Monstrous Regiment, by Terry Pratchett

This was a brilliant takedown of the “girl crossdresses in order to do boy things” trope, which is, I will be honest, my fucking crack (see also: Jackaroo, Kingston by Starlight, The Rope School, the Alanna books). But that doesn’t mean i don’t appreciate a good deconstruction, and certain hallmarks of that trope deserve some serious critique: femme-shaming, binary reinforcement, and the Inevitable Heterosexual Love Interest among them. I think Pratchett did a bang-up job addressing and subverting most all of them.

The book had dark, thoughtful things to say about the performativity of gender and the abuse of soldiers during wartime, while also being face-blisteringly funny and at times really genuinely adorable. Sorry if I led you to believe it was a Serious Novel of any sort, there are plenty of weird-ass Discworld shenanigans going on throughout!