Novelist Jade Song writes that being queer is “like moving through water while everyone else is on land,” and writer Stephanie Monteith writes that “queer is finding we could breathe underwater all along.” Maybe there really is something queer about water, which resists boundaries and divisions and can flow from one vessel to another and from one form to another with ease. Perhaps that’s why a number of fantasy novels with queer themes are set in underwater worlds or landscapes where water is prominent. Water embodies the otherness/worldliness that people outside sexual and gender norms can sometimes feel, and the fluidity that can characterize their lives.
During the pandemic in 2020 when I began writing The Moonstone Covenant at night in my crowded apartment, the magic of water was foremost in my mind. The city I was creating in my novel was a multicultural archipelago, its islands surrounded by a river rushing down to the sea, its canals clogged with bookboats, gondolas, and floating liquor parlors—its vast Library, repository of the world’s wisdom, looking down on a bustling harbor. In designing Moonstone, I was inspired by other fantasy worlds where people live close to the water: Cherryh’s Merovingen, for example, or LeGuin’s Earthsea. And I was also inspired by my own island home of Manhattan, and other beloved places like Venice and Fire Island, all with their own intense relationship to water: rivers, bays, canals, shorelines.
My protagonist in my own watery landscape is Istehar Sha’an, a refugee forest prophet who’s brought her forest people downriver to the city of Moonstone to keep them safe now that invaders have destroyed their forest home. Though the city’s a refuge for them, it’s also a place of corruption and hostility, where her people’s magic is forbidden. In her time in the city, Istehar’s married three wives—a warrior librarian, an apothecary who’s trying to solve her parents’ murder, and a prince’s former concubine. Together, these women embark on a quest that will upend their lives and transform their city.
As I wrote about my four protagonists’ intertwined stories, I got to watch the characters weave around their water-rich landscape, using alleyways, gondolas, ferries, rowboats, bridges, and even swimming to get where they needed to go. Now that the book is complete, I’ve come to see that maybe my landscape and my characters are intertwined.
In this list of contemporary fantasy novels, queer characters inhabit watery landscapes: islands, underwater houses, magic wells, ocean depths, and more. In these queer waterworlds, water has so many ways it can manifest, including as an anthropomorphous presence and as a transformative force.
Meg Shields writes that water is “a liminal space where bodies are free to exist as they are.” So too, these novels explore water as a space where new and fluid ways of existing become possible.
A Letter to the Luminous Deep by Sylvie Cathrall
The main characters in this charming fantasy (written almost entirely in the form of letters and in the tone of a Jane Austen novel) live in an underwater home called The Deep House, surrounded by the mystery and beauty of the ocean. E., a brilliant recluse, observes a strange and beautiful creature outside her window and starts up a correspondence with a scholar named Henerey to understand what she’s seen. The two fall in love and then vanish, leaving E.‘s sister Sophy and Henerey’s brother Vyerin to piece together what happened through their letters.
The Water Outlaws by S. L. Huang
Set in a wuxia fantasy realm, The Water Outlaws follows the story of Lin Chong, a martial arts instructor with magical and spiritual powers that aid her in battle. Loyal to her country and emperor, she serves faithfully until a corrupt villain falsely accuses her of treason. Branded a criminal and targeted for assassination, she flees, and is recruited to become a bandit of Liangshan, joining other outlaw women in their rebellion against the empire’s corruption. These righteous bandits operate in a sprawling marsh, hiding in the borders between land and water. Queer and genderqueer characters fill the pages of this book, and there’s a queer love story—as well as intense loyalty, friendship, and camaraderie among women.
The Deep by Rivers Solomon
In The Deep, Yetu is the memory-keeper for her people, the wajinru— an undersea-dwelling merpeople who possess multiple sex organs and can self-determine their gender. These merpeople are descendants of pregnant women thrown off of slave ships, now living beneath the ocean. Their collective memories are so painful that the weight is entrusted to one person to hold. Yetu’s responsibilities, and the pain that comes with them, are so overwhelming that she flees to the ocean’s surface. There, she discovers the world her ancestors left behind them—and embarks on a queer romance. As the novel progresses, Yetu realizes her people must reclaim their memories and their identity in order to survive.
The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune
In this novel, Linus Baker, a case worker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, arrives on the magical island of Marsyas to evaluate an orphanage run by a man named Arthur Parnassus, and determine whether it should be shut down. The six children at the orphanage possess magical qualities: one is a shapeshifter, one a forest sprite, one a wyvern, one the Antichrist, and so on. As Linus investigates, he’s told about a terrible threat that exists, but also discovers he’s opening up to love. The novel contains a gay romance, and the motley family of magical children is as diverse as one might wish.
The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman
A young warrior named Collum arrives at Camelot, desperate to become a knight, but he’s too late. King Arthur died two weeks ago at the Battle of Camlann, along with many of the knights of the Round Table. Those who survived are not the great heroes of the legend, but rather the oddball members: a fool, a Saracen knight, Merlin’s disgruntled apprentice Nimue, and others. Collum bands together with these eccentric survivors and undertakes a great magical adventure to rebuild Britain, reclaim Excalibur, and heal their broken world. The Bright Sword makes explicit the queerness of King Arthur’s court, with gay and genderqueer characters who play a significant role in driving the narrative. Mysterious water sorcery is woven throughout the novel, featuring fairy lakes, otherworldly rivers, magic wells, and oceans that contain hidden treasures.
The Legend of the White Snake by Sher Lee
In The Legend of the White Snake, a xianxia fantasy novel, the love story at its heart begins in the West Lake, where the white snake Zhen saves prince Xian from drowning. Zhen swallows the spirit pearl that could have cured Xian’s mother of her fatal illness, allowing him to take on a human form. When Xian begins searching for a white snake to cure his mother, his journeys take him to a far-off city, where he encounters Zhen disguised as a stableboy, unaware that Zhen is the white snake who once saved him. Their budding romance is threatened by Zhen’s secret. Will the truth separate the lovers, in spite of their intense connection? This lush romance is a powerful queer retelling of a classic Chinese folktale.
Lies We Sing to the Sea by Sarah Underwood
Every year, the city of Ithaca condemns twelve young women to be hanged as an offering to the ocean god Poseidon as penance for the murder of the twelve maids of Penelope. This year, Leto, an orphan who sells prophecies, is chosen for the sacrifice. Instead of dying, Leto awakens on the shore of Pandou, now gifted with water magic and the power to become an aquatic creature. Melantho, the island’s keeper, tells her the way to break Poseidon’s curse: Leto must kill the last prince of Ithaca.
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