SciFi Novella Review: Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

Upright Women Wanted by Sarah Gailey

Sarah Gailey is one of the more interesting newer writers of SciFi/Fantasy to emerge since I returned to reading 4 years ago.  I haven't always loved what I've read of their work - their Hippo novella River of Teeth and their Harry Potter-esque noir "Magic for Liars" were both left me with some bad tastes, while their short story STET was my pick for the Hugo last year - but it has always been extremely well crafted and dealt with interesting themes.

Upright Women Wanted is their latest work, a dystopian SciFi Western, in a future US in which morality is heavily regulated, with books and other materials needing to be approved, and queerness not accepted.  In between its Western trappings, its a story of self discovery, as its protagonist Esther discovers its okay to be queer and to fight for her right to love who she wants.  It's pretty well done, if a bit predictable in some ways and honestly pretty simple in its themes.



Plot Summary:  When Esther's best friend and love of her life is hanged by Esther's father for possessing non-approved materials, Esther runs away, stowing away in a cart towed by traveling Librarians - the group responsible for distributing approved materials to towns in what's left of the United States.  Esther hopes to not be discovered until its too late and to join the Librarians, traveling on her lonesome, so that her interest in people who aren't men doesn't get anyone else killed.  But when Esther is discovered quickly, the three Librarians who find are not what she expected - for starters, the leaders are a pair of women named Bet and Leda who are clearly together.  And then there's their junior librarian, Cye, who prefers to go by "they," and who Esther can't help but stare at and dream about, even if Esther knows that such thoughts must be wrong.  But as the Librarians move onwards and find themselves in more and more dangerous situations, Esther will learn there is more right about her feelings than she knew....assuming she can survive it all.

Thoughts:  In a lot of ways, Upright Women Wanted is a very predictable novella whose storyline you can see coming a mile away, from the moment it becomes clear that the librarians Esther meets may not be "legit" and may be subversive in their desires - if not more.  Esther is obviously going to learn throughout that being queer is okay and will find love even if not everyone is going to make it out alive.  Moreover, the facts of the librarians being rebels will be obvious to the readers well before Esther - who is honestly annoyingly slow on the uptake about that situation really.  But Gailey executes the novel well, and there are some strong surprises in how the story gets from its beginning to that obvious ending, with a plot that puts our characters in danger repeatedly in exciting action sequences that work really well.  And the setting - this dystopian queer-phobic America - and the characters aside from Esther are done pretty effectively as well.  Again, it's not a novella that is particularly special in its message or themes these days (maybe 10 or even 5 years ago it would be!) but it's done particularly well, and is pretty solid as a result.