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On the surface, it's a fantasy novel, set in a world that looks very much like medieval Europe, save that the primary Kingdoms (Chalion, Ibra, etc) are made-up. It invents the Quintarian and Quadrene faiths as the primary religions (which are very central to the story), and is the tale of a God-tossed soldier, Lord Cazaril, who winds up quite accidentally the secretary and primary advisor to the Royesse (princess) Iselle as she navigates the political storms around her house and the curse surrounding them. It's a brilliantly structured book, full of little threads that all tie together with remarkable elegance at the end. Particularly interesting and unusual: while it's describing a fictional world, it is tightly based on real history. Iselle is basically Isabella I of Castille, and the book is telling a fictionalized version of the events leading up to her marriage to Ferdinand II of Aragon, and the birth of Spain as we know it. With the exception of our protagonist Cazaril, pretty much every central character is based on an actual historical figure, and the events of the story largely parallel the actual history. (The death of Don Pedro, one of the real-life suitors to Isabella, inspires the turning-point moment in the book, when the story kicks into high gear.) Despite its length, the book is necessarily greatly simplified from the actual history -- it's kind of amusing to note that this by-no-means simple plot isn't remotely as over-complex as the actual history of Isabella and Ferdinand. But that's how we get a satisfying story. The book is, notably, just barely fantasy -- it's nearly historical fiction. It's mostly describing a pretty authentic medieval world. Even the made-up religions intentionally parallel reality, albeit by no means precisely. The two religions at each other's throats are closely related: the Islam-cognate Quadrenes believe in the the Father, the Mother, the Brother and the Sister; the Catholic-cognate Quintarians add the Bastard to that set. And the story is only "fantasy" in that the hand of the Gods is strong enough that it is hard not to accept them as real -- they never actually appear as such (except in visions), but there are enough convenient "miracles" that it is a bit hard for people not to believe in them. Excellent book, and really a model for how to write fantasy-history. Highly recommended.

A sweet, educational, mildly queer coming-of-age fantasy graphic novel.

One protagonist is Perley -- from a family of farmers and crafters, leader of the high school knitting club. (And a really fine example that you can be queer in spirit even if you're neither gay nor trans.) His life was recently disrupted when he found out the hard way that has Type 1 Diabetes, and he's now catching up in school and learning how to cope with the disease.

He shares his catch-up process with Amandine, a fellow junior in this small Maine town. She comes from a distinguished vampiric family, and was prematurely inducted into vampirism to save her life. She's also having to learn coping techniques -- particularly important for a vampire who is also a fairly committed vegan.

They become close friends, and develop a measure of inter-dependency when they discover that she can taste his blood sugar levels pretty accurately -- saving him money on supplies, and giving her a tiny bit of entirely-voluntary energy boost.

There's no high drama here, nor many fantasy tropes: it's a pretty down-to-earth story about navigating high school relationships, where one of the main characters happens to be a young vampire. The characters are generally realistic (including all the awkwardness that being realistic about high school implies), and the book is pretty educational about diabetes without ever sliding too far into being didactic.

If you know a bit about comics, The Refrigerator Monologues is a fascinating book; if you know a lot about comics, it's absolutely searing.

The framing story here is The Hell Hath Club -- a gathering of ladies who lunch in Deadtown. They're all dead; they were all associated with superheroes (and/or villains); and their stories are sad, and smart, and honest.

All names have been changed to protect the poor innocent IP, but if you know comics at all well, it's pretty obvious who all of them are. The framing story is narrated by our Gwen Stacy variant; other members of the club range from Mera to Jean Grey to Harley (yes, she's not dead in-canon, but it's an interesting counterpoint) to, of course, poor forgotten Alex DeWitt, whose fate spawned the meme of "fridging" in the first place.

Each of them gets to tell their own story, and unsurprisingly Valente does then more justice in pretty much every case than they ever got in the comics: telling the story from their point of view.

The thing about the "fridge" meme (and here I'm using "meme" in the traditional sense of "infectious idea", sometimes a bad one) is that it's all about killing female characters (typically love interests) as a means to allow the Men to go and Emote. It's crude and pretty mysogynistic at its core, and while it's less common than it used to be, there's been an awful lot of it in comics.

So this instead centers the stories of the women, each of them getting their own monologue (typically a full chapter) to tell the story as they saw it. Those stories aren't quite identical to the ones in the comics, but if you know the originals, these rhyme quite closely. Each is very personal, very effective, and each drives home the sheer awfulness of the victim trope.

In this case, I'll specifically recommend reading this one via audiobook if that is convenient for you. The narrator, Karis Campbell, handles the job with remarkable nuance. Each of these women has a very different background and personality, and she nails the different voices astonishingly well, to the point where, if I don't know it was all the same reader, I wouldn't necessarily have guessed it. From the punk attitude of our Mera cognate to the coquettish Harley to the utterly despairing Jean, she brings each one powerfully to life.

This really is a book for those who at least somewhat know the comics; I'm not sure it would land as powerfully if you don't have that background. But I give it my highest recommendation, especially if you do know some of the stories it is inspired by.

Spinning (now out in a new edition from Avery Hill) is generally labeled as a queer coming-of-age story, and that's true as far as it goes, but it's a bit less queer-centered than that label might suggest. Tillie has known she was gay for almost her entire life, and the struggle to come out is definitely part of the story here (especially after her parents move to Texas).

But the story isn't nearly that reductive. This is a much broader memoir, told in quiet shades: it's a very introspective story, starting around the time of that move to Texas in sixth grade and continuing through high school. It's partly about her relationships with other girls, but far more about her rather troubled relationship with figure skating.

Tillie is a talented skater, but not world-class, and she knows it. She's been skating for most of her life, much of that preparing for competitions, but her feelings are by no means unbridled joy -- the book focuses more on the tension, the stress, the little abuses perpetrated by coaches that she internalized and built too much of her identity around.

This is a tale of how she found herself trapped by that public image as "a skater", the struggle to escape for it, and the little horrors of growing up -- including some incidents that clearly affected her profoundly, but which were hard to express as a kid.

It's a somber story, partly of figuring out what she wants out of life, but even more figuring out what she doesn't want. It's not a happy tale, but feels more honest a reflection than the way most folks think about their high school days.

Phoebe and her father have just moved to LA, so she has to get used to a new high school -- at the same time that she's starting to figure out how to be a girl, having just transitioned.

This is a refreshingly positive trans story. It is not about the horrors of transphobia, of which there is little -- the kids of the school are generally friendly and accepting. But it's very much about the experience of rebuilding one's life with little clue about the new world one has dived into.

Phoebe meets lots of people her first day, but particularly Ben -- ringleader of the local geeks, who is more than happy to find a new girl geek to game with -- and Mackenzie -- perfectly-coiffed leader of the "popular girls", who decides to adopt Phoebe as a project and teach her how to be a successful girl.

Problem is, Ben and Mackenzie not-so-cordially hate each other, and think each other are pretty toxic. And they're not entirely wrong about that: they both have their own problems, and while both of them very much like Phoebe, they have their own egos and agendas in play here.

So even as Phoebe takes to her makeover brilliantly, winding up as one of the most popular girls in the school, she has to navigate the reality that no one necessarily cares about what she wants in all of this. The road to figuring that out isn't always easy.

Content warning: while there isn't any transphobia to speak of, the story does contain a fair amount of pretty awful performative allyship, and more than a few micro-aggressions -- it's not entirely sweetness and light. But it's a wonderfully honest look at how things can go, even when everyone is supposedly on your side.

Fun book, good for both teens and adults who like well-written YA.

Mags is just about grown up, but her life revolves around home by necessity. Part of that is because she needs to care for the aged abuela, but just as much is because of the thing in the basement, that she needs to feed every day. She is stoic about it, never complaining about a weight that would break most adults twice her age.

This all begins to get upended when her childhood best friend, long moved away, comes back home -- now transitioned, with the new name of Nessa. Nessa is more lively, and wants Mags to live more herself. But as far as she knows, the thing in the basement was just a childhood fantasy that they made up when they were kids.

This isn't a big loud fantasy book: aside from its one fantastical element, it is very much grounded in the here and now of small-town southwestern life. It's long, but a very fast read -- the average page is 3-5 beautiful panels, often wordless.

There's too much dark reality here to quite call it "sweet", but it's hard not to root for Mags and Nessa: their friendship is bone-deep and heartfelt. But they each have monsters to wrestle with before they can move on and live.

Lovely stuff. It was recommended to me while I was at one of our local comic shops, and I pass on that recommendation.