Just finished my first book since joining BookWyrm. It's "The Sapling Cage" by Margaret Killjoy. It's a nice story of a trans girl who wants to become a witch despite her AGAB.

Since it's set in a medieval-like setting, our modern labels are not used, so the author has to actually describe the things she wants the reader to take away from it, instead of being able to just name-drop them. Therefore the trans representation for example is not shallow like usually, but very deep (which is of course helped by the fact that the author is herself trans).

Also a place where this is important is with her politics (she's an anarchist). She can't just let one of the witches go on a tirade about how they're anarchist or how good anarchism is or something, but instead has to show how an anarchist society would actually work in practice and then has to hope that she did it well enough that the reader notices that it's supposed that.

One thing that striked me (someone who is only used to witch stories in the vein of Harry Potter and who spent the majority of their live in the school system) quite strongly is how the idea of a central school is actually not at all necessary for a magic story. I have heard Harry Potter being called the "bourgeoisation of magic" due to that, but didn't really understand it because I wasn't able to believe that a formalized school system (or any school at all) wasn't actually necessary.

All-in-all a quite nice story. If you're able to cope with the bit of transphobia that is necessary(-ish) in story set in a world that doesn't really know of trans people, I think it could become a comfort story for many trans people (or at least for trans women – I can't really speak to the experience of other people of course).