Monday, May 23, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy/Romance Book Review: The Second Mango by Shira Glassman

 



The Second Mango is the first book in Shira Glassman's Jewish Fantasy Romance series of short novels/novellas (her "Mangoverse"), which feature LGBTQ characters at their heart.  For this book, that's lesbian Queen Shulamit and her new friend and bodyguard, the demisexual Rivka (who pretends to be a man named Riv), as they go out and search for a new love for the Queen and find adventure at the same time.  Jewish Fantasy Romance - especially adding in LGTBQ characters - is a way to really appeal to my interests, so I bought this when I first heard of it and it was on sale.

And boy was I glad I did, because The Second Mango is just so so so much fun.  Both lead characters - insecure Queen Shulamit, still a young woman at heart who means well but is a bit naive about the world and also desperate to find another lesbian woman after her last love disappeared (in a world which where such love isn't common), and Rivka, a strong bodyguard woman who has trauma from what happened to the only man she ever loved, are really great and fun, and the story does a great job telling their pasts and allowing them to have adventure.  The book doesn't really have that much conflict or really much of an antagonist, which I guess is the only strike against it, but it's just so so so charming that I really don't care.  

------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Shulamit, Queen of Perach, never expected to become queen so soon, and that her father would leave her.  But even more than all that, she never expected that the only person who understood her, who seemed to love her, and who she loved back, her beloved Aviva, would disappear on her....leaving Shulamit alone and miserable.  For Shulamit isn't just the only lesbian she knows other than Aviva, but she also has some severe digestive problems/food allergies that no one else really believes, and everyone thinks her ridiculous as a result.  

And so Shulamit slips away from her guards one night to visit a bawdy house...where she's kidnapped almost immediately.  

Thankfully, Shulamit is saved by a brave warrior named Riv, a warrior who rides a dragon....who turns out to actually be a woman named Rivka, a warrior from the north.  Rivka isn't interested in women, or really anyone but the man she once fell in love with.  Yet Rivka more than willing to be a friend, to understand Shulamit's needs, and to take her on a quest to find another woman Shulamit can love.

It's a quest that will turn into a dangerous adventure, and will force both Rivka and Shulamit to confront their paths, and to find a way they can move forward in happiness and love....
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The Second Mango is a story featuring a pair of LGTBQ protagonists in a Jewish fantasy world.  And it is filled with parts of Jewish (mostly ashkenazi) culture, with the characters celebrating and referencing Jewish holidays, and the two nations referenced here being one that uses Hebrew and another that uses Yiddish.  It's done really well, and if you're not Jewish - or even if you don't have a full understanding of all of the Yiddish and slang references - there's a really nice glossary in the back to explain the terms.  And as a Jewish American, I really loved seeing how the Jewish culture/religion infused this world.*

*As the author admits in the back, the only non-Jewish thing is a Convent-like setting of Jewish Women who live together without men, which is not a thing in Judaism, but it works for the story so whatever.*  

Also great and so so charming and delightful are our two main protagonists.  In Shulamit you have the naive royal character you see often, who doesn't understand how the world works....and yet the story doesn't make a big deal about that.  Instead you have a woman who loves other women in a world where that's not common, so Shulamit is desperate to find a match after losing the woman she loved, and you have a woman who has disabilities that further make it hard for others to understand her.  This disability in this context is her food allergies/eating-disorder, which makes her unable to eat lots of foods - like breads and pitas, or various other common foods - and which others don't really believe is real.  And so Shulamit is constantly disbelieved in what she needs and loved, and so she really quests not just for a woman to have intimacy with, but for someone to understand her.  

And then in Rivka you have a demisexual protagonist, a woman with little interest in intimacy outside of a relationship with the man she fell in love with - of whom I won't spoil much here other than to say she lost him in tragedy.  She was raised by an uncle who was far more interested in fighting his neighbors than his niece, who didn't understand that his niece could fight or contribute to their martial conflict with her mind, and who wanted only for her to fit into his schemes and plans - and her mother, who disgraced the family by falling for her father, is content to be meek and let it all happen.  And so she dresses like a man, and acts like a warrior in response....and yet she isn't all hard edges and cold, but rather a heartbroken woman who has nothing else to do.  

And Rivka and Shulamit's connection, their friendship, and their adventure is just so charming, whether that be them staying at a hotel that is robbed, or them finding a convent of women turned to stone by an evil sorcerer they decide to track down - or just them riding from place to place on Rivka's magical mare, which can for short periods of time turn into a dragon when she's not tired.  I loved their relationship, and the way the story dealt with their prior loves and hearts.  I'm not describing this well at all, but it's just such a fun and enjoyable charming romance, and I loved to read it - and the fact that it was in a world based upon my own culture just made it all the more endearing.  

I'll be back eventually for the sequels, for sure.  

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