Reader's Choice Review: Unbreakable by Kami Garcia

Review: Unbreakable by Kami Garcia
Goodreads 
Release date: October 1st, 2013
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Series: Yes, #1 in the Legion series
Source: ARC
Rating: 1 part Supernatural, 3 parts super boring, 2 parts super silly.
Recommended by: Blythe from Finding Bliss in Books



Supernatural meets The Da Vinci Code in this action-packed paranormal thriller, the first book in a new series from New York Times bestselling author Kami Garcia.

I never believed in ghosts. Until one tried to kill me.

When Kennedy Waters finds her mother dead, her world begins to unravel. She doesn’t know that paranormal forces in a much darker world are the ones pulling the strings. Not until identical twins Jared and Lukas Lockhart break into Kennedy’s room and destroy a dangerous spirit sent to kill her. The brothers reveal that her mother was part of an ancient secret society responsible for protecting the world from a vengeful demon — a society whose five members were all murdered on the same night.

Now Kennedy has to take her mother’s place in the Legion if she wants to uncover the truth and stay alive. Along with new Legion members Priest and Alara, the teens race to find the only weapon that might be able to destroy the demon — battling the deadly spirits he controls every step of the way.

Suspense, romance, and the paranormal meet in this chilling urban fantasy, the first book in a new series from Kami Garcia, bestselling coauthor of the Beautiful Creatures novels.


*plots Blythe's painful murder*

This book is what I like to think of as a "surface book". All these things are happening on the surface--action, romance, world-building--but nothing is happening below it. It doesn't tap into you on a deeper level. It doesn't create a believable, living world. The characters don't breathe, and the world-building doesn't entirely work, and the relationships are just words on the page. The story exists on the surface. Which makes it a pretty boring read, if I'm being honest.

At least it was quick?

 

Unbreakable is about a seventeen-year-old girl named Kennedy. Sadly, her name, her photographic memory, and her artistic talent are the only interesting things about her, and you can bet your bottom those last two traits will very conveniently rescue a few plot lines later on. One day, her mother dies (not a spoiler, it's in the blurb), and then two identical twins (gorgeous, naturellement) show up in her bedroom and try to kill her cat. Okay, so they're trying to kill the ghost that's inside the cat. Which got there whilst Kennedy was wandering through a graveyard in the opening scene. WHICH IS NEVER EXPLAINED BECAUSE HONESTLY WHO DOES THAT



Anyway, the Wonder Twins, who are paranormal Ghostbuster type people, explain to her that they go around the country expelling spirits and the like, and that their names are Dean and Sam. Er, no. I'm sorry, Jared and Jensen---GOSH, why can't I keep it straight? Jard and Lukas. Right. Of course. Jared and Lukas Lockhart are the names of the beautiful, tousle-haired, tortured demon hunters who learned the demon-hunting trade from their father and have a relationship fraught with tension, jealousy, and protectiveness. If they'd been driving an Impala, I would have put the damn book down.

So they explain to Kennedy that they're part of a Legion blah blah blahh silly silly blah. Was totally skimming all the world-building stuff. Why? Because I couldn't connect to the characters at all, so I didn't really care about what was happening around them. Kennedy is quite useless in nearly every scene. Her main emotional roadblock is "Blah blahhhh, everybody always leeeeaves meee, it's like I'm Peyton Sawyer or something", which is patently untrue. Yes, your father left you, and you're allowed to have some scars from that, but the complex you are carrying around is just not realistically executed. You also had a loving and attentive mother who didn't actually choose to leave you and a very close best friend who also didn't leave you. YOUR CAT DIDN'T EVEN LEAVE YOU. EVEN THOUGH THE LOCKCHESTER BROTHERS TRIED TO SHOOT IT. You had one shitty boyfriend mentioned, and that's it. Puh-leeze, girl. Get over thineself before you start painting emo artwork on your walls.

 
 

Also, can we STOP having main characters who feel embarrassed or isolated because of their awesomeness? "I'm so afraid of telling people about my photographic memory... it puts up such a wall between us... they'll see me as different...Oh noes!" *eye roll* I just didn't buy a second of it. I didn't buy any of the characters at all. I didn't buy Jared's "blah blah I'm so damaged blaaaah". I know. You're shocked, right? That one of the love interests is damaged? That he's the guy who breaks things and destroys people, and his brother is the one who fixes and saves? Are you Salvatores? Are you Winchesters? Are you all of them? No. You are none of them.

Ugh, plot. So, things happen. There are two other teenagers in this Legion of five, Alara and Priest, who are the only characters I liked besides Kennedy's best friend, who's barely in the book. (And yes, five dumbass teenagers are in charge of saving the world from hell's demons, or something. Are you in good hands?) There's a tepid love triangle, some bland insta-love, and stereotypical angsting. I just... I've read this book before, so many times. I just can't get into a lukewarm reinterpretation of all those stock characters and plot lines that I've already encountered. It's like this book never happened to me. Surface book, all the way. Didn't make one impression on me.

Unlike this, which I will never un-see.

I'll admit, I didn't see the twist coming, and I liked that. *shakes pom-poms halfheartedly* There was another smaller twist I liked, too (but that I TOTALLY know the answer too, because I'm just clever like that). I thought the world-building was pretty weak sauce, but I did like the individual ghosts they encountered. So. Yay. Oh, right and Alara and Priest. There was some obligatory girl-on-girl rivalry/hate/whatever based solely on the fact that Alara is gorgeous, though thankfully that disappears pretty quickly. I liked Alara, even though her only defining personality traits are that she's mighty fine, prickly, and despises the color pink beyond all logical sanity. She and Priest, the unrealistic genius boy, do get the most funny lines and the most personality. And I find myself asking, for the millionth time in my life, why the main character can't be the one with the most personality. Why are the MCs so often the very blandest character in the book? Unbreakable is in first person, and being inside's Kennedy head is a boring, unemotional, and unfunny experience.

 Candy wasn't really my thing.

WHAT DO YOU MEAN, CANDY ISN'T YOUR THING, KENNEDY? WHO ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU? WHAT DO YOU WANT, YOU HORRID BITCH?




I give Garcia props for writing a swoony and emotional kiss scene (or at least, it would have been if I'd cared about the characters). But I just have no idea where their feelings for each other came from. At all. I give her props for coming up with some very nice creepy ghosts. But because the writing was mediocre and the characters were flat and the world-building was uninspired, I sadly can do no more than shrug. I won't remember this book by this time tomorrow. Except for this stupid quote, which I will wrinkle my nose at for eternity:

I fought the urge to put my arms around him and breathe in the smell of salt and copper that clung to Jared even when he was only bleeding on the inside.





Know of a book you want me to read? Submit it in the reader's choice! Check my archives before you do, though, just to make sure I haven't already read and reviewed it!

Book Haul Vlog, or the One With the Ending of the Trilogy

Books. I got some this week. Ugh, I never know what to write in these intros. MOVE QUICKLY PAST THIS AWKWARD MOMENT! Hey, look, a shiny video! Go watch it! Why are you still reading this? What's wrong with you? I said move on!


Books mentioned:
Pawn by Aimee Carter (thanks, Kelly!)
SIGNED Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein (thanks, Jess!)
The Impossible Knife of Memory by Laurie Halse Anderson
The Girl who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
The Girl who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente
Allegiant by Veronica Roth (thanks, my past self!)

Baking the Books: Incarnate

 Welcome to Baking the Books, where I bake things inspired by my favorite novels! Since I do a lot of reading and a lot of baking, it was only a matter of time before the two things overlapped. It's just part of my evil plot to get books involved in every single aspect of my life.

Previously on Baking the Books: Harry Potter Pumpkin Pasties

When I asked on Twitter a few months back about what books you guys would like to see me bake, I got way more suggestions than I thought I would. Someone (I can't remember who, sorry!) asked me to bake Incarnate by Jodi Meadows, which is a book I've read and loved. The problem is, I couldn't remember a single food in it. Baking the Books is hard, y'all, unless I'm doing Harry Potter or Willy Wonka or something else that already has food in it. I think I probably made some joke about baking a cake shaped like Sam or something (mmm, Sam).

And then I looked at the cover for a little bit. Which has a big, beautiful butterfly on it. And my brain went duh. Butterfly biscuits! Also known as palmiers or elephant ears. But for the purposes of Baking Incarnate, we are obviously going to refer to them as butterfly biscuits.

 

Plus, they're shaped like butterflies.

Not only are they inhumanly delicious, but they're also super easy to make. Just three ingredients and a couple easy steps and no real measurements. They are flaky and delicate. Like Ana, the Newsoul, the only person in her world who hasn't lived for thousands of years and probably won't be reincarnated like them either, these biscuits feel transient. No, seriously, they don't last long. They are too delicious. Soon they will be all gone.

Ingredients:

Melted butter
Sugar
Frozen puff pastry, thawed
Melted chocolate (optional)
Cocoa powder (optional)

Assemblage:

Prepare a clean table or counter top. If you don't want to work directly on a marble counter, you can work on top of a non-stick mat or large cutting board. Heavily sprinkle sugar over the entire surface. Place one thawed sheet of puff pastry, unrolled into a flat sheet, on top. Roll it out over the sugar with a rolling pin until it's flatter and larger and the dough is thinner.



Brush the top of the puff pastry with melted butter all over. Sprinkle with as much sugar as you want (hint: you want as much as possible). For chocolate palmiers, instead of brushing with butter and spriling with sugar, brush the puff pastry with melted chocolate and sprinkle lightly with cocoa power. Obviously, I forgot to take a picture of that, because I'm awesome.



Now, fold the edges of the puff pastry in like a scroll, towards the center. The fold should be about a fourth the size of the whole. Fold them again so the two folds meet exactly in the middle of the dough. Then fold them over again.



Brush the top of the dough log with butter and roll in sugar or sprinkle with sugar. Repeat with the bottom. Basically, cover the outside of this sucker with butter and sugar. You can go light on this or skip this altogether, but this is where so much of the sinful deliciousness comes in.



If you are using a second puff pastry sheet, repeat all the steps.

Chill your dough logs in the refrigerator for 20 to 30 minutes. When you take them out again, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Slice the dough logs into 3/8-inch thick slices and then place them on baking sheets lined with tinfoil.

 

Now, the baking times are really tricky for me to tell, because my oven is very strange and it took a lot longer than it should have. This is definitely a recipe where you're going to have to watch it. Check on them after ten minutes. If and when the bottoms are caramelizing, flip them over and bake them until the tops turn golden.

 

Take the palmiers out of the over and remove them from the baking sheet immediately. Let them cool on a rack or cutting board. They'll turn deliciously hard and crunchy as they cool. AND THEN YOU CAN EAT THEM ALL BECAUSE THEY ARE SCUMPTIOUS

Enjoy!

Do Authors Owe Readers Anything?

In my opinion? Short answer: no, except to not attack readers for their opinions on how they read. Do readers owe authors anything? No, except to not attack authors for the things they write.

I think all of this should be pretty simple, but apparently it isn't.



This morning, the drama llama ran rampant through the Twittersphere over a certain tiny, never-heard-of book called Allegiant by Veronica Roth that made no ripple whatsoever in the reading universe. I will be discussing the reactions to this book's ending, but I will NOT post spoilers, and please DO NOT post them in the comments, or the drama llama will eat your face. And you like your face, yes? Yes. Anyway, it's no secret that the ending is controversial. Though the book's only been out two days, already sites like Amazon, Goodreads, and Twitter are blowing up with opinions both negative and positive, though mostly negative. Some feel ripped off by the ending. Some are just devastated. Some, of course, are taking things entirely too far and threatening the author with physical violence.

But we all know that that is entirely inappropriate, right? Right??? We all went to Kindergarten and leaned to use our words and that violence isn't the answer and kumbaya, my lord? Oh. Apparently  not. Well done, humanity.

Threatening authors? BAD. BAD BAD BAD BAD BAD. But you know what I don't think is bad at all? Readerly anger. You totally have to right to feel whatever you like about a book. You are allowed to have whatever expectations you have, because you can't really help those. And an author has the right to write their own books however they damn well please. Both spheres should respect each other, and big time authors should be careful about saying things implying that a lot of people read books wrong. Seriously, big time authors.

Related: The Absolute Terror of the Final Book in the Series

There's no wrong way to read a book, and there's no wrong way to write a book. The only wrong thing to do is to be a douchenugget about it. Readers have NO obligation to a book or author to read the book the way the author intended. If I want to read a book as escapist, or literary, or entirely because the romantic lead is attractive, I have that right. I do NOT have the right to yell at the author or threaten them when the book doesn't go my way. I have the right to get mineself to the ficmobile and write the ending I want ("and after Harry turned Voldemort into a fluffy bunny, he and Ginny and Draco linked arms and stepped through the wardrobe to Narnia, where they started a free love commune in which all the Houses were abolished").

Related: BookRiot's article on reading and series superfans. WARNING: HEAVY ALLEGIANT SPOILERS

I have the right to review a book through whichever lens I please with whatever emotional bias I have--so long as I don't author bash and I don't thrust the negative review under an author's nose. Honestly, it's impossible to remove personal expectations from a reading experience, because they're in you. You have expectations, and when they're thwarted, it's hard to deal. But just because the author is successful does not mean she owes her superfans anything, and the superfans don't owe the author unconditional love, either.

Related: Brutal Endings to Series and Why They Are the Best

Now let's all hold hands and sing some kumbaya and kick that drama llama in the teeth. BEGONE, DRAMA LLAMA!



Dag nabbit, drama llama.

Review: Perfect Ruin by Lauren DeStefano

Review: Perfect Ruin by Lauren DeStefano
Goodreads 
Release date: October 8th, 2013
Publisher: Simon & Shuster
Series: Yes, #1 in the Internment Chronicles
Source: purchased
Rating: Blah and boring for 200 pages, and then the ending is amazing. HOW DO I RATE THAT?



On Internment, the floating island in the clouds where 16-year-old Morgan Stockhour lives, getting too close to the edge can lead to madness. Even though Morgan's older brother, Lex, was a Jumper, Morgan vows never to end up like him. She tries her best not to mind that her life is orderly and boring, and if she ever wonders about the ground, and why it is forbidden, she takes solace in best friend Pen and her betrothed, Basil.

Then a murder, the first in a generation, rocks the city. With whispers swirling and fear on the wind, Morgan can no longer stop herself from investigating, especially when she meets Judas. He is the boy being blamed for the murder — betrothed to the victim — but Morgan is convinced of his innocence. Secrets lay at the heart of Internment, but nothing can prepare Morgan for what she will find — or who she will lose.


What an odd thing this book was. I was all set to give it two stars and a shrug. I was even flirting with a DNF at one point. But because I purchased it, and it happens to be the prettiest book in all the land, I persevered. The beginning of this book is unbelievably boring, despite the stellar world-building, occasionally gorgeous (and occasionally silly) writing, and brilliant concept. Morgan Stockhour, our main character AND our viewpoint character, has about as much personality as a toenail. Simply put, not very much happens, or the same thing happens over and over, or all the cardboard characters have long cardboard conversations with one another.

And then, all of a sudden, a hundred pages from the end, things happen. Damn you book.

Perfect Ruin is set on Internment, a utopian floating city in the sky completely isolated from the ground. It is its own unique universe with unique rules, the key of which is to avoid the edge and all thoughts of what might be below. I give DeStefano all the credit in the world for the original way she executed Internment and the intricacies of life on a city "the size of the king's fist". But oh, was most of this book a slog. And it shouldn't have been, considering that there was an attempt at plotting. There's a murder and a fire and mysterious things. Too bad none of that was made remotely exciting, mostly because Morgan is about as scintillating as a pancake (wait. No. Pancakes are fascinating. I LOVE PANCAKES. Wait, what was I talking about?).

Seriously. It took me 200 pages to care about Morgan, and that is 200 pages too many. We're told she's a daydreamer, she's imaginative, blah blah. Whatever. The only characters with any personality were Pen, her best friend, and Lex, her elder brother, who is a "jumper" or one who has approached the edge. Couldn't Pen have been the main character? I loved her. And Lex deals with loving people by shouting at them and telling them to leave him alone, so obviously I loved him best.

The romance. Oh my god. Blaaaaaaaaaaaah. In Internement, children are engaged from birth, so Morgan is betrothed to this boy named Basil and snorrrrrrrrrre. Really, is there meant to be a love triangle? I could not figure out her connection to Judas, who is suspected of murdering his betrothed, but who Morgan just knows is innocent. She just knows it. Um, I only know it because I know you're a character in a book, and books have twists, Morgan. What's your reasoning?



DeStefano writes in lush but often lifeless prose that sometimes caused me to roll my eyes ("she lifted her burden of eyelashes"). Every now and then I would stop and marvel at a particularly gorgeous passage or phrase, but none of that impressed me until I started to car about the characters. I read for connections, not just prose, and sometimes prose that exceptional coupled with flat characters can be pretty distancing.



Also, DeStefano has an incredibly annoying habit of leaving in a lot of "he says" and "she says" and "I say". So many of those should have been edited out. When her writing was on, though, it was on.

"Ghosts aren't terrible," he says. "They aren't real. They're a fantasy we've concocted to tell ourselves this life isn't the only one we get. Even at their worst, ghosts are doing us some good."

But then... all of a sudden... I got super invested. Why? Because DeStefano DID SOMETHING. DIRECTLY TO THE MAIN CHARACTER. The shitteth hath hitteth the fan! Eth! Morgan got an infusion of personality, the story got an infusion of plot, and stuff went down, yo. It sucks that the only good stuff is the stuff I can't talk about, as it is majorly spoilerrific, but the ending is really, really, really good. Shockingly good. Why couldn't the rest of the book have been that good??? Now I'm even more annoyed by the blah beginning.

 

So yes, obviously I need the second book, and I'm sure it will be an identical experience, but... I must know what happens!! CURSE YOU, DESTEFANO.

Top (Not) Ten Character Names I Love

Hosted by The Broke and the Bookish

Related: Character's I'd Name My Children After

I was originally going to open this post with my weekly lament of how haaaaaard it is to limit myself and how I hate to leave off so many worthy names and not do them justice and blah blah blah, but obviously that lament is not necessary, because obviously I have about a hundred million names on here (math is not my strong suit). I REALLY LOVE NAMES, OKAY?



From YA Lit:

Lola Nolan and Calliope Bell from Lola and the Boy Next Door
Lirael from Lirael
Cassia from Matched
Blue Sargent and Gansey from The Raven Boys
Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games
Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter series
Cress and Linh Cinder from Cinder and Cress
Persis Blake and Elliot North from Across a Star-Swept Sea and For Darkness Shows the Stars
Araby Worth from Masque of the Red Death
Seraphina from Seraphina
Sophia Petheram from Strands of Bronze and Gold
Sophronia from Curties and Conspiracies
Trisana Chandler from the Circle of Emelan series

From my childhood:

Lyra from His Dark Materials
Felicity Merriman from her American Girl series
Ramona Quimby from the Ramona series
Arrietty Clock from The Borrowers
Coraline Jones
Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

From classic literature:

Holly Golightly from Breakfast at Tiffany's
Cassandra Mortmain from I Capture the Castle
Atticus Finch and Calpurnia from To Kill a Mockingbird
Inigo Montoya from The Princess Bride
Briony Tallis from Atonement
Scarlett O'Hara and Rhett Butler from Gone With the Wind
Jane Eyre from Jane Eyre
Ebeneezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol
Fitzwilliam Darcy from Pride and Prejudice
Lucy Honeychurch and Charlotte Bartlett from A Room With a View
Anne Elliot and Elizabeth Bennet from Persuasion and Pride and Prejudice
Catherine Morland and Emma Woodhouse from Northanger Abbey and Emma
Emma Bovary from Madame Bovary
Flora Poste from Cold Comfort Farm
Anna Karenina from Anna Karenina
Sherlock Holmes from the Sherlock Holmes series
Major Major Major Major from Catch-22
Eustacia Vye from The Return of the Native
Dorian Gray and Sybil Vane from The Picture of Dorian Gray
Ichabod Crane (or, in his present incarnation, Ichahotbody Crane) from The Legend of Sleepy Hallow

From Shakespeare:

Juliet Capulet from Romeo and Juliet
Viola from Twelfth Night
Cymbeline from Cymbeline
Cordelia from King Lear
Miranda and Prospero from The Tempest

So. Yeah. Overboard? Nooooooo. Going to skip all the "What makes a good name?" clever-ing I might have done and just end now. Finally.

Gender-Bending and Why It's Awesome

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have heard me mention one or two or seven hundred times that Christina and I recently watched and loved a kdrama called Coffee Prince. (In fact, we'll be doing even more kdrama watch-alongs, if you're interested and you should be.) Coffee Prince is set in Seoul and is about a tomboyish girl who's often mistaken for a boy. She's the only breadwinner in her family, singlehandedly supporting her mother and younger sister, and they're in dire financial straights. Through SHENANIGANS, she becomes acquainted with a young, hot coffee heir... but he thinks she's a boy. And when he hires her at the all-male coffee shop he just opened, she makes the choice to go along with the charade. BUT THEN FEELINGS. FEELINGS FEELINGS. She falls in love with her hothothot boss... and by that point in the drama, if you are not shrieking and flailing and swooning, you may be broken.

The romantical TENSION, you guys. I CANNOT.

LOOK AT HIS CHEST HEAVING HE IS OVERCOME BY FEELS

The reason I loved Coffee Prince so dang much is because it has one of my favorite tropes of all time: gender-bending. Blame Alanna and Tamora Pierce, blame Mulan, blame whoever you want to, if I see that a plot involves a girl disguised as a boy (or a boy disguised as a girl, that would be fun too!), I AM THERE WITH JAZZ HANDS. Heck, blame Shakespeare, if you want to! That guy loved nothing better than to stick a girl in some breeches and flip a few plots upside down (Twelfth Night, As You Like It). (It gets even more interesting when you remember that in Shakespeare's time, the actors were all men, so in reality they'd be men playing women playing men. Or like in the end of Shakespeare in Love, where it's a woman playing a man playing a woman! GENDER, WHO EVEN NEEDS IT?)



It often leads to men and women seeing each other as equals, as people, and as friends, which is always nice. In the case of The Song of the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce, Alanna earns a title and friendships she never would have been able to get if people hadn't mistaken her for a boy. It is really sad that so many fictional girls realize that in the unfair system they're forced into, male parts are required to gain respect.

 

But I love all the lessons that come from a girl bending (and literally binding) herself into the patriarchy like this. All the men whose respect she's earned realize that this girl is their equal regardless of gender and that girls can be just as awesome as boys. And the girl often realizes that being honest with who you are is the way to go and to be proud of whichever gender you truly identify as, and that you can be strong because of your gender. Or, more accurately, that gender has nothing to do with strength.

 
 




Also, it leads to very hilarious and interesting romantic situations, which, you know, kind of works for me. Take, for instance, Hana-Kimi, full name Hanazakari no Kimitachi e, an amazing manga that I'm buddy reading with Christina, Debby from Snuggly Oranges, and Steph from Cuddelbuggery. In it, a teenage girl pretends to be a guy to attend an all boy's boarding school, and oh, the HILARITY THAT ENSUES. How many times does this silly girl take showers and forget to lock the door? Or what about the time she passes out because her breast bindings are too tight? Or mistakenly crawls into her roommate's bed in the middle of the night? Or what about when poor Mulan goes to take a bath in the middle of the night and the whole regiment shows up? Awkward. Hilarious. Perfect.



Gender-bending often leads to another of my favorite tropes: hate to love. I mean, the two leads can't exactly insta-love all over the place when one of them doesn't even know the other's true gender. Then one or both can develop FEELINGS and it's CONFUSING and they BANTER and oh, my heart.

Gender-bending: it is the best. If I see it in a book, I will pick up that book. It's mostly present in high-fantasy, but there's an endless supply of it in Asian culture, in manga and kdrama and so many others. Heck, there's even a volume in Hana Kimi where the boys all dress up like girls! It's a thing! Why? Who knows! It's just fun! But I love it.

"I'm a man!" "Well, nobody's perfect."

Some examples of gender bending:

In film and television:
Mulan
She's the Man
Coffee Prince
Shakespeare in Love
Yentl
Victor/Victoria
Mrs. Doubtfire
Shakespeare in Love
Just One of the Guys
Tootsie
Some Like it Hot

In literature and manga:
The Song of the Lioness quartet by Tamora Pierce
The Burning Sky by Sherry Thomas
Hana-Kimi by Hisaya Nakajo
As You Like It
Twelfth Night
Eon by Alison Goodman
Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer
Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld



What about you? Do you love gender-bending? What are some of your favorite examples of it?