Boys Weekend

Imagine you have been invited on a boys weekend bachelor party for your best old college friend. While you are the best man, you did not plan this weekend, and it is taking place on a libertarian wet dream of an artificial island in the ocean, where there are no laws, just a "terms and conditions" contract with a lot of fine print. And oh yeah, you no longer identify as a man, something even your best (old) friend hasn't been terribly supportive of. Oh, and also, there is some kind of weird culty pyramid scheme seminar slowly recruiting the members of your group. And also there may be some kind of monster swimming in the deep? Getting my bearings in this story was a little bit of a rough start, establishing Sammie's estrangement from show more her old group of friends, but then once the party gets started, things get VERY WEIRD VERY QUICKLY. There are so many WTF!? moments, but in the end it was kind of amazing. show less

Boys Weekend is the queer sea monster story you didn’t know you needed. Meet Sammie, a recently out trans femme artists assistant who has been invited to an old friend’s boys weekend bachelor party on a floating island made from trash. It’s a no rules money talks kind of place where Sammie has to endure continual not so microagressions from old college friends and her ‘friend’ Adam doesn’t say a word to stop them despite being a “nice guy”. Sammie is constantly questioning her decision to go, but then weird things start happening. Why does no one else seem to realize there’s a dudebro MLM cult that people keep getting absorbed into?

Boys Weekend was an over the top satire and I loved every minute of it. It’s every show more rich white boy shady thing you can think of that might happen in a Hunger Games Vegas style floating trash island. Robotic sex workers, hunt and kill your own clone, gambling with human lives. I’m always here for eldritch horror styled sea monsters and stories where you root for most of the people to get eaten. Sammie is awesome. This is a fun smash-the-patriarchy bit of escapism where the queer folks win. CW - transphobia, sea monster violence, creepy hunt your own clone thing. show less

The book starts by examining some interesting quandaries about how much transphobia one should endure from the people who knew you when, but then devolves into a ridiculous supernatural conspiracy and bloodbath that offers a very unsubtle solution. I just couldn't find any enthusiasm at all in myself for the fantasy/sci-fi elements.

The art was good; the story was also good. Were either what I’d consider fantastic? No, not really, but they were enjoyable enough. A little heavy-handed with the clone validation at the end (“love yourself!”), and if I was a little disappointed with the extremely too-little-too-late acknowledgment from Sammie’s “friend” about his lack of support, it was probably realistic, based on the brief amount of time the author granted the characters to reach it.

Note: DEFINITELY not YA, so I’m not sure why the publisher sent it to the Rainbow committee as such.

Don't let my lack of intelligent things to say about this discourage you from reading it; I liked it quite a lot. More emotions than I've seen from Lubchansky's work before. They fit it into their Futurama-inspired storytelling style well, though there's nothing particularly subtle happening here.

The ending is real, and it has a zany energy, but way too nonsensical for me.

A must for all my queermos.