The witches of Galree: A short fiction novel by Emily M. Lovelace, also known as Lady Scarecrow.
So, I got fed up with waiting for the review and decided to just upload this book to archive.org.
This is a short-ish (80 pages) novel I wrote some time ago. It's quite different from the poems I've been sharing so far, but I hope you'll enjoy it as well. It was mostly born out of wanting to see more stories of (and by) trans women like me.
The story is called "The witches of Galree" and it's set in medieval times, where a famous sword fighter, who's going through a crisis despite having an objectively good life, meets a group of trans witches who learned how to create a feminizing potion. Our protagonist sees some hope of answering his existential questions by seeking advice with their leader, Julia, a wise but enigmatic woman, who agrees to help while warning that the path of self-discovery is never an easy one.
It should be noted that the characters suffer a fair amount of prejudice in the story, so this is not necessarily an easy read.
I really enjoyed reading this! I liked how you managed to get a range of trans experiences into the book, and it maybe felt almost nostalgic reading it. The bit with the mares was cool too. The end was absolutely not what I was expecting!
Thanks a lot! Yes, a lot of what I've written about were things I've personally been through, or experiences I've heard from other trans people. I've also wanted to have several trans women in the book precisely so I could cover a lot of different stories. Also, the mares thing was inspired by conjugated estrogens that people used as HRT in the past.
As for the ending, it's supposed to catch you off-guard, so I'm glad I managed to pull that off lol. You spend most of the book not knowing much about Julia, up until the very end, and then it becomes clear why she acted the way she did throughout the whole book.