The Four Profound Weaves

This book will occasion comparisons, I think, to Peter S Beagle or Patricia A. McKillip, if either of them were interested in transing the genders. The world feels like a strange and wonderful tapestry, and the characters within it feel like they have been produced by that world.

This is a story about two people later in life whose lives seemingly have left them at loose ends. One character has finally been freed by the death of his partner to make the change she made him promise not to make. The other character, Uiziya, has been betrayed by her aunt and mentor who as going to pass on the Four Profound Weaves she had spent her life hoping to learn. The man, who calls himself nen-sasaïr, (no name) because he doesn't know how to name himself as a man, doesn't know how to order his life. The culture he comes from has very different roles for men and women, and although he has always known he was a man, he's lived (mostly) according to the rules for women for the last sixty years. He yearns to be accepted among men, but he has a better idea than most of what that entails giving up.

These two go on a journey together to try to find what they need to fashion a new life, and get caught up in the net of a man called The Collector, who owns people and treasures that appeal to him, and rules a city where all magic is used only by him.

This is a book that those who like that sort of thing will like, so if that sounds like you, I urge you to give it a try!

I've loved R.B. Lemberg's Birdverse stories, so I went into this expecting to like it; and like it I did, very much. Deep worldbuilding and immersive prose, and a sort of pacing that just lets me breathe, and settle a little bit deeper in with every breath. And the characters, and the world, and the way it highlights beauty in everything while simultaneously acknowledging pain and drudgery and horrors, and...

If you're not familiar with Birdverse, that's no reason to hold off on this. If anything, it errs on the side of too much explanation, and it (and Birdverse stories in general) are not written with a rigid reading chronology in mind.

Selling points: worldbuilding; magic system; immersive prose; both protagonists are trans; both protagonists are in their sixties; nonbinary rep; two trans elders defeating a dictator through art.

Warnings: transmisia (not in the narrative, but in characters), including deadnaming and misgendering.