To celebrate Ace Week (23–29 October), here’s a bonus Queer SFF Spotlight blog post! This is a round-up of all the brilliant science fiction and fantasy books with asexual representation that have featured on the blog before. Enjoy!
Books with ace protagonists
Werecockroach by Polenth Blake (link opens in a new tab)
Werecockroach is a weird and wonderful novella featuring an unusual alien invasion of London and humans who can shape-shift into cockroaches. The main character Rin (they/them) is asexual, aromantic and agender.
Read more about Werecockroach in my post about agender protagonists.
The Left Hand of Dog by Si Clarke (link opens in a new tab)
The Left Hand of Dog is a wildly inventive and hilarious novella, in which Lem (she/her) and her adorable dog Spock get abducted by bunny-like alien bounty hunters and have to team up with an assortment of other alien abductees to find their way home. Lem is asexual and agender.
Read more about The Left Hand of Dog in my post about agender protagonists.
Books with ace love interests
The Heartbreak Bakery by A.R. Capetta (link opens in a new tab)
The Heartbreak Bakery is a heartfelt and cosy YA contemporary fantasy novel. Syd (no pronouns) works at a queer bakery in Austin, Texas. Syd copes with a break-up by making a special batch of brownies, but it soon becomes clear that the cakes are causing a wave of spontaneous break-ups across Austin’s LGBTQIA+ community… Syd’s love interest Harley (he/they) is demisexual, and Syd’s sister is aromantic and asexual.
Read more about The Heartbreak Bakery in my post about agender protagonists.
Human Enough by E.S. Yu (link opens in a new tab)
Human Enough is a fast-paced paranormal fantasy novel with a sweet romance at its heart. Noah (he/him) is a vampire hunter with a secret: his boyfriend, Jordan (he/him), is a vampire. Jordan discovers during the course of the story (in a really lovely scene) that he is grey-asexual.
Read more about Human Enough in my post about queer autistic protagonists.
Books with ace side characters
An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon (link opens in a new tab)
An Unkindness of Ghosts is a hard-hitting science fiction novel set on a generation ship reminiscent of the pre–Civil War US South. White people live a life of luxury on the upper decks, while Black people and other people of colour are enslaved and confined to the lower decks under a harsh regime of constant violence. All the major characters are genderdivergent, and there’s a minor supporting character who is asexual and aromantic.
Read more about An Unkindness of Ghosts in my post about queer autistic protagonists.
Where to find more books
There are plenty more great SFF books out there with ace representation, and many of them will no doubt feature on this blog in the future. If you’re looking for more asexual protagonists, the Queer SFF Book Database (link opens in a new tab) is a fantastic place to start—you can search by identity. The AroAce Database (link opens in a new tab) also has a huge list of characters (not just protagonists) who are under the ace and aro umbrellas, across all fiction genres.
Outro
Thank you very much for reading this post! I hope you enjoyed it and have added a book or two to your TBR.
If you’ve read any of the above books, let me know what you thought of them! And if you‘ve got any recommendations of other SFF books with asexual representation, I’d love to check them out. You can leave a comment down below or tweet at me @JakeCNicholls (link opens in a new tab).
This post is part of my regular Queer SFF Spotlight series. If you’d like to stay up to date with these posts, plus posts about writing craft and gender worldbuilding (among other things), consider signing up for my newsletter to stay in the loop!