#portalmania

[aroaessidhe]

asexual books: sex-averse/repulsed

this is something I've previously only noted down when it's explicitly stated in the book or marketing - I think in earlier representation it was kinda assumed by default so I didn't note it down, but I'm trying to mostly include books where it is blatantly clear! This includes both characters who are entirely sex-repulsed (incl. depictions) and characters who are personally repulsed but fine with depictions, etc, as well as characters where touch-repulsion is the more significant aspect explored, but it's assumed sex is included in that. I know there's many variations in what words mean to people, this is just broadly: don't like/want sex in any circumstance.

indifferent/favourable post

Life Underwater - contemporary, sex-repulsed ace man MC m/nb

Ace of Hearts - contemporary romance, sex/kiss-repulsed ace woman MC, m/f

Adrift In Starlight - scifi romance, touch/sex averse MC f/nb

The Circus Infinite - scifi, while the MC describes himself at one point as 'not entirely sex averse', all evidence in the book points to him being sex averse. at least 99% of the time. m/m

Beyond The Black Door - YA dark fantasy, sex repulsed demiro ace MC, m/f

Upside Down - contemporary romance, averse/repulsed ace man MC, m/m

The Crows - horror, sex-averse secondary MC, m/f QPR

Portalmania - collection of sci-fi stories, many of which explore sex-repulsed asexuality (cw: martial rape)

Fourth World - YA scifi, sex repulsed ace girl MC m/f

More Than Enough - fantasy romance, touch/sex repulsed MC, m/m

The Space Ace of Mangleby Flat - sex repulsed MC, m/f

The Bone People - literary/magical realism, touch (and presumably sex) repulsed aroace MC

Is Love The Answer? - contemporary manga, aroace sex-repulsed MC, ace sex-repulsed SC

Convenience Store Woman - litfic, sex repulsed aroace-coded MC

Royal Rescue - high fantasy, aroace MC, I recall is sex/romance repulsed

Beautyland - litfic, aro-coded ace MC who I'd say is repulsed (though forces a relationship for a while)

more YA books that I'd say from context are sex-repulsed, though it's either not discussed in detail or it's been a while and I can't quite remember: Dear Wendy, Don’t Let The Forest In, We Were Restless Things, Six Angry Girls, Threads of the City, The Hanging Bones, Funeral Girl, What We Devour, Belle Revolte, The Final Curse of Ophelia Cray, Scorpion Deep

#aspec books / aspec database / tumblr masterpost

info included here is brief! please see my database for full details of the books. 7/26

[wearethekat]

March Book Reviews: Portalmania by Debbie Urbanski

I was recommended this book by Laya on Tumblr for its interesting take on ace perspectives. In Portalmania, Urbanski collects a series of short stories mostly centering women trapped in unendurable situations. Through a series of stifling marriages and unhappy lives, portals offer a glimmer of a better world that never seems to be achievable.

As a whole, this collection feels like one long scream of agony. Out of nine short stories, four feature intensely sex-repulsed ace women trapped as stay-at-home wives in conventional marriages where their husbands kindly, insistently, and repeatedly rape them. Occasionally a therapist appears and condescendingly explains to the stay at home, unemployed protagonist that submitting to sex is a condition of staying married, and effectively mandatory for being a real human. In one of my favorite stories, "How to Kiss a Hojacki", a woman slowly transforms into something inhuman, to the fear and disgust of her husband. The story is told from the unsympathetic perspective of the husband as he tries to force his wife to act "normal." Likewise, "LK-32-C" is from the perspective of a mother who is failing her autistic kid. In both pieces, the cruelty and indifference is much more striking from the internal perspective.

Throughout the collection, the stories often toy with breaking the fourth wall and directly addressing the reader. The repeating themes imply that Urbanski is writing partially autobiographically, but the line is deliberately nebulous, and in the author's note she sarcastically declares that everything is a factual account, even the ghosts and space travel. It's clear that at least some of it is autobiographical, as "The Dirty Golden Yellow House" has a protagonist who writes stories about ace women trapped in marriage directly critiquing misreadings of her stories, including a reader complaining about her series of "repugnant asexual wives." If you didn't catch the point in the previous stories, Urbanski is going make sure you get it now.

A uniformly brutally unhappy collection, striking in its vividness and clarity of purpose. But not an especially easy read.

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2026: PORTALMANIA: STORIES by Debbie Urbanski.

Well! This is the most deeply sex-repulsed asexual collection I've read in my life!! I picked it up because hello, portals?, and the asexuality was a much-appreciated bonus for me. (Shout out to @aroaessidhe for putting it on my ace radar!)

It's also, however, one of the most (intentionally) challenging collections I've ever read--absolutely nothing in here is sunshine and rainbows. I've been having a hard time wrapping words coherently around my thoughts, so I wound up with list of adjectives: brutal, unflinching, unsettling, uncanny, distant, dissociative, disallusionment, domestic, familial, intimate, violent. The stories in here are about escape and the possibility of escape and the rejection of the possibility of escape; about families and stability and suffocation and failures of family; about longing and discomfort and monsters and fear and resignation.

I appreciated the major recurrent perspective: slightly older women, wives and mothers, who realized After they started families that they're ace (and almost unilaterally sex-repulsed). It's an important voice, and one I haven't encountered much in fiction yet--props to Urbanski for leaning into it hard.

"Favorite" seems like a hell of a choice when describing my relationship to any of the stories in here. The ones that stuck with me most are:

"A Few Personal Observations on Portals"

"The Dirty Golden Yellow House"

"Some Personal Arguments in Support of the BetterYou (Based on Early Interactions)"

"Coda"

Overall, it's a very dark and fucked up collection (lots of coercive sex and marital rape), with glimmering portals of Something Else shimmered throughout. Urbanski's narrative voice is rock fucking solid, and it does fascinating things to the collection's tone (not quite cognitive dissonance, but close?? The voice is certainly A Choice, and a good one, but descriptions are failing me). It does make all the stories kind of bleed together--these feel more like microvariations on a theme than a sweeping collection--but if you vibe with it, this collection will have Much For You. (Her short fiction has been pubbed in many a magazine, so you can probably find her online for a sampler.)

[aroaessidhe]

aro & ace books: literary fiction

once again the not-my-usual-genre disclaimer!

Beautyland - aro-coded ace MC, othered woman believes she is an alien

Breasts and Eggs - ace MC, considers motherhood/family and having a donor-conceieved child without having a partner

Convenience Store Woman - aroace coded MC, is uninterested in relationships or sex and constantly pressured to be 'normal'

Portalmania - literary scifi collection of short stories, many exploring asexuality, primarily sex-repulsed, motherhood, unhappy or abusive relationships

The Bone People - literary/magical realism, aroace MC (1/3). Likely the first published intentionally-ace book, this aspect is autobiographical

I Love You Don’t Die - maybe-acespec SC, considers amatonormativity and relationships and love of many forms

Small Joys - ace coded SC, a man makes friends with a man who is uninterested in conforming or normality

American Mermaid - 2 ace MCs, an author's book is being made into a movie, and she has to deal with the aphobia and misogyny of her co-writers (*I did have mixed feelings about the depiction here)

elseship - this is nonfiction/memoir-ish but I think it has similar feel to these. an asexual woman considering love and relationships of various kinds, while being in unrequited love with her housemate.

#aspec books / aspec database / tumblr masterpost

info included here is brief! please see my database for full details of the books 3/7/26

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2026: A Totally Hinged Number of Books in Progress :)

Currently reading literally all of these!! Many more than I usually do!! Rationales as follows:

BROWN NEON: essays. discrete.

MY POEMS: poetry quest, this month edition. chewing on them.

AROUND THE WRITER'S BLOCK: nonfiction. activities-oriented. referenced in #4. hoping it helps me kill some perfectionism.

STRUCTURING LIFE TO SUPPORT CREATIVITY: buddy reading two chapters at a time with a writer friend. we discuss.

PORTALMANIA: short stories. discrete.

AKHMATOVA: poetry quest, december edition, but i am NOT!!! reading 900+ pages of poetry in a month thanks,

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2026: March Wrap-Up.

I'm still revising along, which has slightly shifted the flavor of my reading for this month (trying to squeeze in more writerly-adjacent nonfic for habits/perspective adjustment). Somehow multi-wielding books did not spectacularly backfire on me?? I'm sure I will learn nothing from this experience. Relative to how my TBR's been going so far this year, many of these were Not Planned (Writer's Block, Notes, Hail Mary), and also not remotely the direction I thought side quests would take me, but Here We Are.

Reviews linked!:

AMERICAN ELSEWHERE ★★★★★ Cannot begin to express how directly up my alley this was. Weird, fucked up, funny, immaculate vibes, perfectly meshed with my revision project. Highly recommend.

PORTALMANIA ★★★½ THE most sex-repulsed asexual collection I've read in my entire life. Microvariations on a theme. Glad I read it, heavy and fucked up. Tonally fascinating.

BROWN NEON ★★★ More academic than I was expecting. Interesting perspectives, but I didn't have quite enough context for this to hit right for me.

AROUND THE WRITER'S BLOCK ★★★★ Helpful and practical!! If you want an assist getting Unstuck in your writerly life, check it out.

PROJECT HAIL MARY ★★★½ Had fun! Weir is Weir, and boy howdy does he Have A Type™. I liked THE MARTIAN better overall but Rocky is perfect so...

ON TRAILS ★★★★ Enjoyed this a lot more than I was expecting too! Very cool mix of hiking/ecology/memoir/biology/paleontology/history with a dash of linguistics in there. Also funny. Do recommend.

NOTES ON WRITING FICTION ★★★★½ Enjoyed this VERY much more than I thought I would, will be preordering the paperback. Tonally very different from the other writing-adjacent nonfic I've been reading. Insightful and hilarious. Also recommend.

MY POEMS - 22/154 pages read. I was doomed to fail the timeline on at least one (1) Book of the Month installment, really, it might as well be the one where I'm trying to read Russian poetry from ~1910-1934 in Russian, huh. Having a good time when I sit down to do it! Struggling to make myself sit down because it's a lot! Translation is wild! Poetry in translation is especially wild! I do have a favorite so far though :)

STRUCTURING LIFE TO SUPPORT CREATIVITY - 202/256 pages read. Buddy reading in the home stretch! The book is now available on The Beloathed River Site (and therefore Goodreadsable)!

ANNA AKHMATOVA - 80/942 pages read. I will not lie to you: The eighteen (18) pages I have "read" since last month were further translator/editor notes and then fourteen (14) pages of photographs with captions lol. Progress is Progress! We are Behind on Poetry Quest! It is Fine!!!

I miss fiction, and I'm very excited to get back to fiction next month! I am simply not built for the Majority Nonfiction Lifestyle, I don't think.

Under the Cut: How I Generally Conceptualize ~*★Stars★*~

★ - This was Bad. I would actively recommend that you do NOT read this one, no redeeming qualities whatsoever, not worth the slog. Save Yourself, It's Too Late For Me. Book goes in the garbage (donate bin).

★★ - This was Not Good. I would not recommend it, but it wasn't a total waste or wash--something in here held my interest/kept my attention/sparked some joy. I will not be rereading this ever. Save Yourself (Or Join Me In Suffering, That Seems Like A Cool Bonding Activity).

★★★ - This was Good/Fine/Okay/Meh. I don't care about this enough to recommend it one way or another. Perfectly serviceable book, held my interest, I probably enjoyed myself (or at least didn't actively loathe the reading). I don't have especially strong feelings. You probably don't need to save yourself from this one--if it sounds like your jam, give it a shot! Just didn't resonate with me particularly powerfully. I probably won't reread this unless I'm after something in particular.

★★★½ - I liked this! I'll probably recommend it if I know it matches someone's vibes or specific requests, but I didn't commit to a star rating on Goodreads. More likely to reread, but not guaranteed.

★★★★ - I really enjoyed this!! I would recommend it (sometimes with caveats about content warnings or such--I like weird fucked up funny shit). Not a perfect book for me by any means, but Very Good. This is something I would reread! Join me!!

★★★★★ - I LOVED THE SHIT OUT OF THIS, IT REWIRED MY BRAIN, WILL RECOMMEND TO ANYONE AND EVERYONE AT THE SLIGHTEST PROVOCATION (content warning caveats still apply--see 4-star disclaimer). Excellent book, I'll reread it regularly, I'll buy copies for all my friends, I'll try to convince all of Booklr to read it, PLEASE join me!!

[biblioklept]

Debbie Urbanski's Portalmania (Book acquired, 5 May 2025)

I really dug Debbie Urbanski’s debut novel After World, writing about it, Debbie Urbanski’s debut novel After World reimagines the end of humanity—or perhaps the beginning of a new digital existence. The narrator, [storyworker] ad39-393a-7fbc, reconstructs the life of Sen Anon, the last human archived in the Digital Human Archive Project, using sources like drones, diaries, and other materials.…

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