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Hugh Likes Comics: Young Men in Love

January 4, 2023

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Young Men in Love: A Queer Romance Anthology
Edited by Joe Glass and Matt Miner
Published by A Blue Wave World

The Skinny: A sweet collection of short gay romance comics
A pair of pirates just looking for a bit of privacy, a pre-teen looking for his own identity, and a new couple still figuring out their boundaries are just some of the stories in this sweet, romantic anthology. Created by Queer writers and artists across the comics industry, this anthology of six-page pieces runs the gamut from the fantastic to the mundane and from the melancholic to the exuberantly joyful. There is a story here for everyone.
Young Men in Love is a book of stories that go on separate journies but arrive at the same place. Gay love and Queer relationships are more varried than you often see in media, particularly comics, and this book breaks the mold by telling personal, diverse stories that each have a life of their own. This book is as long on charm as the stories are short. There are low-stakes stories about first love, self discovery, and loneliness, and more fantastical stories about discovering your partner is a superhero or a couple falling into a virtual world while replacing a lamp. YMiL isn’t just about love but about acceptance and more importatnly, self-acceptance.
 Joe Glass tells a story which feels deeply personal. It follows a fat person as he deals with his body issues as a gay comics fan, coming up against not only the societal expectation that he should be ‘thin’ but also potential lovers that fetishize his weight. Dead End creator Hamish Steele tells a poignant story about loneliness, depression, and suicidal thoughts during the holidays. While not all the stories are so personal,, they all feel important. There is something deeply uncommercial about this collection.
 These aren’t love stories about the stereotypical gay characters you would see on a sitcom or in a romance novel written for the female gaze. YMiL is a book of our stories, for us, and that feels vital to me. If you want to see more diverse stories or find new, brilliant creators, writers and artists not on the radar of big-2 comics, you need this anthology.
Young Men in Love is available in print and digital editions from your local comics shop or the usual monopolistic book outlets. It is a deeply personal, highly original, and honest collection of stories that need to get out into the world. I give it my highest recommendation.

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Hugh Likes Fiction: Legends and Lattes

May 20, 2022

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Legends and Lattes
Written by Travis Baldree
Audiobook read by Travis Baldree

The Skinny: What if the Coffee shop A. U. was the story?

Viv is a barbarian warrior ready to get out of the mercenary’s life. But before she hangs up her greatsword for good, she needs a plan. Fortunately, she has two things going for her: A lucky, if gross charm in the Skalvert Stone, a sort of a magical bezoar she takes from the skull of a monstrous giant insect. Trophy in hand, she travels to the town of Thune, following the ley lines to the place where she’ll start her new life: Opening a coffee shop.
Unfortunately, there are a few hurdles for her to overcome, including the local organized crime boss, the fact that nobody in town has even heard of coffee before, and her prime location is in fact an abandoned livery. But with the help of some new friends, and the occasional assistance of her former adventuring party, she’ll give her new life a go.
Legends and Lattes is the coziest of cozy fantasy stories. Not so much a tale of adventure and blood, but of steam and baking. There is some tension as Viv attempts to break from her old life and settle into the new one, but most of this audiobook’s six-hour run time is more concerned with the day-to-day running of the shop than fighting monsters or fantasy politics. It’s clear that these things are all going on somewhere, but this story is all about the beans.
As a professional narrator, Baldree does an outstanding job reading, and the text feels right as an audiobook. His voices for the characters feel distinctive without becoming forced, which is no mean feat as a male actor reading a book with two female leads.
While the story was engaging and satisfying, It did feel a bit on the short side to me. We get an eclectic cast of characters, both from Viv’s old life and her new one, but they are mostly supporting Viv. It would have been nice to have spent more time with Cal, Thimble, Tandry and the rest of the supporting cast. Also, this is a romance, but a very fluffy one. It doesn’t go much farther than awkward stammering and acknowledged feelings. I would have liked it to have been more, well, steamier.
Legends and Lattes  is a +5 cozy little story that is sure to warm your heart like a warm cup of coffee on a cold winter’s morning. It is available as an audiobook, print or ebook from the usual locations.

Hugh Likes Fiction: This Is How You Lose the Time War

September 13, 2019

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This Is How You Lose the Time War
Written by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Audiobook read by Cynthia Farrell and Emily Woo Zeller
Published by Simon and Schuster Audio

The Skinny: Two time-traveling agents begin a correspondence that will have epic consequences.

This beautifully written novella follows Red and Blue, two agents of opposed possible futures working to ensure their side wins history, as they begin an exchange of letters that will, well, change history.
El-Mohtar’s and Gladstone’s writing is lyrical and beautiful. The locations for the two agents’ missions are tiny glimpses into beautiful and compelling worlds. From neolithic labyrinths to ruined battlefields on crumbling, distant planets. But the letters themselves are as fascinating as their correspondents’ adventures. The reader watches as their exchange starts as a taunt, gradually becomes more friendly as the two begin to understand one another, and eventually become something more intimate, in letters written on plain paper, and hidden in more devious methods, in the bottom of a teacup, in the rings on a fallen tree, or the boiled water in an abandoned hospital MRI machine. Each exchange is surprising and engaging, and the reader is left to wonder what they’ll think of next, and to worry as a shadowy figure stalks behind them.
The audiobook, although short, was particularly good, which a pair of excellent narrators that give the poetic descriptions and intimate epistolary sections real gravitas. Often an audiobook is either well narrated or well acted, and finding not one but two narrators that excel at both is a triumph in and of itself.
This Is How You Lose the Time War is a confection of time travel mystery romance that will leave you aching for more, and heading back through to see how they pulled it off when you’re done. It’s certainly award-fodder, and it breathes new imagination into it’s sub-genre. Don’t miss this one!