peristeronic

Tl;dr: Are you interested in an f/m ship with canonical femdom/malesub? How about if that ship is also an interspecies relationship in which two people from very different cultures become comrades-in-arms and finally lovers? 

Tsira and Jeckran are two of the POV characters in Unnatural Magic by CM Waggoner, a fantasy novel set in a vaguely 19th century world in which a series of disturbing murders have inflamed racial tensions between humans and trolls. The evolving relationship between Tsira and Jeckran takes up a large part of the novel (the other POV character being teenage magic prodigy Onna Gebowa; the two plotlines converge when Tsira and Jeckran team up with Onna to catch the murderer).

Fleeing from the middle of a battle, Jeckran injures himself and is found lying in a snowdrift by Tsira. The seven-foot-something half troll picks Jeckran up like he’s a child and takes him to her home, where she nurses him back to health. Although Jeckran is initially frightened of Tsira—since he was literally just in a battle where an enraged troll killed several of the men under his command—the two of them strike up a friendship. Jeckran finds himself increasingly attracted to Tsira’s quiet competence and her muscles.

What he felt for Tsira was not noble admiration for her pure and virtuous spirit, and he’d spent too much time mooning over her muscles and her cheekbones and her freckles to delude himself on that point. 

Tsira quickly identifies that Jeckran is just her type. Her type is pretty, submissive men. One of the most fun aspects of Unnatural Magic is the troll gender system, in which gender is not determined by your biology but by what kind of job you want to do. Reigs are the dominant gender, the providers and the leaders. Vahns are the gender that is sexually submissive, take care of the home, and raise children. Properly speaking, there’s no such thing as women and men among trolls, but reigs use she/her pronouns and are referred to as women in human speech while vahns use he/him pronouns and are referred to as men. 

She was a little embarrassed to say it. Wasn’t like they’d talked about this before. “Bit like my wife.” 

“Husband,” he said, and blushed. 

“No, wife,” she said. “Reigs take care of vahns they’ve taken to clan. That’s the point. Closer to . . . householded, I guess. And the reig’s the householder.” She couldn’t meet his eyes. She felt like a jackass. “Ma’s pleased. Thinks I’ve started my own clan. Rather let her keep thinking it.” 

Mutual pining ensues! There’s a bit where they pretend to be a couple to placate Tsira’s mother! They figure out they both want each other and they have a lot of sex where Tsira fucks Jeckran silly! Tsira is possessive and dominant and Jeckran likes it! I ship them so much. 

She wanted him. Wanted him with his face between her legs. Wanted him screaming for her. Wanted him her vahn and no one else’s. 

And more than that, I like Tsira and Jeckran separately as characters and I think their relationship feels genuine. There’s a camaraderie between them that I really enjoy, but as a couple they have realistic problems that they need to work on. I won’t spoil the ending, but I like that they are mature enough to not always put their relationship ahead of their responsibilities to other people, but they’re also crazy about each other enough to want to make a go of it in spite of the obstacles in their way.

 If you like fantasy novels with extremely shippable characters and fun, creative worldbuilding, give Unnatural Magic a try.