Gay Fantasy Stories

[FatDog]

I cannot recommend any particular book but http://www.rainbowebooks.com is a site dedicated to gay ebooks so you might want to check out their best sellers.

[jehane]

Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald Mage series definitely fits.

I'd also recommend Ethan of Athos by Lois Bujold. It's science fiction (space opera/adventure) but also a great read. One of the non-Miles books in the Miles universe.

[Rtturvwsxmavpduc]

Not fantasy and far from fluffy but deeply moving: The Gift of Rain: A Novel by Tan Twan Eng.

Publisher's Summary:
"This remarkable debut saga of intrigue and akido flashes back to a darkly opulent WWII-era Malaya. Phillip Hutton, 72, lives in serene Penang comfort, occasionally training students as an akido master teacher of teachers. A visit from Michiko Murakami sends him spiraling back into his past, where he grows up the alienated half-British, half-Chinese son of a wealthy Penang trader in the years before WWII. When Hutton's father and three siblings leave him to run the family company one summer, he befriends a mysterious Japanese neighbor named Mr. Endo. Japan is on the opposing side of the coming war, but Endo paradoxically opts to train Hutton in the ways of aikido, in what both men come to see as the fulfillment of a prophecy that has haunted them for several lifetimes. When the Japanese army invades Malaya, chaos reigns, and Phillip makes a secret, very profitable deal. He cannot, however, offset the costs of his friendship with Endo. Eng's characters are as deep and troubled as the time in which the story takes place, and he draws on a rich palette to create a sprawling portrait of a lesser explored corner of the war. Hutton's first-person narration is measured, believable and enthralling."

One of the most extraordinary explorations of sexuality you'll ever experience. Nothing is consummated in the conventional sense but the emotions are so powerful they remain unforgettable long after the last pages and the intertwined lives.

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by covingtoncat73

Mercedes Lackey's Last Herald Mage Series (Magic's Pawn, Magic's Price, Magic's Promise) comes to mind for you, though you may have already read it. If I think of anything else, I'll let you know.

3rding Lackey's Last Herald Mage.

Honestly, she's got a pretty large sprinkling of gay characters throughout her Valdemar books, although last Herald Mage is probably the best (IMO), there's some more in the Mage Winds/Storms. Vows and Honor is about a couple of lesbian mercenaries, too.

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

Vows and Honor is about a couple of lesbian mercenaries, too.

Tarma and Kethry aren't lesbians*. They're just Heterosexual Life Partners™† (WARNING: TV Tropes). But their stories are lots of fun to read and highly recommended, as is the story of Kethry's granddaughter.

But Lackey's Last Herald-Mage series is fairly decent and rather entertaining as long as you don't mind the angst and whining on the part of the main character (I liked them, but it's long been established that I have questionable taste).

Bujold's Ethan of Athos is very good and I umpteenth the recommend.

Also good is Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint, which is practically a non-fantasy fantasy in which the main fantastical element is that the entire city it's set in is made-up. But it's a very good book if you like mannerpunk. And societies where bisexuals are common and expected. Highly recommended.

On that note, Tanya Huff's Four Quarters series and The Fire's Stone standalone are constructed the same way, but more magical in nature. If the OP is in the mood for more contemporary urban fantasy, her Blood books (basis of the short-lived Blood Ties TV show) and Smoke series have a bisexual vampire and gay wizard, respectively (several gay wizards, depending on how you count the Big Bads).

Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover series tends to have gay, lesbian, and bisexual characters in prominent roles throughout the series (at least in the books originally written by her and not the posthumous co-author stuff), and several titles where they're outright main characters. The "Free Amazons" set of books have most of the lesbian couples as you might expect; the best set of books involving the gay characters also happen to be the best set of books in the series overall: The Heritage of Hastur and Sharra's Exile.

* Well, okay, on occasion they pretend to be if it'll help them with a job.

† But seriously, one of them is a sworn celibate who is No Longer Interested thanks to divine intervention, and the other isn't and has said granddaughter.

[caleb72]

David H Burton (MobileReads author) has The Second Coming. Kind of post-apocalyptic earth playing out as a dark fantasy. One of the main characters is gay.

[WillAdams]

Ellen Kushner's _Swordspoint_. Short story set in this world which is a nice sample of her (wonderful!) writing style here:

http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/12/t...ith-the-knives

[wyndslash]

Originally Posted by GreenMonkey

3rding Lackey's Last Herald Mage.

Honestly, she's got a pretty large sprinkling of gay characters throughout her Valdemar books, although last Herald Mage is probably the best (IMO), there's some more in the Mage Winds/Storms. Vows and Honor is about a couple of lesbian mercenaries, too.

i've been considering Lackey's work as well, but I read a comment back then about how the series was disturbing and was in nature, very homophobic. so i'm still thinking about it...

However, I do second Swordspoint, and also highly, highly recommend Jesse Hacjicek's The God Eaters. One of the best I've ever read

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by wyndslash

i've been considering Lackey's work as well, but I read a comment back then about how the series was disturbing and was in nature, very homophobic. so i'm still thinking about it...

I wouldn't call them homophobic per se, but they written from an 80s US perspective of gayness as seen from the viewpoint of a well-meaning but moderately insulated middle-class heterosexual middle American woman who still lives in the heart of the so-called Bible Belt, which, if some very depressing news reports are to be believed, tends not to have progressed very much acceptance-wise in the intervening decades.

So they do end up being very, very angsty as the protagonist spends a lot of time being self-loathing and whiny due to the pressures of Being Different In A Mostly Intolerant Society* until he Comes To Terms With Who He Is (and some of the more intolerant people to whom he's attached get some sense beaten into them).

And they were kind of one of the first mainstream-published fantasy novels to even have openly gay main characters being openly gay and having relationships (instead of chastely dead or predatorily villainous, which I've read was kind of the cliché norm until then) and thus kind of end up Setting An Example for tolerance and acceptance, so if it seems like they harp on certain issues, that's probably why.

Possibly one of Lackey's other works would be better off to start off with to try (although LHM is kind of key to underpinning much of the Valdemar mythos and a big chunk of it will make less sense if you haven't read them).

I'll warn you that her books can be disturbing due to her other regular writing tropes (tendency to linger on self-justifying rants from the villainous viewpoint just to show how vile they are, annoying use of Funetically Speilt Aksent to denote dialect speech, female characters having to struggle against depressing amounts of misogyny to accomplish stuff, future heroic characters being bullied by especially cruel and sadistic bullies before they wind up Showing Them All, attempted rape/torture to imbue that historically-accurate faux-medievalish ceci n'est pas un Renaissance Faire theme park flavour).

There are some of her books available as promotionally freebies in the Baen Free Library and on the Baen CD-ROMs at the Fifth Imperium site which has permission to distribute them.

I think that The Lark and the Wren is probably the closest in tone to the Last Herald-Mage books, as far as the wangsting protagonist struggling and eventually triumphing over her intolerant and unsupportive culture thing goes, and Born to Run as far as the disturbing content regarding physical/emotional abuse goes. If either one of those goes over the top for your reading tastes, then you should probably skip LHM entirely unless you're really morbidly curious.

Actually, I think you'd probably like Knight of Ghosts and Shadows best. It's actually pretty upbeat for a Lackey book and there's fairly strong relationship which plays with a love triangle turning into a threesome the characters involved find out that they can find each other attractive regardless of gender. You might also be interested in a free short story set in the same world by another author in the anthology Bedlam's Edge, about an elven/human gay couple.

* This, incidentally, is a trope that applies to practically all Lackey hero/heroines, regardless of sexual orientation, so it's not like it's something she reserved in particular for Vanyel.

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Tarma and Kethry aren't lesbians*. They're just Heterosexual Life Partners™† (WARNING: TV Tropes). But their stories are lots of fun to read and highly recommended, as is the story of Kethry's granddaughter.


* Well, okay, on occasion they pretend to be if it'll help them with a job.

† But seriously, one of them is a sworn celibate who is No Longer Interested thanks to divine intervention, and the other isn't and has said granddaughter.

Oops, I tossed out that post in a hurry, my bad, you're right. I just re-read them, too, about 6 months ago.

[GreenMonkey]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

I wouldn't call them homophobic per se, but they written from an 80s US perspective of gayness as seen from the viewpoint of a well-meaning but moderately insulated middle-class heterosexual middle American woman who still lives in the heart of the so-called Bible Belt, which, if some very depressing news reports are to be believed, tends not to have progressed very much acceptance-wise in the intervening decades.

So they do end up being very, very angsty as the protagonist spends a lot of time being self-loathing and whiny due to the pressures of Being Different In A Mostly Intolerant Society* until he Comes To Terms With Who He Is (and some of the more intolerant people to whom he's attached get some sense beaten into them).


And they were kind of one of the first mainstream-published fantasy novels to even have openly gay main characters being openly gay and having relationships (instead of chastely dead or predatorily villainous, which I've read was kind of the cliché norm until then) and thus kind of end up Setting An Example for tolerance and acceptance, so if it seems like they harp on certain issues, that's probably why.

Agreed. The date of writing does kinda figure into the feel IMO.

I'll warn you that her books can be disturbing due to her other regular writing tropes (tendency to linger on self-justifying rants from the villainous viewpoint just to show how vile they are, annoying use of Funetically Speilt Aksent to denote dialect speech, female characters having to struggle against depressing amounts of misogyny to accomplish stuff, future heroic characters being bullied by especially cruel and sadistic bullies before they wind up Showing Them All, attempted rape/torture to imbue that historically-accurate faux-medievalish ceci n'est pas un Renaissance Faire theme park flavour).
...

* This, incidentally, is a trope that applies to practically all Lackey hero/heroines, regardless of sexual orientation, so it's not like it's something she reserved in particular for Vanyel.

Ehh, it's Lackey's style. Terry Brooks has a recurring thing for magic seducing people into evil. GRR Martin has a thing for making the heroes suffer (or killing people outright). I think most authors have a style of some sort, and Lackey certainly likes a certain kind of villain and has a certain idea of what evil is.

[futurebear]

I have read books one and two of the Nightrunner series. Really good. I have to give her a small critique of being very repetitive in some of the scenes, but I couldn't put it down. On book number three right now. it is by Lynn Flewelling if anyone is interested. I give it a 9 out of 10, 10 being Harry Potter

I also read the Draegon series that someone suggested. It was an ok story, but the smut didn't really help the story line.

Next I am going to try Magiks Pawn and that series. Thanks for all the suggestions. Even with all these great books, still isn't what I am looking for. I will have to write it myself!

[futurebear]

@ ATDrake
Since there has been much to do about gay rights and bullying in the news, I will post this about the south.

We haven't gotten any better at all. I have lived here all my life and trust me, I've seen it from when I was a kid. The bad thing about it is, it probably won't get much better as much of it is passive aggressive.

There is much racism here as well, people here hate anything that isn't what is taught in their church. The sad thing is if you go home and watch these people, they aren't what is taught in church either. It makes no sense to me. Why make people wish they weren't born when you can't live up to your expectations either.

The answer is probably that they feel so bad about not being able to live by these expectations that they have to vent their frustrations. I know I am very guilty of that.

I could go on with many many examples of what I am talking about, but it would probably just fall on deaf ears.

I do want to show my own history though in case some bigot reads it. Maybe the people on this forum can even tell it to someone else to help them understand.

I grew up raised as a Baptist. Southern Baptist to be exact. I did everything the Bible told me, I even read most of it unlike most Christians. As I grew up and started realizing I liked men instead women I started hating myself even more. I already hated myself because of being different (geeky) and fat. Now I hated myself on a whole other level. I hated myself for be created this way.

I can't really put into words what that feeling is really like. To put it as short as possible, to this day I wish sometimes I never existed. It is something that doesn't fully go away. If I hadn't been raised a Christian I don't think it would have been that bad.

I tried to change myself by masturbating to straight porn (even though that was not right either, but a lesser offence from what I was taught). It didn't work at all. I remember punching myself in my crotch, and in my face. Hitting myself with bats or whatever was in my room trying to make myself change, or feel the way on the outside as I did the inside. Nothing worked. I prayed, I vowed myself to celibacy.

It hurt, and no one knew I was going through it. I assume some people at school must have thought I was being abused by my father, which was semi correct for multiple reasons, but he didn't know about me being gay. It didn't help that I constantly heard negative things from him, the preachers, the media, my teachers, and my peers about being gay. I wanted to die.

Eventually after reading the Bible some more I came to realize that the one thing that hardly anyone practices that the Bible teaches is Tolerance and Love. Yes, it says that this and that is wrong (and I wont' even start on the contradictions so I don't really make people made) but it says that you shouldn't judge people, you should love them. Judging is reserved for God or Jesus, which ever one of the same your supposed to worship (or it could be the spirit). The main example is the example where he saved the street walker from being stoned. Those who are without sin can throw the first stone.

After that (and the fact that I realized everyone is going to purgatory or hell except the Jews *semi joke*), I decided that I wasn't made wrong, I was made right. After a while I lost my faith completely, but at that point in my life I realized that I couldn't change myself so I stopped hating myself for being gay.

I got off on a tangent, and was going to delete the brick of text above, but decided to leave it in case it can help someone understand that no matter if you think something is wrong or right you should still love them. There is no excuse for making someone else feel inferior. I am not hurting anyone, or anything by being me. I can not change, and at this point in my life, I don't think I would. I wouldn't consider myself a role model, but I am out, everyone knows it. I think that will help someone somewhere understand that gays aren't evil incarnates and maybe teach their kids to be tolerant, which will stop a bully somewhere. Our actions are always watched, even if we don't have kids ourselves.

@ ATDrake
The original point was just to point out that the south hasn't changed, but I got of on a tangent. There are very few places you can be you. No matter if your black, gay, Asian, or even middle eastern. God help you if your have a beard and are dark colored because you are part native american. You still get labeled as a terrorist. Trust me, I have been labeled one and was born and raised in Alabama. (Of course, if you ask me any belligerent redneck bigot is a terrorist as well.)

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by futurebear

@ ATDrake
Since there has been much to do about gay rights and bullying in the news, I will post this about the south.

We haven't gotten any better at all. I have lived here all my life and trust me, I've seen it from when I was a kid. The bad thing about it is, it probably won't get much better as much of it is passive aggressive.

That's so very sad to hear. I'd read some horror stories in the news regarding the situation in those parts of the US, but also some hopeful ones which suggested that even glacially slow progress might be made.

Originally Posted by futurebear

I think that will help someone somewhere understand that gays aren't evil incarnates and maybe teach their kids to be tolerant, which will stop a bully somewhere. Our actions are always watched, even if we don't have kids ourselves.

I think perhaps you might end up really liking Lackey's Last Herald-Mage series. They were kind of written with that in mind, and on her website she has a number of fan comments which say that the LHM books really helped them come to terms with their identity (if they were gay) or help them understand that gay people were people too and shouldn't be treated any worse than you'd treat anyone else (if they were not gay).

And I think you might also really like Tanya Huff's Smoke series, which have a much more positive, multicultural set of stories as the experience would be up here and now. I won't pretend that Canada is perfect, because we still have a lot of issues to deal with, but generally speaking, acceptance of LGBT people isn't really one of them (outside of a few very backward places that everyone makes fun of and some intolerant old people who are going to die off eventually and a couple of hardline religious sects which no one really respects all that much if at all anyway).

Fun fact: the United Church of Canada was one of the ones who sent an official delegation to Parliament arguing in favour of making same-sex marriage federal law back in the day. They're supposed to be our largest Protestant denomination and second-largest Christian church, and they now work on anti-bullying stuff, according to an article I read on about one of their programmes.

Incidentally, we have an opt-in politics and religion forum on MR if you ever want to vent about stuff and it might be useful to share your perspective when the topic comes up (occasionally some idiots go and post about same-sex marriage being immoral and against their religion and how they don't see why gay people should have equal civil rights and probably need to be reminded to act more Christ-like by someone who's actually Christian, if I read your post about your upbringing correctly).

[futurebear]

I want to move to Canada. Don't really see a reason to get married, but the men tend to be hotter there.