B. R. Sanders

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 show more 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. * show less

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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. show less

In short, Resistance is about a bisexual elf and her girlfriend overthrowing the government. Now there’s an elevator pitch that grabs my attention!

Last year I read and loved Ariah by B.R. Sanders, so I decided to check out more books by the author. Resistance is their debut novel, which is set in the same world as Ariah. I had fun with it, but it never struck me the way Ariah did.

Shandolin is an elf in a city ruled by Qin. Although the majority of the city’s population is elfin, the show more vampire-like Qin retain tight control over the city. Shandolin is a rebel who runs an underground revolutionary press. She and her friends have managed to stay out of reach of the Qin… until Shadolin (Doe) finds one of her friends murdered in the street. The Qin have hired assassins to take out Doe and other elves who are resisting their rule. Luckily, Doe has the help of her friends and her girlfriend, Rivna, who is herself an assassin. The only way that they’ll ever be able to live openly again is if they organize the city to destroy the Qin’s strangle hold on power.

At a certain point while reading Resistance, I had a realization. This is the book I’ve always wanted to write. My senior year of high school, I started trying to write a novel length story about a bi elvish conwoman in a trading city filled with a number of different species, where she, her girlfriend, and her friends were trying to overthrow the local tyrant by means of a heist. I ultimately didn’t get even a third through the story. I may love reading, but that doesn’t always translate into writing fiction. So I am incredibly happy that B.R. Sanders wrote the sort of story I’ve always wanted – a queer, female led heist with amazing world building.

But for all that, I kept finding myself putting down Resistance and going to do other things. My best guess is that the heist and plot let me down. It’s relatively uncomplicated, without any of the twists and turns I love those sorts of plots for. On a more nebulous note, Resistance just wasn’t enough. I left it wanting more from the characters and story.

While I think Resistance is decent for a debut novel, it pales compared to the author’s later work. That said, I think it’s still a fairly enjoyable story. If the basic premise appeals to you, you might as well give it a go.

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