A great opening, a killer finale. If the middle bit had been as engaging and exciting, it’d have netted five stars. While slightly outside of my comfort zone (it’s not sci-fi), this book managed to capture me, and had me stay up late, well past my bedtime, to find out what would happen next.
Within any community that seems united and strong from the outside, there are fissures along the fault lines where the personalities of its members meet. In this case, the author, inspired by his own experiences, extrapolates and exaggerates these fault lines in the QUILTBAG+ community.
I’m not going to beat around the bushes, this book had a disconcerting effect on me. While I have been acutely aware of such fissures within other communities, I had not noticed them in the QUILTBAG+ world. Perhaps I have not immersed myself enough to have done so, but in hindsight (and after a bit of back-and-forth with the author on the fediverse), it should not come as a surprise. People are going to be people.
As such, this is an interesting exploration of a very poignant aspect of human nature, and it’s done in an alternate history that at first seems utopian, but turns out to have a dystopian side to it. An ambitopia, to quote the author. In keeping with that concept, the ending isn’t a ‘happily ever after’. But that’s OK, that’s life.
Rumour has it that there will be more by this author in the reality of Proud Pink Sky, and I’m looking forward to it.