I am a novice reader of the romance genre. I’d say I read one romance novel, on average, every year. I’d just never been hooked. Since the beginning of 2018, I’ve read seventeen romance novels. “Hooked” is the grossest understatement – I have been drowning myself in a beautiful universe that is simultaneously breathtakingly new and soul-soothingly like home.
What changed? I found the Beyond series by Kit Rocha. (Some mild spoilers for the series follow – nothing you wouldn’t get from the back of book blurbs.)
The Beyond series is set in the Sectors around Eden, a glittering cage of a city going about post-apocalyptic survival in all the wrong ways. The Sectors are set up as the grime and poverty to Eden’s glitz and prosperity, but there’s very little freedom on either side of the wall. Enter the O’Kanes – a gang of heavily inked bootleggers for whom “freedom” is an even more intoxicating pursuit than their whiskey. The O’Kanes are all about sex, partying, and living life for themselves – and each other.
The series spans nine novels, five novellas, and a number of short stories, chronicling the O’Kanes’ pursuit of sex, love, and brotherhood in the face of Eden’s increasing tyranny. The formula is magical – the overarching story unfolds at a perfect pace, told through the eyes of the couple (or triple, or more, whatever) at the time, plus short vignettes from other characters. This gives many of the groupings time to get to know one another slowly, in each others’ stories, and gives the group as a whole the cohesive feel they need to carry the tension and fear of the eventual war with Eden. Again, romance noob here, so I have NO idea how common this formula is, but I love it.
It’s one thing to know, intellectually, that the media you consume has issues with a particular topic. It’s quite another to submerge yourself in media that not only understands that the issue exists, but takes a firm stand against it. The Beyond series did this for me on three separate fronts. At times, it was overwhelming – it felt like I was retraining pieces of my own worldview that had been long calcified. I cried more than once.
The first and perhaps most obvious way in which the Beyond series broke and reformed my standards for media was the sheer abundance of bisexual characters. Just…so many. Most of the main characters were bi, it seemed. I was in my twenties before I understood that I was bisexual, and I’ve been desperately hungry for more bi representation ever since. Perhaps if I’d had such a series when I was younger, it wouldn’t have taken so long or caused so much pain before I realized.
The second way the Beyond series ruined other media forever is the way it centers and prioritizes consent. This is most apparent in the first book, Beyond Shame, where it’s a core theme, but it’s vitally and blessedly present in every single story. It is a master class in the nuances and issues and flavors of consent, from a huge variety of different perspectives – and not just sexual consent, but related concepts like agency and empowerment. Reading so many stories in which flawed, human characters understand and navigate issues of consent makes it heartbreakingly apparent when other narratives – including ones in the news and in real life – fail in this critical capacity.
The third way was both related to and more subtle than the previous one: I am now thoroughly convinced that sex is one of the most effective tools an author can use for worldbuilding, if they choose to. I’ve always been a fan of detailed and nuanced worldbuilding, and the Beyond series has it in spades. When I stopped to think about why it was so particularly deep, I realized that it didn’t draw an arbitrary line at the bedroom door, past which all attempts at setting up a particular world view were unimportant. What goes on in the bedrooms (and party rooms) of Sector Four contributes as much or more to the picture of the world the characters – and the authors – are trying to build. What better way to demonstrate the messed-up, post-apoc world they live in than showing how the characters work through their issues – and where are our issues more powerfully resonant than when we’re being intimate with someone for the first time? Not all intimacy is sex, including in these particularly explicit books, but it’s definitely an effective avenue for development. Not all books need or want such explicit sex scenes, but all authors should definitely think more carefully about the ways in which sex adds to or detracts from their settings.
All in all, I would highly recommend the Beyond series, whether you’re a romance noob like me or an avid romance reader. It has single-handedly converted me in several important ways, and I can’t wait to read more.
(More? What? Yeah – there’s a follow up series, set in Sector One. It’s called Gideon’s Riders, and the third book is due out very soon (and not soon enough!). It’s a great time to get in on this series!)
Rating: 5/5 stars (individual books rated separately on Goodreads)
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