Bold Sapphic Novellas
Short on time but don’t want to compromise on quality?
Novels are hard, and short stories are SO hard, but novellas are another level altogether. Just because they’re short doesn’t mean they’re less complex.
Below I’m featuring books as novellas in the 25-60K word range that could be called either novella or short novel, depending on how you categorise them. Novellas usually stick to a single POV (but not always!) and a single plot/conflict/consequence (but definitely not always!). There are no rules except the length, and it’s astounding what some seriously talented authors can accomplish in this short form. There’s nothing wasted here, just pure story, pure emotion.
Our collection of novellas includes an thoughtful Arthurian tale, a high concept SciFi, a brutal and tragic epic, a steampunk adventure, and a dark noir that could give Raymond Chandler a run for his money. All of them have serious stings in the tail and represent the beauty, possibilities, and yes limitations of the form, but none compromise anything in worldbuilding, character, or story due to the short format. They are all, in a word, momentous, but often also contentious.
Spear - Nicola Griffith
Nicola Griffith isn’t as well known to newer Spec Fic audiences but her recent works have been historical fiction/fantasy and she does not write to literary trends. She is a master of her craft with prose that sings and is rhythmic and seductive. Spear is the Sapphic Arthurian retelling I never knew I needed. It follows the journey of Percival/Peretur, but not as you know it, as Peretur has had a gender swap and is a young woman in a re-imagined Camelot looking for a place to belong. Griffith has broken free of some of the rigid historical accuracy she’s known for in her Hild novels in order to give us a legendary romp for the ages, complete with queer rep, disabled people, and people of colour.
Peretur slays bad guys and wins duels, steals the heart of a clever woman, and forms a fellowship with other knights that’s so heart-warming it hurts.
“The lake sometimes has a mind of its own; there’s no telling how it might treat you.”
Even Though I Knew the End - C.L. Polk
It never occurred to me this novella would be contentious until I started reading reviews. I adore film noir and Raymond Chandler, so I found the voice of the MC delicious. This author knows the rules of noir well enough to subvert them for best effect. The mingling of noir and fantasy is so seamless I’m stunned it doesn’t happen more. There’s a literal “sold my soul to the devil” angle, and the characters are just unhinged enough to be both compelling and funny, even through the darkness around them. The book goes to some really dark places—mental health issues, electric shock therapy, queer conversion, gory crime scenes, suicidal ideation, the works—but there’s a lightness to the prose that helps it move. It’s brave, unflinching, unapologetically Sapphic in an era that despised it, and very very good.
“I never told her how she had saved me. I never told her how she became the dearest friend I’d ever had. I told her I loved her, but never enough. My Edith of the sparrows. My heart. My world.”
Volatile Memory - Seth Haddon
One of the best SciFi novellas in recent memory, and it is from an Australian writer. The best novellas are books where you don’t feel you’ve been short-changed in the worldbuilding, but also don’t feel too much has been crammed in. Haddon has chosen to work with a big world, but makes it digestible by focusing on two personalities within it and their relationship to each other. With a nod to Arkady Martine in the best ways in terms of having a voice in your head with a BIG personality, this SciFi/Space Opera follows Wylla, a trans woman, and her adventure with an intelligent mask with a memory and a past called Sable. It’s a mad journey of discovery and revenge—fast paced and slick. We have trigger warnings here for death, underage marriage, assault, gruesome murders, suicide, and dysphoria. There’s a sequel novella “Null Entity” coming. I can’t wait.
“You had spent your life reshaping yours. Turning flesh into art, owning wholeheartedly the body that contained your mind.”
Stone Mad - Elizabeth Bear
I’m cheating a bit here because you do need to read the novel “Karen Memory” first to read this, but that’s no hardship as it’s a steampunk western fantasy that’s light on the gadgetry and bigger on place and heart. This is another one of those books that never makes it onto the “Sapphic books you should read” lists for inexplicable reasons. Elizabeth Bear is better known for her big concept SciFi, but when she chooses to really go intimate, her ability to build characters you care about is second to none. Karen and her lover Priya are about to celebrate their freedom from their old life, but in the midst of their excitement they find themselves wrangling magicians, con men, spiritualists, and other bad guys out to pull them back into the muck of their old life. Through it all they keep their wit, their love, and most of all, their heads.
“I was figuring it out. I could feel myself figuring it out. And I wasn’t going to have time to make sense of it before we all got killed.”
Fate’s Bane - C.L. Clark
If you’ve read other C.L. Clark you’ll know they are a writer that feels out of their time. I find their style more akin to high fantasy writers of the past, with a deft touch for worldbuilding that relies on how a character feels about the environment they’re in rather than lots of explanatory description, and it’s a breathtaking skill. They also have the remarkable ability to shift from the magical to the brutal (physically and emotionally).
Fate’s Bane has that “lovers across enemy houses” trope feel (and we all know how that usually ends), and also digs again into the themes of belonging and stretched loyalties that we saw woven so well into “The Unbroken”. Yes it’s tragic, but it’s gorgeous.
“She reached out with her fingers, and I flinched when she brushed the leather collar locked at my throat. Unlike the collars of the other slaves, it was studded with copper. It splashed fire across the dark roundhouse whenever I moved.”