Dr. Nyri Bakkalian's novel of lesbian love lost and restored across multiple lifetimes was beautiful, with exciting, suspenseful prose and vivid charaDr. Nyri Bakkalian's novel of lesbian love lost and restored across multiple lifetimes was beautiful, with exciting, suspenseful prose and vivid characterization. The main characters are women I wish so badly I could see more of in fiction, and I'm grateful to Dr. Bakkalian for giving them life. I was so excited to get a copy of her book and I really look forward to anything she writes next. I definitely recommend checking out Grey Dawn if you're looking for queer romance, historical romance, and well-rounded and distinctively original lesbian and trans characters. It's also really cool to read something set in Philly and south-east/central PA, a region I love very dearly. Lesbian love is important, and trans lives are important. Fuck the confederacy.
Merged review:
Dr. Nyri Bakkalian's novel of lesbian love lost and restored across multiple lifetimes was beautiful, with exciting, suspenseful prose and vivid characterization. The main characters are women I wish so badly I could see more of in fiction, and I'm grateful to Dr. Bakkalian for giving them life. I was so excited to get a copy of her book and I really look forward to anything she writes next. I definitely recommend checking out Grey Dawn if you're looking for queer romance, historical romance, and well-rounded and distinctively original lesbian and trans characters. It's also really cool to read something set in Philly and south-east/central PA, a region I love very dearly. Lesbian love is important, and trans lives are important. Fuck the confederacy....more
**spoiler alert** Wrath Goddess Sing is utterly brilliant and achingly beautiful. The author Maya Deane constructed a living world in the Bronze Age M**spoiler alert** Wrath Goddess Sing is utterly brilliant and achingly beautiful. The author Maya Deane constructed a living world in the Bronze Age Mediterranean, full of people whose lives and passions flash and shine as brightly as those in Homer and Virgil. A historical fantasy of the events surrounding the Trojan War, it features an Achilles whose youth as a girl on the island of Skyros is extrapolated and interwined with related mythology and the history of Mediterranean trans priestesses to produce her characterization as a trans woman - one whose pain and love is recognizable in myself and the women I know, and whose rage is truly a fusion of the famous rage of Achilles in the Iliad and that of every minority today in the face of a world that hates us and erases us and lies about us. Mythical characters I disliked or never otherwise cared about, like Agamemnon and Patroklos, become real and understandable, and so many others - the mysterious Kiya, the vengeful Amazon Annasu, and the once-captive, now-turncoat Brisewos are alive and important. And most important are the beautiful relationships Achilles experiences with her sisters, the women in the story - poor Deidamia, sweet Melia, and brilliant, lost, but utterly determined Meryapi. I felt the loss Meryapi experiences midway through the book in my bones, and I loved her maybe more than Achilles.
But then there's Helen - so much more than I ever expected, strange and cruel and unnerving, but ultimately understandable. Helen is wicked and starving and she finds in Achilles everything she's been looking for for centuries.
On that note, the depiction of divinity here is primal and terrifying and alien, but still deeply human. The gods are natural phenomena and pure emotion but still emerge from the human heart and feed on human passion as well as sacrifice. When the Great Mother appears, the Mother of all the gods, I felt like I was looking at something really divine - I recognize the Goddess I worship as a trans neopagan. The divinity of Pallasu-Atana the Silent One and of the Great Mother is incredible, and I'll be thinking about it for a long time.
Finally, though there's a lot of sex in this book, all of it well-depicted (and usually super hot), most of all every relationship in Wrath Goddess Sing is radiant with love, and most of it isn't sexual in nature. The partnerships, sisterhoods, motherhoods, rivalries - all of the action of this novel is driven by love. All of the hate is driven by love. There are scenes and images here that call out across the depths of time and resonate with the beauty in the heart of every trans person and make me yearn for that beauty to be recognized as divine.
This is an expertly crafted book by a trans woman that centers and exalts women, and trans women in particular.
PS: I'm a really slow read and usually take forever to finish anything - like, months - and I got Wrath Goddess Sing the day it came out and finished it in a couple days. It was one of those books I wished would never end....more
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