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This is a breathtakingly beautiful story of hope and grief and death and the uncertainty of finding your place in the world even after you've acknowledged your truth. It was so refreshing and meaningful to read a story from the point of view of two 60+-year-old trans people who still have stories to tell and answers to find about their identities and who they are. Lemberg's writing and the Birdverse in particular are something I'm looking forward to exploring in greater detail in the future.

Content warnings: (view spoiler)[ violence, death, transphobia (misgendering and deadnaming) (hide spoiler)] I originally picked this up on Corey Alexander’s recommendation – it’s a commentary on how much I trusted their recommendations that I ordered a physical copy even before I requested an ARC! The author lists LeGuin as one of their influences, and this fairy tale has a lot of the qualities you’d expect from her work. It brought back a lot of the same feelings I felt when I first encountered her work as a teen. This is the first work I’ve read in the Birdverse (though this is the first novella, there are stories and poems) and it won’t be the last. “The Four Profound Weaves. A carpet of wind, a carpet of sand, a carpet of song, and a carpet of bones. Change, wanderlust, hope, and death.” The story follows two elderly trans characters: Uiziya, a weaver from one of the Surun’ tribes and a nameless Khana man, nen-sasaïr. After forty years of holding on to the cloth of winds – the magic used to remake bodies – that Uiziya’s aunt Benesret made him, Nen-sasaïr has only recently made the change and is struggling with what to call himself now. He hopes Benesret will name him, but she’s been banished and no one will tell him why. Uiziya knows, and has her own reasons for seeking out her aunt – she wants to be taught the Four Profound Weaves, a magic unique to the Surun’ tribes. What seems like a simple quest to find her turns into an exploration of their pasts and what, truly, it means to change. “Changing is not done among his people.” Benesret snorted, an odd hollow sound. “That’s what he says. Changing is always and forever done. Everywhere, it is done; in open, in secret. He has gone through the change and so, I assure you, have others.” The worldbuilding is excellent. The magic was fascinating. Besides the Surun’ weaving, there’s also a more general magic that involves deepnames. How many deepnames and the number of syllables in each deepname determines how powerful a person is, and the deepnames can be used in different configurations to power magic. The Khana people – nen-sasaïr’s people – are divided strictly along gender binaries. Men live on one side of the wall in the Khana quarters in Iyar, studying and building magical automata. The women live on the other side, and they’re the ones who form women-only family units and set off into the desert and beyond to trade. The Surun’ tribes are more accepting of non-cis people – inbetweeners (non-binary) and trans. What differs here from our world is that their magic allows trans people to remake their bodies to match their minds. “Those who loved you held you in shape, even if this shape was all wrong.” As a cis woman, I naively thought that a world with the magic to near-instantaneously remake bodies would make trans lives easier, but I misjudged how transphobia can be engrained in a society. Uiziya wove her own cloth of change when she was a child, while nen-sasaïr was given one on a trading trip when he was already an adult. For Uiziya, among a people who accept differences from the “norm,” the fact that she’s trans isn’t even worth commenting on, and nen-sasaïr even initially assumes she’s cis. Nen-sasaïr has a harder time with both life in general and as a trans person. After the death of one of their lovers, his other lover downplayed his feels in an effort to control him. For forty years she kept his cloth of winds locked away, and kept him locked away in the body he was born in. He stayed because he loved her and was scared, and it was only after her death that he felt free to make the change. There’s more traditional horror in this book – there’s a very good reason Benesret was exiled – but the part that stuck with me was being trapped by those who are supposed to love you unconditionally when you figure out that it’s only pieces of you they love, not your whole self. And, of course, there’s the whole classic fairy tale quest aspect that leads Uiziya and nen-sasaïr from the depths of the Burri desert to the Rainbow-Tiered Court of the ruler of Iyar. The prose is lovely and lyrical and always leads back to the themes of change and transformation. It’s a bit slowly paced but expected considering it’s about two elderly characters with all their expected physical ailments and travel difficulties. Overall, I very much enjoyed this book and I’m looking forward to the author’s next entry into the Birdverse universe! I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

I definitely liked this book. I think I should have attempted to read it in one sitting versus picking it up/putting it down as often as I did. I think that took away from some of the ambiance of the reading experience. Buuuuuuuuut, still a super unique and fascinating book that takes a different angle when depicting characters as a part of the LGBTQIA+ community. It makes a hard-to-talk-about topic understandable for those of us, not a part of the community ourselves.