Kate Heartfield's new time-travel novella is Alice Payne Arrives. One of the author's five favorite SFF books with F/F relationships, as shared at Tor.com:Everfair by Nisi ShawlRead about another entry on the list.
Everfair is an alternate history that re-imagines and re-examines one of the worst atrocities of the 19th century: King Leopold of Belgium’s murderous Congo Free State. What if African-American missionaries and British socialists had bought a piece of land from Leopold and tried to establish a utopia there, a haven for refugees and enslaved people? Of course, the land isn’t Leopold’s to sell in the first place, and the rightful king of that land naturally has some opinions.
Everfair is a complex, fascinating critique of colonialism and white supremacy—and it uses steampunk to do it. The airships and prosthetics of Everfair develop out of the state of war and the needs of its characters.
Two of those characters are women in love. Lisette Toutournier begins the novel as mistress to an olderEnglishman who engages her as a nanny to his children. She falls in love with his wife, Daisy Albin. These two women are passionate soulmates but the racist, patriarchal and colonial toxicity of their world continually buffets and disrupts their relationship.
Everfair is a book about nations, in which nothing is easy and nobody is right. Throughout, the passion of these two women is a constant refrain, like hope, as Daisy whispers in Lisette’s ear: “Where can we meet? Chérie—how soon?”
Everfair is among Ginn Hale's five top alternate histories that embrace diversity.
--Marshal Zeringue
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