There's an interesting story in last week's Strange Horizons. It's sort of one of those it didn't really need to be genre except to make the twist work, but I'd probably be hypocritical to critique others for that... Good anyway.
I'm currently reading a Steampunkish novel, All Men Of Genius by Lev AC Rosen. I say steampunkish because it seems to be more about trappings, but maybe that's core genre, I dunno. I picked it up because my college alumni mag made a big deal about it. Then Strange Horizons reviewed it favorably this week. I'm not as impressed.
I think I need a keyboard and to finish the book to explain why, but I have this question, which also occurred to me while reading Richard Morgan's Thirteen, though that was much meatier: Why is it that when men write novels with a romance as the main structure, no one ever refers to or complains about the novel as more a romance novel than SFF?
Here, the romance is the point, it's based on a romance of Shakespeare as well as a Wilde play, the steam is mostly trappings- they drive the story ostensibly but this is not necessary except to appeal to that set of readers (from within the genre, from the author photo). So why isn't it getting slagged for being too lite, as similar female-authored novels do?
As the gay people are also mostly setting and props. But more later.
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