lightreads

Behind the Throne, After the crown, Beyond the Empire, There Before the Chaos, Down Among the Dead

4/5. Haha, okay. This is some quality badfic with a good beta, is what this is. Badfic being an entirely different and much more delightful beast than bad fic, you understand.

Oh, right, this is about the runaway princess turned gun smuggler dragged reluctantly home to her matriarchal space!India empire to rule on the brink of war. It's scifi in the way Star Wars is scifi – that is to say, it's actually epic fantasy in scifi clothing. It's also tropey as all get out. Like the AO3 tags on this sucker would be something like loyalty oaths, loyalty kink, royal AU, bodyguard kink, matriarchy, the best ships are friendships, thieves with hearts of gold, found family, so much hugging, also crying, POC main characters, bisexual main character, gender politics, foul-mouthed princess.

They're not great literature or even particularly good, but they're full of queer people of color and heaps and heaps of feelings (though too much crying, TBH), and they gleefully start jumping various sharks by book four, and I can't wait for the next one.

Content notes: Up close depiction of a psychotic break, loss of fertility, grief.