Supervillainz

by Alicia E. Goranson

Rump-smacking good action-adventure trans fiction that boots transgender literature out of the classroom and into modern hipster culture with its unapologetic depiction of young genderqueers and their daily struggles for income, housing and friendship. A hard-edged tale of passion, revenge, and low-rent apartments, SUPERVILLAINZ has romance, car chases, brutal superheroes, epic battles in dyke bars, and a climax that will have you reaching for the tissues.

"This fast-paced adventure features transgendered characters who immediately grab the reader's interest and empathy. SUPERVILLAINS is saturated with laughter, tears, and adrenaline. It's sexy, queer, and smarter than most whips"--Patrick Califia.

Genres: Fiction, Transgender, Queer

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Alicia E. Goranson writes outsider fiction - pop genre fiction with underrepresented characters.

Reviews

[Tobi]

This book had a major impact on me. The first adventure novels I've read with trans characters - and specifically characters from a sex-positive queer community who had experiences I could recognize. When the power-suit wearing vigilante "super heroes" falsely believe our trans protagonist killed one of them and begin hunting her down, she must go on the run, staying with different friends, while investigating who these vigilantes are and how she can prove her innocence - or even take them down.

[LB Lee]

This book is definitely an oddball. I deeply appreciate it for its depiction of local Boston queer community, circa 2001, and love that the trans protagonists get to be flawed and imperfect, but MAN is this book weird and uneven! There's a really strange surreal sequence involving masturbating in an possessed automobile junkyard which NEVER gets mentioned again except for ONE sentence at the very end, and the gore at the beginning feels strange and out-of-place and either added late or forgotten due to strange editing.

That said, I appreciate the bucking of classic superhero themes and pulling the focus from individual fighting to an individual vs. community focus.

This book is a weird one, and I feel like it's very roughness would make it charming for some people. I think that if I had found this when I was first figuring out my transness, I would've really enjoyed it, but as it is, I found it just okay.

[Dana]

This was a fun, light read, made even more enjoyable by the fact that the protagonists are transpeople who are believable, compassionate, and well-written. Furthermore, the fact that they're trans is, thankfully, not the central focus of the book. It was extremely refreshing to read a bit of fairly well-done queer pulp action, and I recommend it to anyone who is looking for the same.

[Edie]

unfortunately the pacing of this book was so off i couldnt get through it but i did enjoy the characters and concepts a lot!

[Thomas Hale]

Based around the lives of a queer community in Boston in 2001, this book is a weird but engrossing blend of action and interpersonal drama. A trans woman is blamed for the murder of a masked vigilante, and it puts the lives and livelihoods of her and her closest friends in jeopardy. There's espionage, romance, revenge, sex and action, as advertised on the book cover. The story is heavy on regular "queer and/or trans living in turn-of-the-millennium Boston" slice-of-life stuff - I really liked the characters (Bit and Devon, the main protagonists, in particular), so I was happy they were allowed time to interact and be fleshed out. (I really enjoyed the minor thread of Galeno and Chloe's relationship, too - a lot of the smaller moments in the book feel lifted straight from life.) This does come at the expense of the action though, and the pacing means that some major set pieces feel rushed and hard to follow. That said, I enjoyed it overall, and it's worth checking out for its unique premise alone.

[Emily]

I am so torn about this book! There are a lot of literary things about it I don't like, and a lot of gender things about it I do like.

My big issue is that, for the great majority of the book, nothing anybody does makes any sense. Like, "My friend is in mortal danger... ahh fuck her, I want a beer!" and "These kids are clearly not the culprits of (crime), so let's keep destroying their lives!" So I wouldn't want these people for my friends, even if they do have random friendcestuous sex all the time.

But sometimes the things they do make perfect sense: when it's about gender. Out of everything in the book, that part felt the most real.

I tried to ignore this when I started reading, but let me tell you: it feels really good to have (some) kickass realistic queer main characters. I don't know how to describe it other than to tell you we need more books with queer characters like that.

So, two stars in general, but a whopping huge tilt for the gender stuff.

[Catherine]

Fairly conflicted about this one. The sfnal content is negligible and I never got a real sense of any of the characters - no one has any real depth to them. The plot and character motivations made a lot less sense than I would have liked. What I did like was the portrayal of people from a fairly wide range of gender identities and the portions of the plot that kept moving along just enough to keep me engaged. Close to a 2 star read, but bumping up for the things that I did like.

[Lisa]

A christmas present with a difference, the book Supervillainz was both unexpected and fun, with an edge to it. However, it took me two goes to read the end and understand what had actually happened - perhaps I'd read it too quickly :)

[Rachel]

A landmark in trans fiction, tragically out of print — but available for free on the author's website!