The Transfeminine Review

And here we are, folks, at the category I know a lot of people have been waiting for.

110 people have cast their ballots for the Best Transfeminine Fiction award as of the shortlist cutoff, which makes it by far the most competitive category. So far, you’ve cast your votes for an impressive 38 books (and four more that aren’t eligible). As the weeks have gone by, though, there’s been a clear separation between the front of the pack and the rest. Only eight books have cleared five votes – but only four books have cleared ten, and there’s three full ballots of daylight between the two groups.

The threshold for the longlist for this award, which you can read here, was two ballots. The threshold for the shortlist, however, is twelve ballots – by far the highest of any of the shortlists I’ve published today.

Every book on this list has appeared on at least 10% of all ballots cast.

Any of these four books could still take home the final prize. The leading two in particular are neck and neck with each other. Moreover, while no book that wasn’t on the longlist has cleared the five vote threshold, there were four other books from the longlist that were just a few ballots shy of making the cut here, so if you loved a book from the longlist and don’t see it here, now’s the time to VOTE, VOTE, VOTE.

So, without further ado, here are your four contenders on the shortlist for TFR’s Best Transfeminine Fiction of 2024 Award.

1. The Shortlist
   1. Welcome to Dorley Hall – Alyson Greaves
   2. Kimmy – Alyson Greaves
   3. The Sapling Cage – Margaret Killjoy
   4. The Hades Calculus – Maria Ying

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The Shortlist

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What if the only way to fix toxic masculinity were to erase it entirely?

Mark Vogel is like the older brother Stefan never had, but one day he disappears without a trace. A year later, after encountering a woman who looks near-identical to Mark, Stefan becomes obsessed. He finds that dozens of young men have disappeared over the years, many of them students at the Royal College of Saint Almsworth, and most of them troubled or unruly. Why are students going missing? Who are these women who bear striking resemblances to them? And what is their connection to the selective student accommodation on the edge of campus, Dorley Hall?

Stefan starts studying at Saint Almsworth for one reason and one reason only: to find out exactly what happened to the women who live at Dorley Hall, and to get it to happen to him, too.

An electrifying début by Alyson Greaves, Welcome to Dorley Hall is an intense exploration of gender and society that will appeal to readers of Torrey Peters, Imogen Binnie and Gretchen Felker-Martin.

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John and Emily are a perfectly normal couple living in near-future suburban America, with plans to attend a perfectly normal Halloween party with Emily dressed in a perfectly normal android costume. But Emily has an accident, so John steps up to take her place, and that’s where things start to go wrong. Because the hollowed-out android they bought from John’s brother is supposed to be dead, and isn’t supposed to be influencing his actions, and when the time comes to take it off, it’s supposed to let him out…

A novel of transformation, alienation, and isolation.

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In the gripping first novel in the Daughters of the Empty Throne trilogy, author Margaret Killjoy spins a tale of earth magic, power struggle, and self-invention in an own-voices story of trans witchcraft.

Lorel has always dreamed of becoming a witch: learning magic, fighting monsters, and exploring the world beyond the small town where she and her mother run the stables. Even though a strange plague is killing the trees in the Kingdom of Cekon and witches are being blamed for it, Lorel wants nothing more than to join them. There’s only one problem: all witches are women, and she was born a boy.

When the coven comes to claim her best friend, Lorel disguises herself in a dress and joins in her friend’s place, leaving home and her old self behind. She soon discovers the dark powers threatening the kingdom: a magical blight scars the land, and the power-mad Duchess Helte is crushing everything between her and the crown. In spite of these dangers, Lorel makes friends and begins learning magic from the powerful witches in her coven. However, she fears that her new friends and mentors will find out her secret and kick her out of the coven, or worse.

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Decadent cyberpunk cities. Greek mythology and giant mechs. Hades and Persephone as never seen before.

For centuries, colossi have besieged the gates of Elysium. Each day, the city’s fall looms closer.

As one of Elysium’s rulers, Hades has long sought to break this stalemate. In Persephone, a cyborg tailor-made to kill, she finds the key to victory and the perfect pilot for her war machine. She will acquire Persephone at any cost.

Born to wield violence and with the bloodthirst to match, Persephone chafes under her mother’s control. At the first opportunity, she brutally breaks free and seeks sanctuary with the unlikeliest of the Lord of the Machine Dead, the Master of the Underworld.

All Hades and Persephone have to do to realize their goals is to navigate the city’s treacherous politics—and survive the coming war.

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And there you have it.

Today’s been a marathon of endurance for me, but it’s a sprint to the finish for everyone else! You’ve got five days to vote and celebrate your favorite authors in this year’s TFR Reader’s Choice Awards, so if you’ve been holding off for the shortlists, now’s the time! Voting will close on December 27th at 11:59pm EST, and you can vote at the link below:

Thank you to everyone who’s voted so far, and remember that you can also check out the shortlists for poetry, nonfiction, debut novel, and author of the year. Have a great night and a wonderful holidays, and I’ll see you in a week with the final results ❤