Some books are so completely an experience within themselves, so wholly another world—a world that takes up residence beneath your skin, like an inverse tattoo, indelible and sacred—that it’s impossible to fully describe their impact. For me, B.R. Sanders’ Ariah is such a book. I can tell you I cried three times while reading it, twice in a gasping way where I physically shook; and they were happy tears, too, the kind that spring up when the right words in the right order and context burst in your heart like a comet.
I can tell you that Ariah embodies the true potential of Bildungsroman in terms of the protagonist’s journey to adulthood, and that its intelligent, powerful, emotive discussion of gender, sexuality, culture, racism, imperialism, language, family, love, autonomy and personhood, among other things, is evocative of the best aspects of both Katherine Addison’s The Goblin Emperor and Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice. That these books have been nominated for, and won, some of the most prestigious awards in the field should, I hope, convey my full meaning: that Ariah deserves a place among them. But none of that tells you how it made me feel.
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