Steve Berman (ed.), Burly Tales: Finally Fairy Tales for the Hirsute and Hefty Gay Man. Lethe Press, 2021. Pp. 218. ISBN 978-1-5902-1084-0. $15.00.
Reviewed by Gwen C. Katz
It’s official: The LGBT+ community has become a marketing demographic. Every June, the floodgates open as every publisher, film studio, and content producer tries to get in on the rainbow dollar. Obviously, I’m not angry at a trend that boils down to “being queer has become socially acceptable,” but I know I’m not the only one who has a certain nostalgia for a time when queer content was made by us and not at us.
Happily, we have Lethe Press.
If imitation is indeed the sincerest form of flattery, The Expanse series has a lot to be flattered by in John Appel’s Assassin’s Orbit, a work of mid-flung-future space opera involving multiple perspectives brought together by a mysterious case verging on interstellar incident. The book was even promoted as “The Golden Girls meets The Expanse,” a tagline that intrigued this reviewer, but unfortunately yielded disappointment when it turned out that the “Golden Girls” component was simply… having three major POV characters be older women. (I’d like to see someone try to call The Expanse’s Chrisjen Avasarala a “Golden Girl” simply because of her age.) Appel’s characterization of these women as women falls into tired territory at times, but if you put aside the marketing—and indeed, the whole Golden Girls reference entirely—the characters are still solid, sensible actors moving through a confidently-paced political intrigue.