Okay so we are here in #AceWeek! After a long and fantastic month with new friends we made through the @AceReadathon!! This is the beginning of a very enthusiastic thread about the books the three of us loved this month!

@the_GiannaMarie's bookcase!

The first nine books were read by @the_GiannaMarie, who is writing the first part of this thread!

As soon as October began, I started off with Goddess of the Hunt by @briseisbooks, which was short and lyrical and fantastic??

I'm not sure that I'd ever come across the idea of Artemis as a-spec before - even though she's so famously one of the virgin goddesses.

Goddess of the Hunt is unapologetic and bold and...ugh it was SO GOOD. I think I ate it up in one night.

Next up was To Be Taught, if Fortunate by #BeckyChambers! This is a stunning little novella about four scientist astronauts exploring extra-solar worlds and studying the flora and fauna. This one is so warm and gooey for the found family stuff

One of the astronauts is ace! At least one of them is bi, I think? All of them are NERDS, of the kind that are so excited and passionate, but basically this is a short and wonderful story about an unconventional family and what might be a one-way trip.

After that, my library app tossed my next read to me: Tash Hearts Tolstoy by @Kathsby, which was - SO GOOD. I kept shouting into the @AceReadathon discord about how much I loved it and everyone was like "well, gonna have to reread now"

THT is one of the most realistic ace reps I've ever seen, especially in Tash's self-doubt, shame, and surety that she's undesirable. She's got so much ambition and art in her, and fantastic friends and a lot of stuff happening in her family. SO REAL.

Summer Bird Blue by @AkemiDawnBowman was next, and I absolutely dove headfirst into this one. Asexuality wasn't so much a thing in this book as some of the others; it's something Rumi is thinking about, but mostly the rest of the book is about grief. A lot.

And music! It is also about music. And it was very tenderly set in Hawai'i (but not the tourist kind - the real people living in Hawai'i kind), with POC characters all over the place! Basically this book is an exquisitely painful story of loss -

- and if it wasn't ace, Rumi would absolutely have gotten together with the boy next door. Because it is, though, it's instead a moving friendship that felt much more impactful.

Eliza and Her Monsters by @chessiezappia was the next available on the library app! I admit I was confused why this was on my reading list for the Ace Race lol but after I read, I found a statement from the author explaining that our titular Eliza is demi!

This one's YA and heavily focused on fandom - what gives you life, what you owe your art, the push and pull between creators and fans - and an awkward girl who's a genius webcomic author learning how to have friends and relationships IRL.

(Love the stance here that your true friends are the people just as passionate and geeky as you. There's just no chance someone will understand Eliza without also loving #MonstrousSea, and this sets the tone for all her new friendships in the book!)

The last book I got from my library was Elatsoe by @ShiningComic, which has been making a lot of rounds lately for being FABULOUS. While I love an ace issue book just as much as the next ace, I hadn't realized how important this kind of rep was, too:

It's mentioned on-page once that Ellie is asexual, and it never comes up again, because it's just not important! Ellie has a murder to solve, ghosts to call, and family to look out for. (This is hands-down one of the best YA families I've ever read.

Her parents are supportive and loving and her mom is a straight-up badass on her own; her cousin's fam is integral to the main plot, and so is her grandmother's pet mammoth.) Also, they're Lipan Apache - own voices - and the story never lets you forget it.

The ghost-centric worldbuilding is grounded in the Apache lens, there are stories of Ellie's ancestor Six-Great, a bomb ghost-raising heroine, all throughout, and it is very, very decolonial. (FYI: Euro-vamps are not welcome on Apache land.) READ IT.

At this point I had two books left on my tbr, and I threw myself into A Pale Light in the Black by @kbwagers. OMG. Loved it. Loved it so much T.T This is a fantastically queer and decolonial adult sci-fi set a few centuries after "the Collapse"

(aka, whatever we're heading towards rn), focusing on the space coast guard #NeoG! Everyone's pronouns are on little digital nametags - and there are more non-binary characters in this book than I've ever seen before - the lady in charge of the NeoG -

- is a wheelchair user, and there's no homophobia. The three mains are Max (brown ace girl who really needs a family), Jenks (South Asian bi/pan undefeated cage fighter), and Rosa (Latinx married lesbian mother of two). The rep is EVERYWHERE, and it's

The actual plot is something about an Olympics-style games and a drug conspiracy, but the real goodness is in Jenks and Max forging a sisterhood for the ages; this book is so character-driven and delightful and I can't wait for more #NeoG!!

Aaand the last book that I read for the @AceReadathon was one that I was saving until last: The Ice Princess's Fair Illusion by @dovelynnwriter. @RosieeThor recced this to us earlier this year, so when I was going into the readathon I made sure to include!

TIPFI is a queerplatonic sapphic novel in verse retelling King Thrushbeard as the unsatisfied princess is asexual and her "Thrushbeard" is an aroace queen who sees the signs and busts ass to make sure she can save her from forced marriage to someone worse.

There is no way to properly explain how adorable and fluffy and WHOLESOME and heartwarming this book is - it is perfection, and it was a wonderful way to close out the month and begin #AceWeek2020 - so you'll just have to read it yourselves. (Waves) Go. Go!

And that's a wrap on @the_GiannaMarie's ace reads for @AceReadathon! Stay tuned to hear what @GothicFlapper and @Anni3Cat read and loved this month as well!!