Pluralities is an allegorical story about the process of realizing that you don't fit into the role you were assigned at birth. It's a complicated and somewhat painful story about dealing with your own transformation while also dealing with the reactions of people who don't understand why you think you are different/other than you appear to be. This book has a lot of "knives" (meaning, painful emotional moments) and was in a lot of ways extremely familiar. (There is a scene involving a cookout with unpleasant, bigoted relatives saying horrible, stupid things and having to endure the experience or find a way to escape it that was realistically unpleasant.)

There are two story lines. One follows a retail worker who
has psychic visions, one of which inspires them to quit their job. The retail worker is under a great deal of stress, and suffering what turns out to be dysphoria. (In this setting, women are marked with the word "She." The retail worker feels disconnected and incapable of performing the roles associated with the gender they were assigned. This is symbolized by the "She stamp" being smeared and blurry.)

The other story follows a runaway prince who is unable to deal with the role he's expected to follow. (Which seems to involve intimate relationships with people he doesn't like who all want things from him that he's not sure he can provide.) So he escapes with his sentient spaceship friend and gets himself immediately into trouble. (And also the sentient spaceship does something stupid, think its protecting the prince which leads to an entire Thing.)

Pluralities is written in a style that is clearly allegorical magical realism, but at the same time depicts the journey of discovery with painfully realistic accuracy. (Specifically, scenes where "She" is attempting to explain what's going on with their mother, who immediately blows off their attempts to explain what's going on. And also scenes where the prince is dealing--or failing to deal-- with the emotional mess of his life, and his overprotective friend hiding information from him. Also, that cookout I mentioned.) In some ways I was reminded of Nancy Springer's Larque on the Wing which also deals with questions of identity and being your authentic self.

This book was hard for me to read in a number of ways. I don't do very well with stories that are clearly allegorical. I tend to prefer character driven or plot driven works with a lot of interesting worldbuilding. "She" and "The Prince" do a lot of struggling that is emotional to watch, but it's difficult to understand and relate to them as characters--because they're allegories of the experience of coming out as nonbinary in a society that is very invested in binary gender roles. Another reason it was hard to read: the sheer emotional accuracy of the feeling of confusion and frustrations as the people in your life refuse to listen to you. (This is not to say the entire book is a downer. There are knives, but there is also acceptance and friendship as the protagonists grow into themselves as individuals. I'm just resonating more with the knives than with the acceptance and found family aspects of the story.)

Pluralities is not the kind of book that can really be read for entertainment. (At least it's a book I can't read for entertainment's sake.) This is instead a book meant to evoke and explain feelings related to transitioning, and why transitioning is emotionally important. It's an allegory about learning how to be your authentic self, and the struggle to achieve that. I feel that it was effective in accomplishing that, and is well worth checking out.

This book review is based on a galley received from NetGalley.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for giving me an e-ARC of this book to review. More queer novellas like this one, please! It was unusual (you might say "queer"!) and I really loved the thoughtful approach to gender identity in a sci-fi story of this nature.

I don't usually read novellas, but the blurb for this one intrigued me. I'm so glad I picked it up. I was fascinated by the story and I loved the characters: a rogue prince, a sentient spaceship, a trans guy and a nonbinary person. I really can't explain what this novella means to me, just that it spoke to me on a deep level. I would love to read more of Avi Silver's writing. The only thing that knocked a star off this one for me is that I don't really like sex scenes in books, but that's just a personal preference. I would highly recommend this novella to anyone who likes trans stories!

I went into this expecting to love it, and yet was still somehow <i>surprised</i> about how exactly much I did. Pluralities is one of my favourite novellas I’ve read this year, and if the universe has any justice (and judging by this years best novel hugo nominees it doesn’t), it will be nominated for a hugo award for best novella for it’s shear <i>brilliance</i>.

Featuring:
☆ A sad nonbinary spaceship
☆ a prince adamant that he is Not A Prince but a rogue
☆ and a not!girl discovering themselves in the wake of that revelation

Oh my god, where to <i>begin</i>? This is the first I’ve read of Ari Silver’s work, and honestly, after this, I will likely be reading the rest of their work. This novella is a science fiction ditty, following a rogue who used to be a prince, and local nbi adult, who, for the breadth of the novella, is referred to as <i>SHE</i>. While these two never meet, their lives and stories are indelibly intertwined by the choices they make. Namely to refuse their supposed fate. Both of them are incredibly delightful protagonists to follow. They’re both distinctive and relatable, and working through the things in their life that to them don’t make sense. The Rogue is so determined to make himself something outside of a prince even though he knows life was easier as one, and <i>SHE</i> is trying to learn to be nbi while being from a family which believes in the divine feminine. The two stories link together incredibly loosely, until the end, where you see how they link a little bit more firmly. Most often you’ll read of something in one of their POVs only to encounter it within the others, or read a line that hints at the other POV, but for much of the story it doesn’t go beyond that.

And it works! It works so incredibly well to have these loosely connected POVs where they are in many ways the same, and yet different people. And it’s <i>so fuckng clever<i>. Silver does a fantastic job of winding these two POVs together, but then doing so in some of the most drop dread gorgeous language I’ve ever read. I would be offended, but so much of the book does such a good job of speaking to the experience of being nonbinary in a way defined by euphoria and not dysphoria that I really can’t be. In the end the only potential criticism I have is that this was incredibly confusing, but in all honesty, that was definitely the point. <i>Please</i> go read this novella though, you won’t regret it.

Final Rating: ☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆ (10/10)

This novella is beautiful. I *did* start out my reading experience staring at the wonderful cover and becoming one with the universe, as recommended per the author’s note.

There are essentially two storylines in this book: one with a first-person narrator questioning their sexuality that has only light scifi elements, and one that serves as a science fiction allegory for gender identity. The writing is so beautiful, and even though fourth-walls breaks often drive me a little crazy, I didn’t mind them in this book.

I loved the way the spec fic elements allowed the author to explore certain aspects of gender identity from multiple angles. This story really resonated with me as it dug into the guilt associated with “abandoning” femininity as a trans/enby individual. I could write a whole essay about how this book spoke to me. It’s not long, but it did a lot of legwork in those pages. I will probably end up getting myself a copy to read again, because I’m pretty sure I’m the target audience.

10/10, 5⭐️, cannot recommend enough. Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC.

Okay, I absolutely devoured this. It wasn't what I was expecting, based on the summary, but it was still great.
The two narratives work really well, when compared against each other, and I'll admit it took me an embarrassingly long time to work out the connection between the two of them. In fact, I think it was about 47% through when I said to myself "Oh, *Theseus*, I get it now" out loud. Because it's a ship.
Mostly, though, I don't want to talk about that, I want to talk about what the narrative *is*. Because it would be easy to view this as a coming-out story, with the MC coming out to a parent, and themself. But somewhere in the last 10-15% there was a line I have since lost track of, but it made me think "This isn't a coming out narrative, it's not about discovery, it's about Becoming and transformation" and I thought that was pretty rad. I'd read this again in a heartbeat.