“Winter’s Orbit” is a sweeping blend of space opera, novel of manners, and romance, written by Everina Maxwell. It tells the story of Kiem and Jainan. Kiem is a careless prince from the dynasty of the interplanetary Iskat Empire. Jainan is a count from Thea, one of the vassal planets. Being widowed by Taam, Kiem’s cousin, he has to marry another member of the royal family to ensure the political treaties necessary for the existence of the Iskat Empire, the inner and the outer treaties, since relations with the galaxy’s Resolution is as much important. In the meantime, Kiem and Jainan try to live together and pose as an enamoured couple, and to find out what actually happened to Taam, and who he really was.
Here you get the premise of the worldbuilding and of the main conflict. The rest is a funny, poignant and gripping story which I’d savoured for a week until I read it to the end.
Reading Winter’s Orbit is like reading a good space-opera, but with a twist appropriate to our times, so that people of colour and LGBT people are represented, and some difficult topics, such as political domination, (post)colonialism(?), and domestic abuse are not silenced, but handled deftly. I am aware, though, that some people may not be ready for a story of a gay royal marriage between two people of colour, because for some reason, we can imagine all the kinds of aliens up there in the space, but people who have brown skin and aren’t straight? Oh, no, that’s impossible, that’s spoiling all the fun! But I also believe that such stories as Kiem and Jainan’s can convince many readers, too: that including non-white and LGBT people isn’t some “forced diversity”, it’s telling yet another part of human experience.
Of course that there are some simplifications in this novel. When two planets, Iskat and Thea, are described, it’s more like planets=ethnic groups/nations. It seems to me also that Iskat, with its cool snowy climate, has some vibes of LeGuin’s Gethen, if Gethen was basically the planet of one state and nation, which it isn’t, because, after all, politics in “Left Hand of Darkness” is more complicated than in “Winter’s Orbit”. However, Everina Maxwell’s novel is by no means the only one which handles ethnicity in science fiction in an oversimplified way, so I cannot blame her, honestly. The mood there is enough. Iskat is cool and snowy, and Thea is beautiful and green. Got it.
Not to mention that beside stock elements (an interplanetary Emperor, a clan-based society on Thea, a big galactic association) there are more original bits to this novel. Some artifacts Maxwell describes are uncanny and thought-provoking, just as the merge of science and psionic powers which appears atbthe climax of the story. And the main intrigue isn’t as predictable as you may think, although Taam Was Abusive wasn’t that hard to guess out. But the political part of the stuff? Here it gets more unexpected and I definetely appreciate that. And the scientific parts aren’t sterile or boring. Whatever happens in the novel, you can easily imagine it. It’s a human, lush space opera, not a cold image of a distant futuristic setting. It’s something you can recognize from “Star Wars” or “Star Trek”, but on a smaller scale, and I think that the fact that Everina Maxwell has added the whole thread of media and its reactions is also interesting. In science fiction and fantasy books, what the public thinks and how it reacts is often eaither skipped or exaggerated. In “Winter’s Orbit”, it’s believable, even if you get an impression of reading a bunch of contemporary gossips headlines. If that’s a comment on our culture, I appreciate it.
And well, there are characters, characters who are just lovable. Kiem is kind and awkward in turn, Jainan is your reserved intellectual type with Painful Mysteries. I’ve seen it many times, in both queer and straight romance, but those two neither fall into some binary stereotypes (like, ekhm, seme and uke, don’t even ask if you haven’t heard of those terms) nor they are overdrawn. They are easy to like and easy to relate, and their romance is convincing and slow-burning. It’s funny, it’s poignant, it’s touching. It’s just as a love story should be. And if you think that a widowed guy falling in mere weeks for another one is improbable and actually all but a slow burning relationship, it’ll become probable and understandable once you’ve read the whole book.
However, I have one complaint on this book, and on many other contemporary science fiction books. For when they fall into “feudal future” trope, they really mean it. “Winter’s Orbit” is a book about queer people and people of colour, and about abuse-survivors, and that’s fine, that’s great. But ordinary people here are on the backstage. There’s Bel, Kiem’s helpmate, and she is surely a well-drawn character, but do we know a lot about her backstory beside that she was born on a planet of literal gang-raiders? And well, those people aren’t ordinary, We don’t learn anything how the common inhabitants of Thea and Iskat live, and who actually provides for the royalty of the empire. And because the world surrounding the protagonists is futuristic, we aren’t bothered with the question of who works for the “well-born” ones, either. That’s really sad, but I don’t think that Everina Maxwell is classist on purpose. We are all a product of a neoliberal society, we are told that social class doesn’t matter, and one can see this conviction popping out from time to time in the very construction of many works of speculative fiction.
But, again, many books which pretended to be more complicated and elaborate than a funny and poignant space opera-queer romance have had the same problem. So, how can I blame Everina Maxwell while her novel is so… nice? So unaffectedly nice without toxic or problematic elements? It’s a charming tale of love, friendship, and interplanetry wonders, and I highly encourage you to read it!
Left Hand of Fiction 