![amberlight book sylvia kelso amberlight book sylvia kelso](https://pictures.abebooks.com/isbn/9780982763780-us.jpg)
But how come almost none of the reviews mention the fact that the book’s hero is a bisexual transvestite? (Kudos to Gary Wolfe here for not dodging the issue.) And still with SF, Liz Williams’ Bloodmind continues the series she spun off from the PKD-nominated Ghost Sister. Ian McDonald’s Brasyl is probably on many people’s SF top ten lists. Robbins doesn’t make as much of the gender confusion as you might expect, but she does say a lot about the relative power of men and women at a (17 th Century?) court. I really do hope that Gentle didn’t mean to do that.Īlso on the gender bending front is Maledicte by Lane Robbins, a debut novel featuring a young street girl who disguises herself as a man to be with her lover who has recently been revealed as the bastard son of an earl. On the other hand, one reading of the book is that Gentle is setting up the intersexed Ilario as an example of a “legitimately” gender-confused character, as opposed to the transsexual Neferet who is portrayed as being “really” a gay man with pretensions. I’m very pleased about this, because intersex people get the rough end of just about everything and are still a very invisible minority.
![amberlight book sylvia kelso amberlight book sylvia kelso](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dobtJARQSjg/VV4AB5AaQ7I/AAAAAAAASHo/P683RyJxPYY/s320/91lEgd1LswL__SL1500_.jpg)
A new book by Gentle is always very welcome, and this one centers on an intersex character. First up is Mary Gentle’s Ilario (published as a single volume in the UK but as two in the US). Given that this article is for the Aqueduct blog, I guess I should start with books that address gender themes. Thankfully I have read a lot, though not the 8 or so books I month I was reading for Emerald City, and many of them were very good. I’ve been reading frantically ever since I got back to California in October, but my “to read” pile still has a lot of very promising books in it.
![amberlight book sylvia kelso amberlight book sylvia kelso](https://www.sfsite.com/grc/0903/tilg.jpg)
This hasn’t been helped by the fact that a whole pile of really good stuff came out in the US over the summer when I was stuck in the UK and unable to get hold of it. Consequently I’ve been feeling rather behind. This has been a strange year for me in that I’m suddenly no longer getting books several months before publication. Her most recent short story release is "Crow" in the Spring Equinox 2014 issue of *Eternal Haunted Summer* e-zine.To continue with our end-of-the-year reports. "The Price of Kush" for the US anthology *Griots: Sisters of the Spear* was released as an ebook in December 2013. Her short story "The Honor of the Ferrocarril" in *Gears and Levers 3* was released in June 2013 by Skywarriors Books, and "Spring in Geneva," a novella-length riff on *Frankenstein*, from Aqueduct Press in October 2013. Sylvia Kelso's short fiction has appeared in Australian and US anthologies, including *Love and Rockets* from DAW in 2010 and *Beyond Grimm: Tales Newly Twisted* from Bookview Cafe in 2012. Her most recent novel-length work is the contemporary fantasy duo of Blackston Gold, *The Solitaire Ghost* and *The Time Seam* released by Fivestar Books in 2011. The third Amberlight novel, *Source*, was released in 2010. She has published six high fantasy novels, two of which, *Amberlight* and *The Moving Water*, were finalists for best fantasy novel of the year in the Australian Aurealis genre fiction awards. She writes fantasy and SF often set in analogue or alternate Australian settings. Sylvia Kelso lives in North Queensland, Australia.