I had been intending to read this book forever and it was long past time I finally got to it. If you look at the reviews for this, it seems people either really love it or are frustrated and have a hard time getting into it. Somehow I did both. In the early chapters, it felt like this book kept bouncing off of my brain somehow. I struggled to keep the two narrators straight. I struggled to feel like I understood them. Was I just tired? Was my brain too full of other stories? But I kept going and in the end the resolution was SO satisfying as to soothe all my earlier frustrations.

Both narrators are older, and they start on a path that has them rushing headlong into confronting their greatest disappointments in life. For Uizaya, it is that her aunt never taught her all of the Four Profound Weaves, that she never mastered this form of artistry/magic. For the second narrator, who goes by "nameless man" for the first section of the novel, it is that despite knowing himself to be a man all his life, he did not undergo the magic to change his body until so late in life, after both of his lovers were dead, and until the ways of living as a man in the highly gendered culture he was raised in were all long closed to him. There is magic and desert life and diverse cultures rubbing against each other and a despot and resistance.

Took a while to click for me, but once it did I really loved it! ( )

Beautiful. I will read this again. ( )

An Incredibly Powerful and Dense Novella

CW: Transphobia, including misgendering, deadnaming, and denigration

I am going to be honest about needing to give this another listen at some point as it was a lot to take in, but the simple fact that I want to do that speaks volumes. While I found following the precise events of the book took some effort, the emotional journey and assertion of the protagonist's true self are raw and powerful. The prose is well wrought and the characters and performance are wonderfully crafted.

As someone who is transgender, It is truly wonderful to see a story about trans characters exploring and asserting their gender and relationship to it in a narrative where that is just a fundamental part of the character and the struggles they face on their journey, rather than it being solely about that. Don't get me wrong, those stories are important too, but there is something about this being a fantasy book with trans characters and their experiences, rather than a trans story told through fantasy that is wonderful to see. Because we do just exist and live our lives and have other struggles beyond transphobia.

There's so much in heat that is so powerful and dense that I really will have to give it another listen, but that's a compliment that I want to and more a reflection on my and my own capacity and ADHD.

Definitely one of the best things I've read from the Audible Included library and something I am incredibly happy I randomly picked up and gave a listen. ( )

In this fantasy, a trans man physically transitioned late in life; that estranged him from his culture, which doesn’t recognize transition. He has relatively powerful magic and wants the powerful woman who helped him to give him a new name, so when a trans woman who transitioned as a young girl also turns out to be looking for that person (her aunt), they join up despite misunderstandings and mistrust. Her aunt is something between a vampire and the incarnation of Death, and their journey is structured by the wounds of the past—the aunt left before teaching the woman how to weave in the fourth magical way necessary for true mastery; the man encountered the aunt when searching for a magical weaving to ransom one of his lovers from a cruel ruler, but the cruel ruler had the lover killed anyway and is still interested in collecting magic weaving. Especially if you’re interested in older protagonists, albeit aided in physical combat by magic, it might be of interest. ( )

Got pretty far into this before I DNFed which is why I still rated it. Prose was just a bit too lyrical/repetitive for me and the two POV characters were indistinguishable. Loved the world and the magic. I even liked the characters I just couldn't tell them apart which was a bummer. ( )