#the first two installments were some of the most engaging books i've ever read

[aviolinstruggle]

Found a couple of early reviews for Apostles of Mercy! Mild spoilers ahead:

Also, if you pre-order the book in any format you can show the publisher your receipt to get a free bookplate signed by the author!

Personally I got the e-book so that it will appear on my kindle the day it is released and I can have my heart broken immedately (affectionate).

[imakemywings]

This is the first installation of my new segment A+ Library, where I review books with asexual and/or aromantic characters. This one is about The Circus Infinite by Khan Wong. The book description is:

Hunted by those who want to study his gravity powers, Jes makes his way to the best place for a mixed-species fugitive to blend in: the pleasure moon. Here, everyone just wants to be lost in the party. It doesn’t take long for him to catch the attention of the crime boss who owns the resort-casino where he lands a circus job. When the boss gets wind of the bounty on Jes’ head, he makes an offer: do anything and everything asked of him, or face vivisection. With no other options, Jes fulfills the requests: espionage, torture, demolition. But when the boss sets the circus up to take the fall for his about-to-get-busted narcotics operation, Jes and his friends decide to bring the mobster down together. And if Jes can also avoid going back to being the prize subject of a scientist who can’t wait to dissect him? Even better.

The character: Jes, panromantic asexual

TL;DR: A disappointed thumbs down

My general experience with media that sells itself on representation is that it often falls flat, like the creator was so excited about putting the representation they wanted to see into the world they forgot that they needed to also tell a story, or assumed that anyone engaging with their story would be so hungry for that representation that they would be remarkably forgiving of slapdash plots and flat characters. I think these are usually put out with good faith, they're just often very mediocre entertainment.

Nevertheless, (although I had a lot of fun) going to Pride last month reminded me uncomfortably of how lonely being asexual can be, even amidst other queer people, so I sought out some books that centered asexual and/or aromantic characters, and the first of these I've set down to read was this one.

Because Jes' asexuality is not a focus of the novel, I'm breaking this review into two parts: the representation of asexuality, and the rest.

Asexual Representation

Jes is a sex-repulsed asexual young man who enters into a romantic relationship with Bo, one of the clowns/acrobats at the circus where Jes takes up work at the start of the novel. Iirc by my calculations Jes is roughly 20 years old.

First off, it was honestly delightful to read a story that centered an asexual character. I don't think it's an experience I've ever had. Most often characters are only interpretable as asexual and most often it's villain or a one-off line from a side character. Jes' asexuality and his romance with Bo is not the main storyline—I would argue tertiary at most—but it is still present throughout the novel.

Jes is in a particularly awkward position as an empath, because he can quite literally feel people around him being horny, which is a remarkably uncomfortable place to be for him. However, it also puts him in the position of being "safe" in certain circumstances—other empaths may seek him out because they can feel that he lacks any sexual ulterior motives while talking to them. It's the first time I ever saw asexuality presented as not just a neutral, non-negative, but a helpful or beneficial state of being. ​

For these reasons I understand why the author wanted to be very explicit about Jes' sexuality. Nevertheless, reading any SFF novel where the characters describe themselves with intensely contemporary terms is a bit jarring. Hearing Jes throw around terms like "ace" and "asexual panromantic" definitely yanked at my focus on the story, but other people may be less bothered by that (the use of "gaslighting" elsewhere in the narrative was definitely not necessary and also, once again, incorrect).

There were times when I felt that Jes' reaction to being exposed to sexuality was overblown, but he's also a young person, at an age when most of us are inclined to put ourselves first, so on reflection I think it actual tracks with Jes' character that he prioritizes his own discomfort over whether or not his response is reasonable (for instance, immediately leaving the room after learning that Bo had previously had a sexual relationship with another cast member).

Jes and Bo's romance was sweet, if underdeveloped. For the first time perhaps ever I found myself wishing the romance was a larger part of the plot! There's a meet cute, and Jes is upfront with Bo from the very beginning about being asexual. This is important because Bo is not asexual, a decision I actually quite appreciated, both because it was a refutation of the idea that asexuals and allosexuals can never enter into a mutually fulfilling relationship, and because it displays a spectrum even within allosexuality. Bo is allo, but by his own admission has a low libido and often prefers to masturbate rather than engage even with someone he's attracted to. Jes has some angst about this, but Bo never expresses any resentment or dissatisfaction with their relationship and he is always respectful of Jes' boundaries.

Which brings Jes' background into it. Jes (this is no spoiler, it's on the back cover) from early adolescence until the start of the novel, was a human experiment. It would have been easy for a less focused author to posit Jes' asexuality as a product of this trauma (which may be another reason the author wanted to introduce the concept well before Jes becomes property of the Institute) which could be loved away by Bo, but that is not the case here. The author very cleanly delineates between Jes' growing comfort generally with physical contact, something he has not had much of in his life but grows to enjoy from his friends, and his asexuality, which never changes. Jes may grow comfortable and even desire cuddling and holding hands with Bo, but he's never interested in more.

Their physical relationship progresses at what I imagine feels like a glacial pace to allosexual readers, but it felt very real from an ace perspective, particularly for an ace of Jes' difficult background, where even small gestures like kisses on the cheek initially feel like a huge deal to him. When he hasn't been allowed to set boundaries in so long, it makes sense that they are initially very strict.

Ultimately, I enjoyed this representation of asexuality. I would have liked to dig more into Jes' feelings for Bo, which seem rather shallow and undefined (WHY is Jes into Bo? We don't really know.), but on the whole it was pleasing to read.

The Rest

The rest of the novel, unfortunately, is very uneven in quality. The author provides some truly magical descriptions of some of the artistic and spiritual phenomena that take place in the story, but most often the writing comes across with a very blunt, young-adult-novel feel, even though this is not a YA novel. We're often rushed through what feel like very significant events, and three big plot threads hit so rapidly and unconnetedly at the end that by the time you get to the last and most significant of them, it's hard to care anymore.

It does something which particularly annoys me, which is when an author tries to erase any and all ambiguity in the story. Every character speaks in a remarkably precise, self-aware way (and they all speak in the exact same style, despite the vast differences in background and upbringing of many of them) as if the author is terrified that a single reader might not understand or might interpret a scene or interaction differently than they intended. It crosses into therapyspeak.

This flat, explicit method of storytelling comes off in the prose as well, so that I found most of the emotional beats simply did not land for me; they felt very empty. This paired poorly with the sanctimonious tone the story takes on at times, when it is so obviously keen to impart a Morally Correct View on the reader (not that that position is even wrong or debatable--but it came off a bit Sunday school-lesson-ish here) and show that all its characters are Unproblemat.

And call me cynical, but I'm getting very worn out of found family as a trope. I understand why it hits so hard for queer people especially, but so many stories do not pull it off in a way that feels natural or justified. That's the case here, where Jes essentially insta-befriends anyone who's a "good" character, and essentially drops right into a premade found family. I know this is comforting to other readers, but for me it came off hokey.

There were a couple exceptions though, and I do appreciate this: not everyone Jes is suspicious of turns out to actually be a bad guy. To often we laude our sense of intuition, because we all like to think we can simply tell who's a good person and who's not. This attitude leads to disbelief when someone you liked turns out to have done troubling things, or unwarranted suspicion towards someone who hasn't actually done anything wrong. So while Jes' intuition does guide him pretty significantly throughout the novel, I did appreciate these instances of him being proved wrong.

As noted, the plot can feel rushed at times, and the pacing of the ending chapters in particular felt all over the place. The final encounter came well after the denouement of what felt like the "main" plot such that I was checked out and ready to get to the happily ever after screen when it came about. It felt like it happened just because the author felt it needed to (can't have loose ends, not in this story!) and also because they could not think of another way to push Jes into a bad enough headspace to do what he does at the end.

On a final SFF-specific note, I think this novel also suffered from character exposition about various alien races, cultures, and customs. It's only interesting so many times to hear another alien describe their lifestyle like a high school social studies textbook.

Altogether, this was a relatively enjoyable, deeply forgettable novel. If it weren't for Jes' asexuality it would get a thumbs down from me because there's simply not enough good there to recommend. This author with a LOT more polish could maybe put out something worthwhile, but this was not that.

Next review: Loveless by Alice Oseman