Destiny sees what others don’t.A quiet fisher mourning the loss of xer sister to a cruel dragon. A clever hedge-witch gathering knowledge in a hostile land. A son seeking vengeance for his father’s death. A daughter claiming the legacy denied her. A princess laboring under an unbreakable curse. A young resistance fighter questioning everything he’s ever known. A little girl willing to battle a … battle a dragon for the sake of a wish. These heroes and heroines emerge from adversity into triumph, recognizing they can be more than they ever imagined: chosen ones of destiny.
From the author of the Earthside series and the Rewoven Tales novels, No Man of Woman Born is a collection of seven fantasy stories in which transgender and nonbinary characters subvert and fulfill gendered prophecies. These prophecies recognize and acknowledge each character’s gender, even when others do not. Note: No trans or nonbinary characters were killed in the making of this book. Trigger warnings and neopronoun pronunciation guides are provided for each story.
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This is a collection of stories that all feature trans, nonbinary or gender fluid characters in a fantasy world.
What was particularly great about it is that these stories take place in the typical medieval setting, devoid of hormone therapy or anything that would help someone pass, yet there is never anyone purposely misgendering anyone else.
As with any short story collection, I liked some of the stories more than others, but my favorites are the ones that feature someone fulfilling a prophecy that no one suspects they are the chosen one of, due to the prophecy specifying a gender that no one knows this character is.
Oh my. I have no words. Having finished No Man of Woman Born I fear I may be hopelessly infatuated with Ana Mardoll’s voice and vision. This was such a beautiful, powerful, and necessary collection. I am envious, jealous even, of a generation that gets to grow up reading empowering, inclusive stories like this alongside their mass-market fantasies.
What Mardoll offers here are familiar fantasy tales of sacrifice, vengeance, justice, and love. They are simple stories, a mix of fairy tale, fable, and fantasy, which follow the genre conventions we all know and love. Some of them are explicitly about gender, with pivotal questions of identity and expression. These are the stories that follow the prophecy from which the collection gets its name, where ‘no man of woman born’ is subverted in some clever and entertaining ways.
That said, there are no traps or surprises here, no big reveals designed to shock or titillate the reader. There is one story – a sword in the stone story – where the reveal of gender is done publicly and proudly, but it a moment of empowerment, of claiming one’s destiny. There is also a story – a dragon sacrifice story – that is all about the wishing for one’s true gender identity, but for all its very public spectacle, what exactly the wish changed, if anything, remains a very private thing.
It is the other stories that I think are even more important, however. They are the stories that are not about gender, but where the characters exist in a world where nonbinary genders are simply accepted without question, without comment, without hatred, and without ridicule. More importantly, they are accepted as a state of being, as a defined gender, and not some confusing phase of transition. There is no expectation that these characters ever were or will become binary. These are the stories where, if not for the gender-neutral pronouns, most readers likely would not have picked up on the gender aspect.
There are also stories here that straddle those two extremes, suitably non-binary stories of non-binary storytelling. There is one in particular that I just loved – a Sleeping Beauty style fairy tale – where the entire castle knows the protagonist has boy days and girl days, and where that duality of gender is the key to circumventing the fairy’s curse.
Gender aspects aside, I would be woefully remiss if I did not call out the storytelling of Mardoll. These stories in No Man of Woman Born flow so beautifully, are so wonderfully readable, that it is almost too easy to overlook the polished sense of style. The writing is as beautiful as the sentiments it conveys, and I will never stop recommending this to friends.