5 stars

ARC provided by publisher on NetGalley for an honest review

“I was a shapeshifter, worshipped for my pluralities…So many stories of self, huddled together to wander the void of my own uncertainty, fleeing and seeking in equal measure… Silence, silence. Perfect and terrible. The sympathetic resonance of the great dark universe, waiting to be heard.”

Avi Silver’s Pluralities is quite possibly one of my new favourite books. Pluralities is a piece of speculative fiction, which in the space of just over 100 pages, manages to trace two narratives; one exploring gender, the trans experience, and gender euphoria, and the other exploring connection, love, and what it means to be alive.

“It would be nice, to lie down. To disassemble. To let his atoms wander apart and return to the universe, perhaps to come back together as something better in another hundred million years. Perhaps it would be painful, but only for a moment. The pain of unbecoming would be nothing compared to the pain of trying to connect.”

Silver’s prose is something to be admired. Their voice carries a poetic quality, and the beauty of their prose, his constructions of language, could be placed on a level with the likes of Oscar Wilde. I found myself unable to tear my eyes from the text; Silver’s poetic voice carries beautifully into their prose, and results in a novella that feels like a piece of art to be taken apart, admired, respected, and cared for.

“There is a wound in Cornelius that Bo cannot see. There is something in his heart that it cannot find and repair, not in the way it wants to, and it fears what these messages will do if they take root. A bit of bad code can corrupt everything, and the ship does not want its friend to break.”

The narrative of Cornelius, an alien prince, and Bo, his best friend who happens to be a sentient spaceship, explores the beauty and depth of platonic love, as well as what it means to be alive, and the fragility of the organic body and experience. Bo and Cornelius are completely in harmony together, two lonely existences joined by an invisible, but infallible, cord within an infinite space of the universe. There is a deep, and profound relationship between these two beings, despite their differences, and this relationship is fundamental to their own realisation of self. Their relationship isn’t perfect, they have to learn to trust one another entirely, to trust the other’s judgment and decisions, and to respect that judgement, but the relationship is founded wholly on pure love.

“Because we’re no good without the other. Because even at your worst, you do not deserve the pain you house. Because I do not do enough to show just how much faith I have in you. Because I’ve run a thousand simulations through my core, imagining what our lives would be apart, and it just doesn’t work, Cornelius. It just doesn’t work.”

This narrative finds itself as an analogy within the exploration of gender, the body taking the role of the spaceship, the vessel, and the self becoming the passenger, allowing Silver to seamlessly weave two different stories into one novella.

“But here I was, a pale blue dot in a whole galaxy of possibilities. A nervous little spaceship, floating somewhere between the supposed binary. It was a nebulous place to be, but it was mine.”

Avi Silver’s depiction of the trans and nonbinary experience isn’t neat, it isn’t tidy, it isn’t the easy A to B of self-realisation - it felt so personal, so real, and I felt so seen within the pages. Being trans isn’t as simple as a journey from A to B, not every trans individual finds themselves neatly fitting on the binary of gender constructed by our society. Theseus says, “…my life experience [is] fundamentally different from cis guys… a way of choosing masculinity for myself, but masculinity that isn’t cis. Being a man on my own terms, I guess.”, verbalising the experience of recognising the vague idea of gender, yet feeling it is something wholly unique from the binary ideas of gender (“… a flickering light I didn’t have the words for… I understood, but I didn’t have the verbal language to describe just how much.”).

“The confession came in a burst of brilliant light, supernova of honesty long overdue, and then went dark. I grasped at my body with shaking hands, trying to keep myself from malfunctioning, falling from the sky into a million unfixable pieces.”

Silver articulates the peace found in “…the void that was left between identities…”, a reminder that there is no obligation to have to be able to verbalise your own experience of gender and self, whilst also recognising the wanting to be recognised by others: “Despite the fact that I barely understood myself, I wanted to be understood by others.”

“They looked at each other, the mysteries flowing between them like cosmic feminine ley lines, and I felt nothing… I didn’t know if it was more her pride or my shame that made me so determined to be a girl… Cult’s kind of a loaded word, but what I’m trying to say is even though I knew that I didn’t belong, leaving didn’t feel like an option.”

The relation of femininity and womanhood to a “cult” in the post-first, second and third wave feminism society, is a detail that I really appreciated in Pluralities. It’s something I also noticed in Felix Ever After, and the misguided accusation that being trans as an AFAB individual made you a “bad feminist” because you must hate womanhood and femininity. Seeing this self-doubt reflected on the page, the question of whether your experience is gender dysphoria, or whether it is internalised misogyny - “Was shying away from the divine feminine of my line an act of violence against my own? A projection of internalised misogyny?” - was a comfort. “Leaving” womanhood doesn’t make someone a bad feminist, or a victim of internalised misogyny, it’s just that it was never you to begin with: “…she had never been mine…”.

“The concept of gender euphoria was my lodestar, a promise that being trans wasn’t just about what felt wrong, but also what felt right.”

But Avi Silver also emphasises trans joy. At the heart of the narrative is the journey to gender euphoria. Pluralities is a story of hope, of joy, and peace within the notion of self. It’s a story on the value of trans voices - “Just because it took me more work to get here doesn’t mean that it’s less valuable…” - and the value of an expression and experience of gender beyond the binary.

“I couldn’t describe what it felt like to be myself, to be nonbinary, but I could read through the stories and decide whether or not they felt like mine.”

Quotes taken from e-ARC provided through NetGalley and may change in final published work

a fab piece of short speculative science fiction partly about an alien rogue prince and his sad spaceship, and partly about someone figuring out that they are non-binary with their trans man friend.

it's got one of the best explorations of how figuring out your gender identity feels, from the struggles to the complexity to gender euphoria & how good it is to speak to other trans+ people who /get it/ instead of cis people who you have to explain things to. so much media around being non binary focuses on dysphoria so it felt so good to read about non binary gender euphoria. can't wait to get my hands on a physical copy of this gorgeous book💖

Pluralities is a quick read just under 150 pages and Avi Silver somehow stretches them to make not one but two stories come to life in a transformative telling of what it means to no longer understand and be who you thought you were when you were born. To understand that you've truly never been that person even if everyone around you couldn't tell.

As a Cis Woman I can't imagine the ache of understanding your body is yours but the pieces you've tried to fit around it just don't. This story never feels like it's explaining this feeling *to* you or for your benefit. How She's and Cornelius's stories weave together makes you want to reread it and pick up on the things you missed in the beginning. It made me tear up, it made me laugh, it made me want to hug and hold the characters and protect them from their worlds.

Another ARC review and another one to add to my Pre-Orders list.

Pluralities is an allegorical story about the process of realizing that you don't fit into the role you were assigned at birth. It's a complicated and somewhat painful story about dealing with your own transformation while also dealing with the reactions of people who don't understand why you think you are different/other than you appear to be. This book has a lot of "knives" (meaning, painful emotional moments) and was in a lot of ways extremely familiar. (There is a scene involving a cookout with unpleasant, bigoted relatives saying horrible, stupid things and having to endure the experience or find a way to escape it that was realistically unpleasant.)

There are two story lines. One follows a retail worker who
has psychic visions, one of which inspires them to quit their job. The retail worker is under a great deal of stress, and suffering what turns out to be dysphoria. (In this setting, women are marked with the word "She." The retail worker feels disconnected and incapable of performing the roles associated with the gender they were assigned. This is symbolized by the "She stamp" being smeared and blurry.)

The other story follows a runaway prince who is unable to deal with the role he's expected to follow. (Which seems to involve intimate relationships with people he doesn't like who all want things from him that he's not sure he can provide.) So he escapes with his sentient spaceship friend and gets himself immediately into trouble. (And also the sentient spaceship does something stupid, think its protecting the prince which leads to an entire Thing.)

Pluralities is written in a style that is clearly allegorical magical realism, but at the same time depicts the journey of discovery with painfully realistic accuracy. (Specifically, scenes where "She" is attempting to explain what's going on with their mother, who immediately blows off their attempts to explain what's going on. And also scenes where the prince is dealing--or failing to deal-- with the emotional mess of his life, and his overprotective friend hiding information from him. Also, that cookout I mentioned.) In some ways I was reminded of Nancy Springer's Larque on the Wing which also deals with questions of identity and being your authentic self.

This book was hard for me to read in a number of ways. I don't do very well with stories that are clearly allegorical. I tend to prefer character driven or plot driven works with a lot of interesting worldbuilding. "She" and "The Prince" do a lot of struggling that is emotional to watch, but it's difficult to understand and relate to them as characters--because they're allegories of the experience of coming out as nonbinary in a society that is very invested in binary gender roles. Another reason it was hard to read: the sheer emotional accuracy of the feeling of confusion and frustrations as the people in your life refuse to listen to you. (This is not to say the entire book is a downer. There are knives, but there is also acceptance and friendship as the protagonists grow into themselves as individuals. I'm just resonating more with the knives than with the acceptance and found family aspects of the story.)

Pluralities is not the kind of book that can really be read for entertainment. (At least it's a book I can't read for entertainment's sake.) This is instead a book meant to evoke and explain feelings related to transitioning, and why transitioning is emotionally important. It's an allegory about learning how to be your authentic self, and the struggle to achieve that. I feel that it was effective in accomplishing that, and is well worth checking out.

This book review is based on a galley received from NetGalley.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for giving me an e-ARC of this book to review. More queer novellas like this one, please! It was unusual (you might say "queer"!) and I really loved the thoughtful approach to gender identity in a sci-fi story of this nature.

I don't usually read novellas, but the blurb for this one intrigued me. I'm so glad I picked it up. I was fascinated by the story and I loved the characters: a rogue prince, a sentient spaceship, a trans guy and a nonbinary person. I really can't explain what this novella means to me, just that it spoke to me on a deep level. I would love to read more of Avi Silver's writing. The only thing that knocked a star off this one for me is that I don't really like sex scenes in books, but that's just a personal preference. I would highly recommend this novella to anyone who likes trans stories!

I went into this expecting to love it, and yet was still somehow <i>surprised</i> about how exactly much I did. Pluralities is one of my favourite novellas I’ve read this year, and if the universe has any justice (and judging by this years best novel hugo nominees it doesn’t), it will be nominated for a hugo award for best novella for it’s shear <i>brilliance</i>.

Featuring:
☆ A sad nonbinary spaceship
☆ a prince adamant that he is Not A Prince but a rogue
☆ and a not!girl discovering themselves in the wake of that revelation

Oh my god, where to <i>begin</i>? This is the first I’ve read of Ari Silver’s work, and honestly, after this, I will likely be reading the rest of their work. This novella is a science fiction ditty, following a rogue who used to be a prince, and local nbi adult, who, for the breadth of the novella, is referred to as <i>SHE</i>. While these two never meet, their lives and stories are indelibly intertwined by the choices they make. Namely to refuse their supposed fate. Both of them are incredibly delightful protagonists to follow. They’re both distinctive and relatable, and working through the things in their life that to them don’t make sense. The Rogue is so determined to make himself something outside of a prince even though he knows life was easier as one, and <i>SHE</i> is trying to learn to be nbi while being from a family which believes in the divine feminine. The two stories link together incredibly loosely, until the end, where you see how they link a little bit more firmly. Most often you’ll read of something in one of their POVs only to encounter it within the others, or read a line that hints at the other POV, but for much of the story it doesn’t go beyond that.

And it works! It works so incredibly well to have these loosely connected POVs where they are in many ways the same, and yet different people. And it’s <i>so fuckng clever<i>. Silver does a fantastic job of winding these two POVs together, but then doing so in some of the most drop dread gorgeous language I’ve ever read. I would be offended, but so much of the book does such a good job of speaking to the experience of being nonbinary in a way defined by euphoria and not dysphoria that I really can’t be. In the end the only potential criticism I have is that this was incredibly confusing, but in all honesty, that was definitely the point. <i>Please</i> go read this novella though, you won’t regret it.

Final Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (10/10)

This novella is beautiful. I *did* start out my reading experience staring at the wonderful cover and becoming one with the universe, as recommended per the author’s note.

There are essentially two storylines in this book: one with a first-person narrator questioning their sexuality that has only light scifi elements, and one that serves as a science fiction allegory for gender identity. The writing is so beautiful, and even though fourth-walls breaks often drive me a little crazy, I didn’t mind them in this book.

I loved the way the spec fic elements allowed the author to explore certain aspects of gender identity from multiple angles. This story really resonated with me as it dug into the guilt associated with “abandoning” femininity as a trans/enby individual. I could write a whole essay about how this book spoke to me. It’s not long, but it did a lot of legwork in those pages. I will probably end up getting myself a copy to read again, because I’m pretty sure I’m the target audience.

10/10, 5⭐️, cannot recommend enough. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

Okay, I absolutely devoured this. It wasn't what I was expecting, based on the summary, but it was still great.
The two narratives work really well, when compared against each other, and I'll admit it took me an embarrassingly long time to work out the connection between the two of them. In fact, I think it was about 47% through when I said to myself "Oh, *Theseus*, I get it now" out loud. Because it's a ship.
Mostly, though, I don't want to talk about that, I want to talk about what the narrative *is*. Because it would be easy to view this as a coming-out story, with the MC coming out to a parent, and themself. But somewhere in the last 10-15% there was a line I have since lost track of, but it made me think "This isn't a coming out narrative, it's not about discovery, it's about Becoming and transformation" and I thought that was pretty rad. I'd read this again in a heartbeat.