I have loved Charlie Jane Anders’s writing since her io9 era. I really enjoyed All the Birds in the Sky and her YA trilogy. I think it was back in 2017 when I was at NYCC and got an ARC of The City in the Middle of the Night and got her to sign it and she was thrilled because she didn’t think they had them available for giveaways yet. (That may be my favorite book of hers.)
So I was overjoyed when I got an eARC from Tor and NetGalley of her new novel, Lessons in Magic and Disaster. It is a story about a trans woman teaching her lesbian mother magic, as the back cover promises, but it is about so much more. It is about love and loss and parenthood and childhood and how to exist in the world. This book made me laugh and it made me sad in all the best ways. The flashbacks to the life of the protagonist’s mother were some of the most riveting sections of the book. I wonder what a nonSF book by this author would look like? Probably also amazing. The view of academia and anti-trans right wing hate in this book seems almost quaint compared to the hate and vitriol I’m seeing in the news today- it’s hard to believe that the real world has gotten so much worse since the author wrote this novel. I cannot recommend this book enough.
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