It’s the Transgender Day of Remembrance, coming at the end of Transgender Awareness Week. This is a day when we remember the ones we’ve lost, because of the entire queer community, trans people – especially trans women of colour – suffer the most violence. And the rest of us have to remember that, and work to fix it.

One thing that continually gives me hope is how much easier it is to find SFF with trans and nonbinary leads these days. I won’t say it’s easy, but it’s a lot easier than it was when I was 18. Behold five of my faves!

Lessons in Magic and Disaster by Charlie Jane Anders
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Trans MC, lesbian MC, nonbinary partner
Goodreads

In the vein of Alice Hoffman and Charlie Jane Anders's own All the Birds in the Sky comes a novel full of love, disaster, and magic.

A young witch teaches her mother how to do magic--with very unexpected results--in this relatable, resonant novel about family, identity, and the power of love.

Jamie is basically your average New England academic in-training--she has a strong queer relationship, an esoteric dissertation proposal, and inherited generational trauma. But she has one extraordinary secret: she's also a powerful witch.

Serena, Jamie's mother, has been hiding from the world in an old one-room schoolhouse for several years, grieving the death of her wife and the simultaneous explosion in her professional life. All she has left are memories.

Jamie’s busy digging into a three-hundred-year-old magical book, but she still finds time to teach Serena to cast spells and help her come out of her shell. But Jamie doesn't know the whole story of what happened to her mom years ago, and those secrets are leading Serena down a destructive path.

Now it's up to this grad student and literature nerd to understand the secrets behind this mysterious novel from 1749, unearth a long-buried scandal hinted therein, and learn the true nature of magic, before her mother ruins both of their lives.

This book made me so freaking HAPPY. The tone is very millennial, if that’s a statement that makes sense, and it’s just overflowing with love and joy. The main character’s passion for her thesis is so convincing that I ended up obsessed with her research topic – WHEN DOES THAT EVER HAPPEN? I highlighted so much, and many giggles were giggled, and I want so many more people to read it!

My review!

Notes from a Regicide by Isaac Fellman
Genres: Adult, Queer Protagonists, Sci Fi, Speculative Fiction
Representation: Trans MCs
Goodreads

Notes from a Regicide is a heartbreaking story of trans self-discovery with a rich relatability and a science-fictional twist from award-winning author Isaac Fellman.

When your parents die, you find out who they really were.

Griffon Keming’s second parents saved him from his abusive family. They taught him how to be trans, paid for his transition, and tried to love him as best they could. But Griffon’s new parents had troubles of their own – both were deeply scarred by the lives they lived before Griffon, the struggles they faced to become themselves, and the failed revolution that drove them from their homeland. When they died, they left an unfillable hole in his heart.

Griffon’s best clue to his parents’ lives is in his father’s journal, written from a jail cell while he awaited execution. Stained with blood, grief, and tears, these pages struggle to contain the love story of two artists on fire. With the journal in hand, Griffon hopes to pin down his relationship to these wonderful and strange people for whom time always seemed to be running out.

In Notes from a Regicide, a trans family saga set in a far-off, familiar future, Isaac Fellman goes beyond the concept of found family to examine how deeply we can be healed and hurt by those we choose to love.

I haven’t talked much about Notes because I don’t know HOW, but it’ll be on my Best of 2025 list next month for sure. It’s this…truly gorgeous, beautifully crafted book, following a very messy trans artist in a far-future setting in the lead-up to a rebellion, but also tracing the story of his adopted son (also trans) many years later. It mostly reads like secondary-world literary fiction, until Fellman, every now and then, casually drops a bomb that makes it clear this is sci fi set in our future. Everyone here is complicated, but every one of the main cast will steal the heart right out of your chest.

The Candlevine Gardener and Other Stories by Yoon Ha Lee
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Many nonbinary characters
Goodreads

A gardener at the end of the universe, a raven engineer, a cat who has forgotten how to fly, and more—all these appear in Yoon Ha Lee's flash fairy tales. Previously available on Patreon, they have been collected in this volume for your delectation.

Lee’s The Fox’s Tower is one of my favourite short story collections ever – which is why I was so excited to discover he had another collection, Candlevine Gardener! Like Fox’s Tower, this is made up of micro-fiction – tiny stories that are sometimes only a few paragraphs long, rarely longer than a page – and here and there are some sadder or heavier themes, but it’s also full of queerness and wonder, and showcases an absolutely BREATHTAKING imagination. Expect lots of mermaids!

Powder and Feathers by Johannes T. Evans
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Nonbinary trans MC, MLM MC, secondary BIPOC characters
Goodreads

Aimé Deverell, a depressed and lonely artist finishing up his degree in Dublin, watches the world go by, and paints it as it goes. Life is short, he thinks - and thank God!

He’s tired of living it.

That philosophy shatters like glass when his life is threatened by the beautiful Jean-Pierre, a Fallen angel.
---
Powder and Feathers is a dark romance featuring a complex relationship between an immortal several centuries the senior of his new boyfriend. Note warnings for manipulation, non-consensual body modification, twisted power dynamics, gaslighting, infidelity, consent issues, and BDSM vibes somewhat removed from the realms of SSC. There are multiple explicit sex scenes, many of them kinky.

The MC of this story is not explicitly labelled as such within the narrative, but I normally label him as in line with borderline personality disorder: he experiences delusions, severe mood swings, emotional dysregulation, and other painful episodes.

There are other potentially triggering topics throughout. Please use your best judgement and remember to take a step back from the work, temporarily or permanently, if you find any themes are too much for you to read about at this time.

Look, this book is NOT for everybody. It’s probably not for MOST people. It’s kind of slice-of-life-but-supernatural; it’s a lot of Actually Dark Romance; everyone is fucked-up and nobody is nice; the sex is not safe or sane a good deal of the time; there’s trauma and murder all over the place. (More trauma than murder, for the record.) And yet, it’s also weirdly cosy, with really powerful found-family themes and character growth that’ll make you proud of these idiots. If you love the kind of long, rambling fanfics that go on forever but don’t have much of an overarching plot – and you are down for extremely messy characters who are never gonna be described as Unproblematic – then I think you’ll enjoy this. It went straight onto my favourites shelf when I first read it, and I seriously doubt it’ll ever be unseated.

My review!

The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall
Genres: Adult, Fantasy, Queer Protagonists
Representation: Disabled trans MC, major sapphic character
Goodreads

In this charming, witty, and weird fantasy novel, Alexis Hall pays homage to Sherlock Holmes with a new twist on those renowned characters.

Upon returning to the city of Khelathra-Ven after five years fighting a war in another universe, Captain John Wyndham finds himself looking for somewhere to live, and expediency forces him to take lodgings at 221b Martyrs Walk. His new housemate is Ms. Shaharazad Haas, a consulting sorceress of mercurial temperament and dark reputation.

When Ms. Haas is enlisted to solve a case of blackmail against one of her former lovers, Miss Eirene Viola, Captain Wyndham is drawn into a mystery that leads him from the salons of the literary set to the drowned back-alleys of Ven and even to a prison cell in lost Carcosa. Along the way he is beset by criminals, menaced by pirates, molested by vampires, almost devoured by mad gods, and called upon to punch a shark.

But the further the companions go in pursuit of the elusive blackmailer, the more impossible the case appears. Then again, in Khelathra-Ven reality is flexible, and the impossible is Ms. Haas' stock-in-trade.

I’m usually not much of a Sherlock fan (bar Elementary, which is flawless) but this retelling is just SO MUCH FUN. Absolutely wackadoodle! The fantastical elements are delightfully over-the-top, with tentacle monsters and mysteriously supernatural bankers and a whole HOST of other things. This ‘Sherlock’ isn’t particularly nice, but she’s very impressive, and the ‘Holmes’ here is, as usual, an utter darling. Strongly recommended for anyone looking for a fun time that doesn’t talk down to you!

You can find some of my other trans and non-binary SFF recs at the links below!

Fantasy Featuring Fabulous Trans Leads
Your Gender Binary Is Imaginary: Non-Binary Characters in Fantasy (+bonus scifi)
Your Gender Binary Is Still Imaginary: SFF For International Non-Binary People’s Day!
Celebrating Transgender Day of Visibility With SFF!
SFF Faves From Trans and Nonbinary Authors!
Your Gender Binary Remains Imaginary: SFF For Non-Binary People’s Day!
SFF For Trans Day of Visibility!
Visible in SFF: Trans Day of Visibility Recs!
Your Gender Binary Is Only Imaginary: SFF For Non-Binary People’s Day!

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