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+ so there's only two books in the series, right? finally a series i want to be a million books...and it's only two!
+ wow this book is so so queer. i don’t think there’s a single other fantasy novel that has such a wide-ranging, nuanced exploration of gender as this one. i can’t think of another. literally every main character (zhu, ouyang, wang, ma) struggles with what society expects of them gender-wise and the limits of what they are able to be. sure, it’s way more extreme for someone like zhu or ouyang than it is for wang or especially ma, but all of them have to face the question of: what do societal gender roles tell me i should be? to what extent can i obey those roles? to what extent is it possible for me to defy them?
( way more spoilery thoughts behind the cut )
+ wow this book is so so queer. i don’t think there’s a single other fantasy novel that has such a wide-ranging, nuanced exploration of gender as this one. i can’t think of another. literally every main character (zhu, ouyang, wang, ma) struggles with what society expects of them gender-wise and the limits of what they are able to be. sure, it’s way more extreme for someone like zhu or ouyang than it is for wang or especially ma, but all of them have to face the question of: what do societal gender roles tell me i should be? to what extent can i obey those roles? to what extent is it possible for me to defy them?
( way more spoilery thoughts behind the cut )
