs through Elvenesse. Only by navigating the Elven labyrinth can he win his people’s lives.
Link: Macmillan
March 30, 2027
Up to the Light — Julia Armfield
Genre: Historical horror
Rep: Lesbian & MLM MCs
June, 1994. The storied Mount Varda has been untouched by mountaineers for decades: the last expedition ended in tragedy. When Liam Holness and Petal Coulson-Carter, best friends and celebrated climbers, are invited to join a team organized by the famous Jim Callaghan to pioneer a new route, they are initially skeptical. Working-class Liam and butch lesbian Petal exist on the outside of mountaineering’s privilege, and they have no interest in Jim’s media circus.
But the call of the mountain is too strong, and soon Liam and Petal are in the French Alps preparing for ascent. Joining them on the expedition is Bill Franklin, Liam’s oldest rival, whose sweet nature begins to break down Liam’s defenses, while Petal’s heart is turned by a climber’s widow living in the town. As the expedition looms closer, the climbers begin to experience sleepless nights, bad dreams, and hallucinations. And as they make their way up the mountain, the world gives way to something stranger. With oxygen scarce and the altitude dizzying, how can Liam and Petal be sure of what is real? And will they ever know what happened to those they leave behind on the peak?
Braiding Liam and Petal’s perspectives with Jim’s tell-all memoir in the expedition’s aftermath, Up to the Light is a heart-pounding adventure story and an aching dual love story, with a horror edge. Gorgeously written, chilling, and entrancing, this novel asks why we are drawn to danger, and how we can find one another again in the wake of unspeakable loss.
Link: Macmillan
Hell to Pay — Kylie Lee Baker
Genre: Horror
Rep: Queer
A riveting, darkly humorous, and deeply strange story of three roommates whose everyday struggle to survive in New York is complicated by the intestine-eating demon who haunts their apartment.
Leni was kidnapped and almost sacrificed to the devil as a child, but now she’s perfectly fine. Aside from the fact that she has three reflections in the mirror… and one of them wants her to poison people.
Emerson was a leading heart surgeon until The Incident that left his patient dead. Now he’s too sick to work, keeps finding severed fingers in his water bottles, and is followed around by a faceless Girl Scout with a creaky red wagon.
Jasper is a line cook with a criminal record, just trying to keep his chosen family together. Sure, he sees a man in the shadows who likes the taste of blood, but he’s very good at ignoring that. He would do anything for Leni and Emerson. Anything.
They’re fine. They’re normal. They’re roommates making it work in New York City.
That is, until a demon leaves his sigil on their wall.
Now, they have seven days to bring Sychar a sacrifice, or he’ll tear off their skin. Who knew demon-slaying wasn’t a valid excuse to miss work? Why are murder supplies so expensive? Just how is a low-income household supposed to afford a human sacrifice?
As their personal ghosts grow louder and Sychar’s deadline draws nearer, Leni, Emerson, and Jasper discover just how far they’ll go to protect each other.
Link: Kobo
The Seventh Banisher — A.K. Larkwood
Genre: Fantasy
Rep: Sapphic
From the author of The Unspoken Name comes a riveting Gothic fantasy mystery full of uncanny magic, long-guarded secrets, and a deadly trial to inherit a legendary power, perfect for fans of The Tainted Cup and The Raven Scholar.
The Mallory cousins have been summoned to their ancestral home by their great-aunt Sophia―or as the world knows her, the great Banisher, warden of the Isles and the singular defense against unspeakable otherworldly horrors.
Whoever can survive on the remote island for ten days and ten nights will inherit her house, her title, and her magic.
But the island is a labyrinth of deadly puzzles, terrifying ghosts, and scheming cousins with their own scores to settle. By the time the ten days are up, almost everyone on the island will be dead.
Almost everyone. Because someone else was there, witness to it all. And the story they tell is far darker than the blood coating the grounds of that cursed place.
Link: Macmillan