Recs if you like The Black Coast...

This is NOT for books featuring trans or nonbinary protagonists in worlds with gender systems that mimic modern real-world ones. This is for books like Left Hand of Darkness or the Imperial Radch series, where the setting has an invented system of gender and/or sex, or of assigning gender/sex. I'm including interesting-to-me matriarchies (so, not ones that are just our patriarchy but gender-swapped) and gender systems that include male and female but have other genders/sexes too.

Suggestions are extremely welcome!

Lately I’ve been craving that old school fantasy, but much more diverse than what you’d generally think of when you think of old school fantasy. So this list will be queer epic/high fantasy full of high stakes adventure and perhaps magic, but specifically that has the VIBES. vibes are essential.

As a note I haven’t read all of these books yet but I am making my way through them, and if any of them are not the match I think they are I’ll remove them (or feel free to comment to let me know!)

thank the stars for bisexual masculinities. ✨ there’s a lot of great bi+ fem(me)s in lesbian/sapphic/wlw literature, and bi+ masc/butch/stud/gnc/nonbinary rep needs to catch up! soft butches/mascs/studs, stemmes, futches, and tomboys also included here. mostly curated from suggestions, more recs welcomed! note: a small number of these are (significant) side-characters, please check blurb/reviews.