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Unnatural Magic by C.M. Waggoner
Sep. 4th, 2022 11:41 amUnnatural Magic
3/5. Fantasy about a deserting soldier who hooks up – literally – with a troll woman, and, in a story strand that remains entirely separate for 80% of the book, the progress of a young woman who is a genius in the mathematics of magic.
I read the sequel first, which I liked a great deal; this book has flashes of that creativity and wit, but they’re undercut by lots of first novel problems (like major structural issues, for one). So yes, the troll/human relationship is hitting a very specific button about inverting expected gender dynamics, and it’s doing it well, but I kept being distracted by thinking how I would have turned this wobbly double-strand narrative into a much tighter, more satisfying novella.
The thing where the troll is the woman and much bigger and stronger than the human man, and the multiple ways they are both coded as queer in different cultures is pretty good, though.
3/5. Fantasy about a deserting soldier who hooks up – literally – with a troll woman, and, in a story strand that remains entirely separate for 80% of the book, the progress of a young woman who is a genius in the mathematics of magic.
I read the sequel first, which I liked a great deal; this book has flashes of that creativity and wit, but they’re undercut by lots of first novel problems (like major structural issues, for one). So yes, the troll/human relationship is hitting a very specific button about inverting expected gender dynamics, and it’s doing it well, but I kept being distracted by thinking how I would have turned this wobbly double-strand narrative into a much tighter, more satisfying novella.
The thing where the troll is the woman and much bigger and stronger than the human man, and the multiple ways they are both coded as queer in different cultures is pretty good, though.