Reviews and Comments

I wasn't prepared to read smut, but it is a lot of smut. And it makes sense, with characters who have extensive fan fiction fandom history, how the smut is written, not just the sex scenes, but the conversations that I wish I saw more in queer mainstream published literature. Namely, conversations about dysphoria, internalized transphobia, how desiring others impacts how we identify or desire our own bodies, the loneliness of queer trans time whether you learn early or later in your life. I didn't read this for the smut, and there was so much to the story outside of the smut.

Too often I see queer trans lit where people are so accepting there is nothing said, and I do like that sometimes, I do wish not to have to struggle for being trans, but my trans experience in reality has been informed by my struggle. Too often I see queer trans lit where people are so unaccepting that there is also nothing said but pain, but my trans experience is also informed by those who have been kind, curious, willing to be held accountable, and willing to deeply consider what accepting my existence means for how they treat themselves. Whether it's how to refer and interact with genitals, to the ways in which transition can be a constant and/or impromptu thing that one's (potential) partner might consider at any time and how that might effect how desire has been defined up to that point. In a way, it makes sense that these characters and the story have the tone of fan fic, it's often in fan fic that we see fans reimagining what might occur between characters outside of the cannon, what keeps them sustained and intertwined-- or not.

Furthermore, Sol's vampirism is not just about the fantasy of a hot, sexy, shiny vampire that lives forever. Vampirism is rather treated as a debilitating health condition that makes the barriers that he faces in managing his condition along with his relationships or housing strikingly familiar to others with chronic disabilities.

One last note, I do enjoy the mixed media of the book that emphasize a reality not predicated fully on in-person dialogue, including excerpts from bulletin boards and email chains that still do well in the format of audio.

As an amateur mycologist who has been actively involved in community building and engagement around environmental justice and mycology, I must ask, does this book promote mycophobia or mycophillia? I have never read a T. Kingfisher book, but picked this up because I heard it had mushrooms.

I was excited when this book started off featuring a character named Eugenia Potter, implied to the fictional aunt of real mycologist and author of the Peter Rabbit children's books: Beatrix Potter. There are many aspects to real mycological concerns around things like species identification. There's also references to the important discussion of sexism within mycology.

I also do appreciate that the main character Alex (they/them in English, Ka/Kan in native fictional heritage) is one that would not typically get attention as a retired female soldier. When it comes to gender and pronouns, I am torn.

Alex is from a fictional country where soldiers gain specific pronouns which translate to a gender neutral term like they/them. In fictional history, soldiers were socially defined as male, but due to an accident a woman was able to become a soldier since there wasn't exactly paperwork with gender exclusive language being equivocated to cis men using he/him, and due to the deficiency in people to conscript, it set a precedent for more women to come. So new rights for women, closer to the rights of men, because of: war.

Pronouns are not the same as gender, period. This carries over as Alex still acknowledges themselves as a woman using occupation-based gender-neutral neopronoun variant of a formerly occupation based cis man's pronoun. I like the idea that the gender associated with pronouns can change. Yet, women are still treated has weaker to men that need to be protected (unless I suppose, they become a soldier).

Alex is often treated in a manner that equivocates soldier status not to a gender neutrality, but to overt manhood through activities and roles that are otherwise mean to exclude non-soldier women (this soldier, that is a "man", cannot be left alone with an unmarried woman), though occasionally dismissed as a woman to be patronized (is this woman really a soldier?), or maybe neither mostly out of a confusion and giving up: not overt acceptance of gender neutral presentation.

Kingfisher's use of gender-neutral pronouns does not appear to me to be an act of defining non-binary gender (as gender is not the same as pronouns), which is fine, but the fact that ultimately binary gender roles are enforced and gender-neutral presentation is still held to it is disappointing. As a transmasc person constantly having my masculinity be put into question or treated as if joining the boy's club means playing into misogynistic gender roles, I don't love Alex being treated as some kind of man-"lite".

Looking into it, there are real historical examples that this seems to be inspired by: known as the Sworn Virgins of Albania. I don't know enough about it though to say what it has to do with pronouns, especially considering Alex is from a fictional country that could have had any history written, Alex is not said to be from Albania!

Ultimately, this is a horror book that, despite Eugenia's love for mushrooms, sets a completely fictional and unfounded fear for mushrooms in our main character. Okay, we have plenty of scary mushroom stories, I'm not going to ban them. My concern is that, to write such a story with an overwhelmingly white, militant, and questionable gender representation, it is not for a person like me nor would I feel comfortable sharing it to promote an interest in mushrooms.

Thank god, it was a very short listen.

Provenance is the last book I had to read in the Imperial Radch universe. I almost didn't listen to it until someone told me so, because when I first hit play, it seemed quite unrelated). For the most part, it is unrelated to the main trilogy, though events are alluded to in parallel.

It's a good book, with the worldbuilding charm of the other Imperial Radch books. It's a fun, amusing, and dramatic adventure. I think there are the groundworks for this to be a prison abolition movement, though the book never quite gets there.

Ultimately, I found the twists and turns a little too predictable to be impressed. Characters do what I expect early and later on what I expect them to do, with a level of privilege and immaturity I don't have sympathy for. I usually like how things all thread together by coincidental relations by the end of the book, but at this point, I was tired of it. Some things felt too forced, too unfortunate, too tokenized. It feels more juvenile than the main series or Translation State.