Four Profound Weaves

This novella is hailed as an ‘epic queer trans fantasy’… and that may be true, but it did not live up to my expectations. The start is sluggish and I had to prod myself through what seemed like irrelevant worldbuilding info dumps. I can tell Lemberg has put a lot of work into crafting the Birdverse; but given that I haven’t read any of their other works, I was missing a lot of context. They also referenced random details that flew over my head. After I acclimated a bit, it got a little better. By the end, I didn’t mind being in the Birdverse, except that I had a lot of questions. Perhaps there was too much to fit into a novella of this length. Oddly, some passages felt like they could’ve been speaking about real world analogues, which broke my immersion in the world.

The characters are also a bit one-dimensional. Uiziya has but one goal—to weave the final of the four profound weaves with her grandmother. The Nameless Man (AKA nen-sasaïr) wants… I wasn’t exactly sure at first. Then it becomes clear he wants a name from Uiziya’s grandmother, Benesret. Some of his later aspirations and goals are more exciting. These two main characters are friends, but lacking their history, I could not care much about their relationship. Also, the novella is told in alternating perspectives—like many other reviewers have already noted, I found it hard to distinguish them. At first, I didn’t even realize they were different perspectives.

The storyline is decent, but ultimately, not much happens. This is a book about gender, transformation, hope, and death—that is, ideas. The plot is more or less just a thing that happens. This is fine when the ideas are compelling and thoroughly fleshed out. But in this novella, there was more showing than telling. Often times, a specific fact would be repeated two or three times throughout the novel, as if the reader didn’t already read that a few pages beforehand. Don’t treat me like a stupid reader, please, have some faith. Reviews have remarked on the beautiful imagery and prose, but the writing just seemed overly abstract. The focus on gender and transformation was refreshing, and the representation of trans characters was well done, at any rate.

While there were elements of potentially interesting themes and some semblance of an interesting narrative towards the end, this novella left me wanting a lot more than I got out of it. Beautiful cover, though.

For we are all woven of words; and after we go, it is our tales that remain, wandering around the desert with the wind.

This is the kind of book I qualify as a "quick read with a lasting impression." The two main strengths here are the characterization and the worldbuilding. The two main characters, both transgender in their sixties, are journeying through a desert, searching for past and future alike. The story unfolds slowly at first, then picks up the pace slightly in the latter half when more secrets are brought to light and the external stakes rise higher. Even in the external conflict, the focus remains staunchly on self-change, self-discovery, personal truth, and the courage it sometimes takes to not let go of yourself.

Both the way the story is structured and the way the setting unfolds in front of the reader's eyes, reminded me of the weaving that's so important to this tale and this world. At first, there's a collection of individual threads, each of them bright and intriguing, but you have no idea how they fit together. As the novella progresses, they do begin to fit together, forming a rich, unique tapestry that is seriously hard to talk about without giving too much away. It's a word that both a lot more inclusive than what a lot of us are used to and just as strictly gender-roled, even if the roles are different. It's a world of imaginative divine magic. It's a desert with ghost snakes and assassins. It's scary and strange and beautiful all at once.

The writing remains smooth and lyrical throughout, and the characters really, really shine on every page with all the experience they'd amassed way before this story began, the positive and the negative and the in-between. The Four Profound Weaves reminded me of some of my favorite books, taking the most interesting parts of them and mashing them together: it's not unlike The Balance Academy series by S.E. Robertson in how the characters undertake a physical journey that's really all about the inner change, and the focus on the older protagonists who are still in the thick of things, leaving through complex internal arcs and taking active part in external events, reminded me of Ravenwood by Nathan Lowell.

I think I'll end my ramblings here, because there are so many details I want to talk about, but the story is so intricate and thus so easy to spoil: some of the details may seem simple if you just know about them going in, but the way they unfold, the way you learn about them as you read, is a huge part of the magic. Very highly recommended, especially to my fellow queer/trans readers.