Game Changer

Rachel Reid
Completed 12/8/2025, Reviewed 12/11/2025
3 stars

There were a lot of things to like about this book: the theme, the plot, the spiciness.  There was also one problematic thing, that is, the fairy tale resolution.  Despite the worry and angst about being a closeted gay man in a hypermasculine sport with rampant homophobia, it all works out a little too nicely.  However, that didn’t take away from my enjoyment of the book.  It just made it more fluff than substance.  But hey, it’s very spicy and the whole Game Changers series has been made into a major HBO Max event.  And, well, yeah, I’ll probably continue the series.  

Kip works at the counter at a smoothie shop.  He has a history degree, lives with his parents, and is working food service to survive in New York City.  One day a stunning man walks in and orders a blueberry smoothie.  There’s some flirting and banter, but neither makes a move.  Then Kip finds out the guy was Scott Hunter, the immensely popular, most eligible bachelor and center for the NY hockey team.  Scott’s team wins that night and he returns the next morning for another smoothie.  Like many in sports, he is superstitious and begins a new ritual.  Eventually, after hinting around while flirting with Kip, they hook up.  However, Scott is very closeted, fearing the loss of his job and corporate sponsorships.  But they attempt to see each other.  Of course, they fall in love, but Scott’s fear of coming out publicly puts a heavy strain on their relationship.  Kip must deal with being an out man dating a terrified closeted man.  

I have to give props to this book for dealing with homophobia in sports.  Scott’s fear is palpable.  Being with Kip has made him happier than he’s ever been in his rags to riches life.  But he can’t fathom coming out publicly when he is worshiped by the team, the city, and the media.  This cognitive dissonance is real, not only for the rich and famous, but for many people.  Kip, on the other hand, struggles with going back in the closet for his boyfriend.  This is a tough compromise when you have tasted the freedom of being true to oneself.  I thought his dissonance was well played out as well.

My biggest issue is with the ending.  There’s some acceptance and some rejection.  This story takes place at the end of the 2000’s, so it is possible that the outcome could be very rosy.  However, given today’s atmosphere where the dictator in chief wants to make supporting LGBTQIA+ people a political crime, I can’t help to think there would be more backlash for someone in the spotlight like Scott.  

I give this book three stars out of five, mostly because of the ending.  While the book is fairly well written, it mostly suffers from being a little too sweet.  At the same time, I do enjoy a spicy, gay, happy ending book.  It just doesn’t have the depth the I’ve come to expect from the M/M supernatural romantasy genre.  I know there’s a lot of fluff out there, and this is one of them.  Side note: after watching episode one on HBO, I’m finding the actors in the streaming series give the characters more depth.  I’ll watch the series on streaming, and yes, I’ll read the rest of the books.

Heavenly Tyrant

Xiran Jay Zhao
Completed 12/4/2025, Reviewed 12/5/2025
2 stars

I returned to this sequel after reading Iron Widow.  I restarted it, not trusting my memory and judgement of the first two hundred pages from my original attempt.  It began well, making much more sense having the full background on Zetian, the MC.  However, I found most of the book to be tedious filler to get to the end goal.  It spends most of its time in her head, rehashing all her fears and neuroses every time someone spoke with her or whenever something happened.  Then at the end, I found out that this is a trilogy and groaned.  I don’t know if I have it in me to get through another iteration of Zetian’s mental state.  This book was nominated for the 2025 Lodestone Award, which is the non-Hugo award for YA novel at WorldCon.

For the plot summary, be forewarned of SPOILERS for the first book.

So in this book, Zetian returns with the Emperor, who she revived after over two hundred years in a deep freeze to prevent his death by the pox.  She claimed the title of Empress at the end of the last book.  She is both loved and hated by the people.  The Emperor sees the benefit of keeping her around for the revolution he started before being put to sleep.  He declares that he will marry her, ensuring her title and begins a kind of cultural revolution, putting to death the oligarchs who kept the poor downtrodden and abused as well as the counterrevolutionaries.  His ultimate goal, like Zetian’s, is to bring down the gods who are in orbit around the planet, controlling and punishing them for deviating from the heavenly edicts.  While they wait to strike, Zetian convinces the Emperor to make many radical changes to society, including elevating women from being nothing more than the property of men.  In addition, he tries to consummate their marriage, but Zetian wants no part of it.  She also discovers the true nature of the alien Hunduns and the purpose of their war with them.  The majority of the book is Zetian’s mental gyrations over every interaction with the Emperor and the people around her as the plot slowly progresses toward the attempt to attack the gods.  

By about page 100, I had it with Zetian.  I couldn’t stand all the time we spent in her head.  She is the narrator again and she goes on and on and on about her hate for the Emperor, men, the oligarchs, and the existing cultural paradigm.  That all worked well in the first book.  Here it is simply tedious.  Every interaction with the Emperor is the same, rehashing her same issues of revenge and the terror of trust, sex with the Emperor, and pregnancy.  There were some good parts, like her starting a non-profit to help women and her softening the Emperor to repeal the witch hunts and death penalty for the rebels.  She does learn a lot about what makes a revolution successful and how to lessen its heavy hand.  Amazingly enough, the Emperor actually listens to her.

What struck me as most interesting about her is that she is self-aware.  In response to how to act as Empress, she says, “Becoming likable.  Now that is the most daunting challenge I’ve ever faced.”  Regarding the Emperor, “It shouldn’t be possible to drift off to sleep in the arms of someone who represents so much of what I hate, but the throne room is very cold and he is very warm.”  And the brilliant realization, “Every oppressor, through their denial of humanity, sows the seed of their own destruction.”

The Emperor is interesting.  It is hard to tell if he is good or bad.  He shares many of the same values as Zetian, but he’s also quick to anger and retribution.  It’s difficult to tell is we can trust him since we only see him through Zetian’s lenses.  Yizhi, who featured prominently in the first book, appears in this book, though not to the same extent.  He is elevated to the Emperor’s secretary.  Of course, he can no longer be in a relationship with Zetian.  In addition, she feels she can no longer completely trust him.  This creates a lot of tension in the book, adding to the tension with the Emperor.  Shimin, the third person in the polyamorous relationship between Zetian and Yizhi, seems to be with the gods being kept alive after nearly dying at the end of the first book, apparently like a hostage to control Zetian’s wild, reforming nature.

This book makes many good points, but it’s all lost in the delivery.  Zetian is only 18 or 19, but after everything she’s gone through, she should have matured at least a little.  She is still the bitter, angry child who won’t grow up.  The only positive is the help she provides women through her non-profit.  Granted, she has to constantly fight the public’s perception of her as a usurper, and she does learn a little from some of the people around her, but it wasn’t enough to get me to empathize with her like I did in the first book.  I give this book two stars out of five.  The prose and world building is fine.  The themes are good.  But in the end, I was just so glad to be done with it.

Sisters of the Vast Black

Lina Rather
Completed 11/28/2025, Reviewed 11/28/2025
4 stars

I had a tough time getting into this “nuns in space” novella.  It’s only 160 pages, but it took me the first sixty to get into the story.  Then I was completely sucked in.  I have a fondness for rebellious nuns, and specifically, radical lesbian ex-nuns with guitars, having been friends with several throughout my life.  They take the Gospel message seriously, providing good works and focusing on peace and justice.  This completely replaced the image I had of nuns from my experience in Catholic school as mostly being castrating and abusive, perverting the Gospel for conformity and punishment.  The story began feeling conformist but jumped into a battle against an oppressive new government colluding with the Church for galactic control.  

The book begins with introductions to the sisters of the Order of St. Rita on their living, breathing space convent, the Our Lady of Impossible Constellations.  They travel in space providing services to those in need.  Despite their call to live open, honest lives, they all have secrets.  Mother Superior has a dark past associated with the destructive revolution on Earth.  Now she hides aboard the Our Lady in a vow of silence so as not to give away her true identity.  Sister Gemma, the ship’s maintenance-biologist, has a secret love on another ship.  Other nuns have varying gifts and inner demons as well.  They are all arguing about the theological implications of allowing the ship to follow its own instincts to mate.  Some of the nuns want to preserve its virginity because it is a consecrated entity.  Amidst this contact, they answer a call from a new colony to perform some marriages and baptism and to bless the colony.  Some time after their visit, they get a desperate call from that same colony that they have been infected by the horrible plague and need help.  However, a priest sent by the new pope to bring the Order under rein refuses to allow it, opting for proselytization over service, sending them into a conflict about following the Gospel message or kowtowing to the whims of the oppressive Church-backed government. 

Yes, that was a long plot summary.  For a novella, it packs a lot of information.  I think that may be part of why it took so long to get into it.  It also took a while to get into the idea that the nuns were living inside a living creature genetically developed to fly through space and house humans.  Quite the conceit to wrap one’s head around.  And then to be dumped in the middle of a heated debate about allowing the ship to reproduce, it kind of made my head explode.  But it all came together after the first third when I finally suspended disbelief.  I also got into the more when the secrets of the nuns were made more clear and more specific.  And yes, at least one of the nuns is lesbian 😊.  That made me happy.  

Mother Superior was a very interesting character.  It takes a long time to unravel her past, considering that she only communicates through sign language and is even spare with that.  Somehow, she escaped the massive bombing of London at the beginning of the revolution that radically changed life on Earth.  And while dealing with being head of this Order in a state of disarray, she seems to be experiencing the onset of Alzheimer’s.  Her mind gets unstuck in time and she panics, forcing her translator to figure out what’s going on with the slurred signing.  But you get the sense that she was a powerful force back on Earth and has been using that skill as the leader of the Order.

It is through Sister Gemma that we get the complete picture of the spaceship creature.  It has interesting little details, like the moss that grows around standing feet to help stabilize the person in zero-g and acceleration.  There’s also an intimate moment between Gemma and the ship when she goes into its reproductive area to observe the eggs being produced and to read the communications with her girlfriend from another ship.  It is because of the ovulating ship, Gemma falling in love, and Mother Superior’s Alzheimer’s that we learn of the conscience conflicts of the other featured nuns in the story.  This personal conflict sets the stage for the decision they all must make whether to answer the call of the plague infected colony or follow the new orders of Rome by acceding to the new priest on board.

I ultimately really liked this book.  It is the in-person book club selection for December.  Being so short, I may try to reread it before book club to get the full impact of its beginning.  I give this book four stars out of five.  It felt really good to read about nuns making the radical choice to follow Jesus’ message rather than the Church’s nationalist mandate.  It warmed my heart during this time of spiritual despair over current events.  

The Hyperspace Enigma Part 1: Destination Unknown

Adam Andrews Johnson
Completed 11/27/2025, Reviewed 11/27/2025
4 stars

This book was a hoot and a half.  I bought it at Beaverton Pride last June at the author’s booth, along with its sequel.  He was an hysterical guy and I thought his books would be too.  This one certainly is.  It’s not great literature, but it’s excellent fluff.  Imagine an out-of-control Star Wars in a queer-normative universe with tons of puns, glorious drag queens, hunky gay mandroids, tough lesbian bounty hunters, people-eating giants, abducted children needing to be saved, a ton of space pirates, and a lot of “pew pew” (laser gun battles).  Everything, including the plot, is outrageous and fabulous.  I read this in two days and wished I had brought the sequel with me on my Thanksgiving vacation because it leaves you on a cliffhanger. 

The story begins on a spaceship that’s an all-male “reverse harem.”  One mandroid named 5NTR0M  (pronounced Phentrom) experiences a programming snafu and experiences real falling in love with Lyoth.  The ship’s computer declares him a danger to the crew and needs to be decommissioned for study.  But when that fails, the compassionate captain chooses to place the two lovers to a cozy island world, away from nasty computers that want to harm Phentrom.  However, they are abandoned there when a mutiny happens.  They discover that the planet has become a haven for space pirates.  They meet Stawren and her father Jintrin, who runs a drag bar.  Stawren, Lyoth, Phentrom, and a few others decide to lead a revolt to wipe the space pirates off the planet.  It turns out Lyoth is not just a lover, he has quite the heroic past.  Then they discover the mutiny plot and pursue the ship to save the captain and the faithful crew.  This leads them to a prison lab at the end of the known universe, an unreliable wormhole, and a plot to overthrow the governments of the known universe.  

Yes, it’s all very silly, but it’s also very enjoyable.  The characters are rather wooden, but still somehow, very sweet.  For most of the book, they are all unbelievably amazing at getting out of jams and leading rebellions.  Things don’t get dicey for them until very end, during the lead up to the cliffhanger.  One of my favorite scenes is when a bounty hunter tries to capture Phentrom at the drag bar and it turns out Priestess the drag performer is the bounty hunter’s boyfriend.  He humiliates him into surrendering up Phentrom, throwing enough shade for an episode of Drag Race and threatening to withhold sex.  It’s quite hysterical.

There were times when I thought the writing was clunky, with statements like, “They had a great time,” or “They really enjoyed themselves.”  But I forgave the author those unnecessary obvious statements because the overall effect of the romp is just so fun.  I think if I was a hardcore reviewer, I would say this is maybe a three-star book.  But I also like to support the indie writers, especially in the LGBTQIA+ community.  So I give this book four stars out of five.  To me, a fun, fluff novel is just as worth the investment as serious genre literature.  The escapism is worth it to me.  It is more fulfilling than a 600 page, dark, depressing, heavy handed space opera.  And I must say, the world building is absolutely terrific!