(4.5 stars)

Have you ever put off reading a book because you were scared of how good it was going to be? That was my experience with this one. I read the first lines months ago but only got to it now.

If you are looking for your traditional sci-fi, filled with cool technology you'll probably be disappointed. That's not to say you can't enjoy it - that is just not what this book is. Instead, this is mostly a book about gender, putting the pain and confusion that those of us who don't fit into the box that was checked at our birth experience into beautiful words. Although the author may have a different gender identity to my own, I still felt so incredibly seen and understood. I feel like this is more a book of emotions and sensations than plot. While this may not be to everyone's taste, I ended up enjoying it and seeing someone else experience the very deeply and often forcefully gendered world we live in, an experience I'm sure most (if not all) other non-cis people relate strongly to.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for granting me free access to the advanced digital copy of this book.

Absolutely captivating read! This book kept me glued to the pages from start to finish. The characters were richly developed, the plot was engaging, and the writing style was simply brilliant. A definite must-read for anyone looking for an immersive literary experience. 5 stars!

Do you ever fall a little bit in love with a book? I keep circling back to this scifi novella and its story, how much I fell in love with our two protagonists.

I don't even want to reveal much more than the synopsis does but this book has so many beautiful, quotable moments that my digital copy is highlighted like a Christmas tree.

I want to highlight three things.
1. There are strong themes about gender and personhood what stood out to me more was how aromatic-coded the book is. We have two POVs and both their main relationships are non-romantic. Sex plays a role, but so does friendship, parent-child dynamics and adversarial connections. It explores many different relationships and the impact the have on our protagonists.
2. The mirroring and merging of the storylines. Avi Silver got creative when crafting this story! In the beginning, the retail worker and the prince seem to have nothing in common and I was wondering if and how the stories would connect, why we are reading about both of them, I adored how it all comes together. By the end, I was sad that it was all over, I would have happily taken another 100 pages. (Not that this felt incomplete, I just didn't want to let it go).
3. Narration style.
I fucking love it when the narrative addresses the reader and the story is told more like a casual retelling than a limited 3rd person point of view. In here, we have a 1st person narration and a 3rd person narration which also helps distinguish the two leads. The story feels also self-aware in a how it frames conversations and memories and how it interacts with the characters.

It's such a well-structured story.

Unexpected. Surreal. Sort of hard to explain. And a feat of short-form speculative fiction exploring gender, and queerness in a refreshing - if not perplexing - way. Regardless, Avi Silver is an author to keep an eye on and expect new narratives unlike what we've ever seen.

(Content warnings: sexual content, dysphoria, minor transphobia, deadnaming, suicidal thoughts, injury detail)

God. I don't think I have the words to describe how this book made me feel other than "absolute gender catharsis." Not only did I spend most of it sobbing, but I actually cried so hard I got a migraine. I think I need to be sent out into the vacuum of space and rotate in silence thinking about it for a couple days. 10/10 would recommend

Like "Clerks" meets "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," Pluralities is an astonishing and empowering blend of SFF and literary storytelling with themes of anticapitalism and gender euphoria that will change how readers view themselves and their societies.

"The Ship of Theseus is a thought experiment about whether an object, after having had all of its original components replaced, remains the same object." - What a magnificent analogy to trans-experiences.

I have almost no words for what I had the honor to read except that it was perfection. The symbolism, the doubled narrative. Theseus. The prince and the ship. Their connection. The symbolism. The perfection of describing trans experiences. The pronoun -stamps.

This was wonderful and a must read - for everyone, no matter cis, trans, straight, queer. This one is important!

3.5

I definitely think this is a case of right book wrong time for me and I will be rereading it at some point when my life is a little less hectic to hopefully “get” all of the praise this novella has received. As it is, I thought the writing was incredible and I loved the exploration of gender and identity and belonging. That being said, I didn’t understand how the two stories connected or if they were even meant to so while I enjoyed reading this novella and highlighted a bunch of quotes, I finished the book with a slight unsatisfied feeling because of the second storyline.

Pluralities alternates between two character-driven stories exploring identity linked in ways that are not always clear. I liked all of the characters and the touching depictions of their relationships, and I was interested in both stories, but both felt incomplete, leaving me wanting more. However, I fell in love with Avi Silver’s beautiful writing, and I highlighted several passages that particularly resonated with me.

Reading Pluralities is a unique and memorable experience. I highly recommend it if you enjoy unconventional narratives, speculative fiction, and queer representation. Note that this book contains swearing, violence, and explicit sexual encounters.

I received a free advanced review copy of the ebook through NetGalley. I volunteered to provide an honest review.

"Surviving the world in small concessions, reassembling the self in pursuit of being taken seriously and loved nonetheless-Cornelius Flux has been playing this game for as long as he can remember."

It was a unique experience. I am really surprised by how this novel was written. I even feel like I missed some things, like I didn't understand it all. It was a whole lot of complicated concepts to absorb after all. But I really really liked it. It was flawed, but quite enjoyable in my opinion. The writing style was versatile, and changed tone between the two perspectives we are following. There is a girl on earth and a boy in space, both stories apparently very separate but linked in a subtle way, that was implied towards the end.

"But having the opportunity to explore myself, to seek the joy in discovery alongside the discomfort of relinquishing expectation it was nothing short of liberating."

"It took a lot of work not to get sucked into other people's traumas, not to suffocate under the weight of all possible futures."

So this book talks about transgender-ism or more accurately, the struggle to recognize oneself. The girl, we don't know her name, ends up in this dilemma of sexuality, of who she is supposed to be. Her mother is a great person, and a big support to her too. Her story was quite understandable but required more pages I think. And it's a very complicated novel, I don't think I understood every single thing. What I did understand was some sort of nontraditional approach to dealing with the dispute over sexism. The women in this story are supposedly very strong but not in a feminist-pov way. The women are considered to be strong and that's the problem. The world expects her to act on those principles of womanhood that are supposed to describe her as a woman. And she is a complex mind, she doesn't really understand this compulsion to act according to the norms of society. And so ends up befriending a trans guy, and becomes one herself. But this book is much more than just transgender and cisgender. What it talks about is understanding oneself, who one is, what one wants and trying to reach out to your wishes in a non-arrogant way. Or that's what I understood anyway. The real self hidden in our ostensible self is depicted as a sort of passenger in a vessel and as a metaphor there is the other story of the boy in the spaceship wandering in galaxies. He is the emotion. He is the sentiment hiding in that spaceship of a mind, that vessel of a body. Trying to find his way out to that mask of a facade the world is supposed to look at.

"Connecting with people had always felt a little like losing opacity, like offering up parts of me that even I couldn't see. The closest I ever got was being curious."

"In a world that wielded womanhood as a silencing tool, I had been born into the mysteries, graced with the knowledge of inherited power."

"Despite the fact that I barely understood myself. I wanted to be understood by others. I wanted to be comforted without having to explain myself over and over and over again."

The other perspective of the boy was more interesting to read. In the beginning I didn't know how the stories were connected so I was just treating it like another perspective that will gradually mingle in with the other. And oh man, it was gorgeous, I loved him. His name is Cornelius Flux and he has run away from his home planet in his frustration. He is tired and exasperated by the worldly talks and the demands of society. So now he is travelling in outer space in this spacecraft, except that it is not a spacecraft at all but a living bionic body. It's made of some bionic living material, and it is living. It can talk in his head and they have the best, the warmest, the most beautiful friendship ever. The ship's name is Bo. They have amazing adventures together. The way they meet and the way their friendship grows to form an unbreakable bond makes me nostalgic and emotional.

"You're not a weapon. Or an afterthought or a, a sidekick. You're my friend! You're my friend, Bo. I love you. I love you so much that it hurts. I don't know what to do with myself."

"If it could reply, Bo would tell him the truth: Because we're no good without the other. Because even at your worst, you do not deserve the pain you house. Because I do not do enough to show just how much faith I have in you. Because I've run a thousand simulations through my core, imagining what our lives would be apart, and it just doesn't work. Cornelius. It just doesn't work."

I just want to appreciate how much this relationship of the ship and the boy was built up and made important in the story. The ship was basically his harbour, they were one and could not be detached just like a mind cannot be taken from a body. There were real piercing scenes and I loved it. The prose is also beautiful and deep. It was really a hefty book, something that demanded a lot of focus and I feel happy to have read it.

"Things were so easy in their youth, when by each ached only for an anchor. Life was so simple, when all they had to fear was everything but each other. Home was such a comfort, back when being understood felt more a purpose than a plague."

I think this quote summarizes the concept really well:

"I was a shapeshifter, worshipped for my realities. Without, within. So many stories of self, huddled together to wander the void of my own uncertainty, fleeing and seeking in equal measure. Transcendent. The lights within me spoke an impossible language, and all at once the ship of my body caught a proper glimpse of its lonesome occupant."

"I hoped so. I hoped we would not lose each other as we dipped between the planes of reality, seeking the shape of each other as the singular plural. Bionic organic. Sentient story."

Pluralities is a speculative, and at times dreamlike, queer delight. I'm not sure genre is a helpful descriptor for this book, as it so satisfyingly occupies space between categories. We follow two tracks, a young person awakening to and stepping into their transness, and an alien prince bopping through space with his sentient ship best friend. The writing style is fun and fast-paced and doesn't hand hold the reader through the story. There's a lot left unsaid, a lot of space (no pun intended) left for us to ponder and put together. The themes tackled are expansive: friendship, love, self-love, self-knowledge, while the tone is fresh and colorful. Pluralities felt like a work that needed to be birthed, irrespective of commerce. This is one that will sit with you, but won't drag you down. I absolutely loved it.

The beautiful cover and subject matter drew me to this title and I’m not surprised to find out the story really resonated with me but it was still a pleasant surprise to like it as much as I did. This is a journey to gender identity and also an emotional space adventure.

“Once more I caught a glimpse of the mark on his cheek, where his she stamp would have been if he were a woman. But men didn’t wear stamps— they were just allowed to Be.”

The author is an exceptionally good one. The writing is rather beautiful, flows nicely and is easy to follow even when it’s the rambly thoughts of the narrator in a world almost identical to our own, or strange things happening in another universe with a sentient ship and its alien passenger.

The story gives good insight into nonbinary, it’s real and emotional, a bit surreal, and rather funny at times. The combination of humour and the space adventure really makes it an interesting tale that doesn’t feel anything like a lecture. I related strongly as a nonbinary person myself.

“When we got to Aunt Lisa’s, it took less than half an hour before I started fantasizing about pressing people’s faces into the grill. This wasn’t something I was particularly proud of.”

I was considering deducting half a star just for being able to put the book down. But when I thought about it more I came to the conclusion that perhaps this book is not meant to be devoured in one sitting.

Unlike most of my reads, this is not a romance book – actually this has some aro vibes, which I dig, though honestly I’m always a sucker for romance and only wish they’d skipped it when it’s implemented abhorrently. So I would have welcomed some romance too but it’s not needed here. There is a lot of love in other forms.

“The ship wishes, as always, that it could open up the prince’s motherboard and understand what is misfiring. It longs for the ability to program a Float for his racing thoughts, reset him to something that would hurt them both a little less.”

My thanks to the author and NetGalley for the ARC.

I’m not even sure how to write about this. “good” “well written” and “I liked this” don’t seem to even get close.
Sometimes you come across a writing style that just…. Feels familiar on first read.
This is beautiful, and messy, and clear and vague and familiar and foreign all at the same time. (this mess of expression is the reason I read books, and don’t write them)
Grappling with their own identity, in a society where SHE stamps are worn by women, the narrator talks through how the stamp doesn’t feel like it fits, but if not, what’s the alternative? There’s a parallel sci fi narrative talking through a metaphor of working with and against your own body.
Specifically significant to me was the conversation with the narrator’s mother. The mother is from a strong line of women, who are brave and strong and proud and who believe that a woman can be and do anything that she wants, so when the narrator indicates the SHE stamp doesn’t fit, the mother struggles to adjust. This just really hit that the people who would see themselves as open minded champions struggle to adjust when something sits outside of the defined limits of how “open” they are.
This is just a magnificent piece of writing that was so viscerally exposed and vulnerable.

Thanks NetGalley for the ARC.

This book stands out amongst ACRs for me. It feels polished, and every word sounds carefully chosen and arranged. I found myself pausing my reading frequently to reread passages again, because they were just that good. So many enormous metaphors that leave your brain swirling at the end of chapters. I loved it. And of course, I can’t forget to mention the delightful sarcastic humor.

The dual storyline was also super entertaining. Personally I love when a book follows two intertwining narratives, especially if each character’s voice is distinctive, and this nailed it!

Many thanks to getting this book as an arc on netgalley.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/5690906389 good reads review

I wanted to love this, but I didn’t. I hated this book so much, I just couldn’t get into it. I don’t know what it was about it. Not posting anywhere else.

The novella follows a person on earth unraveling the complexities and nuances of their gender while an alien prince traveling through some galaxy in space mulls over his own life with an incredibly tender sentient space ship as a companion. Though at time it was too fast paced to find myself genuinely invested in the characters, it somehow managed to stick with me ever since I read it. It's thought-provoking, clever and its overall sincerity I found quite relatable and endearing.

(slightly longer review on my goodreads very soon!)

This is a beautiful tender exploration of gender, personhood and love (in all its forms) wrapped in a little sci-fi bundle.

This book has two main narratives running side by side, one - A person who, whenever they touch the skin of another, has visions of the future, near and far, of things that will happen to that person. They quite their job, they meet Theseus and suddenly they're on a journey of figuring out their gender identity in a world where men are allowed to be and do whatever and women, aside from expected subservience, have to wear a stamp on their cheeks saying 'She', which is sometimes all they refer to each other as, just 'She'. They're also finding that on this journey they're feeling this strange connection to something they can't quite place. Where does this feeling of having a passenger come from, why do all their metaphors about gender seem to loop back to being a spaceship, building themself, seeing metallic representations of arms in the mirror sometimes instead of their own?

Every other chapter we are catapulted back into Cornelius's story, a prince, a rouge, a lost alien (to us) escaping his home planet and preparing to explore the universe. With him is his ship Bo, B.O.D.Y, a lifeform that, as it grew, was able to choose what it became - it could have been anything, a museum, a boat, vehicle, building, but sentient either way. Bo chooses to be a ship, Bo chooses to travel with Cornelius forever, and Bo loves Cornelius above all else.

Bo is the kind of character I adore in science fiction, the questions of sentiency in machinery, what they think of humans or ‘organics’, how they can love and how they exist in a very ‘human’ focussed world. Bo was interesting in the fact that it was slightly different, it had this somewhat organic core (maybe, if I understood correctly) and had so much more choice and agency than other AI, robot etc characters commonly do; it could choose what it wanted to be and where it wanted to go. I want so badly to know more about it and it’s life and history. Give me a loving, confused sentient spaceship or any kind of bot and I’ll immediately be in love with them and the story even more.

I loved the conversations about body and gender between Theseus and the other main character, whose name we never find out. First off just Theseus choosing that as his name. The "whole ship"; this theme of building and creating and re-working something from what it originally was into something new, or something the same but just rearranged. Both metaphorically and the actual physical ship of Bo, changing and building itself, sacrificing itself...

‘“It was like a metaphor, I guess? Less Theseus the hero and more the whole concept of the ship.” A spark popped deep in my chest, a flickering light I didn’t have the words for. I nodded quickly to show that I understood, but I didn’t have the verbal language to describe just how much.’

These conversations between them felt so real, made me nostalgic and feel a little too seen. I was laughing, almost slightly embarrassingly, at myself thinking back to all those conversations I'd had and still have with friends that so commonly start with 'do you know where you’re at now with…' just how theirs did.

‘Self discovery is a lonely experience by definition, but I don’t think it has to be done alone.’

So, when Theseus asks, 'Do you know where you’re at now? With the body stuff?', you laugh and you cry a little because you know that moment. You know having that nervous excitement about where that conversation is going and know that feeling of being completely unable to respond in any kind of way that makes for a conclusive, helpful answer, but appreciating the attempt to understand, by others and yourself, anyway.

I think I did try and rationalise it a bit too much maybe, trying to figure out how exactly the characters were linked - the author spoke of multiverses and at times we'd watch a character zoom out in their mind and see it all, but was it coincidence, was it just different parts of the universe going through similar motions seeing glimpses of themselves in another? Was it something deeper than that and I didn't quite understand it? Were they actually the spaceship, was the combined Bo and Cornelius actually them, was it something else entirely. And maybe that was the point - no definitive answer, no neat and tidy conclusion when being a person doesn't have one, when being non-binary, trans, queer, anyone, anything doesn't have one...

‘I was a shapeshifter, worshipped for my pluralities. Without, within. So many stories of self, huddled together to wander the void of my own uncertainty, fleeing and seeking in equal measure. Transcendent. The lights within me spoke an impossible language, and all at once the ship of my body caught a proper glimpse of its lonesome occupant.’

Another aspect I really enjoyed seeing depicted was how sex and kink can be a tool or a catalyst (accidentally or not) to helping a person figure out different facets of their identity. Of course, some things stay strictly sexual for some people and do not meld into their everyday lives, but some things do. Sometimes trying out something in that space can lead to a world of discovery about wants and needs and desires different from sexual ones. I loved that this was touched on and was looked at in a celebratory way.
Also, can we talk about when that character finally had that moment of gender euphoria they were hoping for. What a perfect tiny moment that meant a huge thing.

‘The concept of gender euphoria was my lodestar, a promise that being trans wasn’t just about what felt wrong, but also what felt right.’ . . . ‘Even at my most destructive, I wasn’t about to resign myself to a life made of absences.’

I wish this book had been a little longer, I wish we had been able to explore Cornelius’s life more to fully understand who he was and wasn’t. When I started the book I assumed at one point all the characters would meet, but it wasn’t about that, and they kind of did meet, in a way. I wished for more worldbuilding, to have my questions of why they lived like this answered, and to see Cornelius’s home, to see what him and Bo became. But, on the whole it was beautiful and unforgettable. I loved the melding of the stories, in both obvious and subtle ways, and clearly, the author has an incredible way with words and a knack for capturing what feels sometimes impossible to pin down, that ‘soft rouge thing’, that ‘sense of translucence’, that ‘gaping void of nameless want. Some untended tale of a man and his spaceship; my tender mechanical heart. The long examined absence where the she-ness should be’…

I'm already looking forward to reading it again!

“Wait—rewind. I was still a girl back then, before the universes converged.”

Right off the bat I'll say that this isn't a book to pick up if you're looking for something with a strong plot. Pluralities by Avi Silver is a character-driven exploration of gender, finding oneself, and trans identities, merged with an allegorical space adventure.

I feel like lately all my reviews have been talking about resonance, but as I've always felt like a contradiction and a mystery even to myself, saying I found resonance in a story is really the highest praise I can give of it. Maybe it's because I've been reading more trans fiction lately, as my genderfluidity does it's seasonal turn towards more internal masc-ness (listen, it's a strange phenomenon and I haven't had a lot of time to collect suitable data on it, so for now at least, that's the best way I know to put it).

Anyone who follows my reviews or knows me in any way will know that I LOVE symbolism, and Avi Silver outdoes himself with the way the two stories in Pluralities parallel each other. They even managed to keep my full attention with the more contemporary-styled story (a truly impressive feat, since I would often rather be anywhere but spending another second on this planet), AND include a sex scene that didn't make me, a sex-repulsed ace person, uncomfortable!

I could gush on and on about this story, but I'll leave you with one of my favorite gender quotes (and a glowing 5 star recommendation):

"I didn't feel born in the wrong body, I felt displaced in time and space. And since the rest of the world seemed to think I was perfectly suited to being a woman, I felt displaced from myself by association."

Thank you to Netgalley & the author/publisher for the ARC! The opinions expressed in this review are my own and freely given.

I really, really enjoyed this book. I started reading it and finished it all within a couple of hours at most, the writing style was gorgeous and pulled me in right away.

There's two seperate stories being told at the same time, and while I preferred one to the other, both were good and they do complement one another nicely.

For such a short book, it manages to cover a lot of ground without feeling rushed or lacking in depth - the exploration of gender and non binary identities feels extremely well done.

I'd absolutely recommend this.