It’s fall, the season of back-to-school, of new notebooks and fresh, unspoiled planners. So what more appropriate time to look at academic romances with scholarly leads?
First up is Anna Burke’s sapphic paranormal IN THE ROSES OF PIERIA (Bywater Books, ebook, $8.99), in which the historian Clara Eden leaves her dead-end college job for a post as an archivist, cataloging a private collection of artifacts for a mysterious woman named Agatha. The materials are wildly exciting, and her new boss’s assistant, Fiadh, is attractive. But then Clara’s curiosity leads her to uncover the house’s darker secrets. Such as: Agatha is an ancient blood-drinking vampire.
Clara’s blooming affection for Fiadh is the frosting on top of the sinister romance Clara translates from the library’s letters: a bitter, tempestuous passion between Agatha and her vampire beloved. Samara Breger’s “A Long Time Dead,” a favorite of mine from earlier this year, was told from the novice vampire’s perspective; “In the Roses of Pieria” is vampirism from the view of human prey, and it flirts engagingly with the elements of horror.
It’s also a particularly erudite romance, suggesting sly parallels between working for a supernatural predator and laboring in modern academia. Sure, Clara might be a source for a nutritious snack in Agatha’s eyes, but she’s already had to sell her plasma when her adjunct salary failed to cover rent and groceries. At least the vampire offers health insurance! Unfortunately, that plasma donation is only the first painful compromise Clara has to make in this series starter, and the book ends on an ominous (but delicious) note of suspense.
As Agatha knows, surviving when everyone thinks you’ve died confers a kind of immortality of its own. So discovers the vengeful ex-scholar Quynh in A FIRE BORN OF EXILE (Jabberwocky, ebook, $9.99), Aliette de Bodard’s incredible retelling of “The Count of Monte Cristo” set in a Vietnamese-inspired galactic empire.
Betrayed by her lover, branded a rebel and left for dead long ago, Quynh has returned to the Scattered Pearls Belt to exact vengeance on the corrupt military leaders who rule with brutal repression. But revenge starts to lose its savor after Quynh meets the quiet bot-repair technician Hoà at the graveside of someone they both loved.
Hoà’s sister was a brilliant scholar killed for associating with rebels, so Hoà has learned to value discretion as a way of keeping herself safe. The last thing she wants is to come to the attention of a high-ranking general or a prefect prone to issuing harsh sentences. But she also has a steely sense of justice, so the more she learns about Quynh’s past — and about what the Belt’s present rulers are hiding — the more she feels compelled to act. This is a world of dizzying tech, gorgeous illusions and twisty political thrills — catnip for readers who enjoyed Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch trilogy or Jacqueline Koyanagi’s “Ascension.”
As with Dumas’s original, the central question is: What is a life truly worth? Asking for restitution forces you to consider the value of what’s been stolen. Status and power are easy metrics, but they’re incomplete — how do you redress a lost love, or broken friendships, or shattered kinship? Quynh intends to pay back violence with violence, but Hoà helps her realize that perhaps justice looks more like claiming happiness for herself instead.
In A SHOT IN THE DARK (Dell, 320 pp., paperback, $17), Victoria Lee brings us back to the here and now. The aspiring photographer Ely Cohen fled to L.A. when a drug-fueled tragedy got her expelled from her Orthodox Jewish community; now she’s sober and back in New York for a prestigious art program. She works out her homecoming jitters by hooking up with a hot trans dude at a queer club — only to discover in class the next morning that he’s actually her hot trans photography professor, Wyatt Cole.
Wyatt was in the Marines before being on the streets and then getting clean. The last thing he needs is a fling with an emotionally volatile student. He can’t grade her work objectively but kicking her out of class feels just as wrong, so he agrees to mentor her as she creates her showcase project for the semester.
Ely’s work is intensely personal — a photographic exploration of Jewish communities — and it’s impossible for either of them to remain detached. Flashbacks keep the past fresh, particularly for Ely, whose skittishness and shame are unusually potent. The chemistry, too, is palpable. Where many rom-coms try to skip across the surface of a world, this book plunges into the depths.
Wyatt and Ely, both in recovery, are fearful of repeating their own worst mistakes; that risk creates a small but persistent pulse of suspense, a heartbeat that speeds up as the chapters fly by. As in so many of my favorite romances, the happy ending for these two is not really an ending but a beginning: It’s a blank page, unspoiled by errors. Something that looks like hope, and the bright possibility of starting fresh.
