Stone and Steel by Eboni Dunbar
Stone and Steel is the debut novella of author Eboni Dunbar and a part of last year's Neon Hemlock series of novellas - a set of generally queer SF/F novellas, which I have generally enjoyed. It also was an Ignyte Award nominee for best novella this year, which made me regret missing it when it came out last year.
And after reading it, I can see why people really liked Stone and Steel last year - it's a solid story featuring a strong queer fantasy setting of a heroic general who put her adopted sister and magically powerful lover on the throne years ago only to return to her home to discover her lover has become as power hungry and awful to the people as the ruler they deposed. The novella's lead protagonist is particularly strong, as she attempts to reconcile this new reality with what she thought was happening, and deals with her own feelings, her desire for justice, and issues of her past. It's not a mind blowing novella, but it's very well done.
More specifics after the jump:
Quick Plot Summary: General Aaliyah returns to her city, the city of Titus, for the first time in years, together with the army she has used to forge Titus' empire for the sake of Aaliyah's adopted sister and lover, Queen Odessa. Aaliyah, a woman born without any magic, helped the powerful Odessa take the throne and not just for personal desire, but because she thought it would result in a better Titus, a more just Titus. But the city she finds is one much like the one she once fought a revolution over, with the poor and oppressed just as bad off, if not worse under the woman Aaliyah loves...who seems to care nothing about it all.
And so Aaliyah will have to reckon with her mistakes in the past as she tries to make right what she obviously did wrong, to take back the city once again....but what can she do without magic, against a Queen so full of it, a queen she loved so much?
Thoughts: So Stone and Steel takes a fairly standard type plot - general without magic comes home to their country, discovers the king they served had turned wrong, and begrudgingly takes steps to rebel and depose them and begrudgingly rule - except well, the characters are all flipped in gender, race, and queerness. So the rulers of the main city are all women, as is the protagonist general (and lesbian women at that) and the ruler of the neighboring kingdom is a gay man - and everyone's a person of color (the one city that is apparently filled with white people is the one not seen here). And it imbues all of these characters with life and personalities, that make them all highly enjoyable, even as the story it tells is mostly predictable in how it all goes about (the most surprises involve that aforementioned neighboring kingdom).
The result is a tale that won't take long to read - I suspect most will read it in one sitting since it's on the short side for a novella - and won't really blow you away, but it's really executed very well, with characters who are very enjoyable and those twists on the classic story are very nice to see. It's the type of story we should see more of and we only are beginning to do so, so I get why it worked better for others and earned some awards talk.
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