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It's a girls' boarding school in the 1920s - a time and a place that might cause a reader to indulge in flights of romantic fantasy, which this book first indulges and then dismantles. Whenever and wherever we are, the question remains: who gets to be final girl?

Lee joins us to discuss the latest Raadchaii book. (Our policy remains: if there are Raadchaii, there are lesbians.) This is a hearty meal (ironically) if you're interested in religion, colonialism and/or political power - and, of course, there's cannibalism.

We were promised Moby Dick in space with lesbians, and that's what we got. It's kind of a thankless task, being Moby DIck in space with lesbians - particularly if you're not playing it for laughs, which this book isn't - because the best you're ever going to do is "better than expected." On the plus side, this one is better than expected.   HELL'S HEART - ALEXIS HALL

This book is about struggling with your terrible family while eating lots of lovingly-described food, which means it's the kind of thing we're supposed to like. This episode is mostly dedicated to figuring out why we don't.     The Subtle Art of Folding Space - John Chu

Lee joins us to talk about a book which is difficult to boil down to a paragraph - it's about power, and the means by which power is acquired and lost, and it examines this on a multitude of scales, from the granular to the metaphysical.  Also it's set in a world where every inch of available territory is covered by a city which generates its own geomantic power and humans (and mutants) are barred from space travel by a giant atmospheric shield. Fundamentally, though, it asks the question: what if there was a hot guy who sucked?   City On Fire - Walter Jon Williams

A cyberpunk colonial parable from one of our favorite authors - or, at least, the author of one of our favorite books. This one is not quite Divine Endurance, but it's certainly something. It's not a pleasant read but it sure is full of historical interest.   ESCAPE PLANS - GWYNETH JONES

A book about drugs that make you see god. It's day-after-tomorrow SF from the day before yesterday, and it gets all of its predictions so catastrophically wrong that its primary use case is as a time capsule from the war on terror. Also preserved: jokes we thought were funny ten years ago.   Afterparty - Daryl Gregory

It's Little Shop of Horrors but with lesbian Irish millennials! That's the whole pitch.  It fulfills the brief, and arguably overdelivers.   Eat The Ones You Love - Sarah Maria Griffin

It's gay, it's magic, it's a literary classic. Featuring our old books correspondent Kat Weaver!   Orlando - Virginia Woolf

A charming little novel from 1926. We're normally pretty relaxed when it comes to spoilers, particularly for a book that's a century old, but we think the less you know about this one going in the better.   Lolly Willowes; or The Loving Huntsman - Sylvia Townsend Warner

A familiar setup - a misogynist demon who possesses girls and infects them with its predatory desires - executed in a way which is, yes, bad, admittedly very bad, but also very funny.   Sawkill Girls (2018) - Claire Legrand

A debilitating novel - simultaneously enormous and petty, tragic and hilarious, insightful and insular. It wrecked us down the stretch but left us unmoved at the end. We think it's great but we're not sure if you should read it.

We return to Nghi Vo's Singing Hills series and discuss the three next most wizlez-adjacent books in it (to date.) Covered in this episode: The Empress of Salt and Fortune, The Brides of High Hill, and A Mouthful of Dust.

This week we're talking about a classic webcomic in both senses of the word, as it feels like it comes from a departed era of the internet despite being barely a decade old.  Part of that vibe stems from the fact that you can still read it, in its entirety and ad-free, on its own dedicated website - an unimaginable luxury these days. Check it out (it's a classic for a reason) and then join us for a discussion of what's aged well and what hasn't.

It's a Cinderella retelling! But it's Freya Marsk, so it's better than it needs to be, and stranger.