LGBTQIA+ Adventures: Fantasy & Sci-Fi

The Realm recommends a selection of fantasy and sci-fi novels with LGBTQIA+ representation!

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading.
Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That's how war works. Right?

The Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard

Xich Si has been captured by the Red Banner pirate fleet, famous for their double-dealing and cruelty. Rather than being tortured to death, the pirates' enigmatic leader, Rice Fish, arrives with a shocking proposition: an arranged marriage between Xich Si and herself. It's purely a business arrangement with nothing more to it . . . until Rice Fish and Xich Si find themselves falling for each other.

Mortal Follies by Alexis Hall

It is the year 1814 and Miss Maelys Mitchelmore finds her entry into the highest society of Bath hindered by an irritating curse. However, as the curse progresses to more fatal proportions, she realises she must seek out urgent assistance, even if that means mixing with the most undesirable company . . . and there are few less desirable allies than the brooding Lady Georgiana Landrake.

If one is to believe the gossip, she might be some kind of malign enchantress. Then again, a malign enchantress might be exactly what Miss Mitchelmore needs.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

All her life, Kyr has trained for the day she can avenge the destruction of planet Earth. Raised on Gaea Station alongside the last scraps of humanity, she is one of the best warriors of her generation, the sword of a dead planet.

Then Command assigns her brother to certain death and relegates her to the nursery to bear sons, and she knows she must take humanity's revenge into her own hands. Alongside her brother's brilliant but seditious friend and a lonely, captive alien, Kyr must escape from everything she's ever known. If she succeeds, she will find a universe far more complicated than she was taught and far more wondrous than she could ever have imagined

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

Cara's parallel selves are exceptionally good at dying, which makes Cara wary, and valuable. Because while multiverse travel is possible, no one can visit a world in which their counterpart is still alive. And no one has fewer counterparts than Cara.

But then one of her eight doppelgangers dies under mysterious circumstances, and Cara is plunged into a new world with an old secret. What she discovers will connect her past and future in ways she never could have imagined - and reveal her own role in a plot that endangers not just her earth, but the entire multiverse.

The Principle of Moments by Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson

She's searching for the emperor who stole her sister. He's searching for the prince who stole his heart.

As their paths entangle and a prophecy awakens in teh cold darkness of space, Obi and Asha must voyage through the stars, racing against time, tyranny, and the legacy of three heroes from an ancient religion who may be awakening, reincarnated in ways beyond comprehension. 

Winter's Orbit by Everina Maxwell

The Iskat Empire rules its vassal planets through a system of treaties - so when Prince Taam, key figure in a political alliance, is killed, a replacement must be found. His widower, Jainan, is rushed into an arranged marriage with the disreputable aristocrat Kiem, in a bid to keep rising hostilities between two worlds under control. But Prince Taam's death may not have been an accident, and when Jainan himself is a suspect, he and Kiem must navigate the perils of the Iskat court, solve a murder, and prevent an interplanetary war . . .