Gay fantasy?!? O_o;;

[Maze353]

The narrator in Working for the Devil is bisexual, though it is never stated out-right.  

[CastleAlyts]

the fuzziest llama

the Nightrunner series is pretty gay-tastic. for most of the first book it's extremely thinly veiled, but in the 2nd and 3rd it becomes more intense. it is in no way explicit, though, all implication. but it's there. heart

The Nightrunner series is actually very well written, not only does it have gay relationship dynamic, the plot itself was entertaining. Sadly i misplaced 2 of the series.  

[chessiejo]

Robert Heinlein wrote a calssic about a man whose brain was transplanted into a woman's body...it was groundbreaking at the time, and gender bending.

Mercedes Lackey writes many stories with a gay theme but fortunately that doesn't usually dominate the telling.

Door Into Shadow by Diane Duane has a lesbian theme unless i am totally wrong (it wouldn't be the first time! razz )  

[murphyad]

I think that it's ok i have read the Valdemir series by Mercedes Lackly and she touches on it there is no real in depth thing so i think it's ok as far as age group is, I have no problems bt it ws a little shocking to read it for the first time especially since it was the first time that i had read gay male on male sex sceane  

[MinervaEvenstar]

If you want graphic gay sex, I suggest fan fiction. wink Most fantasy books I've read about it have a background character that's gay, so it merely touches upon the subject, like The Theif's Gamble by Juliet McKenna and The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman. In Wolfcry by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes the main character turned out to be a lesbian, but it still wasn't descriptive. In The Tale of the Five by Diane Duane almost all of the character are bisexual and while there aren't any detailed intimate scenes, there are plenty of lewd comments! So I suppose Duane's book is the closest I can come to a recommendation in this area.  

[Darth_Magus1]

John Varley wrote a trilogy that had bisexual and lesbian people in it. The main pair were lesbians and it was a sci fi/fantasy series. I don't remember the exact order of the books but they were Titan, Wizard and Demon. Hope that helps  

[Xenologista]

there's a gay couple in the House of Night series by P.C. and Kristin Cast  

[Shexyfeline92]

I didn't know there was gayesqe fantasy books, i'll have to look them up next time I go to bookman's(o sorry it's a used bookstore, among other things for those who don't know) i'm trying to see gay romance in a softer light than the untouchable s word because i do accept all walks of life and orientations. Hooray to freedom.  

[chessiejo]

in Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left hand of Darkness, the people who inhabit this one planet change gender under certain circumstances. It is not by choice, although the change can be temporarily resisted.

This makes for complicated relationships among the characters.  

[Foolish Catalyst]

Ah, all the best forums have been deserted for months it seems!
Oh well, that won't stop me.

Lets see, these aren't exactly what the topic calls for, but they all have gay characters and relationships, I think. Probably. I haven't read some of them in a while!

The Black Magician Trilogy by Trudi Canavan has a side-story about a gay couple, but nobody seems to like it for some reason. It's one of my favourite parts of the book!

Then there's Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings books, containing a character that may be gay, straight, bi, male, female, androgynous, who knows. Anyway, he's generally taken to be male, and is in love with the narrator - also male.

The Tales of the Otori by... Lian Hearn, I think, has tons of references to gay relationships. Its set in a world based on Medieval Japan, where everyone is pretty lax about sexuality. I read them when I was pretty young, and it shocked me. But then, so did the descriptions of het. sex and menstruation, so y'know.

Erm... The Vampire Chronicles by Anne Rice more or less disregards sexuality altogether, which isn't quite the same thing, but its enough if you're not all that interested in the societal side of things.
I actually almost forgot about that, because I don't usually think of it as fantasy... its in the regular A-Z section in town.

I know I've read more, I just can't think of them right now. ^_^
And I should mention, I thought I was the only one who liked LGBT in fantasy! I'm definitely going to be looking up some of the suggestions here!  

[draven_heart]

Other than The Nightrunner series by Lynn Flewelling and all the others that everyone has already mentioned, I can't think of any other fantasy series that really focuses on 'gay' characters.

Though I have read many series, where there are 'gay' characters, either very subtle or really minor characters.

Perhaps try out Ethan of Athos by Lois Mcmaster Bujold, its sci-fi.

Though I can recommend (though I have not read the books) the Lord John series by Diana Gabaldon. This is a spin off from her Outlander series (which I have read), continuing /extending the story of Lord John who is a secondary character in the Outlander series. The Outlander books don't really have a set genre, but I would call them romantic-historical fiction, with a dash of fantasy.  

[Azaveil]

Ayamechan

Kolibris

That's not really the type of thing that interests me, and I've never understood people's obsessions with yaoi type stuff. And I'm perfectly aware that yaoi usually refers to anime or manga, but I have no better term that doesn't sound awkward when said aloud. Out of the books I've read, the only book that even really has gay hintings is Kushiel's Dart. And even that isn't all that much. Well, there was Undead and Unwed. One of Betsy's best friends is gay, but that doesn't come into it too much. And a series by Orson Scott Card has a gay character. That's all I can think of right now. I feel like i'm forgetting something. I haven't read any straight-out gay fantasy books. I don't believe I've ever even really seen one. Or if I did I've forgotten. Like I said, doesn't really interest me.

The Kushiel's trilogy, from what I understand, is just set in a world where the people are very, very open about sex, and most of them have had same-sex relations at one point or another. The main romance in the series is most definitely het.

The "gay fantasy" I was thinking of was along the lines of Lackey's Last Herald-Mage trilogy, Flewelling's Nightrunner series, and a lot of Storm Constantine's work (particularly Wraeththu, though I'm not sure that counts as "gay" becuase all the "males" in that series are androgynous).

Mind you, all of them have plots (rather nice ones, in fact) and the romance/smut part of it is mostly in the background, and usually not described at all. You just know that there's DEFINITELY something going on.

OMG! I was thinking of titles to post that I read and you totally named them. I loved the "Last Herald-Mage" trilogy series so much I had to buy it, and I bought Storm Constantine's trilogy (I think it was called the "Magravandias Chronicles") and loved it, especially the gay romance part. I have so many books I couldn't begin to track it down, but I looked at her site and that looks like the series. I'm also writing some of my own series with gay romance in them. True, I am a big yaoi fan, but I've been reading fantasy long before I knew what yaoi was and the above were some of the fantasies I read pre-yaoi. My gay friend also lent me a vampire book by and about a gay guy which I loved. I can't remember what it was called though. Anyways, history is filled with gay love, especially the way women were sheltered and usually out of reach. Japanese Samurais and Ancient Greeks were a few. Even ancient armies probably had more than one gay couple in them. It makes sense that fantasies would have at least one or two gay couples in them. Even if it was publicly frowned upon, it was still a fact of life.