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The Queersar Not An Award 2023
For excellence in queer SFF and SFF with queers released in 2023
Eddie
May 26, 2026
As I move onto the penultimate year of this exercise, it’s been interesting to see the patterns I’ve set in my list selection from year to year. After the profusion of indie publishers last year, we’re back to seeing domination by the big players in 2023. Some superb work in here from Neon Hemlock, Subterranean, and Titan but 9 of the twelve books mentioned (we’ll get to why there are twelve in a second) are from the big 4; 3 each from Tor and tordotcom, 2 from Orbit, and one from MCD (a Penguin imprint).
What I find interesting is that there is no clear relationship between how ‘literary’ an offering is and whether it’s out from an indie or a big publisher. We have some great stuff from the literary end of the genre this year from both sources - Das’s book from Subterranean, the Chandrasekera in the HOAF from tordotcom, and the Griffith from MCD - but perhaps more than any year so far, 2023’s selections are dominated by the corner of the genre I thought the old Gaylactic Spectrum award particularly focused on: top quality, commercial midlist SFF that nevertheless is brilliantly written and full of queers. Big commercial books definitely get award attention some of the time (particularly from the Hugos), but commercial, midlist books speaking to queer readers? Not so much. Happily some of the selections here do have some existing award recognition, but plenty do not. And I repeat that, again, this particular niche seems to be under-served. Have a look through these twelve books I highlight below; more than anything else for this year’s list I hope you find something fun.
(why are there twelve, rather than the ten plus HOAF? Because I messed up some pub dates, and therefore we need…)
…a 2022 Erratum aka Eddie got the pub date wrong aka Jenn Lyons: The Discord of Gods (Tor)
I see the Guardian accidentally left Camus’s L'Étranger off their best 100 novel list. Oops. In that fine tradition, I left something off last year’s list, and I’m correcting it here. It’s my not-an-award, I can mess with the rules if I want to! The short version is this: The Discord of Gods by Jenn Lyons is an absolutely brilliant book and a rock solid conclusion to one of the absolute best modern epic fantasies out there.
The slightly longer version is that one of the modes of fantasy I’ve really missed from my and teenage years is what was derisively called Fat Fantasy. Long, 3, 4, 5 – more – book series, each book of which as a high page count, generally in one subgenre or other of epic/high fantasy. Raymond Feist, Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, Kate Elliott etc. The genre seems to have largely died as a commercial proposition at some point in the last decade for people not named Brandon Sanderson. Lyons’ A Chorus of Dragons is a five-book series which harks back to this tradition in the best way, carrying forward the long, twisting plotlines, the panoply of points of view, the time spent developing character and setting in an unhurried way. It also leaves behind in 1992 the stuff that belongs there, updating that sensibility to include a panoply of queers (Lyons is a master of the disaster bisexual), interesting takes on both gods and dragons, nuanced villains and, be still my scholarly heart, footnotes. The Discord of Gods pulls all these together and rather remarkably entirely sticks the landing. I’m not including a blurb here because this blurb in particular is outrageously spoilery for the books that have gone before. This does not mean the series has anything but my highest recommendation. (And sorry I got the date wrong!)
Award nominations: None.
Hall of Already Famous
Vajra Chandrasekera: The Saint of Bright Doors (tordotcom)
Fetter was raised to kill, honed as a knife to cut down his sainted father. This gave him plenty to talk about in therapy.
He walked among invisible devils and anti-gods that mock the mortal form. He learned a lethal catechism, lost his shadow, and gained a habit for secrecy. After a blood-soaked childhood, Fetter escaped his rural hometown for the big city, and fell into a broader world where divine destinies are a dime a dozen.
Everything in Luriat is more than it seems. Group therapy is recruitment for a revolutionary cadre. Junk email hints at the arrival of a god. Every door is laden with potential, and once closed may never open again. The city is scattered with Bright Doors, looming portals through which a cold wind blows. In this unknowable metropolis, Fetter will discover what kind of man he is, and his discovery will rewrite the world.
Award nominations: Hugo Award, Dragon Award, Lambda Award, Le Guin Prize.
Award wins: Nebula Award, Ignyte Award, Locus Award for best first novel, Crawford Award.
Honour List
M A Carrick: Labyrinth's Heart (Orbit)
An excellent conclusion to the Carrick duo’s excellent Rook and Rose series. What started as a straightforward (if really well executed) long con caper expanded its cast and its concerns to cover a broad suite of both plotlines and thematic concerns. There is a lot going on for Labyrinth’s Heart to resolve – political intrigue, colonialism, plots with intricate magic systems, romantic and family complications – and it’s to the authors’ credit that they manage to do it in style. Nadežra is a fantastic (in both senses of the word) Venice-tinged urban setting, evocative and believable. It’s also a (mostly) queernorm setting, and the cast is awash with queers (all of whom are well drawn and rounded). In short, this is top quality, engaging commercial fantasy that is simultaneously a lot of fun and has something to say. Great stuff.
Rook & Rose: Book 3
Ren came to Nadezra with a plan. She would pose as the long-lost daughter of the noble house Traementis. She would secure a fortune for herself and her sister. And she would vanish without a backward glance. She ought to have known that in the city of dreams, nothing is ever so simple.
Now, she is Ren, con-artist and thief. But she is also Renata, the celebrated Traementis heir. She is Arenza, the mysterious pattern-reader and political rebel. And she is the Black Rose, a vigilante who fights alongside the legendary Rook.
Even with the help of Grey Serrado and Derossi Vargo, it is too many masks for one person to wear. And as the dark magic the three of them helped unleash builds to storm that could tear the very fabric of the city apart, it's only a matter of time before one of the masks slips--and everything comes crashing down around them.
Award nominations: None.
Indra Das: The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar (Subterranean Press)
A sparkling, Borgesian jewel of a novella. Das pulls off a very difficult trick by pairing perfectly observed detail with a flickering sense of (un)reality about the whole narrative. It’s a story of a young person growing up not quite fitting in with his immigrant family or the society in which he lives. Of grappling with culture and gender. It’s a deeply affectionate tribute to the pulpier ends of fantasy. All of this is rendered in Das’s gorgeous, impressionistic prose. It also works perfectly as a novella, a form that I think, given its surging current popularity, is often not well executed. Novellas can read like overstretched short stories or cramped, cut down novels; The Last Dragoners of Bowbazar is neither. A perfectly judged, perfectly painted world and story, and one that should be destined for any SFF canon worthy of the term.
Ru is a boy from nowhere. Though he lives somewhere—the city of Calcutta—his classmates in school remind him he doesn’t look like them, and must come from somewhere else. When Ru asks his parents, they tell him they are descended from nomads. But even nomads must come from somewhere. The question, forever on the mind of the boy from nowhere, is where.
Ru dreams things that wouldn’t seem out of place in the fantasy novels his father read to him when young. Fragments of a culture that doesn’t exist in this world, but might in another, where sky and sea are one, and humans sail this eternal ocean on the backs of divine beasts.
Ru dreams of dragons, of serpents impossible. Perhaps Ru remembers dragons.
Alone in a city that’s home but doesn’t feel like it, Ru befriends Alice, his neighbor from the nearby Chinatown. As they grow with their friendship, Ru finds that Calcutta may yet be a home for him. But with his best friend starting to realize that Ru’s house and family hide a myriad of secrets, the question haunts him still—where is his family from? Are they truly from nowhere, migrants to this reality? And if so, what strange wings brought them across the vast reaches of impossibility to here—and what is their purpose?
Award nominations: Locus Award.
Award wins: British Fantasy Award for Best Novella.
Daniel M Ford: The Warden (Tor)
When you start with “rich snobby professional sent to small town in the middle of nowhere filled with quirky characters,” certain expectations are created. The professional is going to thaw, there’s going to be community building and heartwarming occurrences, good cozy Gilmore Girls stuff. What’s interesting about The Warden in that it both fulfils and entirely subverts those expectations. Our professional is a bisexual necromancer. Turns out the quirky small-town inhabitants are papering over a wagonload of trauma. The setting has serious tinges of grimdark, though that doesn’t carry through to the tone of the book. There are several well-paced action sequences. All up, an exceptionally clever, well-executed fantasy that deploys and combines familiar tropes to form something both comforting and surprising. It also ends in a cliffhanger that had me laughing out loud rather than throwing the book in frustration. And happily for you, the sequel is already out so, unlike me, you can pick it up and see where that goes immediately.
The Warden: Book 1
There was a plan.
She had the money, the connections, even the brains. It was simple: become one of the only female necromancers, earn as many degrees as possible, get a post in one of the grand cities, then prove she’s capable of greatness. The funny thing about plans is that they are seldom under your control.
Now Aelis de Lenti, a daughter of a noble house and recent graduate of the esteemed Magisters’ Lyceum, finds herself in the far-removed village of Lone Pine. Mending fences, matching wits with goats, and serving people who want nothing to do with her. But, not all is well in Lone Pine, and as the villagers Aelis is reluctantly getting to know start to behave strangely, Aelis begins to suspect that there is far greater need for a Warden of her talents than she previously thought.
Old magics are restless, and an insignificant village on the farthest border of the kingdom might hold secrets far beyond what anyone expected. Aelis might be the only person standing between one of the greatest evils ever known and the rest of the world.
Award nominations: None.
Nicola Griffith: Menewood (MCD Press)
It may say something about me that this is the Nicola Griffith book I’ve included in this project when:
(a) there is at least some debate on whether Menewood reasonably counts as fantasy; and
(b) Griffith’s 2023 novel Spear has many more traditionally fantastic elements and got significant award attention.
The response to both of these is, essentially, that it’s my not an award and I don’t care; Menewood is absolutely brilliant (and, in short, if you think Guy Kay’s “I can’t believe it’s not Europe” secondary world historical fantasy is clearly within the genre, the Menewood certainly at the very least straddles its border enough to be on this list). The second book in Griffith’s deep dive into the life of the future St Hilda of Whitby, this is slower, longer, deeper, and even better than the already excellent Hild. Griffith’s research is impressive, but her imagination and command of the plausible human detail of 7th century England is even moreso. Hild is also a fantastic character, well-drawn and with a rich interior life (and bisexual in a period-appropriate way). This vivid world and its people are set out in excellent, evocative prose as well; unsurprisingly coming from Griffith. A triumph, and it boggles my mind it’s had basically no award attention inside or outside SFF.
The Hild Sequence: Book 2
Hild is no longer the bright child who made a place in Edwin Overking’s court with her seemingly supernatural insight. She is eighteen, honed and tested, the formidable lady of Elmet, now building her personal stronghold in the valley of Menewood.
But old alliances are fraying. Younger rivals are snapping at Edwin’s heels. War is brewing—bitter war, winter war. Not knowing whom to trust, Edwin becomes volatile and recalls his young advisor to court. There Hild begins to understand the true extent of the chaos ahead—and realizes she must find a way to navigate the turbulence and fight to protect both the kingdom and her own people.
She will face the losses and devastation of total war, and then must summon the determination to forge a radically different path for herself and her people. In the valley, her last redoubt, Hild draws strength from the fierce joy she finds in the natural world, as, slowly, her community takes root. She trains herself and her unexpected allies in new ways of thinking, learning what it means to gather and wield true power. And she prepares for one last wager: risking all on a single throw for a better future.
Award nominations: None.
Brent C. Lambert: A Necessary Chaos (Neon Hemlock)
Gay science fantasy Mr and Mr Smith. A really, really great premise for a book, but it lives and dies in its execution and happily for us Lambert executes with aplomb. Compelling, kinetic action sequences, efficient character work – necessary for a novella – revolutionary politics, all good stuff. But what really makes the book work is the absolutely combustible chemistry between the leads. Althus and Vade are visibily, hornily into each other and we completely get why. A lot of fiction featuring queer dudes – even otherwise good stuff – really doesn’t get this bit right, but here it’s the spark that elevates all the other good work Lambert does well above the norm. A firecracker of a book (and also one of the best covers on any book in this exercise so far).
In a world of magical empires and the anarchists that would tear them down, A Necessary Chaos follows two mages, Althus and Vade, each assigned to spy on the other by opposing sides. But when they both catch feelings, what happens when they’re commanded to kill their target? They must each decide if they'll follow orders or find a way to make their romance thrive beyond the lies.
Award nominations: None.
Ed McDonald: Traitor of Redwinter (Tor)
Being on this list means I like it, so I can afford to make an admission here: Traitor of Redwinter, the second book in McDonald’s Redwinter Chronicles is on there because that’s where this series clicked for me. I liked the first book well enough to finish it and start this one, but what – in the end! – made me love what McDonald is doing here also made it a bit of a struggle. That is, at heart, the narrative voice, which has the courage to be both distinct and intrusive. Raine’s way of experiencing the world took me a fairly long time to really grasp, but once I did I was entirely on board. It’s going to put some people off (it almost did me!) but that vibrant and characterful first person narration is what makes Traitor of Redwinter stand out about the crowd of competent but interchangeable fantasy.
In addition to the voice, this is an interesting take on epic fantasy, darker and grimier that many without ever being hopeless, with well judged romance plotlines and Raine’s growing understanding of her bisexuality. The action rises and peaks well for the middle book in a trilogy, and the various antagonists are well-judged and believable. Impressive and entertaining, worth spending some time with to see if it works for you.
The Redwinter Chronicles: Book 2
The power of the Sixth Gate grows stronger within Raine each day—to control it, she needs lessons no living Draoihn can teach her. Her fledgling friendships are tested to a breaking point as she tries to face what she has become, and her master Ulovar is struck by a mysterious sickness that slowly saps the vitality from his body, leaving Raine to face her growing darkness alone. There’s only one chance to turn the tide of power surging within her—to learn the secrets the Draoihn themselves purged from the world.
The book can teach her. She doesn’t know where she found it, or when exactly, but its ever changing pages whisper power that has lain untouched for centuries.
As the king’s health fails and the north suffers in the grip of famine, rebellious lords hunger for the power of the Crown, backed by powers that would see the Crowns undone. Amidst this growing threat, Raine’s former friend Ovitus brings a powerful new alliance, raising his status and power of his own. He professes support for the heir to the throne even as others would see him take it for himself, and desperately craves Raine’s forgiveness—or her submission.
But the grandmaster has her own plans for Raine, and the deadly training she has been given has not been conducted carelessly. In Raine she seeks to craft a weapon to launch right into her enemy’s heart, as Redwinter seeks to hold onto power.
Amidst threats old and new, Raine must learn the secrets promised by the book, magic promised by a queen with a crown of feathers. A queen to whom Raine has promised more than she can afford to give…
Award nominations: None.
Malka Older: The Mimicking of Known Successes (Tordotcom)
Malka Older’s Centennal Cycle is some of my favourite near future SF; that rare creature speculative political science. That being the case, I was a little apprehensive to see the sharp left turn into cozy SF mysteries with The Mimicking of Known Successes. I shouldn’t have been concerned, because this novella is just a pure delight. The Jovian Gaslamp setting obviously isn’t ~serious scientific speculation~ but the setup explains both the widespread use of rail – giving it the appropriate period vibes – and the interesting speculation about how such a society would work. I’m a fan of mystery plots with my cozy-adjacent fiction, because cozy can tend inert, and mystery plots keep things moving (this is also a pretty damn good mystery plot). Points too for the affectionately exasperated depiction of academia; this is not a book that could have been written by someone unfamiliar with petty academic beefs and grant applications.
The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti: Book 1
On a remote, gas-wreathed outpost of a human colony on Jupiter, a man goes missing. The enigmatic Investigator Mossa follows his trail to Valdegeld, home to the colony’s erudite university—and Mossa’s former girlfriend, a scholar of Earth’s pre-collapse ecosystems.
Pleiti has dedicated her research and her career to aiding the larger effort towards a possible return to Earth. When Mossa unexpectedly arrives and requests Pleiti’s assistance in her latest investigation, the two of them embark on a twisting path in which the future of life on Earth is at stake—and, perhaps, their futures, together.
Award nominations: Hugo Award, Nebula Award, Ignyte Award, Locus Award.
Martha Wells: Witch King (Tordotcom)
I was genuinely delighted when Martha Wells achieved widespread success with the Murderbot books, but as someone who came to know and love her work as a fantasy author in the 90s and 00s, I was delighted to see her return to that genre in Witch King, and what a return it is. The book occurs in braided timelines looking forward to the fall of a pretty oppressive empire and back to the aftermath of that fall (which, surprise, didn’t instantly solve all the world’s problems). The two timelines are used to great effect to dole out information about our main character, Kai, and his world, leaving us with a vibrant picture of both by the time we reach the end. Wells never offers easy answers of good and evil, and her character work is fantastic (and deeply queer). Witch King got more award attention than many books I’m highlighting in this exercise, but not perhaps the universal acclaim Murderbot occasioned. I think that’s a bit of a shame: Wells is an excellent fantasy writer and this is her at the peak of her powers.
The Rising World: Book 1
After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well.
But why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World Coalition appear to be growing in influence?
Kai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions.
He’s not going to like the answers.
Award nominations: Hugo Award, Nebula Award, World Fantasy Award, Goodreads choice award.
Award wins: Locus Award for best fantasy novel, Dragon Award for best fantasy novel.
Jen Williams: Talonsister (Titan)
I pretty consistently vibe with the sort of epic fantasy Jen Williams puts down, and Talonsister is no exception. She has this way of combining warm and engaging character dynamics with well crafted action plots and often quite grim settings in a way that ends up feeling welcoming without ever being saccharine. Here we have a fantasy Europe-ish (the map is like a slightly distorted photocopy of Europe after a couple of hefty asteroid strikes and/or some moderate plate tectonics) setting with scheming empires and competing magic systems and a looming threat of ancient magical species that humans don’t quite grasp. The character work is typically great, the cast is full of queers (shout out to the gay griffin dad), and the whole thing is accented with a well-judged, never excessive, line of visceral brutality. This is a book that feels easy, but a moment’s attention makes it clear that doing this – and doing it with the consistency Williams does – is really hard. The fact that Talonsister stands out against Williams’ general baseline of “really good” shows just how accomplished this book is.
Talon Duology: Book 1
Leven has no memory of her life before she was a soldier. The process of turning her into a Herald – a magical killing machine – was traumatic enough that it wiped her mind clean. Now, with the war won and the Imperium satisfied, she finds herself unemployed and facing a bleak future. Her fellow Heralds are disappearing, and her own mind seems to be coming apart at the seams. Strange visions, memories she shouldn’t have, are resurfacing, and none of them make any sense. They show her Brittletain, the ancient and mysterious island that the Imperium was never able to tame. Leven resolves to go to this place of magic and warring queens, with the hope of finding who she really is.
Envoy Kaeto has done a number of important little jobs for the Imperium, most of them nasty, all of them in the shadows. His newest assignment is to escort the bone-crafter Gynid Tyleigh as she travels across the Imperium – as the woman responsible for creating the Heralds, his employers owe her a great deal. But Tyleigh’s ambition alarms even Kaeto, and her conviction that she has found a new source of Titan bones, buried deep in the earth, could lead to another, even bloodier war.
Ynis was raised by the griffins, and has never seen another human face. She lives wild, as they do, eating her meat raw and flying with her talon-sister, T’rook. The griffins fiercely protect their isolation – the piles of skulls that litter the mountains of Brittletain are testament to that – but the magic they guard will always make them a target for the greed of men. By choosing not to kill Ynis when she was just a baby, the griffins may have doomed themselves – because the girl’s past is coming for her, and it carries a lethal blade.
Award wins: British Fantasy Awards (Robert Holdstock Award for Best Novel).
Spotlight
Bethany Jacobs: These Burning Stars (Orbit)
In a year heavy on books which really do get at the core sensibility of this exercise, Bethany Jacobs’ These Burning Stars is quite probably the ur-example. That sensibility, to remind you, is “good quality, quirky but commercial SFF that's queer or full of queers” in the mode of the late 90s/early 2000s SFF midlist. And boy does These Burning Stars tick all those boxes. One of the things I like about a lot of midlist science fiction published around that time (and I’m aware this may be a negative for others) is the science bit is set rather than setting. What I mean by this is it’s not particularly concerned with scientifically plausible speculation but rather things being really cool. Jacobs is writing something closer to fantasy with some space stuff. Not quite space opera, which is that tendency’s usual form, more a modernised cousin of planetary romance in the Dying Earth or Majipoor vein, with, yes, elements of space opera sensibility and a tone reminiscent in places of the better end of 2000s grimdark fantasy.
I’m aware this sounds like a mess. So does a lot else about the book – the theocratic state of three branches where none of them is a legislature (I’m a lawyer, this should bother me), the fractured out of order timeline, the tonally very different points of view, a constructed religion – but my god does it just work. There are a lot of narrative plates to keep spinning, and it’s to Jacobs’ immense credit that she doesn’t let a single one of them fall. There’s a lot to be impressed by here, but as Roseanna Pendlebury notes, possibly the most impressive is one of the best villain protagonists you will come across anywhere in genre in recent years. A truly terrible person, not at all a redeemable edgelord, she serves to show the failures of the setting’s society – and the failures of some of the more sympathetic characters – in a way we absolutely cannot avoid. This worldbuilding via character is a far more interesting thing, to my mind, that making sure FTL travel has plausible physics to hang its hat on. These key characters in positions of authority in the theocracy also lead to a genuinely interesting exploration of religion, something SFF is generally terrible at.
These Burning Stars is also, quite simply, a boatload of fun. It’s really hard to do all these things well. Gonzo plotting, social speculation, great character work (including multiple queers), held together with accomplished prose. Unlike a lot of the books I’ve looked at in this exercise, some awards did in fact pay attention to Jacobs’ work (though interestingly enough, not the Lammy), and I can but echo them: this was a remarkably accomplished, creative debut and it kicks off a hell of a series. Dive in; enjoy.
The Kindom Trilogy: Book 1
On a dusty backwater planet, occasional thief Jun Ironway has gotten her hands on the score of a lifetime: a secret that could raze the Kindom, the ruling power of the galaxy.
A star system away, preternaturally stoic Chono and brilliant hothead Esek— the two most brutal clerics of the Kindom—are tasked with hunting Jun down.
And tracking all three across the stars is a ghost from their shared past known only as Six. But what Six wants is anyone’s guess. It’s a game of manipulation and betrayal that could destroy them all. And they have no choice but to see it through.
Award nominations: Compton Crook Award, Dragon Awards, Locus Awards, Jacobs nominated for the Astounding Award for best New Writer in 2025.
Award wins: Philip K. Dick Award.