The consent issues in this book are glaring and haunting and terribly dealt with. ( )

Ariah is an interesting book, and it was very little like I expected upon reading the synopsis. What is presented on the surface as a sweeping, magical, romance, with a plot to drive it forward, is quite another thing entirely. Ariah is instead the coming-of-age story of a man (well, elf) who learns that he is nothing at all like he thought he was, and that the world outside of his sheltered upbringing is colorful and beautiful, with much to offer that he once was happy to live without.

The romance is a bittersweet thing, pulling at your heartstrings at moments when you least expect it, and the plot of the book is really just a thin vehicle to move that along. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, depending on the kind of reader you are. The story is incredibly character driven, and wouldn't have functioned any other way. I personally wouldn't have had it any other way even if it could have. A character driven novel gives you an opportunity to really dig deep into the hearts of the characters and ferret out all their secrets. You get the chance to see them truly grow and change, and in this instance it was beautiful to watch.

The style of story and the writing put me strongly in mind of Katherine Addision's The Goblin Emperor, and the carefully laid out, alluded to without being hammered over your head world-building reminded me of Elizabeth Bear's fantasy novels. Since these are two of my favorite authors, I was absolutely delighted to come across someone else who fit in with them. It's a rare breed that can paint you a beautiful fantasy world in bits and pieces, letting it unfold without dumping exposition into your lap, while leaving you enchanted and mesmerized just watching it exist.

The breadth of gender and sexuality so carefully explored in this book was also a joy to read. Never was I made to feel like characters were token representations of their labels. It was a part of them, not what defined them, and that's something that doesn't come up often in novels, much less in the fantasy genre.

It was superb, and I am glad to have read it. I wasn't ready to leave Ariah, Sorcha, and Shayat for a long time yet, but sadly, the book is done and read. I look forward to reading more by Sanders in the future.

* I was provided a review copy of this title in exchange for an honest review. * ( )

When I first started reading this, I thought I'd wind up giving it three stars. There are some issues with repetition throughout the text, but for some reason it came across as more prevelant, and therefore more distracting, in the beginning of the novel. For example, a description of characters was written like:


"They looked nothing alike. I saw absolutely no family resemblance."



Many of the descriptions came across like this, and in the beginning, they felt unnecessary.


Also, there were descriptions that, if added, would have heightened my sense of immersion into the story. For instance, I thought the main character was female for the first few pages. I also had a great deal of trouble imagining the city and the train, so I went to default human buildings, which didn't seem to match the characters.

And then, as I continued reading, the rating in my mind went up one star. Despite repetitious statements, the prose is smooth and easy to follow. I was fully immersed at some places, and can still imagine these scenes vividly.

Along with these positives, I came across beautiful imagery and wordings, like:



"The sun sat low on the horizon, bloody and wounded."

"Black skin that drank in the light."

"The image of her profile silhouetted against the flickering orange light is burned into my mind, a fixed point in time. It's one of those indelible memories that serves to organize a remembered life."


There is so much from this book that will stick with me.

The main focus of the story is not a villain or saving another person (the main character does get saved on many occasions, and on many more he saves others), but it's more about the character's growth. The main character, Ariah, is prime and proper, unsure of himself, but as the book continues, he goes on many adventures and finds himself in the process. In other words, the more Ariah experience, the more he realized what he did and did not like.

The author handles the character growth in a brilliant way. Ariah isn't stuck in one place, learning who he is. He travels all over the "country", lands in new settings, around different types of people, and it's these new experiences that causes him to look at the world a different way. In many of these adventures, there is danger and that need to continue reading to find out what happens, but these things are not the focus of this novel.

In some ways, this reminded me of Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness. There is an exploration of sexuality, and many of the characters come across as gender fluid

In the end, I wound up with a solid five stars on my mind. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey Ariah went on, and when it was over, I felt overwhelming sadness.

Ariah's journey resonated with me on a personal level, and I loved that in the end he knew himself so well that he left comforts and took one final trip back to those he loved. ( )

Ariah is a fantasy bildungsroman, the coming of age story of a young elf in a predominately human city. It’s intensely character focused and uses it’s fantasy setting to address issues of gender and sexuality. It’s a story about home, love, identity, and family, and I’m not sure my review will be able to do this book justice.

The story opens with Ariah arriving in the big city to leave with a mentor, Dirva, and learn how to control his magical powers. Ariah is a mimic, which means he can learn languages easily and mimic other people’s voices, and more importantly a shaper, which means he has the ability to sense other people’s emotions. However, Ariah often gets lost in other peoples feelings, losing any sense of himself or what he wants.

Ariah has always abided by the rules of his culture and never questioned the possibilities of other ways of life. The first real challenge to his way of thinking is when he accompanies Dirva on a trip to his hometown because one of his fathers is dying and lives with his brother Sorcha. Ariah’s bisexual, but same sex relationships are strictly against the rules of his home culture and he has difficulty admitting that there are other elements in play in his and Sorcha’s relationship besides friendship.

Many different types of relationship norms are presented in Ariah. There’s Ariah’s home culture, which shuns anything outside of a married, heterosexual, monogamous relationship. There’s the culture Dirva comes from, where polyamorous and same sex relationships are more more accepted. Finally, there’s another that has no concept of gender at all, attaches little importance to sex, and believes that sexual and romantic relationships shouldn’t be with the same people. In sum, Ariah is one of the queerest fantasy books I’ve ever read. It’s Tiptree nomination was wholly deserving.

There are a lot of different racial and ethnic groups in Ariah, and I still don’t have them completely sorted out in my head. There’s different types of elves, different cultures the elves reside in, plus the Qin (are they the only humans we see?). Ariah is an elf living in an empire dominated by the Qin. You see the effects of the oppression Ariah lives under, but the narrative doesn’t dwell on the lurid details, instead focusing (as always) on Ariah’s emotional state.

There’s little in the way of the sort of plot you find in most fantasy books. As I said before, this book is entirely focused on and driven by the characters and the relationships between them. Reading Ariah was an incredibly immersive experience. It was so easy to keep promising myself that I’d read only one more chapter and to read far more than I’d intended when I sat down.

If you’d ask me before reading Ariah, I would have said that I dislike coming of age novels. I have trouble describing why, although it might be that I had too many I disliked forced on me during in middle school and high school. But I loved Ariah. It has a few flaws – the ending felt slower than the rest of the book and I wished I had a clearer picture of all the different cultures and races of elves – but ultimately I think it’s one of the most memorable fantasy novels I’ve ever read.

I think there’s a lot more that could be said about this book than I’ve said here. I still struggle to describe it and why you should read it, but you really should. If I haven’t convinced you, I suggest reading Foz Meadow’s review (FYI contains spoilers) on the Tor blog.

The Illustrated Page. ( )