asexual main characters

Chameleon Moon – RoAnna Sylver

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Series: Chameleon Moon, #1
First Published: 1st October, 2014
Genre: Superhero / Novel
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK | Smashwords

People with superpowers are kept in quarantine in the city of Parole. When an assassination goes wrong, Regan is left with amnesia, and it might have something to do with the larger issues of the city.

It’s debatable in an ensemble cast whether anyone is a main character. I’m loosely saying they’re Regan and Evelyn, as a lot of the plot and scenes revolve around their stories, even if they’re from someone else’s perspective. But other characters also have large roles, so it’s open to interpretation. This is the second edition of the book.

Regan ends up with amnesia early in the story. It’s a good handling of amnesia in general, such as Regan processing how he feels about not remembering anything, and the way the memories trickle back. If he did have his memories, the plot wouldn’t be solved in five seconds, so it’s not used in that way. The personal impact of not remembering things like his family is the primary focus.

What I wasn’t fond of was the reason for the amnesia, because it’s caused by Hans. I disliked the scenes he was in and hoped they’d be over quickly, which unfortunately, they never were. One issue is that Hans has mind powers which mean he can give people amnesia, control their minds, and is generally unstoppable. Which makes it hard for other characters to stand up to him. Hence when he’s in a scene, it’s all about him, and it’s not going to end quickly.

Part of Regan’s struggle to remember his past reveals he may be asexual, as he realises he doesn’t find others sexually attractive. He’s also a lizard person with PTSD and anxiety.

Evelyn is a superhero with singing powers. She’s a trans woman and is in a poly relationship with two other women. I’m assuming she’s non-white as her skin is described as brown. One of the things she has to face is her past. She left her birth family behind, but ends up having to return. Evelyn is misgendered by one of her family, though these scenes are brief.

There’s a lot of diversity in the cast, including a non-binary person with they pronouns, someone with a double leg amputation, and multiple non-white people (though I was uncertain of exact races). PTSD is common, along with anxiety and depression. There are some references to suicide as part of this. It’s not clear whether the characters in relationships view themselves as gay, lesbian, bi, pan and so forth. Regan’s sexuality is the only one explicitly discussed. However, the relationships tend towards same gender or binary gender with non-binary.

Some of the books I’ve had recommended to me as lighter queer reads have turned out to have a constant threat of sexual violence. This one was noted to be somewhat darker, but it managed to avoid that particular issue. It has general violence, but that violence doesn’t focus around sexual violence.

On the issue of darkness, the characters may be living in a disaster zone, but the end tends towards the hopeful rather than the tragic. Named characters have a very good chance of survival. Unnamed characters may not be so lucky.

I enjoyed a lot of things about the book. Parole is an interesting setting and it was good to find out more about the mysteries surrounding it. There’s a lot of character time, as the characters talk and figure things out. I did feel it got confusing towards the end, in terms of exactly what was happening, and everyone’s locations. I also really didn’t like Hans, particularly because his powers made it hard for anyone to resist him. But my criticisms are minor, and for the most part, I’d be interested in seeing where it goes next.

Every Heart a Doorway – Seanan McGuire

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Series: Wayward Children, #1
First Published: 5th April, 2016
Genre: Urban Fantasy / Novella
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK

Nancy has spent the last few years in the Halls of the Dead, an underworld where stillness is valued. When she returns, she ends up at a boarding school for other teenagers like her, who are longing to return to their worlds.

Contrary to the book’s official description, it’s not about children who are spat out by their portal worlds when their potential is used up. Some can return to their worlds if they find another door. Some will go back and forth many times. Which is a pity, because I liked the idea of draining children of their miracle powers like some sort of portal world vampire, but there you go.

There’s obviously a deeper system going on here, with the worlds mapped out in directions like Nonsense and Logic, but this never really gets developed. Most of the interesting setup is dropped once the murder mystery begins. Speculative murder mysteries are my thing, but this one really didn’t work for me. I figured they’d go around finding out about everyone’s worlds, in the hopes of finding clues to the killer. What actually happens is they don’t do a lot of investigating, ignore the very obvious clues, then have the answer fall into their laps at the end. Note that this is a darker mystery, so the deaths are gory and the bodies are described in detail.

Nancy is a romantic asexual person. The book attempts to explain asexuality in basic terms, but in a way that is impersonal to Nancy. It’s like a definition for someone who hasn’t heard of asexuality. Which makes it a problem when asexuality is being defined as not having a desire for sex, rather than not feeling sexual attraction. This is true for Nancy, but not for all asexual people, so it would have been better if she’d made the description personal.

The discussion of romance is rather more confused. She makes it clear she did enjoy dating when she was young enough that there wasn’t pressure for sex. She directly states she’s not aromantic. Then she goes on to describe people as being like paintings, so she doesn’t want to date because she wouldn’t date a painting. In other words, she doesn’t get into romantic relationships with people she’s not sexually attracted to, which is no one, so therefore she doesn’t date. I’m not really sure what all that was about. Maybe Nancy was confused. Maybe the author was confused. I couldn’t tell which.

However, my biggest issue with her asexuality is that it’s portrayed as a bigger problem than having returned from the Halls of the Dead. Her parents push her to date and she thinks it’s inevitable in relationships that she’ll be pressured into sex. Nancy was put into sexually awkward situations just to show her being uncomfortable, like her roommate wanting to know if Nancy wanted sex with someone, and if she could masturbate whilst Nancy was in the room. The overall feel is that it would be impossible for Nancy to exist in society as an asexual person, and so she turns her back on society.

There’s an attempt to distance Nancy’s death and stillness from asexuality, by saying a lot of people in the Halls of the Dead were sexual. Which would work better if being asexual wasn’t a reason for her to want to return there and retreat from society forever.

Nancy states she doesn’t have an eating disorder, but that’s not how it looks. She’s attempting to survive on the food that sustained her in the Halls of the Dead. That means mostly fruit juice. It’s a fantastical eating disorder for an unusual reason, but she’s still restricting her portion sizes, and this is still going to kill her. However, as it isn’t addressed as an eating disorder, there aren’t any downsides. It’s shown as rather ethereal and mysterious, which was getting a little too close to glamourising eating disorders for my liking.

One of Nancy’s new friends is Kade, who is a trans boy. He was kicked out of his world when they realised he wasn’t a girl, his parents rejected him for it, and he also faces bigoted comments at the school. The anti-trans themes weren’t unrealistic, but were rather a downer, especially considering he’s the only one who couldn’t have the happily-ever-after of going back to his perfect world.

Jack and Jill are identical twins. It avoids some tropes (they’re not telepathic linked or treated as being identical people), but does fall into others (when one twin is good the other must be bad).

There are a few non-white characters. Sumi is Japanese. Christopher is Latino. The former doesn’t get much development time, it grated that she constantly called people stupid, and I didn’t like how her story ended. The latter has some development, though I noted his world was rather Day of the Dead, linking the world to his roots in a way that doesn’t happen for the white characters. These characters exist, but it’s the white characters who are centred.

There’s an attempt to make the school mostly being girls sound less binary by blaming it on imposed gender roles, but this didn’t work for me. Nothing about “boys will be boys” would stop them disappearing through a door in an instant. It’s possible this was intended to sound ridiculous, and Kade’s experiences would suggest the portal worlds prefer girls because they’re bigots rather than there being a real gender difference. But no character challenges this at all.

Also, I never did like the trope that adults are so vastly different from children, except for old people who are just like children. This is used to justify why adults (except for old adults) can’t cope with nonsense.

I liked the concept for this a lot more than the actual story. It’s a great idea. There’s some lovely writing in places and some of the worlds were very imaginative. But it doesn’t really come together as a whole. The inclusion reads too much like it’s there to explain terms for people who don’t know them, and has some implications I don’t like very much. This is tied up in a murder mystery that isn’t very mysterious.

Sea Foam and Silence – Lynn E. O’Connacht

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Sea Foam CoverFirst Published: 9th June, 2016
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy / Verse Novel
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK

A little mermaid watches the tall-crabs and starts to think they might be people too, but heading to land to find out will come with a cost.

This is a retelling of The Little Mermaid written in free verse. It’s hard to judge length with long poetry, but the book is around novel length. Fewer words on each page means it’s a relatively quick read.

The mermaid is set the deadline of a year to find love or be turned into sea foam. There are three main sections, with the first covering her life at sea, the second the time up to the deadline, and the third the time after. I liked that it didn’t only focus on the time on land looking for love. It allowed the contrast between life as a mermaid and life on land to be clear, as well as considering new challenges once the initial situation is resolved.

The mermaids were distinctly mermaids, rather than feeling like the author wanted to write humans with a few references to having a tail (which is unfortunately what too many mermaid stories end up doing). They live in a group of sisters, though it’s noted some become fathers during mating time. Among mermaid culture, it’s not considered odd that some don’t take direct part in mating. It’s only on encountering human culture that things start to get complicated, with human concepts of love, marriage and gender. Hunting humans for food is a stable part of their lives, which the little mermaid starts to challenge, but it isn’t portrayed in a binary good and evil way. The same goes for the witch who makes the bargain that gives the mermaid legs. The witch obviously has an agenda of some sort, but what that might be is ambiguous. It’s not a story with a villain, but one that deals with the more everyday difficulties of finding a place in the world.

The goal of finding love is difficult as the mermaid is confused about what that means. There are conflicting messages between all love being love and romantic love being the only one that counts. The narrative falls on the side of love being love in any form. There are also differences between human cultures in how things are viewed, rather than making this only a mermaid versus human issue.

Though it’s clear that the mermaid is asexual, I was less certain about how she viewed romantic attraction. It’s debatable where she falls on the romantic / demiromantic /grey-romantic lines, but she did appear to only potentially consider people that way after knowing them. There is also an aromantic asexual character and a lesbian, along with a polyamorous queerplatonic relationship being shown.

Every step she takes on land causes pain, so she has a fantastical chronic pain condition. At first, this means it’s difficult to walk, but she slowly adapts to the pain. It was good that there’s no magic cure here, though I would have liked to see her having bad pain days when she couldn’t do everything she wants to do. It’s not that it’s unrealistic to adapt to a certain level of pain or to find some things distract from the pain, but even the best pain management scheme will have times when it doesn’t work out.

She is mute and learns sign language to communicate. There’s one instance where someone expresses frustration at her not being able to speak verbally. This is in part because her early sign language is fairly crude and that makes communication difficult, but it’s still a moment I found jarring. I did generally like the sign language though, as well as the use of emoticons in places to convey facial expressions.

There’s a reference to people having different skin tones, but the main characters appear to be white. The mermaid doesn’t have much of a concept of race, so most descriptions are vague.

This is an enjoyable book with a focus on the issues of finding a place to belong. The free verse style works well to portray how the mermaid thinks and her confusion as she tries to figure things out. The chronic pain aspect is where I think it could have used a bit more exploration. The asexual and aromantic aspects were the strongest. Overall, this is worth a read for anyone who loves mermaids and verse novels.

Keeper of the Dawn – Dianna Gunn

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Novella CoverFirst Published: 18th April, 2017
Genre: Young Adult Fantasy / Novella
Available: Out of Print

Lai has trained all her life to become a priestess, like her mother and grandmother before her. When she fails the test, she runs away and finds her people aren’t the only ones with that religion.

This is a novella of unfortunate implications. That’s going to take some explaining, so I’ll start with the simpler stuff. I’m also not talking about much which isn’t in the book description, but I’d note the official description covers most of the plot.

One thing I did like is the two cultures with the same religion are both shown as being equally religious. Often in these situations, there will be one group who are the true believers and one group with a corrupted version. Here, the goddesses are watching over them both. There isn’t one true version of the religion and they both have holes in their history knowledge.

The writing flowed along well enough. Though the story was predictable, that’s not always a bad thing for a light read. It has some adventure and some romance, which is what it promised. It did tend to jump huge chunks of time, which left gaps in the relationships and worldbuilding. None of that would have been that bad, if it wasn’t for the rest.

There’s a black/white means bad/good thing going on from the start, though it’s more subtle at the beginning. Lai is attacked by someone with black hair, when Lai has white-blond hair (described as silver and as blond at various points). The community is mostly lighter people, so the darker-haired antagonist is noticeable. Given a choice of horses, Lai chooses the white one as superior to the brown and black ones. On their own, these things might not register, but then Lai is off visiting the lands to the north, and the unfortunate implications really get going.

To understand my reservations, there needs to be some understanding of a group of connected stereotypes. They’re connected by superficial similarities in appearance, rather than the groups involved having much else in common. Often tanned, curly dark hair, hooked nose, sometimes with other features like large ears, thick lips, or tiny eyes. Things that set a person apart as different compared to lighter Northern Europeans. They can’t be trusted, they’re greedy, the men will lust after women, the women are temptresses, and they’re probably all doing some dark magic on the side. There are some variations on the theme, but it’s often difficult to separate exactly which group is being targeted, because it’s a combination of all of them. Commonly included are Jewish people, Romani people, and pagans / witches. The last of those makes more sense knowing that the early inhabitants of the British Isles had darker complexions, with pale blonds moving in later. So, with some vague handwaving to justify it, obviously all people with darker complexions are doing evil witchcraft. At a minimum, they’re very bad people.

When Lai crosses the border, she ends up working for a man called Calvin. He is a travelling merchant and is shifty from the start. I was thinking Romani stereotypes at this point. He also makes suggestive comments to Lai, despite him being married and her being a teen. This could be falling into the Romani men lusting after pure white women thing (and it happens again later, with a travelling bard, because you can’t trust travellers). But the lust thing can also be applied to Jewish men. Which brings me to how he’s really rich and hoarding wealth, which is a common Jewish stereotype. This is reinforced by northerners being monotheists. To finish off, the magic in the north has shady stuff like blood oaths going on, which comes back to the paganism and witchcraft connections.

This is all tied up with the physical side. There aren’t any hooked noses here, but there are beady eyes and northerners are overall darker (especially compared to white-blond Lai). Calvin is also fat, and described as a disgusting and gluttonous eater. An anti-fatness stereotype in itself, but one that is frequently associated with the greedy Jewish stereotypes.

I’d also note the trainee in Lai’s new home who is violently against her also happens to be the one with curly black hair. Everyone described as having black hair is antagonistic to Lai in some way.

These things are so common they’re often not noticed. Or when they are, people argue that they’re too general to pin down to one specific group as the target, so they’re not really targeting anyone. I agree the former can be tricky, as it often covers a mashup of different stereotypes. I’m sure people can pick out some I missed. But it doesn’t make the latter true. It just means the targets are widespread.

More obvious as an eyebrow-raiser is she’s a desert nomad from a culture that made amazing Ancient Near East / Rome inspired structures, and her favourite weapon appears to be Chinese butterfly knives under another name, but people from those cultures aren’t in the story. The cultural aspects are there, but not the people.

The reason I picked up the book is Lai is asexual, which is what I thought I’d be talking about. Instead, you got a long ramble about the ways stereotypes interact. But this is partly because being asexual didn’t come into it much until later. I’d have liked more tell than show here, because showing meant creepy sexual situations. Men tried to get Lai to have sex with them. The new community happens to have a fertility festival where people are supposed to have sex. It’s sort of optional, but not really, as Lai has to go to impress people and she’s coerced into dancing. The positive side is she isn’t coerced into sex and her romantic partner is okay with it once explained, though it does come with the statement that normal couples have sex. Not wanting sex was okay, but also abnormal. This was a mixed bag for me as a result. I’d have liked it a whole lot more without the creepy stuff and normality statements.

I didn’t note any disabled characters, but it’d be a bad world to be disabled, as health and fitness are assumed to be because of the gods. Priestesses have to be able to win battles to prove they’re favoured. Disease is assumed to be a divine punishment.

The worldbuilding is very binary, as men do this, and women do that, and it’s innate rather than simply being culturally enforced. In short, I don’t have a place in this world, except perhaps as the beady-eyed villain. But it does have two women in a relationship and one’s asexual, and for some readers, that might be enough.

[A copy of this book was received from the publisher for review purposes]

Fourth World – Lyssa Chiavari

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Fourth World CoverSeries: The Iamos Trilogy, #1
First Published: 28th December, 2015
Genre: Young Adult Science Fiction / Novel
Available: Amazon.com | Amazon UK

Isaak lives on Mars and discovers something that hints at the history of the planet. Nadin lives on Iamos and her people are threatened with destruction.

The beginning of the book focuses on Isaak, with Nadin coming into it later on. It’s clear from the start that they’re both on Mars in different times. Isaak is literally digging up Nadin’s history, as he assists on a geology dig site.

I liked the worldbuilding of Iamos. Its culture has hints of ancient Earth civilisations, but it isn’t exactly like any one of those. There’s a strict caste system, eugenics, and other markings of a totalitarian regime presenting itself as being for the good of the people.

Mars is not so strong. It felt very present day, from pop culture references to technology. I shouldn’t be able to recognise everything in a book set in the future, because there should have been new things appearing during the passage of time. Even if that’s just a new band or book series that’s the current big thing.

I enjoyed the overall story, as it focuses on how corporations and governments keep things from people for the benefit of those at the top. It’s a slow build at first as Isaak and friends figure out what’s happening, then speeds up once Nadin’s part gets going. There are some resolutions at the end, but this isn’t really a standalone story.

The cast is generally diverse when it comes to race and sexuality. Isaak is Latino and Nadin is non-white. The supporting characters are various races, and one of Isaak’s friends has two mothers. There’s some bigotry, such as slurs aimed at one of Isaak’s friends, but mostly these things are accepted without much comment.

Isaak is demisexual, which is made clear later on as he says it directly. Given that, I did wonder at Isaak suddenly going off on love and sex being what makes people human. Nadin is asexual but is still figuring it out and thinks of herself as broken. There’s some forced intimate contact (hugs and kisses). It’s not that any of this is unrealistic, as asexual people can internalise the message that love/sex are required to be human and something is wrong with them. Sexual assault is a common risk, along with blaming the asexual person for viewing it as assault. But it’s not really a portrayal with happy endings, at least as far as this book goes. It’s possible it’ll come around in future books in the series. I hope it does, because this would be a bad place to leave things.

Disability isn’t touched on in a major way. Where it’s referenced, it isn’t positive. Words like lame, spaz and moron are used. Crazy and psycho are aimed at people who might be dangerous. Isaak’s mother has motion sickness, but it’s not described that way. Instead, “she always insisted VR gave her motion sickness.” The wording casts doubt on that, as it isn’t that she has motion sickness, it’s that she says she does. As someone who gets motion sick frequently, I can assure readers that the vomit googles really do cause issues, and motion sickness is really real.

This is an entertaining read. The plot interested me enough to want to know what happens next. However, I’m cautious about where the relationships are going. The asexual experiences weren’t unrealistic, but they were realistic in a rather sad way, so there’s a lot resting on how the series resolves that.