Every once in a while someone on a list asks about books with slashy content. Since I entered slash fandom because a friend I kept lending homoerotic books to in college suggested I check out some slash sites online, I figure I could help on a list of books. The broad majority of these are science fiction/fantasy because that’s what I read outside of fandom. Some of these are probably out of print, but if you run into them....

* Sexual tension recognized by at least one member of the party
^ Slashy vibe but unacknowledged by the characters. You know, like where the men involved still chase women and claim they feel only a brotherly/comradely bond. Right.

C.J. Cherryh: My favorite author. 90% of her books have a slash vibe. It throbs between so many of her male characters. Add angst, stir well. And I just have a thing for tortured men who think too much, as well as Cherryh’s sociological dissection and intriguing aliens. These are the slashy books I consider best and most notable.

* The ironic thing about the acknowledged couples of Cyteen is that they have the least heat of her slashy characters. Intriguing plot about the nature of genius, identity, love, and treachery, though. (sf)

^ In the Morgaine Cycle [Gate of Ivrel, Well of Shiuan, Fires of Azeroth, and Exile’s Gate], Vanye USTs with everyone he meets, but especially with his half-brother Erij and his cousin Roh. To make it kinkier with the cousin, Roh looks almost exactly like him. Vanye suffers beautifully and gets injured constantly.
Gate of Ivrel was also partially rendered in graphic novel form and can be bought directly from C.J. Cherryh. For reasons Cherryh explains far better than I could, the series didn't go far past the characters' escape from Leth, so the slashiest stuff was yet to come. Though we do get to see Liell manhandle Vanye a bit. I have the two graphic novels and highly recommend them. You can even get them autographed. They link the Morgaine series into Cherryh's universe more explicitly, and Jane Fancher's artwork is highly expressive. Her Vanye is as young and pretty and somehow stubborn looking as you'd expect him to be. I think the cheekbones and nose have something to do with it. Jane Fancher's informative and often funny notes and sketches about the project can be found here. (fantasy with some science fiction elements)

^ For Faery in Shadow, I can only say Guh where Caith and the pooka Dubhain are concerned. Dubhain is such a tease. Caith being utterly damned and miserable makes it tastier. (fantasy)

^ Rusalka, Chernevog, and Yvgenie show a deep bond between Pyetr and Sasha. I keep wanting Pyetr to care more. Sasha’s one of my favorite characters. (fantasy)

^ In the Foreigner Universe, when Jase Graham shows up in Invader he messes up Bren’s already complicated loyalties. There are moments in Precursor when the charge is so high that you’re dying for them to touch one another.... Great series about the perils of First Contact and assuming that humans would vote as a bloc. Hell, the ship humans are almost more alien to the planet humans than the alien race they uneasily share the planet with. Consists of Foreigner, Invader, Inheritor, and Precursor, with more to come. But I didn’t feel that Inheritor was up to Cherryh’s usual standard. (sf)

^ I know not everyone would see UST in Heavy Time and Hellburner, but I really think there are times when Pollard is sublimating lust under his frequent desire to beat the crap out of Dekker. <g> [recently these two novels were collected in a single edition called Devil to the Belt.] (sf)

^ Tristen and Cefwyn. Mmmm. Poor Tristen, since it’ll never happen. [Fortress in the Eye of Time, Fortress of Eagles, Fortress of Owls, Fortress of Dragons, and more coming.] (fantasy)

Jane Fancher: In the two series I’ve seen from her, both have open, acknowledged m/m relationships. The books read fast, though the angst level of her characters can get over-the-top high.

* Groundties, Uplink, and Harmonies of the ‘Net have the angstiest boy of them all, Stephen Ridenour. So pretty, so intelligent, so utterly fucked in the head. Wesley Smith can be fun and annoying. (sf)

* Ring of Lightning, Ring of Intrigue, and Ring of Destiny has a huge cast and a lot of intrigue. Mikhyel is the second angstiest boy of them all. Unfortunately, for me things started going wrong in this series near the end of the second book. The third book didn’t do much for me at all. (fantasy)

Tanya Huff: 75% of her characters are bi--main and supporting characters--and matter-of-fact about it. Of what I’ve read:

* Fire’s Stone is one of my favorite books. You so want them to get together and be happy. Great characterization too. Chandra could have been obnoxious in different hands, but here she’s just young and defensive. (fantasy)

* Fifth Quarter is one perverse little book. Fun, though. A sibling team of assassins get caught together in the sister’s body chasing after the brother’s stolen body. The brother and sister want one another. The sister wants to do the guy who’s in her brother’s body. Her brother wants them to do the guy too, but he wants to get him to vacate afterward. * The Quartered Sea is also slashy and features Bannon, but it's not any Bannon I know, and the book wasn't as successful with me. (fantasy)

^ The Last Wizard has some moments where Raulin and Jago, brothers, think things of one another that strike me as other than brotherly. Raulin gets excited imagining the woman he loves and the brother he loves all entangled with one another.... [recently reprinted as part of a mass market paperback edition including the first novel Child of the Grove. The mass market edition is known as Wizard of the Grove.] (fantasy)

Melissa Scott: Every book she writes has at least one same-sex couple as well as some interesting science fiction plot ideas. My favorites are * Dreamships and its kind of sequel, * Dreaming Metal, which illustrate the potential and perils of artificial intelligence and asks whether people could ever be ready for it. Her book on writing science fiction, Conceiving the Heavens, is one of the few author-on-writing books I’d ever recommend.

Poppy Z. Brite: It’s rare to find straight people in her books. I know some readers are very devoted to her, but I find her a guilty pleasure, one I enjoy while I’m reading but get a bad aftertaste from afterward. Somehow, plot twists that involve two people deciding to do ‘shrooms in a homicidally haunted house don’t make sense when you think about them.... The way that female characters, if they even show up at all, usually die horribly isn’t endearing to me either. I’m fond of Lost Souls, Drawing Blood, and a short story collection that can be found under two different names: Wormwood or Swamp Foetus. Exquisite Corpse’s courting serial killers were fun, but I hated everybody else in the book and didn’t even like the killers very much. (horror)

Books (in no particular order)

* Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner. Everybody recommends this one, and for good reason. Witty dialogue, intrigue, the obvious love, and the alluringly mysterious and self-destructive Alec are my major reasons. It’s well-written, of course. I think I ran through this in a few hours. (fantasy)

* Luck in the Shadows, Stalking Darkness, and Traitor’s Moon by Lynn Flewelling. I think the first book is by far the best. (fantasy)

^ Lord of the Fire Lands by David Drake. Okay, most of the Kings’ Blades books have a slashy vibe due to the Blades being soulbound to the people they have to bodyguard, but this one struck me as above and beyond. It also gets points for having one character wonder how his people will react when he brings his Blade bodyguard, a much younger boy, home as his companion. (fantasy)

^ Igniting the Reaches, Through the Breach, and Fireships by David Drake. A love so powerful, so obvious, so total... so never going to be consummated the way a slasher wants it to be. *sigh* (sf)

* Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. Duh, people. <g> (Man, what genre could you classify this book as?)

* The Stone Prince and The Painter Knight by Fiona Patton. The slash is much closer to the surface in The Painter Knight, and I think it’s the better book too. (fantasy)

* Lion’s Heart and Lion’s Soul by Karen Wehrstein. Pretty matter of fact. Everybody’s doing everybody, it seems. Plus, war and torture and gladiator stuff and Angst. (fantasy)

^ Oscar & Lucinda by Peter Carey. It’s only a subplot, and I have to warn you that all the characters make stupid decisions, which life then punishes them severely for. The ending struck me as so unnecessarily cruel that I wanted to throw the book across the room. Fair warning. (historical fiction, Booker Prize-winner that shouldn’t have been)

* The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice. Of course. And I think Louis had some UST for his brother, a feeling that crystalized for me during the Interview With the Vampire nightmare sequence in which we discover that Lestat and Paul look a lot alike.... (horror)

^ Under the Eye of God and A Covenant of Justice by David Gerrold. The Sawyer brothers go beyond brotherly love no matter what they think. The vibe is thumping.... (sf)

* Knight of Ghosts and Shadows and Summoned to Tourney by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon. An m/m/f relationship, but I mainly read hoping that Eric would realize how badly Beth and Kory were using and disregarding him, then leave them. Of everyone he knows, the half-elven sorceress trying to suck his power away treats him best, and that’s sad. Your mileage may vary. (urban fantasy)

* Magic’s Pawn, Magic’s Promise, and Magic’s Price by Mercedes Lackey. This series definitely has its sweet moments, but the angst can get over-the-top. Demerits for following what I call the Valdemar Formula:

* An Exchange of Hostages, Prisoner of Conscience, and Hour of Judgment by Susan R. Matthews. In an intriguing future, torture is an accepted part of the judicial process, and Andrej, a surgeon, discovers a taste for the torturer’s art that sickens him. It’s his very empathy that makes him great at it. Deeply disturbing. His personal slave develops a love and devotion to him after he treats the man with affection and total respect. But Andrej may strike some people as a Mary Sue. (sf)

* A Stitch in Time by Andrew J. Robinson [A Star Trek: Deep Space Nine book]. Written by the actor who plays Garak, this book is Garak’s history revealed at last. I always did have a feeling that Robinson had a whole past in his own head as he played the mysterious alien. And there is UST here as Garak writes Julian Bashir an account of his past and Cardassia’s present. Unlike so many media tie-in novels, in which nothing of the status quo as seen on the shows can be affected, there's a feeling here that anything can happen or be revealed, that the writer was given an unusual freedom. (sf media tie-in)

* The Hall of the Mountain King, The Lady of Han-Gilen, A Fall of Princes, and Arrows of the Sun by Judith Tarr. The Lady... is slash-free but for a brief mention of a relationship, but the others are a feast of it, though only Arrows of the Sun resolves the sexual tension in the way a slasher wants, even if A Fall of Princes teases and teases and teases.... Grand high fantasy, full of dangerous love, high intrigue, vengeance, and empire building. (fantasy)

* The Will of the Wanderer, The Paladin of the Night, and The Prophet of Akhran by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. Amidst the war of the gods, the stranded wizard Mathew fights to stay alive and sane in an utterly alien land. Having to also fight his desire for Khardan, something forbidden amongst the desert nomads Mathew now lives among, doesn't make anything easier. The irony of Khardan having to take Mathew as a wife to save Mathew’s life--long story--only makes the situation harder for our wizard. (fantasy)

^ Vampire$ by John Steakley. Macho men Jack Crow and Cherry Cat love one another deeply. They just don’t want to look at the nature of it. This book’s writing style is occasionally obnoxious, but Crow and Cat kept me reading. (horror fantasy)

* The Tempus stories [various short stories in the Thieves’ World series; the Beyond Sanctuary, Beyond the Veil, Beyond Wizardwall, and Storm Seed novels] by Janet Morris; Janet Morris & Chris Morris for Storm Seed. I don’t get it. Niko is a pedophile and drunkard, a cowardly, arrogant junkie. He’s never met a person he can’t somehow blame for his own stupidity. His inability to keep his pants on keeps bringing back his army’s most dangerous enemy. Yet everybody loves him and talks about what a great man and soldier he is. Including Randal, his much abused, neglected, and put-upon mage partner, who’s utterly besotted with him. Run for your life, Randal! As usual, V fell deeply for the character all the other characters denigrate and mistreat. But maybe Chris Morris is more sympathetic to Randal, because the mage comes out better in Storm Seed than in any of the stories written by Janet Morris alone. (fantasy)

*Skin by Kathe Koja. Welder/metal sculptor Tess Bajac wants to put motion into her pieces. Bibi, a dancer and artist into piercings and scarification, helps her find a way. Tess, Bibi, and a growing collective of dancers, body artists, producers, explosive and effects experts, and demolitionists go on to create Grand Guignol horror show performance art. But tragedy and success strike, causing a spiral into self-torture and madness for all involved. An object lesson on how sometimes love isn't enough. But the narrative can be too self-consciously experimental at times. (psychological horror)

*Winterlong: A Novel by Elizabeth Hand. In this hallucinatory novel, you get to see the disturbing (and ambisexual) remains of humanity irrevocably altered by genetic engineering. A girl and her beautiful long-lost twin brother are drawn to a green-eyed boy whose name is Death. (sf)

*A Different Light by Elizabeth A. Lynne. Jimson has an incurable disease and a short lifespan. If he stays on Las Flores, he'd have twenty years. If he goes out a'traveling, he'll die in about a year. He chooses to travel. Part of it is to see new things and live before he dies, but part of it is to try to catch up with Russell, who left him 14 years ago. I have to say that I can't recommend this one, since the ending is wacky and things just happen in a lightly sketched-in way. To me it felt like an outline of a book. But your mileage may vary. (sf)

^ Black Sun Rising, When True Night Falls, and Crown of Shadows by C.S. Friedman. Pity priest Damien Vryce for his fascination with the immortal, evil sorcerer Gerald Tarrant. Wouldn’t you feel the same in his place? But I hated the first book for what it did to a character I really liked. (fantasy with some science fiction elements)

^ The Legend of Nightfall by Mickey Zucker Reichert. Nightfall’s been doing just fine for himself as a killer with no conscience. But getting bound to the naïve and occasionally endearing Prince Ned is doing endless damage to his view of the world and own self-image. (fantasy)

^ The Sun Sword series (so far The Broken Crown, The Uncrowned King, The Shining Court, and Sea of Sorrows) by Michelle West. There are some very intense relationships shown between women in this series, such as the depictions of Diora and the other wives, the flavor of Jay/Jewel's memories of Duster, and the bond that grows between Diora and Margret. Where Diora and Margret are concerned, Sea of Sorrows actually comes right out and says that they're not lovers, but there are things they do that make you feel like sex would be the next step. (fantasy)

^ The various Eternal Champion books by Michael Moorcock. Am I the only person who sees slash between Jhary-a-Conel and the various incarnations of the Eternal Champion? I doubt it.(fantasy)

^ Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. Crowley and Aziraphale feel a lot like a couple to me, and they did to torch as well.(humorous fantasy)

* The Desert Peach by Donna Barr. Thrill to the adventures of the Desert Fox’s fictional pretty younger brother. Funny Nazis is not what this book is about at all. In addition to the humor and men occasionally doing one another you get tragedy and human drama, the absurdity and costs of war. And Rosen so doesn’t deserve Pfirsich. (historical fiction)

* Dawn: Drama; Dawn: Lucifer’s Halo and Dawn: The Return of the Goddess mini-series by Joseph Michael Linsner. How many times do you get to see the goddess of rebirth in lingerie? Hey, Linsner is moving out of his misogyny, which is a great relief to me since I can then enjoy his art without being so offended by his stories. He’s still too hung up on the Christian imagery, but he’s moving to an "all faiths having the same core" vibe. But the slashiness comes from his gorgeous and heart-broken Lucifer, who’s still suffering from being kicked out of heaven and tossed away by the love of his life. To top it off, his lover has Dawn take even his halo away.... There’s a kiss between Lucifer and... ah, Ahura Mazda, His identity whose name shall not be mentioned though we know who He really is, in Dawn: The Return of the Goddess #3 that I think you should see. (fantasy)

^ Poison Elves by Drew Hayes. Macho as they are, but Luse and Jace still vibe at each other. Then there’s the incomprehensible, woman-hating, but terribly funny Purple Marauder.... Though Hayes needs to check his spelling. It’s not a mark of authenticity or indie honor that you can’t spell, guy. And if you name an issue "Nemesis," please oh please don’t spell it "Nemisis." (fantasy)

* Shade, the Changing Man by Peter Milligan, with art usually by Chris Bachalo. You might have to dig through the used bins for this defunct series, but much of it is worth it. I picked up the series after the American Scream storyline, so I don't know what it was like then, but at its best it was a great slice of weirdness. Then in the Off the Road storyline, Lenny and Kathy started getting together.... Lenny was a great creation, a strong woman who always had a wisecrack or a line of bullshit ready, who held up cabs for fun, who usually had a gift for cutting through the crap. Unrepentant, fun yet also self-aware, she wasn't like anything I'd seen in a comic book before at that time (1992). She's the kind of person who could be caught in the act in bed with a friend's girlfriend in #26 and be utterly blase. And I do mean "in the act," since Shade, unable to hold his humanoid form, was the blanket they'd had sex under. Later on, her past started to catch up with her and she didn't deal with it well, but by then I felt that the whole series had derailed. Aside from the goodness of Lenny, Shade also played with dark humor (you have to see the Christmas issue) and gender fucks (the Shade the Changing Woman storyline, in which Shade, in woman form, to his shock, ends up having sex with a man).
Peter Milligan also wrote a limited series called Enigma, which I recommend as well. I think it was collected as a graphic novel. Our stuck-in-a-rut, nominally het but almost asexual protagonist looks for the answers to why someone claiming to be a super-hero from one of his boyhood comics has suddenly appeared, complete with super-villains, in the real world and ends up on a journey of self-discovery in the process. He never thought he'd fall in love along the way.... Like Shade, the Changing Man, this series could be too self-consciously weird at times, and I feel it made some missteps--I would have reacted to Titus' advances in the same way in his place, because they were way too forward, not because of some homophobic thing--but I recommend the series. (both are fucked-up, sort-of super-hero fiction)