Winter's Orbit

A hurried arranged marriage between 2 lovely, broken men; a diplomatic crisis to forestall; and a suspicious accident, all in a queernorm space empire.

The first thing we see is a playboy prince being forced into an arranged m/m marriage with the widower of his cousin, because that’s how the empire binds its vassals’ loyalty. And it’s not so bad: Kiem and Jainan could be a great couple, if either of them could believe they were worthy of the other. But somehow, they have to save the galaxy with nothing more than charisma, persistence and diplomacy. As Maxwell told BookPage, her “goal was to write the joy in healing, even when it’s been so hard, and even when there’s so far to go.”

Originally picked up from Maxwell posting early draft chapters to AO3 (where it was originally known as The Course of Honour), the world-building is nicely done and I pticly enjoyed Jainan’s bemused horror at the native fauna of the imperial capital contrasting with Kiem’s sense of the adorable familiar creatures of his home. (And I won’t link to much fan-art from this piece, but this piece just made me smile so much.)

It’s not often a book makes me cry (though it’s becoming more common the more queer romance I read), but I’m certain I’ll come back to this tale again. I really hope I get to read many more stories in this reality — and, while the next book is part-written and involves another queer couple elsewhere in that universe, I really hope at least some of them show me more of Kiem and Jainan. This was the fourth of the books I mentioned as having pre-ordered at the start.

CN: dealing with the aftermath of (and flashbacks to) an abusive relationship; gaslighting and psychological torture.

This is a book that didn't really pique my interest the first few times I saw it mentioned. But it just kept showing up in lists of recommendations on Twitter. The synopsis didn't appeal to me but it kept being billed as Red, White, and Royal Blue in space. I did love that book. I finally gave in.I ended up really loving the romance aspect of this book but not being a huge fan of the sci-fi aspect.I don't generally read high fantasy where there are kings and queens and empires involved. It just doesn't interest me. This is the sci-fi equivalent. There is an empire and there are treaties that are being renegotiated for ... reasons... and there need to be alliances because ... it said so.... I wasn't sure as I was reading this if the political world building in this book was weak enough that it didn't really make sense or if I just didn't care enough to really think hard about it. There is some world building concerning gender that is very well done. On this planet everyone wears jewelry of different materials to signal their gender. Gender does not limit a person's ability to do any job or marry any person. I was interested in the characters. Jainan is from a vassal planet. He was in an arranged marriage with Prince Taam of a stronger planet in his system. They were like a celebrity perfect couple. One month ago Taam was killed in a vehicle crash. Now, because these planets need to be seen to be aligned, he is being forced into marriage with one of Taam's cousins. Kiem is the cousin that was a disappointment to his family. He doesn't have much going on so he can be sacrificed in an arranged political marriage. He's informed that he's getting married tomorrow.Kiem thinks that it is horrific that the grieving Jainan is being forced to remarry a stranger. Jainan is used to having to be the perfect political spouse and doesn't understand how to act when Kiem isn't into that. The interactions between them as they open up to each other are wonderful.CW: There are depictions of abuse and discussions about healing from trauma. There is limited on-page sexual activity. It is mostly fade-to-black. This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story

*I received a free review copy in exchange for an honest review of this book.  

This features someone in a new relationship after suddenly losing their partner, paired with someone who's never been married before, with the fate of the empire depending on their success. Both pairings were political, and the new partner has a passing familiarly with the former one, enough to know who they were but not how they were. Part of why I love this book so much is for the way it portrays someone in a relationship after an abusive (or at least controlling) one, after being gaslit and diminished, discounted until he couldn’t trust his own thoughts and barely dared to have opinions but wouldn’t dream of voicing any. Watching him come alive and grow throughout the book was wonderful, and the way his new partner tries to get to know him and figure out what he needs was really sweet. The dynamic between the two MC’s helps further the political and mystery bits of the plot while never losing focus on their relationship as the heart of the story. It’s powerful, cathartic, and very moving. 

The two MC's have very distinct voices and it was wonderful to feel them slowly falling in love with each other, to get descriptions through the other one's eyes. I especially love the parts when the POV character just switched and the new POV character is thinking about the other one as their turn to narrate begins. Going from being immersed in someone's thoughts to watching them through the eyes of someone who cares about them was really sweet.

My thoughts are a bit complicated about the gender coding in this book. I have a lot of respect for a story which explicitly includes nonbinary people in the list of genders, but also has multiple culturally-specific systems for gender coding and some comments about how the systems aren't actually as clear and useful as the people using them seem to think they are. It's a nice blend of inclusion and irreverence, and while (being agender) I would personally find a three-gender system as stifling as a two-gender one, I did appreciate it as world-building. It's also means there are several nonbinary secondary characters and at least one of them is recurring and plot-important, so that was very nice.

Speaking of world-building, I think my favorite random detail was the way animals are named in this world, it leads to a kind of an uncanny-valley feeling, where I don't always know what the creatures mentioned look like, but I know they're definitely not what my normal mental image would be.  

I love the diplomatic stuff and the mystery-solving bits, the two MC's focused on different parts of it because they're very different people and were in positions to figure out different bits of what was going on. It's tense in great ways, and the rather dramatic climax of the story is really great. Some parts of the world-building are very specific and laid out because a lot of it's complicated, especially what's needed to understand the political part of the plot. One thing that kept this from overwhelming the narrative (aside from how much I love interpersonal politics and highly specific diplomatic things) was that the two MC's think about the events in different ways and understand completely different bits of what was going on, which naturally let there be space to explain important things again in new ways without it feeling redundant. It's also a long enough book that if someone were to read this over a longer period of time than I did (I read it in a day) the bit of repetition that is there is spaced out enough to feel more like reminders of small but important details rather than rehashing the story.