Roz Kaveney's "Rhapsody of Blood" series. It's FABULOUS. Two storylines that eventually (very very eventually) meet up - a girl at Oxford in the 80s is in love with her roommate, the roommate is murdered and eaten by a supernatural beastie, the roommate comes back as a ghost and confesses her feelings and they become girlfriends fighting supernatural nonsense with the power of sensibleness.
The other one, Mara, is a basically immortal warrior - the idea is that there's something called the Rituals of Blood where you make yourself a god by murdering a lot of people, so Mara stalks through history taking those people down. For the first two or three books (of... I think it's going to be five. Four so far) her storyline is a story-in-a-story of her telling it to Aleister Crowley in a bar, to warn him off doing anything silly. One of those stories is the French Revolution, and how much she liked Voltaire. Inveterate name-dropper, Mara, but it's great and because Roz Kaveney is very well-educated there are loads of little asides about various historical events and then I wiki them and learn things.
I love that Mara's powers aren't all-encompassing, too, though she gains power from killing as much as the bad guys do. She's from Mesopotamia or thereabouts, and travels a lot, but she's still from the Old World. So she has a sense of something wrong, and Rituals happening, when Aztec human sacrifice being used to make the priests gods - but she doesn't know about this other continent and couldn't get there anyway, so she doesn't know why she felt that until much later.
Interesting world! Well-written! Queer women everywhere! Roz is actually a friend of mine, full disclosure, but I'm not saying this cos she's a friend - she's a friend because I went up to her after a queer meetup at a con a few years ago and was all I LIKE YOUR BOOKS.
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The other one, Mara, is a basically immortal warrior - the idea is that there's something called the Rituals of Blood where you make yourself a god by murdering a lot of people, so Mara stalks through history taking those people down. For the first two or three books (of... I think it's going to be five. Four so far) her storyline is a story-in-a-story of her telling it to Aleister Crowley in a bar, to warn him off doing anything silly. One of those stories is the French Revolution, and how much she liked Voltaire. Inveterate name-dropper, Mara, but it's great and because Roz Kaveney is very well-educated there are loads of little asides about various historical events and then I wiki them and learn things.
I love that Mara's powers aren't all-encompassing, too, though she gains power from killing as much as the bad guys do. She's from Mesopotamia or thereabouts, and travels a lot, but she's still from the Old World. So she has a sense of something wrong, and Rituals happening, when Aztec human sacrifice being used to make the priests gods - but she doesn't know about this other continent and couldn't get there anyway, so she doesn't know why she felt that until much later.
Interesting world! Well-written! Queer women everywhere! Roz is actually a friend of mine, full disclosure, but I'm not saying this cos she's a friend - she's a friend because I went up to her after a queer meetup at a con a few years ago and was all I LIKE YOUR BOOKS.