The Brute of Greengrave

by Jemma Topaz

Peer into a world of mysterious witches and deadly dolls, of ferocious hellhounds, faerie beast-women, and poor, ordinary mortals. A trans lesbian focused collection of nine interlinked stories of occult mystery.

The Brute of Greengrave - at an arcane fox hunt, a young witch wrestles with her nobility and cruelty.

Predatory Finance - a trans employee and her cis boss start an ill-advised relationship; will money, power and risk overcome their circumstances?

With Anguish Moist and Fever-dew - a thief pretends to be a maid for a noble witch, but there are more secrets in this house than the thief suspects.

...and more such tales!

Genres: Fantasy, Transgender, Anthologies, LGBT, Romance

471 pages, Paperback

First published May 27, 2024

About the author

Jemma Topaz is someone who is still really bad at writing profiles/bios. She's a trans lesbian living in Britain, and writing spicy lesbian fiction to escape from unspicy environs.

Reviews

[Elena Abbott · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a ride

Normally a book like this would take me a night, maybe two to finish. I get so into it I forgo sleep to finish. This one took me three. It is intense. Involved. And intriguing in the best of ways.

The stories within display the multifaceted relationships between separate classes of people, namely between witches, humans, and dolls. There are a number of stories, all of them sexy or fun as all hell, but also poignant and in parts relevant to our world as messed up as it is now.

Almost every story deals with some facet of the trans experience, particularly in regard to trans women. It's unapologetic, sometimes crass, but also beautifully written and, for a trans woman like myself, amazingly realistic in its portrayal of how messy people, with and without power or the strength to be their true selves, can be.

An excellent read that I highly recommend, but be ready for some very hot and heavy scenes.

[Sophia Turner]

DNF.

This book includes rape/sexual assault that is not properly labeled in warnings. Please be careful with it.

[Sam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went into this collection having read and enjoyed Tempting Poison – Stories of toxic and broken lesbians, as well as knowing that this story had won the Outstanding Erotica award by thetransfemininereview. So, I had really high hopes for this and I am incredibly happy to report that they were not disappointed.
Set (mostly) in England this collection of stories focuses on a world filled with witches and dolls (humans who were transformed through magic rituals and are now physically and psychologically changed) and the ways they interact with each other. While the first short story already hints at the power imbalance between witches and dolls, I have to admit I found myself kind of dazzled by With Anguish Moist and Fever-dew, one of the fluffier stories in this collection. However, the other short stories soon make it clear that there is a far darker side to this world than I initially expected, which I personally really enjoyed. I wouldn’t advise readers to go into this expecting a very cozy read, however. While it is not a perfect way to escape oppression, I found it fascinating that becoming a witch (or a doll, in some ways) offer trans women in this world a way to reclaim their lives outside of mainstream society, which is still quite transmisogynistic. Equally interesting is the way it treats the magic transition offered here. It is not glorified as the perfect option (there is always a cost and witches don’t work cheap), but also clearly a deeply desirable outcome to many as well as available in various forms depending on what one wishes to achieve.
One of the most interesting things about this collection is how the short stories connect with each other, all of them being set in the same universe and quite regularly with characters we got to know through a different POV in previous stories returning to play a role again. I found it really interesting to connect the dots and see this world grow in front of my eyes.
The erotic aspects of this were also quite fun, exploring a variety of kinky scenarios featuring trans and cis women (but mostly trans women) and I completely understand why this won an award for its writing. Often fun, sometimes unsettling, this is a great collection to check out if you are okay with some of the stories featuring some darker implications. This collection also explores themes of class, abuse and exploitation, so deftly woven into the stories to have left me with a constant feeling of unease, especially as I progressed through the stories. The stories are deeply conscious of the ways power warps the interactions between characters and at points that is exactly what makes it so hot.
All in all, a great collection, which I enjoyed reading and with some aspects that will stick with me. If you like dark fantasy and trans erotica, this is the book for you.

Prologue: Grencombe Abbey, circa 8th Century: A short story set in an Abbey, where the Mother Superior has taken in a runaway a few years back. What will she do when a witch arrives looking for something she lost? Interesting atmospheric writing, but quite short. Despite this, a great introduction to this world, which leaves you unsettled and wondering just what the witch had been up to before.

With Anguish Moist and Fever-dew: A job interview for a live-in maid/submissive that does a little bit of housework for a witch isn’t going to be easy, especially not with the competition. But Amy is determined to get the job. After all, part of the job benefits is a little witchcraft to help her transition along. And when that’s done, she isn’t planning on leaving empty-handed either. Everything is going well, but weirdly her boss always disappears around the full moon. I really enjoyed Amy, she is an interesting character and I enjoyed how the romance developed between her and the Marchioness. I also liked how despite the power differential between Amy and the Marchioness consent played an incredibly important role. Very spicy too, that was fun.

The Witch of Artemisia’s Doll Boutique: Set in a high-end witch shop where witches can purchase the perfect doll for their desires, Floriane the witch running the store has quite a lot of work to do. Between caring for her dolls and keeping the books in order, she is thankful for her witch-in-training apprentice Rose. If only Floriane wasn’t holding her own secrets so close to her chest, forcing herself to always keep up appearances. A really intriguing story examining the (sometimes rather permeable) line between being a witch and being a doll. Very spicy, I liked how in control Rose was despite giving up control in the story, that was intriguing. It is at this point in the story as well, that the darker treatments of dolls in this society starts to really shine through.
TW: consensual dubious consent, past abuse

The Brute of Greengrave: The titular story of this collection follows a young woman from a rich noble family in Britian as she is gifted her first doll and struggles with the expectations placed on her as she is made to attend the upper-class witch events. Very British and really interesting, especially since it dives deeper into questions of agency for dolls and how consent can be coerced. I also loved that it explored more what being turned into a doll entails, which was frankly terrifying at points. I do like that various animal-dolls have different personalities, that was also interesting to read. The main witch romance was also really sweet and in general, this short story somehow really straddled the line between the sweet romance aspects and the really messed up world building aspects. Also, it was great to read about a handsome butch as the main character. Finally, this was the short story where I realized that the stories are connected by more than just a shared universe and I really liked that a lot.
TW: abduction, lack of agency, consensual dubious consent, very dubious consent due to brainwashing, normalization of sexual assault in society

Why Enoki is the Best Cat-doll and also should be Allowed to Choose Titles: The backstory of Enoki, the cat-doll in the previous story. I love the change in speech between the characters here and Enoki is sweet. Definitely a heartbreaking story, but thankfully Enoki found a safe home.
TW: animal death, animal sickness, past domestic abuse, transmisogyny

Predatory Finance: Trans programmer office drone, the lesbian CEO who suddenly shows an interest in her and the doll programmed to fuck and kill her owner. Fucking the rich has never been so complicated. Pip, the programmer, is a really interesting character and I loved how this story took the tropes surrounding CEO romances and examined them critically, while still allowing Pip the agency to have an ill-advised romance. Sabine, the CEO, is both strangely pitiable and terrifying and while she tries not to (or pretends not to), the power she holds over Pip (in so many ways, as a cis woman, as her boss and as a filthy rich woman) makes this a very messy story. I really liked that it explored what people find hot about romances such as these, while not sugarcoating it either. All in all, quite enjoyable story, but I would advise readers to heed the trigger warnings.
TW: billionaires, guilt tripping, mention of sexual assault, suicide attempt, suicidal ideation, threat of murder, transmisogyny, unsafe BDSM practices mention

The Scent of Witches and Hellhounds: A deer-doll finds her place in a pack of hellhounds just as a researcher finds her place among women. I enjoyed that this story featured an egg and her coming-out narrative, that was really sweet. I also really enjoyed getting to hear more about the wild dolls living in the forest and to see how they fare after the events of The Brute of Greengrave. A cute coming-out story with some great spice again, but this story in particular stands out for what it adds to the worldbuilding.
TW: ableism, abuse, gore, murder, suicidal ideation

On the Origin of the Anti-Witch Alliance: A short interview about student witches pulling a few pranks on an infamous anti-witch activist. Very fun.
TW: assault, transmisogyny (implied)

Investigations: This story follows a member of the Knightly Order, tasked with making sure witches are safe and figuring out various mysteries. I did enjoy the inclusion of a potential stone top, as well as the additional info on how the British public thinks about dolls. Halfway through the story switches to another POV, that of Pip, who finds herself trapped in a strange forested area alongside a hot butch. If only the mystery of this place would stop interrupting the hot butch’s flirting. Really interesting and I love how it solved some questions I had left over from previous short stories!
TW: abduction/forced contract work, gore, murder

Some shall be Pardoned, and some Punished; Rattlesnake Bluff, 1889: A small outpost is preparing to fight an approaching doll (who we have met before!). An intriguing backstory to one of the characters, filled with blood and gore. I liked it and found it a really great finale to this collection!
TW: abduction, abuse, forced transition, gender dysphoria, sexual assault (off-page, implied)

[oniongrapefruit · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s a sense as you open the pages of The Brute of Greengrave that you’re reading cozy fantasy—low-stakes, domestic, comfortable—until you remember that this is set in a world where an aristocracy of witches rule society and turn people into dolls: beings that can be servants, bodyguards, soldiers and more, and whose creation doesn’t exactly care about the original human’s consent. Then it’s not so cozy suddenly. In this regard Brute is a break from Topaz’s prior work in that, while it has her signature humor and smut, it brings her touch of social commentary to the fore: class, trans femininity, the conditions of the queer body.

The titular story itself is about pushing back against this social order, told from the perspective of a daughter of said aristocracy. Despite the setting being trans-normative, “Brute” deftly engages with the experience of being othered:

Long before I was—by choice—a traitor and—mostly by choice—a murderer, I was an unhappy child. Among the noble witch families, there are some who take the noble part seriously, and some who take the witch part seriously. Mine was definitely the former. Neither of [my parents] had found enough time, among their important activities, for anything as trivial as raising a child.

[…]

Fortunately, I was packed off to boarding school as soon as was practical. For most children of my class this was an awful time. Their parents might have been terrible, but they were at least present; so now they were homesick and lonely. I thought I was not; in fact, I was, but loneliness was like the water I swam in.

This is a riff, of course, on the private boarding schools attended by the British upper-class, but it’s also a story of how the narrator—Verity—doesn’t belong, in more ways than one (‘the fact that I was uncommonly tall and wide for a girl meant that bullies were likely to try elsewhere’). While not written as such, it’s a fantastic alternative to the infamous wizard school books: “Brute” functions as a ruthless critique of the magic boarding school sub-genre, chronicling the life of a daughter of privilege who grows increasingly alienated from the cruelty of her class, and in the end subverts the power she inherited.

In spite of the existence of magic transition, Topaz makes depiction of transness explicit and effortless… and access is, naturally, not equal; in “With Anguish Moist and Fever-Dew” the narrator is looking to serve an aristocratic witch as a maid specifically so she’ll get access to gender-reassignment rituals (though she didn’t account for her new mistress being—even for a witch—unusually eccentric). “The Scent of Witches and Hellhounds” features a male narrator, but naturally “he” doesn’t stay that for long. Many of the stories, too, have intriguing mysteries to them that will often surprise you—and some will break your heart while at it.

Stories in this collection combine whimsy with a sense of unease, that underneath all this pastoral witching fun—and all the BDSM—there is something rotten in this society, and that rot must be dealt with. Even deceptively simple stories like “The Witch of Artemisia’s Doll Boutique” have their own twists (which connects with a later story, “Investigations”, in a very satisfying way): this is core to Brute, that the appearance of cozy comfort exists as a veil for something else. Social commentary, of course, but also unflinching depictions of transgressive queerness. In that regard and more, it makes Jemma Topaz a highly unique and unmissable author.

[Luna Twig · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone that grew up with Harry Potter it hurt finding out that author is super vocal about hating people like me that finally took the courage to live as their authentic selves. I always enjoyed that style of world building that places the magical and the mundane as having evolved together in lockstep.

And this is where Jemma Topaz's "The Brute of Greengrave and Other Stories" comes in, as a fantastically well written "collection of short stories". The worldbuilding is utterly wonderful and actually very cosy feeling. The stories themselves are written with a literary bent (literary smut if you will) and so that they are fulfilling reads on their own, the hot smut just icing on the cake. It has wonderful trans and lesbian representation that has meant so much too me after mostly reading (as it's the predominant market share) cishet* romances. *Cishet: very cis, mostly het, with the occasional gay relationships.

This part may contain a bit of a spoiler as it refers to recurring elements, vaguely but some like to have as little expectations as possible.:


Now I am personally hard-pressed to describe this as solely a "collection" of short stories as there's a number of themes and elements that weave themselves throughout the stories. It actually reads more like a loose novel. As you read through the stories you realize that perhaps some characters that felt minor or secondary throughout may have actually been the main character who's story is being told here. Well done to pull that off.

If Jemma Topaz sets another book in this trans lesbian witch world I will be buying it no questions asked. I bought this book on a whim as it was recommended in an annual review of trans authored books and I figured at the very least supporting a trans author... Yeah first purchase of 2025 and so far definitely one of my top purchases this year!

[Blaize · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book. I bought it because it won the Transfem Review reader's choice award for best erotica, so I was expecting good erotica and I certainly got that, but I was also delighted by the whole fantasy world that was explored through the series of connected short stories. I didn't expect an erotica book to make me laugh out loud on every other page, and also make me cry at one point (MUSHROOM!). I would love to read more from this world, it's a great setting for some *very* hot encounters.

[Anne, V · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved all the stories in this book. It is "ten stories of witches, dolls, beasts, and sexy magic" and each story was unique, thought provoking and really interesting. And really really hot!

[Eve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong 4