I'm afraid this is will be the best book I'll read all year, which is frightening because it's so early in the year. And yet, I can't see something else surpassing it.

This book blew me out of the water. I've never seen a social critique so apt, yet set in a fantasy setting so devoid of our current culture. I've never seen worldbuilding so in-depth yet so thoughtfully in-sync with the themes of the book. I've never seen such complex characters who felt both authentic to the totally fictional cultures and struggles created for them, yet completely understandable and sympathetic to the reader.

It is, in short, a masterwork.

It's not a light, happy masterwork. This book is dark, depressing, about how imperialist structures like racism and sexism and homophobia live inside us all and in turn destroy us all, not just 'us' as individuals but 'us' as in our society and the bonds we make within society.

Without going into too much detail, there are two central metaphors in the book: the bounds of society and what they mean, and cancer. Both are incredibly apt. There is a huge amount of discussion dedicated to what family and culture and society and obligation mean to every person and every culture and every person within that culture. There is a huge amount of discussion dedicated, as well, to the nature of cancer, tumors and radiation, and whether or not these are actually a force for good or evil. The metaphor is clear: this alien thing lives inside you, contributing nothing, slowly killing you and those around you, as it slowly and painfully separates you from others and keeps you sick and unable to contribute to the society around you. A tumor only infects one person, but it affects everyone. The book is in places disgusting, gory and painful, but the kind of exorcism that we as readers need, especially in the current political climate.

Which is to say, if you don't want politics in a fantasy book, this isn't the book for you. Yes, this book is a fantasy, but it's also very, very, very real. Baru and her struggles mirror our own in a way that can't be understated. The characters in this book use different words, have different cultures, and different concepts, but they're going through the same struggles we are now.

I once took a film course in college, and one of the lessons that stuck with me the most was the idea that 'all movies made durring wartime are inherently war movies'. While obviously not film, this maxim applies here. This is not a book 'about' the current political climate, but it also undoubtedly, inarguably is. I'm generally reticent to make wide sweeping generalizations about the nature of people's understanding of books and films and the like, but I'll make an exception in this case: If you don't think this book is about where we are now as a culture, you've missed the entire point.

In short: If you want the best written political fantasy I've ever read (and I've read quite a few), with fantastic and thoughtful forward motion, pacing, worldbuilding, characters, and nuance? Get this immediately. It may make you feel sad, or uncomfortable, or scared, or frustrated, or uneasy... but if you're living in the world we are now and you don't already feel those things? You're not living in Baru's world anyway.