One of my favorite things from Crier's War is all the queerness allegory portrayed through how humans and automae behave differently and relate with each other.
Human and automa romantic relationships are a thing, but they're not that common. Automae don't have any need to form deep emotional ties since that's perceived as a weakness. Throughout the first book, Crier thinks the reason she feels attraction towards someone is because she's flawed, because there's something wrong with her design. Automae aren't supposed to feel that way. It's not until she finds out an automa, someone she admires, was in a relationship with a human, that she starts to think there's nothing wrong with feeling attraction towards someone else while being an automa. It shows how important it is to have queerness visibility in real life: once you realize you're not alone, that there are other people like you, that's how you start feeling confident with who you are. And it's portrayed so beautifully in the book through Crier's perspective.
Another significant moment is when Crier finds out Queen Junn has a human lover. When she contemplates not only the idea of having romantic feelings, but to also be in a sexual relationship as an automa. To Crier, the mere idea of it is so hard to understand at first. Why would automae, who don't have the need to reproduce themselves via sexual intercourse, have sex? In our society, one of the main reasons homosexual sex is seen as wrong is because the act itself cannot make you engender, and is therefore perceived as pointless. But to know that you can have sex just for the sake of it, just to get intimate with someone else, changes most of Crier's ideas about what she could do, what she would want to do, and the first person who comes to her mind while pondering all of this is Ayla. I think it's just a really great way to validate sexual relationships between queer people and i love it.
user so many ocs, my beloved, fellow Locked Tomb enjoyer, I am about to finish Nona and I am losing my mind because nothing will fill the Gideon Nav sized hole in my heart (lol). do you perchance have any recommendations of what I can read next that's similar to TLT?
ok i wanna preface this by saying i've only read GtN (i needed time to recover after the first one and left HtN at my parents' house for the semester lol but by virtue of Existing On Tumblr i know most of what happens in the series + i plan to read HtN asap)
BUT LET'S GO!! (storygraph summaries linked)
if you liked gideon the ninth, try:
This is How You Lose the Time War by Max Gladstone & Amal El-Mohtar - maybe i just read these 2 really close together but Time War has time travel, space fuckery, gut-wrenching sapphic yearning, and a drily humorous tone all packed into the span of less than 200 pages.
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan - historical fantasy, rich worldbuilding, one of my All-Time Favorite Books (right alongside Time War and Gideon the Ninth lol)
Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang - historical fantasy, political intrigue, silver possesses the ability to manifest any meaning lost in translation between languages.
Cosmoknights by Hannah Templer - graphic novel (2 books out now); princesses, politics, and gladiator-style fights, but in space!
now for books i haven't read (on my tbr) that others have recommended for fans of TLT:
The Unbroken by C.L. Clark - fantasy, desert empire, a soldier and a princess "haggling" over the price of a nation.
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri - fantasy/romance, one seeking revenge, one seeking family.
The Ones We Burn by Rebecca Mix - fantasy, girl who is a monster (favorite trope of Ever btw), witches, kingdoms, and assassinations.
Crier's War by Nina Valera - fantasy with some sci-fi elements(?), humans vs. robots but with a twist! i want to read this so bad but have not found it anywhere
this list has some of the books i've recommended here, as well as a couple others i haven't! most of the books i've recommended are sapphic or at least lgbtq as well if that's something you're specifically interested in :)
lastly, storygraph does have a "browse similar books" feature, though i'm not sure how accurate it is as i've yet to really try it out!
