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A review by yubsie
Night Ivy by E.D.E. Bell
3.5
This was a nice, small scale story largely dealing with academia being LIke That. The occasional moments when it tried to broaden the scope were probably the weakest.
The protagonist and all her particular challenges was very vivid, even if her challenges hurt to read sometimes.
The author does some really interesting things with making sure gender is never assumed to default to this world in a secondary world fantasy. Taking it as a given that pronouns are part of introductions, looking at how gender is even conceptualized. I enjoyed Xelle's moment of "We have a hundred genders and I still can't find one that fits!"
I did find the ratio of invented words to real words skewed a little too heavily toward the invented. The worldbuilding is vivid enough that I wasn't going to forget that we were in a secondary world even if they said "person" and "human" instead of "per" and "hu".
The protagonist and all her particular challenges was very vivid, even if her challenges hurt to read sometimes.
The author does some really interesting things with making sure gender is never assumed to default to this world in a secondary world fantasy. Taking it as a given that pronouns are part of introductions, looking at how gender is even conceptualized. I enjoyed Xelle's moment of "We have a hundred genders and I still can't find one that fits!"
I did find the ratio of invented words to real words skewed a little too heavily toward the invented. The worldbuilding is vivid enough that I wasn't going to forget that we were in a secondary world even if they said "person" and "human" instead of "per" and "hu".