#kayla bashe

[lgbtqreads]

Fave Five: Adult Historical Fantasy Romance For Steampunk novels, click here. The Alpennia series by Heather Rose Jones Passing Strange by Ellen Klages (f/f) Caroline’s Heart by Austin Chant (m/f) - T A Charm of Magpies series by KJ Charles (m/m) Graveyard Sparrow by Kayla Bashe (f/f)

[a-wlw-reads]

The Prince and Her Dreamer by Kayla Bashe

7/10

Do the wlw end up together : Yes

Alright everybody, I love LGBT retellings as much as the next girl, but I can honestly say I was not expecting a nbwlw Nutcracker to cross my radar. Sitting down to read this had my mind throwing back to skipping on elementary school homework to go see the ballet (although I recognize that might not be the most universal experience). It’s got just enough whimsy to satisfy my very excitable inner child and some pretty gruesome rat soldiers and battle to keep me intrigued. Clara is an unconventional girl, reluctant to marry as her mother expects of her. For years she has fixated on The Tales of the Red Prince, the storybook written by her mysterious Uncle Drosselmeyer, loving the story for the escape it gives her and admiring the Red Prince for her courage and freedom. So when that same uncle appears one night and gifts Clara a doll of the Red Prince she’s ecstatic, and when that doll comes to life she thinks there might be a bit more truth to those tales than not. I loved that the Red Prince’s fairy tale world is a land free from gendered expectations and homophobia, and I very much enjoyed the characters’ chuckling over the oddities of human prejudice. Bashe did a great job at balancing that magical glitz with some of the more sober realities of the Prince’s twenty year confinement to a doll a world away from her besieged kingdom. I also audibly laughed at the Sugar Plum Fairy’s introduction, and that’s all I’m going to say about it; you’ll have to read it to find out why. All in all, the story keeps all the classic drama and glamour while adding in a fun gay twist.

It releases on December 11, 2018, but you can pre-order it here, if this sounds like your thing!

[lessthanthreepress]

DON'T FORGET TO PREORDER THE PRINCE AND HER DREAMER BY KAYLA BASHE

Grab The Prince and Her Dreamer by Kayla Bashe for 15% off while you can! This title will be the special preorder price of $1.69 until 7:00 p.m. Eastern Time on December 11, 2018.

Clara feels stifled by the life that's been planned out for her, and clings to her only hope that something more might be possible: a mysterious book given to her by her Uncle Drosselmeyer, that recounts the tales of the magnificent warrior woman known as the Red Prince. Decades ago, Drosselmeyer trapped the Red Prince in the form of a doll to save her from the Rats. When the magic of Clara's selfless admiration restores her to human form, she and Clara must find a way to stand against the Rats once and for all if they hope to enjoy the life they've always longed for...

Pairing: Fairy Tales, Fantasy, Historical – Bisexual, Lesbian, Non-binary

Word Count: 17,000

Content: The Prince and Her Dreamer contains no explicit content, references to (off-screen) rape, and brief scenes of violence.

[poetrex]

Goodreads Review: Bashe's glitter blood is part space opera, part choose-your-own-adventure—some paths are dead-ends or dying worlds, but all are woven together gleefully in a galaxy near-to-heart and powered by magic. Some poems read like distant stars, others like solar neighbours, while the entire constellation shifts in orbit around the dark matter of some of its denser, more down-to-earth prose poetry. Be warned: this chapbook will temporarily abduct you on a journey through space and time—and you may return somewhat changed by its mystic bequest of diamond and dandelion. * * * Thank you very much @kayla-bird for this gem, sorry it took me so long to review it! I look forward to reading Meteor Family =D

[the-knights-who-say-book]

The Gift of Your Love

Rating: ★★½☆☆

*I received an advance reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review*

Blurb: Neely has always been able to see things — the details others miss, flashes of color that tell her how people feel, and more. She's been called everything from witch to psychic to freak. But a lifetime of seeing what the rest of the world misses still didn't prepare her for being taken hostage mid-escape by a man with tentacles. And it definitely didn't prepare her for the intriguing woman who comes to her rescue.

There were definitely good parts to this! I'm always up for a quick wlw read, superheroes are great, and I'm loving the anxious queer girl rep. Also, this book is like 90% female characters and I like that a lot. In that respect, this is a perfectly nice novella. But there were some things on a technical level that detracted from the experience.

The writing could be more polished — it got a bit rough and juvenile sometimes. But I know the version I read is subject to further editing, and on the assumption that the writing will be smoother when it's actually published I've decided to up my rating from 2 to 2.5 to account for that.

The other major problem is that without world building, the story is kind of drifting in nowhere-land. For a while I didn't have a solid sense of whether this was a regular world but with magic/superheroes, a fantasy universe, or somewhat in between. Besides the fact that this world has countries the real world doesn't, the clues about the setting are sparse and vaguely modern day. The set up for the story is utilitarian. Neely tells us immediately and clunkily that everything from arson to murder has been going wrong in this city and then we're off to the inciting incident. Sure, it's all you need to know from a plot standpoint, but it makes you feel stranded and confused as a reader. Perhaps a longer exposition, to meet the world and Neely as a character before the plot started, would have grounded the story.

Anyway, I like that the book really emphasizes recognizing your worth as a person regardless of what that mean little voice in the back of your head says.

[biandlesbianliterature]

Shira Glassman reviews The Gift of Your Love by Kayla Bashe

Shira Glassman reviews The Gift of Your Love by Kayla Bashe

The Gift of Your Love by Kayla Bashe is a good fit for anyone looking for woman-centered SFF, f/f without graphic sex scenes, or shorter queer fiction.

Neely is a foreigner who only ended up in this city by accident — she traveled here with her merchant father as a child, but he ended up dead and she grew up in an orphanage far from home. Now she’s living on the street, not just because of her…

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[rhodrymavelyne]

F/F Fantasy Anthology Release

[emma-d-klutz]

Oh

@kayla-bird has been published again. I’m just going to go, you know, buy it, read it, love it, adore it, appreciate it, and then bang my head against a wall made entirely out of salt.