It’s full of heart, romance, and friendship, despite the miserable angst of several characters; it’s full of magic, despite gritty reality that includes financial strain and attempted roofies; and it contains some amazing revelations, along with some things that I was sure all along must be true.
Mindscape is a book that truly deserves this reissuing, so more people can experience its dynamic characters and its vision of cooperation amid great struggles.
So when I received a review copy of a new anthology of gay male romance comics that, per the publicist, “…hearkens back to the days when romance comics topped the sales charts and it enlivens romance novel collections with a fun genre mix, all while joyfully celebrating Pride with its unambiguous focus on cis- and trans men in love by creators who know exactly how it feels.”
Well, I was sold.
I’ve been a fan of Jo Graham since her Black Ships (2008), a re-imagining of the Aeneid from the perspective of a priestess. Although she has written a good deal of science fiction (her Calpurnian Wars series and numerous Stargate tie-ins), much of her work has focused on historical fantasy, ranging from the ancient world (her Numinous World novels that started with Black Ships) through the Napoleonic era (The General’s Mistress, etc.) to The Order of the Air, the 1930s series co-written with Melissa Scott that I wrote about in 2018. When Graham’s fantastic Italian Renaissance series debuted in 2023 with A Blackened Mirror, I missed it, along with the 2024 sequel, The Borgia Dove. Now, just ahead of the release of The Blood of the Bull, I have finally caught up, and I’m so glad I did! The Memoirs of the Borgia Sibyl series focuses on Giulia Farnese, a real-life Italian noblewoman who became the lover of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia. Having some knowledge of history, plus recently listening to Ada Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance: The Myth of a Golden Age (2025), I was aware of the basic beats of Borgia’s career, although I knew nothing of Giulia. Graham has done a great deal of research and has quoted letters from Rodrigo and Giulia on her Patreon. All the books start with family trees, explanations of timekeeping in Renaissance Rome, and lists of important People, Places and Things, but I mostly skipped over those, trusting Graham to explain what I’d need to know as the story progressed. This was justified, but then, I’ve read a lot of historical novels; others may find these elements extremely helpful, especially since the cast of characters is large. What is not historically recorded is Graham’s version of Giulia being a seer with mystic powers. Early in the first book, she descends into some ancient tombs and begs Persephone to rescue her from her expected destiny of maiden aunthood. Her pleas are granted in very unexpected ways, and her connection with the numinous persists throughout the events of each book, including learning how to cast protective wards against evil, and more. Given that this is based on real history, I don’t think it’s much of a spoiler to say that by book 3, Rodrigo is now Pope Alexander VI. Giulia has assisted in his rise, participating in political intrigues and foiling assassination attempts by various means. The question is, having gained great power, can they keep it against old rivals and new threats? A shocking turn of events sends Giulia fleeing Rome, making herself vulnerable to both French invaders and the ascetic extremist Friar Savonarola. Will Giulia and Rodrigo be able to overcome their internal and external challenges, and save themselves, Rome, and the progressive faction of the Church? Or must the blood of Borgia, whose house emblem is the Bull, be shed and sacrificed to protect all that they cherish? I am really enjoying this series. Giulia is kind, clever, resourceful, and brave, an entirely engaging protagonist. Trapped in a bad marriage, used and endangered by her in-laws, and seeing many examples of rule-breaking in Roman society, it’s natural that she looks for love and protection elsewhere. And although modern eyes would see her relationship with Rodrigo as a May-December romance at best, starting with her being 15 and him 58, I love Graham’s depiction of their courtship and bond. Although he has great temporal and ecclesiastical power, she brings her own resources of perception, intuition, social networking, female-coded skills like the languages of clothes and jewelry, and mystic power into the balance. They are sweet, caring, and considerate of each other (except for rare quarrels), and their wordplay and games are often extremely amusing. And they are extremely sensual and sexual together! Graham excels at depicting intensely warm ongoing relationships that blend earthiness and spiritual aspects, and this comes very much to the forefront here. But it’s not just the Giulia and Rodrigo show. Giulia has brothers and a mother (and in-laws), Rodrigo has sons and daughters (despite his clerical station), and both of them have extensive networks of allies and clients. On the other side are Giulia’s in-laws and the leaders and agents of those who oppose Rodrigo for reasons of nationality (he’s a Spaniard, while most Cardinals are Italian), doctrine (he’s humanist, they’re reactionary), and pure power. Graham weaves the plethora of personal threads to create a rich and brilliant tapestry of life in the Italian Renaissance, highlighted by magical underpinnings and subtle sparks. I was planning to space out these books a bit more, but I was so engrossed by the first novel that I bumped the rest up in my reading schedule and gobbled down the next two in the space of two days. I highly recommend these novels for fans of historical fantasy and romance. The Blood of the Bull will be published on July 7; you can preorder it here. The first two books are available at Candlemark & Gleam. At least one more book, A Golden Branch, is planned in the Memoirs of the Borgia Sibyl series. Content warnings (series): Disease, killings, riots, violence; religious and ethnic persecution; religious patronage and corruption; sexual discrimination and coercion; sex scenes, infidelity, and illegitimacy; curses and black magic. Comps: The Emperor’s Agent, by Jo Graham. Disclosures: As mentioned, I’m a longtime fan of Jo Graham; I used to talk with her on LiveJournal, and I support her on Patreon. I received free eARCs of all three books in the series (so far) from the publisher for review.
Malka Older makes a rousing return to her acclaimed SF mystery/romance series, The Investigations of Mossa and Pleiti, with The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses, coming out June 10. The novella that started the series, The Mimicking of Known Successes, was amazingly great (I reviewed it here), and I quite enjoyed the sequel, The Imposition of Unnecessary Obstacles. The latest book is the longest so far, but at 256 pages it feels just right. The mystery seems to have lower stakes than in previous books, but it also highlights previously unexplored aspects of the Giant (Jovian) society and returns to some elements of previous books that hadn’t exactly been resolved after all. The romance between Pleiti and Mossa undergoes some severe friction, but in the end … well, read it and see! I don’t advise jumping into the latest book if you’re new to Mossa and Pleiti; start with the first novella, since the relationship and the worldbuilding are complex and continue to develop throughout the series. However, it’s not necessary to reread the earlier works to pick up the series again at this point (especially if you’ve already reread in the intervals like me), since Older includes plenty of reminder-references and context clues to prior situations. (I think if you skipped the second book for whatever reason, you can still read the third without too much difficulty.) The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses opens with a prologue of Mossa lurking outside Pleiti’s quarters, oddly reluctant to enter. The action starts in Chapter 1 with Petanj, an old Valdegeld University schoolmate, asking Pleiti for help; Petanj’s cousin Villette, a rising scholar-star at rival Stortellen U. who’s scheduled to be honored soon with a donship that’s relatively early in her career, has been receiving nasty anonymous notes and a false accusation of plagiarism. Petanj thinks that Pleiti, as a fellow scholar, will be less official, less intimidating, and more familiar with academic environments than Investigator Mossi, but hopefully familiar enough with the investigative process (given Pleiti’s somewhat notorious participation in prior investigations) to help resolve this problem and growing scandal. Pleiti asks Mossi to investigate with her anyway, or at least consult with her, but Mossa, sunken into a deep apathy or worse, refuses to even listen to the case, and sends Pleiti away. For much of the book, Pleiti doesn’t see Mossa, and frequently asks herself What Would Mossa Do as she embarks on the investigation, wondering whether she should have stayed with Mossa instead to help lift her spirits, since she doesn’t seem to be making much progress as she chats with various associates of Villette (pretending to be a mere curious visitor who’d come for the donship ceremony). Libel escalates to sabotage and worse, but the university leadership is more inclined to blame Villette as a trouble-inciter than to find the culprit(s?). In many ways, this book reminds me of the wonderful academic mystery/romance Gaudy Night (1935), by Dorothy Sayers. In that, Harriet Vane, a mystery novelist, is asked to investigate various “poison pen” notes at her alma mater, a women’s college at Oxford; she begins to feel out of her depth when the attacks move from libelous taunts to violence, and writes about the case to her unsuccessful suitor, the famous detective Lord Peter Wimsey. The Potency of Ungovernable Obstacles doesn’t address women’s roles in society the way Gaudy Night does, since the Jovians of the future appear to have moved beyond that (although I note that the highest leaders of both universities here are men). And Potency doesn’t address clashes between town and gown mindsets the way Gaudy Night does (although Imposition touched on that lightly), but it does talk quite a lot about the different, and sometimes opposite, mindsets of the Classicists (studying Classic pre-Giant works in order to try to reconstruct a sustainable biosphere for ruined Earth) and the Modernists (focusing on life here and now on the orbiting rail-ring platforms around Giant/Jupiter). Distant from Valdegeld, the Stortellans have heard little more than vague rumors about the stirring events from the climax of The Mimicking of Known Successes, and some of them wonder whether the conspiracy there may have been much wider-reaching than the news said — which sets Pleiti to wondering whether she and Mossa really had gotten all the culprits; certainly the major perpetrator there had a lot of sympathizers. As Pleiti confesses late in Potency, she has much less faith now in leaders and institutions than she used to have. Eventually, Pleiti finds her own way to analyze the case and come to a conclusion; eventually, she gets some more help, and the mystery is solved, although not without some collateral damage along the way. Obviously I don’t want to spoil the perpetrator or the motives here, so I can’t talk about the resolution much. However, on a side note, I did feel pleasantly vindicated when I was confirmed in my guess about a romantic subplot. For the major romantic plot, both Mossa and Pleiti both struggle a lot with their feelings of inadequacy, and their tendencies to hurt each other with inadvertencies, occasional emotional obtuseness, and even efforts to shield each other from harm. Somehow, Malka Older manages to write this in a way that mostly has me sympathetically groaning “Oh, Mossa” or “Oh, Pleiti” instead of snarling, “Oh, come ON!” Mostly. But they do, eventually, communicate better. (And the book isn’t all grim and moody! There’s a lot of snide humor, and comfort food, and some exciting action!) Speaking of communication, I’ll mention the word choices here. Language on the platform is an evolving thing, which is natural for a society of Earth refugees thrown together and mixing and building a new way of life together around another world. In this future, numerous words have crossed over from other languages into English (or whatever language the future story has been translated from into our 21st-century usages, ha!), and various words have evolved via dropping prefixes or suffixes, or adding new
The novella starts when Dorothy Gentleman wakes up and discovers she’s been uploaded off schedule and into the wrong body, and she finds out soon that someone else is dead. As one of the ship’s detectives, she shelves her personal feelings (that’s my little in-joke) and immediately starts investigating.
