lin·gua·phile

delladilly:

you know those things that feminists and social revolutionaries who mostly consume fiction and analyze it to death (aka tumblr) are always wishing for

like gosh it would be fabulous if we had young adult fiction where all the main characters were of color

or where the most important relationship was between two women

or where no women were demonized or hated or belittled or unrealistic or scapegoats, where all women were treated with compassion and respect

or where the love interest actually genuinely respected and listened to the protagonist

or if fantasy used its freedom to investigate the shitty things that bind our world, colonialism and racism and misogyny and a thousand forms of structured oppression that we’re so deeply trenched in that it’s hard to see them properly

like ALL OF THOSE THINGS, if you told me that a book could give me ALL OF THOSE THINGS, I probably wouldn’t believe you, and if I did, I would be satisfied with it, I would be bloated by it, it would be all I would need or want

and I know I sound like an infomercial, but Cold Magic has all of that— AND MORE

it’s steampunk— genuinely steampunk the way steampunk was meant to be, reconstructing history from the ice age onwards to make you think about the way our history happened and how it formed the society that we assume is unavoidable and authentic and real

and this ice age went on longer, and the Roman Empire didn’t fall till the year 1000, and one of the principle arguments of the book, which takes place 800 years later, is that the Romans told lies

and plus there are sentient dinosaurs. 

REVOLUTIONARY ANTI-COLONIALIST FEMINIST THEORY

AND

SENTIENT

DINOSAURS

and the heroine is brave and rude and a little cocky, and she holds her secrets tight to her chest, and she thinks with her feet and keeps going

and she gets the dreamiest unlikeliest most besotted love interest you’ve ever met, who takes an absurd amount of pride in his clothing, who is angry about having sweet tender feeeeeelings

and let me remind you that both of them (plus everyone else of importance!!!) are of color

and there is magic, and magic interacting with politics, and with it investigations into freedom/power/safety/oppression/obligation/choice, and also it is sexy

and there are plagues and ghouls and a beautifully drawn spirit world, actually the most complete world building I’ve seen since His Dark Materials or Harry Potter

and the talking heads of poets

and also kissing, and hilariousness, and thrilling action, it’s described in the blurb as an Afro-Celtic Roman icepunk, like DO I HAVE TO BEAT YOU OVER THE HEAD WITH THIS BOOK TO MAKE YOU READ IT

BECAUSE I WILL

Having now read this and its sequel, Cold Fire, I can get 100% enthusiastically behind this whole squee. I did have some issues with the technical/writerly/craft aspects of the first book in the series, but most of those evaporated in the second installment, and I was able to do what I really wanted to do throughout the entire first book, which is be absolutely in love with everything these books are trying to be.

(Also in context of the whole “wow these are awesome because CHARACTERS OF COLOR,” the cover model for Cat bothers me. I’d be interested to see if Elliott had any say in this. Sometimes her admirable desire to be non-anachronistic and internally consistent makes it hard for me to visualize the people she is describing — and of course human history has just gone differently in this world and certain interracial mixes are way more common there than here, so this adds to the estrangement effect — BUT STILL, I picture Cat and Bee and definitely Andevai as darker-skinned than this cover model, and with a facial structure slightly less recognizably euro/western.)