Faith's Reviews > Stag Dance

Wow, wow, WOW!

Thank you NetGalley, Torrey Peters, and the publisher for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I was absolutely blown away by this. This is a collection of 4 novellas and each one is very different but all very trans with a lot of repeated themes. Each novella displays a mastery of both writing and storytelling.

Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones: sci-fi and dystopian and edging into horror. A trans woman creates a drug that completely turns off sex hormone production- and it’s contagious. The idea is that once it spreads everyone will have to choose their gender, but of course there are some unintended consequences. What I loved most about this was the incredibly toxic relationship between the narrator and her frenemy/ex-lover Lexi.

The Chaser: Another very toxic relationship, this time between two teenagers at boarding school. One of them coming to terms with their identity, the other coming to terms with his sexuality. There is a lot of drama, mixed signals, petty revenge and sabotage.

Stag Dance: The main novella and longest of the collection. Told from the POV of a Paul Bunyan type character who is part of an illegal logging operation. The manager of the operation decides to hold a "stag dance" where any of the men can choose to be treated like women if they wear a fabric triangle over their crotch. Paul Bunyan wants to wear a triangle and be courted, but he’s got some competition with the camp beauty- Lisen. There is yet another toxic relationship between these two who are allies at times and other times…. Not.

The Masker: A horror(ish) story where the main character isn’t yet sure about their identity, but is experimenting with cross dressing and forced feminization erotica. Then they meet an older trans woman named Sally who takes them under her wing, but she's a little overbearing. There’s also a mysterious “masker” who is kind of creepy but also kind of enticing.