Winter's Orbit

Going by the Goodreads star ratings "it was okay" is appropriate here. I found myself really intrigued as the relationships are introduced explored, conspiracies are uncovered and seeing how this all ties to impacting politics on a galactic wide scale.

I enjoyed the awkward introduction between Jainan and Kiem. They stumbled through their first hours and days not knowing what to say to each other, how to react and each assumed they were at fault in how the other reacted. This was done with humour but also highlighted how challenging an arranged marriage can be.

Is it a romance novel with sci-fi or sci-fi with a romance subplot? I'd say the latter but my patience for Jainan wore thin as the book crossed the 60% mark and brought down my enthusiasm for the rest.

Although Jainan has reasons to be mistrusting, docile and appear meek, which you learn as the story unfolds, but holy Flying Spaghetti Monster, use your words Jainan.

Jainan had never been good at communicating.

Something could have been avoided because Jainan didn't speak up? Yup.

Timmy fell down a well because Jainan didn't warn the kid about the pit? Sure did.

Damages from an abusive and unhealthy relationship leave long lasting impacts that don't immediately resolve themselves? Yeah, that's probably more accurate.

As a debut novel this was an excellent showing. The pacing of the story was appropriate. The plot didn't get bogged down in too many politics without being dry.

Unfortunately my opinion of the book erode as I approached the end. I'm not sure if things went south for me because I took a little longer to finish the last third or if there were problems with the book but I'd definitely read more from Maxwell.

This book is, honestly, extraordinary.

When I started it, I did think more intro was needed. There was a lot of “as you know, Bob” in the first chapter and I just let it wash over me without trying to understand the worldbuilding going on in the dialogue. And I continued reading.

Very soon, I decided that the book must have been originally a fanfiction that got the serial numbers filed off – it was familiar, and the sudden start almost presumed you already knew the characters. Imagine my delight when I realized that it is indeed original fiction, but the very first drafts were posted to a fannish forum I frequented at the time, where I’m fairly sure I read and commented on a few of them! Obviously, this only predisposed me further to it.

What’s extraordinary to me is the fact that in 2021 we can actually have a novel centering on a tropey m/m romance with an HEA published by a mainstream publisher and marketed as sf/f. It’s not segregated into some minor imprint for queer romance, it’s not put into the YA zone. It’s adult sf/f. Even though the romance is strong, we are acknowledging the plot and not pretending that because it explores emotional situations normally left to unvalued fanfiction, it’s “trashy”.

But don’t get me wrong – I don’t just value the book for its symbolic value. It’s a fantastic read. I found myself wishing I didn’t have to go to work so I could read more in the mornings, regretfully putting in a bookmark and going to bed on time at night to save chapters for the next day.

The plot: Prince Kiem is informed by the Emperor that he will be marrying Count Jainan for a political treaty. Kiem is initially very concerned for Jainan’s feelings, as Jainan’s partner (also a political marriage) died just a month ago. Jainan is also very concerned about how he’s imposing on Kiem, what a nuisance he must be, etc. (No prizes for figuring out who spent the last five years emotionally abusing him.) Gradually, as the two handle their diplomatic duties and work to investigate Jainan’s partner’s death, they fall in love, though they deny their feelings until they’re put in danger and have to act on them.

The progress of Kiem and Jainan’s relationship is deeply compelling. While hurt/comfort isn’t restricted to fanfiction (we can see it in published fiction from A Little Princess to Outlander) and the marriage-of-convenience-but-we’re-falling-in-love is a staple historical romance plot, Maxwell delves into the emotions of the situation in a way that people outside of fandom just … don’t. It’s unseemly to do this outside of the romance genre, and in romance there is much more emphasis placed on the physical and erotic aspect of the relationship. (More on this in a minute.) It’s so refreshing to read the delicate dance of these two characters in a published work of fiction. Both are worried about forcing intimacy on the other, but their attempts to stand back and diminish their wants and needs read as dislike to each other; the misunderstanding is fed from their mutual kindness and concern. This makes sense, and is much better than the stereotypical “I hate him, he’s so annoying! But my treacherous body is so attracted to him!” romance plot.

So, what I was saying about romance above. Historical romance, as a genre, is overwhelmingly heterosexual and dominated by formula. (Which is fine! If you like it, you like it, and I used to like it very much.) I read a post on Tumblr a little while ago that helped me understand something I love about all the m/m and f/f fanfiction and non-professionally-published fiction I read: heterosexual romance often feels like the author is referring to a checklist of secondary sexual characteristics that the characters are required to admire, but queer romance, because it does not have such a culturally-defined script, tends to acknowledge the individualism and reality of attraction. Think of the discourse going around about female characters depicted for the male gaze in League of Legends vs. for the female/queer gaze in Arcane. In heterosexual historical romance novels – and I know I keep going back to historical romance but the kind of dramatic, formal situation in Winter’s Orbit is something you don’t tend to see outside of that subgenre – you are very much aware of the main characters’ femininity and masculinity in the way that their attractiveness is described; the hero is always noted for his masculinity and even if the heroine is imperfectly feminine by societal standards, the hero will notice her femininity, sometimes pointing it out to her. By contrast, in Winter’s Orbit there is very little physicality. We have no idea what Kiem and Jainan look like beyond a few basics about their overall sizes and their hair, and while they have sex and recognize each others’ attractiveness, the focus is on how they act toward and for each other, as well as ungendered aspects of their persons. This extends to the entire book: gender is performed through social rituals (wearing a particular material, tying a scarf a certain way, etc.) and outside of these rituals, people do not gender each other. There is no tie between “biological sex” (to use the TERF term) and gender, to such an extent that secondary sexual characteristics are never mentioned. There is no indication that they relate at all to anyone’s self-determined gender or gender presentation. This feels very deliberate to me, especially when you consider that the two protagonists are only indicated with silhouettes on the cover, and it’s fantastic – both for the act of imagining a world where gender is understood in this way, and for what it does to the romance.

The one place this gender neutrality breaks down to me is that all titles that can be gendered use the masculine version (e.g. Prince). This isn’t bad, per se, but it’s not actually neutral. It might have been a better choice to either make up gender-neutral versions (Prins? Empero?) or to make use of the traditional feminine titles as other ranks.

Starting off Pride Month with a less than stunning book, I guess… this book had an alluring cover and my library had a copy, so I was curious—that and the fact it was published by Tor Books, a mainstream publisher, gave me pause. Surely, this must be worthy of its mainstream status. The blurb was not that interesting but it did hint that there might be fascinating political elements or perhaps some suspense. I like my science fiction to have compelling world-building or at least some decent science as well as interesting characters, but this book failed on both of those counts.

The book unceremoniously inserts the reader into the world, throwing different planetary names and alliances at you before you really understand what is going on. This isn’t that unusual of a tactic so I took it in stride, but the author never managed to truly establish appropriate context for the different types of alliances or why one should care about certain groups (e.g. the Empire or the Resolution) in the book until very late in the novel, and even then not in great detail. The setup of the alliances and planets was also a rather dull reiteration of colonial structures, but in space… which is not particularly innovative.

I was also annoyed with the author’s treatment of gender in the book—gender is entirely about gender presentation, without reference to an internal sense of gender or physical gender at all. It felt extremely stereotypical, like an ally’s understanding of how trans people feel… as if a mere haircut or clothing choice would be sufficient to designate gender. Even in an ideal fantasy world where acceptance and understanding of presentation is the norm, gender is way more complex than that. This, along with the random insertion of non-binary characters and the narrative stopping to note certain signs of gender on-page, made the whole thing seem performatively woke.

I am not really into romance as it is, but the romance subplot really takes over most of the novel so that it felt like ‘romance with a side of sci-fi’ rather than the other way around. Most of the sci-fi elements revolve around the progression of the romance, and there is a sprinkle of science thrown in, but ultimately it is not as coherent or meaningful as it could have been to the overarching plot. The pacing was also way off for most of the book. Finally, the resolution of the plot relies on extremely predictable plot lines and rather convenient dei ex machina to tie everything in a neat bow. Hirondelle put it well: “But it is really really long and full of old fashioned romance tropes like big misunderstandings and too stupid to live characters with lots of big misunderstandings and the sf background is just decoration.”

The characters were also extremely dull—they felt kind of like cardboard cutouts. I was particularly annoyed with Jainan’s character because he has some repetitive tendencies that made his narrative voice extremely grating. Spoilers: From the beginning, he’s like a puppy that’s been kicked and is terrified of even his own shadow. It was relatively easy to anticipate the abuse backstory, which made Jainan’s constant self-doubting and learned helplessness superfluous. As a person I am sympathetic to his struggles, but as a reader I could not care about the character. He seemed more like a wounded teen girl than an adult man who is nearly 30. This, combined with the literally overnight development of the romance, was so cliché I could groan. Kiem also had issues where he seemed rather immature for his age, but I think that’s intentional, so it’s less of a problem. The two main characters suffered from a serious case of assuming-instead-of-conversing for the majority of the book, which I would not expect two adults who have been steeped their entire lives in political and diplomatic nonsense to engage in. Leigh's review goes into this aspect a lot more clearly than I could.

I believe this started as an online story through Archive of Our Own, and it makes sense—the book’s style seems very reminiscent of fanfiction. Usually you are working with established worlds and established characters, so there is never a need to develop personalities or backgrounds for the worlds you use in the story; both author and reader already know all of the details when they read fanfiction, presumably. However, this is an original story, and as such it sorely needed all of these elements to feel like a full-fleshed novel rather than… whatever this is. Pretty cover aside, this was ultimately a disappointing read.

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.