In desert lands where weavers can weave cloth from sand and memory, Uiziya has spent years waiting and then searching for her aunt Benesret, the master weaver who creates cloth from bones for a mysterious order of assassins. Though the search holds many dangers, Uiziya keeps going for the sake of knowledge, though she knows the price may be terribly high. With her travels a nameless man who struggles with his own identity and the expectations of society after spending so many years of his life as a woman, wife, and grandmother. The closer each of the travelers comes to achieving their goals, the more they must questions themselves, their identities, and what it is they truly desire in their lives.

Though science fiction and fantasy are genres that, by their very nature, can allow for a breathtaking array of characters and expressions of self, it’s somewhat rare to come across a story that actually deal with the possibilities, realities, and cultural consequences of non-binary and transgender characters. Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness comes to mind, and after that, there’s little else in the SFF “cannon”, save for a transgender character here or a non-binary character over there, with little of their inclusion dealing with the reality of what it might be like, in these strange new worlds, to be someone who does not conform to traditional male or female identities.

With their Birdverse stories, author R.B. Lemberg presents the reader with elegantly written tales in a world where a person’s gender doesn’t necessarily define their destiny. They may begin life as a girl and grow to realize that the gender of their body may not reflect what is in their mind, and vice versa. If they are born into a culture that respects a person’s decision to change, there is a magical process that allows the body to change to reflect who they are. If they are born into a culture that does not respect this, they may spend their lives feeling disjointed, like they’ve been living their lives wrongly somehow– as the nameless man feels. When he talks to people who knew him in his youth, when he was living as a woman, his frustration at not being heard or understood is obvious.

“‘I am not a woman.’

She shrugged. ‘You were brought up to be one. These things are hard to erase, much as you change otherwise.’

This is not the nature of women, but rather the nature of all people who care. Uiziya had told me this once. ‘You can choose to care or not, and that is what people do.’

Sulikhah shrugged again. ‘As you wish.'”

The nameless man’s struggle to be understood is not the only conflict in The Four Profound Weaves, though. Uizya’s quest for knowledge is just as profound, for her aunt Benesret is not a benevolent person. Her knowledge comes with a heavy price. And out in the greater world, a ruler who sees any change as an evil seeks to put an end to progress, to cultural shifts, and to the gender transformations that are a natural part of life to so many people in their world.

The Four Profound Weaves is a remarkable story, and not simply for the heartbreaking and beautiful ways in which it deals with gender norms, cultural expectactions, family, and friendship. In just 192 pages, Lemberg weaves a multi-facted story in which two aging characters still have a lot to learn about themselves, their strengths, and their flaws. Although, while the prose is elegant and lyrical, its beauty can sometimes obfuscate the meaning. But this is a minor issue overall, as it detracts very little from the story. With elegant prose and an understanding of human nature in all its genders, Lemberg weaves a golden tale of human longing, friendship, and hope.



Thank you to NetGalley and Tachyon press for providing me with a free ebook in exchange for an honest review. This did not affect my opinion in any way.

I was not aware going into this book that it was the second in the series, so that may affect my review. I also DNFed at 30%
Going into this book next to no context was given and I was left horribly confused and lost. I never got a hold on how the magic system works. I also dont understand much of the setting and how this world is set up
I could not get attached to either of the main characters of this book. I was excited to read from the POV of elders since thats rare in books. But both these characters felt flat and I couldnt read any difference between their POVs. I was super excited especially about one of the main characters being a trans man, but other than his trans identity he felt very boring. So much of his story and journey revolved around his trans identity.
I also really disliked the writing style. It was very descriptive and slow, and read like some of the books I was forced to read in high school english that I despised, like The Alchemist. Some people may love this but I found it hard to read

(REVIEW TO APPEAR AT www.fantasy-hive.co.uk )

Some novellas are like short novels, others feel more like long short stories. Neither is necessarily better, but The Four Profound Weaves (due 4th September) struck me as one of the latter - and a very good one, too.

The novella is an interesting length for a story. Long enough for the narrative to stretch its wings a bit, but not long enough to allow any excess baggage. Worldbuilding has to be off-stage, for the most part; plot has to be focused. You have to be careful cramming too many characters in, as they won’t all have time and space to breathe.

And yet, a good novella - like this one - can somehow tell a large story in a small space, projecting beyond its boundaries, creating whole worlds, complex narratives, large casts, all despite showing only a fraction of it on the page. I’ve read some great novellas - Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark, or The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps by Kai Ashante Wilson, and of course Martha Wells’ Murderbot Diaries - but I hadn’t read one quite like The Four Profound Weaves.

This is the story of two people from different societies, both older, both trans, both lost and unfulfilled. One, the desert weaver Uiziya, is waiting for her outcast aunt to return and teach her the last of the titular magical weaves. The other, a man with no name, is looking for the place he belongs as a man, after living so long as a woman. Unwilling to return to his rigid, segregated society in an enclave of the city of Iyar, he also wishes to find Uiziya’s aunt, in hopes of finding a name - and through it, maybe a home.

They come together on the journey, of course, and - of course - it is not as straightforward as they hoped. The last profound weave is death, and the tyrant of Iyar also wants it for his collection. There’s magic, mysteries, and marvels, and hints of a rich underlying mythos (this story is part of the author’s “Birdverse” setting, though it’s the first I’ve read). On the surface, it’s quite a simple and satisfying story - but the surface isn’t the whole story, especially here.

As I said before, The Four Profound Weaves struck me stylistically as a long short story rather than a short novel. The prose is simple but elegant, unafraid to use repetition for emphasis or rhythm, or to leave other things to the reader’s imagination (description is sparse, for example). The story wears its themes on its sleeves, so to speak, tackling head-on the challenges of change vs. stasis, and the danger of being chained to a past, or to people who don’t want what’s best for you. It’s a story about trans characters and trans experiences, but a story that (I hope) anyone can understand, relate to, and enjoy.

In conclusion, The Four Profound Weaves is modern speculative fiction at its best, exploring important issues through compelling characters, fantastic settings, and exciting stories. It’s also a gorgeous book, if the illustrations in my digital ARC were anything to go by (thanks to NetGalley and Tachyon for providing).

This is one of the few books with a really useful and accurate blurb, so I won't add too much in plot summary for you. I found it was unlike anything I've read before, with two elderly protagonist who have full lives behind them still finding themselves, in a world split between transitory desert traders and the immutable city. The desert wanderers welcome change, altering their nature and gender as desired, while that's unaccepted in the city. Uiziya the weaver is set on a journey to find the aunt who trained her in simple weaving, in order to advance her skills, but finds the cost of the profound weaves is high. The nameless man is entangled with her journey, having left behind his life before to live accepted as a man with people who are different from everything he's known before, we uncover the layers of what has drawn him here as the story goes.
The writing is beautiful, pacing very different from your standard fantasy, I loved getting to know the characters, and the journey venturing into a world with bird gods, flying carpets and mountains of bones is so unusual. It takes a slow, thoughtful course, pondering the conflict between change and stability, the cruelty that rigid stability can wreak on the individual. In a novella length this packs a massive punch. I did feel a bit like I lacked pieces of worldbuilding that either already exist in the previous short works set in this world, or could have been expanded on if this were a full length novel, but I look forward to finding out.

I thought I would like this book in the same way I thought I would like A Wizard of Earthsea. I mean, this is a book written about non-binary and trans characters in a fantasy world where people weave carpets of sand, wind, song, and bones. But when it came down to it, this book was slow, all over the place, and plot driven, three elements that made this book something I can't recommend.
Lemberg jumps into the novel without explaining, leaving readers to pick up what's happening along the way. I didn't mind this approach, and much prefer it to the long drawn out part where authors tend to explain the world, including why their world is unique or different from the Earth we know. However, Lemberg also spends long amounts of time explaining over and over again the differences that this non-binary character faces because they don't follow gender norms. This continues to be spread out and re-explained in slightly different context. I was mostly bothered by it because it seems the only thing to be fully explained throughout the book, and wouldn't have minded it if it was explained once and done with, but it is dragged throughout the book.
Why did Uiziya spend so long waiting for her aunt to return and teach her more about the four profound weaves? Why did she not build a loom herself, or explore other weaving that she was interested in? There never felt like any good explanations for these key elements of the book that drove the plot forward.
For a plot driven book, this felt very random. None of the pieces of the plot were expected or really felt like they came together in the end. I've heard people rave about this book, and its lyrical prose (which I didn't find to be lyrical at all), but unfortunately there were too many things that made this book a miss for me.

This is a tough one to get into. It's a fascinating premise, and the magic system is equally fascinating and incomprehensible, with its weaves of air and hope and bone. I don't know if it would make more sense if I'd read the short stories that precede it, but I found that if I floated with the current of the story I could sort of skim along the surface and not get too confused. The language is poetic and layered and difficult and I felt the author was talking around what they wanted to say, but while it frustrated me at first in the end I got used to it. The ending was powerful and moving and I love how all the threads get tied together and feel that it wrapped everything up pretty well.

Also I am HERE for two older (60s) trans leads off on an adventure to start anew after years of hardly living.

I liked the idea of the world but I didn't care about the characters. There were two perspectives, Uiziya and The Nameless man, and I couldn't tell the difference between them. The inner dialogue is so similar that, at first, I didn't even know it was from different perspectives. I didn't enjoy the writing or the pacing either.

I think The Four Profound Weaves is unlike anything else I've ever read before. I am honestly amazed at this book and the complexity of it; at the same time I can't quite make my mind up on what I feel about this book and whether I even liked it as such, much less can I come up with a rating that accurately reflects my feelings.

I don't have the slightest clue as how to feel about this book. I even had a hard time recounting this plot because I genuinely couldn't really remember it, even though I read it yesterday. So, I think I'm going to be completely upfront about the fact that this plot didn't make any lasting impressions on me, nor do I remember much of their quest to get the weave back. However, while I might be feeling this way there are a bunch of things about this book that I genuinely liked.

The magic system in this book was simply amazing. It's deep, it's pretty complicated and very detailed and at the start of this book I was pretty confused but then I got it and I was fascinated. To me this was super interesting and something I'd like to explore more in this universe, so even though I have mixed feelings about this book in particular, I might be picking another book from this universe up.

Moreoever, the writing in this book is absolutely stunning, The language is straight up beautiful, it's frankly breathtaking and I really appreciated reading a book where the writing is good. I would love to read more by this author because of how they write, honestly.

I was really a big fan of the inclusion of trans people and of how trans people were talked about and handled, basically. I mean, I am a cis person so I know it's not really my place to judge but the way gender was handled and how trans people were written as just...naturally occuring, where people can transition (not just gender, but their whole sex too) without it being judged much felt so very uplifting, even to me as a cis person. Like being trans was just something a lot of people were, and no one was judged by it. That felt truly amazing. My heart hurt a lot because of how the Khana people treated trans people, and the way they kept misgendering and deadnaming the nameless man. Again, I'm cis and I have never been exposed to transphobia directed at me, but from this book I think I get a bit of an idea just how horrible that must be.

With all of this being said, I don't know how to rate this book. I mean, as for many individual aspects of it I definitely loved them but my overall impression is still a bit mixed. I think a big reason of why you like a book is usually the plot and like I said before I felt no strong connection to it, and could hardly even remember it despite having finished this book less than 24 hours before writing this review. I'm going to just give up and give this book three stars because at this point I can't pinpoint my feelings any clearer than this.

However, this is not a bad book. If you're a big reader of fantasy and like diverse books with amazing writing and an interesting magic system I would definitely suggest you check this universe out because you could do much, much worse than this.

A book that teaches us about love, freedom, growth and transformation, the importance of being and letting others be, and especially that all lives matter.

Ooof. I'm not going to lie, I actually think I was too dumb for this book? It's such a short story and yet it took me an eternity to get through it and though I enjoyed the parts that I understood, it also made me question my intelligence too often for me to...you know...like the book.
There was a lot of repetition in here and at times I had no idea who was speaking and that on top of the fact that the concepts explained went straight over my head (I feel like they would have fit better in a longer book instead of a novella), I just had a hard time staying engaged. Nevertheless, loved the diverse and queer rep, so yay for that!

Powerful, magical, lyrical, and beautifully original, The Four Profound Weaves is one of those books where you linger over each paragraph, admiring the flow of words almost as much as the flow of ideas. R.B. Lemberg weaves – quite literally – a tale of change that encompasses the transformation of bodies, families, and identities.

This is not a coming-of-age tale but one of facing-your-own-mortality, an epic fantasy featuring two elderly characters from different cultures, connected by their changes, their magic, and their families. Uiziya changed when she was young, becoming a woman in a culture that accepts and embraces her, which welcomes her as part of a community. Nen-sasair changed much later in life, becoming a man rejected by his culture and his lovers, an outcast who struggles to find his place. Both are seeking Benesret, exiled for weaving death, leading them to the Ruler of Iyar, a madman who seeks to end the ultimate change, death.

Gender permeates every page of this, from cultures to people to magic. We are introduced to a culture where gender is fluid, where men and women mix openly, where women weave magic but must give up both agency and magic in marriage; and another where gender is rigid and segregated, a world where men are isolated and veiled, where women live and love together, forbidden to sing or build.

Like gender, magic infuses every page of this as well, beginning with the mythology of Bird and Kimri (which I’m curious to know about) and ending with the magic of weaving. Flying carpets and ravenous diamondflies. Weaves of change and hope. The magic of death, of bones, of lives stolen and spirits captured. It’s a beautiful story, but a dark and sorrowful one as well, marked by pain, sacrifice, and love.

While I don’t re-read a lot of books, I’m looking forward to sitting down and immersing myself in the paperback of The Four Profound Weaves once it’s released. There’s such a depth of meaning to it all, I’m confident I’ll uncover a whole other reading.

"The Four Profound Weaves" is an epic fantasy with fantastic diversity and trans representation. The world building and setting description is intricate and well written. Birdverse is a strange and wonderful world that will captivate readers instantly.

3.5

Beautiful language galore with a gently told story.

The story follows Uiziya e Lali and nen-sasaïr (who learns his true name at the end of the book), two trans elders in their communities. The main characters were both wonderful. It is always a treat to see fantasy about older folx, because fantasy doesn't have an age limit. I felt for Uiziya, wanting to learn so much that she almost gives up her life. And for nen-sasaïr who is coming to terms with his recent transition to the body of a man with magic. I was sympathetic even when they made their mistakes and understood the pull of their desires.

The world is lavishly described with beautiful language that helped me see within everything. Nothing is plain in this book, it is all poetry. That did mean that sometimes it was a bit difficult to follow. Some things were so poetically described that they lost their realness. But, that's not necessarily a bad thing and it was consistent through out the book. I always felt a deep, dreaming haziness as I read, as though none of it was real even in the realm of the story itself. That made the story feel gentle even in difficult moments for the characters. Again, another aspect that can be taken as excellently done or lacking in tension. I appreciated it for the most part. There were moments when I felt I could have been more invested in the feelings but was too busy with the poetry of the book, though that rectified itself in the climax which was suitably enjoyable.

The dealing with trans issues was nice to see. We have Uiziya who comes from a culture when it is normal to change one's body to align with one's gender. This is always a refreshing way to look at things in my point of view. But we also have nen-sasaïr who fears being hated and unacknowledged by his own people. But even within this culture, we see that there are those who understand and support him in his true body. It showed the society to not be completely monolithic in it's misunderstanding of transness.

All in all, I think this was the gentle trans novel I needed in my life. Perhaps the poetry of the book did overshadow some of the world-building and the plot but I appreciated the words very much nonetheless. Not perfect but a good read.

Lusciously detailed world-building and gorgeous language shine in this short novel from Lemberg’s “Birdverse.” The magic is inventive, centered on the intricately constructed carpets, each with its own amazing properties.

The Four Profound Weaves: A carpet of wind, a carpet of sand, a carpet of song, and a carpet of bones. Change, wanderlust, hope, and death.

In this world, personal magic arises from deepnames, and gender roles are strictly divided. In certain cultures, men neither sing nor weave. At the same time, polyamorous families are common, as are gender transitions. Transforming from female to male, as one of the viewpoint characters has, takes on the added challenge of overcoming a lifetime of roles, rules, and the expectation of loved ones. If this is a world of impossible choices and cruelty, however, it is also imbued with hope. Images of heart-lifting loveliness brighten moments of dark, even grotesque elements.

“For we are all woven of words,” says the transgender man, “and after we go, it is our tales that remain, wandering around the desert with the wind until our stories are told four times, until a weave is pulled from them – the carpet of truth which is the desert, this weave of change, and wanderlust, and hope, and death.”

This is a wonderful novella that is set in the Birdverse - which isn't something I had encountered before but a search through Goodreads means I have my work cut out for me to read more! Beware those who don't want to have to add lots of things to their TBR! 

I thought this was fantastic - it's a delightful world, nuanced representation of trans characters and a gorgeous story all packed into one very neat package. 

What I would say to those reading this, based on my own experience, is to give this the time and space that it needs. I first started reading this back at the start of 2020 when I thought I would knock an easy win off my TBR - I wasn't enjoying it or understanding anything that was happening so I put it down. When I picked it up again in June of this year I just gave the story and the characters the space they needed to breathe, doing what I think you should always do with novellas and just letting the story take me, not worrying too much about understanding every little element of worldbuilding. So if you pick this up and find you're struggling to get into it, take a breath and come back when you're ready - I promise it's worth it. 

We don't get many books that focus on older LGBTQ+ identities - and those that do exist tend to focus on the idea of a life wasted or a long-lost love. I appreciated that, while this book did acknowledge the pain of figuring things out later in life, it was also buoyed by the hope and the knowledge that old age is not the end of existence - it's a different time for sure but making those changes to your life is still worth doing and living as your true self is powerful at any age. Where most LGBTQ+ stories tend to focus on young people coming out I thought this was a delightful additional narrative to consider. 

I liked the world - as I say I'd never read anything in this universe before, but the setting and the magic and the cultures depicted were handled very well and in the short span of this book I absolutely got the sense of the wider world these characters inhabit. This is a small narrative in many ways but the scope is huge and it feels simultaneously intimate and epic-  which to me is the sign of a great novella. I love any magic involving death - bone magic, necromancy - it's what I like to read. In this case, I liked the idea of these four weaves and the idea of weaving as something learned and taught and passed on - it's a magic connected to reality which helps to ground the story.

Overall this book surprised me with how much I enjoyed it and how powerful my feelings were by the end of the story, it's emotional for sure and also hopeful and beautiful and tragic and all other emotions that it should not be possible to pack into a small package like this. I'd recommend this to so many people but I'd definitely reiterate what I said above - give this the space it needs, let the story take you. 

My rating: 4/5 stars

I received a free digital advanced review copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley - all opinions are my own. 

The Four Profound Weaves publishes September 4th!

This is a really short book, and yet it took me nine eternities to get through. It has a promising start, and off the bat I waxed lyrical over the writing and the deeply thoughtful magic system.

That all kind of came tumbling down the further I got. But before I get to that, first, the good parts.

There's a lot to like here. As I mentioned, the magic system is (from my experience) quite unique, and the author's exposition of it lends the whole tale a very mystical feel. I could also tell that, like many other aspects of the book, the magic system was born out of intensely introspective ideas and personal experiences.

On that note, the author's deep empathy and understanding of their main characters was also almost palpable. Given what I read in the acknowledgments and what I knew about the author going in, this didn't surprise me. It felt like an intensely personal portrayal, steeped in meaning and allegory.

That's where things get a bit iffy for me. While beautiful, there were many aspects of the book that fell short simply because they started moving into high-concept territory - the kind where the author goes so off the map that the reader just gets lost, even if the idea was likely to convey some deeper meaning through imaginative expression. I feel like I got glimpses of that deeper meaning, but the overall impression I got was that people close to the author themself would have a better clue of what they were trying to convey than the average reader. I ABSOLUTELY acknowledge that I might not have been the author's intended audience for this, for various reasons, but I think the veiled ideas behind the story itself and the way I wasn't able to interpret them go way beyond our differences in life context.

The thing that got me the most, however, was the unnecessary repetition. I truly believe this would have been a much shorter story had the author not constantly repeated the same things over and over again. When the reader is told about certain aspects of the world, the magic system, and the characters for the first time, it's all a beautiful blur. You start building the setting in your mind and envisioning this graceful and wonderfully imagined new world. Yay! But. When you're told those details over and over again, each time in basically the same way and not leaving out anything, as if you as the reader must have short-term memory loss, it starts getting to you. Repetition can work, don't get me wrong, but if you don't put some variety in the way you repeat things, your reader will start second-guessing their own intelligence. It got to the point where I was not even just desperate for the repetitions to stop, but I was desperate for new information to be introduced instead, as the world never really progressed much further, and I really think that's a shame.

To summarize my gripes in one sentence: If this were a short story, or a really short novelette, I think I would have been blown away. This is interesting, though, given that the author actually wrote quite a few shorter works set in this same world, the Birdverse, before writing The Four Profound Weaves as a longer work. Who knows, maybe if I'd read those first before this, I might have had more Aha! moments, but I still don't think I would have been able to look past the issues I had with the writing.

I received the ARC for review from NetGalley. My opinions are my own.

A wonderfully heartfelt story whose metaphors sing and whose themes resonated with me quite a lot. I loved the language and the plot, once I got into it a little, kept me gripped. I came to it without knowledge of Birdverse beyond that it exists, but that didn't prevent me from following the story, understanding the stakes or comprehending the cultures and customs depicted in the slightest.

The protagonists are remarkably complex and written in a way that makes them seem very real and believable; the conflicts are not simple and external but difficult and even heart-wrenching, but never in an exploitative way. I've seen a lot lately about how writing queer suffering (misgendering, deadnaming) is to be avoided (by cis writers in particular, but that gets generalised pretty quickly). I am in the "turning pain into entertainment is often bad" camp, but there is value for me in stories that write suffering in a way that's potentially healing. The Four Profound Weaves isn't cozy, fluffy reading: there's queer pain here, but surely we must have space for well-written queer pain. And while there were some bits that seemed slightly didactic here, especially in the beginning (perhaps because they were also here to explain the verse and the background for unfamiliar readers), later on, the story seemed to me to be written with a queer reader in mind. This wasn't a fluffy read, but it was kind and thoughtful.

An absolutely beautiful, poetic, and emotional story! I'll be honest and say that I had trouble fully diving into the first 30% of the story. It almost felt like I had missed the first chapter where everything was explained and that I had just jumped straight into a complex world knowing nothing. However, after picking things up and finally grasping the world, the characters, and the plot the beauty of the story revealed itself.

Not only is this book written beautifully, but it also tackles issues with LGBTQ+ in society (even though it's fantasy it reflects the real world well) and it has a strong focus on the trans community. This book is such an exemplary example of how fiction can be so important to the world.

If you love adventure, magic, and beautiful imagery this is a book you should definitely pick up!

This was one of the most beautiful written stories I’ve ever read. From the first pages I fell in love with this lyrical writing style that manages to put the serious topic of accepting your own gender and sexuality in a magical setting. It has a bit of a flair of The Tales of The Arabian Nights, which I always love. The main characters were both interesting and I liked seeing this story unfold in both their point of views. The world and magical system were well thought of.
I didn’t have high expectations for this book, but was very pleasantly surprised.
R.B Lemberg will sure make me look up more of their work.

This is a beautiful, lyrical and unique story that takes the characters not only on a physical journey but an emotional one as well. I loved reading about transgender characters who had very different perspectives with regard to their identity, aging, family bonds, and life in general. The Birdverse that R.B. Lembery has created is intriguing with its layers of magic.

While there was so much to love about this story, there were some aspects that left me wanting a bit more. The pacing of the book had moments where the story felt a bit slow and then other times where things moved too quickly and I wished for more specifics. The switching from one character’s perspective to another so quickly left me confused at first but as the story unfolded I enjoyed the two perspectives. As I finished reading I found myself wanting more detail and history for this magical world. Overall, I enjoyed how unique this story was. It’s very different than other fantasy books I’ve read and I’d like to read more from this author in the future.