I have read every Natasha Pulley book and it's getting harder and harder to excuse the extremely uncomfortable things in them. She is one of my favorite authors, but beautiful writing is not enough to excuse the poor handling of complex issues. It feels like she may have overreached in this book.

The out-of-pocket things characters say or think in Natasha Pulley's other books are more "okay" because you can accept there are some cultural differences. The culture of Mars and the future are obviously incredibly different, though one would assume a progression of cultural values and not a regression.

There is random fatphobia. It's all right if January is judgmental because he's a ballet dancer, it's the culture, okay. But nowhere is it ever presented as wrong. January jokes about it and the characters laugh and it's like oh. Also we do not get enough of January's backstory to explore the ballet culture, or really anything about him. We don't get much info on January's daddy issues. Just that he has them. So there's like no backstory for him aside from his being a dancer.

Mars has seasons for the same reason Earth does, which is its axial tilt, and the seasons are amplified by the eccentricity of its orbit. It doesn't have seasons BECAUSE of the eccentric orbit. I don't know enough science to consider the rest of how Mars is.

I liked the linguistic nerdiness. Mori and Daughter.

The gender thing is not explained well enough. Gender =/= pronouns. They got rid of "extreme gender traits." But what are those? One would assume those are the sexual/reproductive organs, since those are really the most extreme you can get. But we know they still HAVE genitalia because Gale offers to show January what they have. They don't, which I like, but it's still weird. Also they have to have genitalia to have sexual reproduction which they do since there are Naturals.* But then what are the other gender traits to get rid of? Also they might biologically and anatomically be similar, but it's not as if plenty of intersex people on Earth right now don't identify with a certain gender over the other. This book really doesn't do its due diligence in tackling the social aspect of gender and gender roles. To be quite pessimistic it makes very little sense that a culture that has a heavy basis/origin in Chinese culture abolishes gender roles, even centuries into the future. Chinese culture (and Asian culture in general really) is extremely patriarchal. I guess Confucius was just one of those other things lost to history.

*Actually Mars is just eugenic. They pick and choose genes. They still need eggs and sperm, no? Unless they're like importing them from Earth or getting them from the immigrants, which is another thing to tackle. Also eugenics is apparently okay because they don't end up whitewashing the population, since Mars was colonized by China and not a European country. Are we supposed to believe that a colony of China, or ANY COUNTRY, would not also end up prioritizing a homogenous population? I mean they prioritize sexual homogeneity.

Also the Mars people get all huffy about using "them" over "he" or "she" because it's more formal, which means they are super happy about misgendering people who do prefer "he" or "she." Also how are they able to tell when someone is using "he" or "she" in Mandarin when they sound the same and that's how the "they" arose in this culture apparently.

I still don't get why marriage only lasts five years. They just assume every couple ends up hating each other and wants to divorce after five years?

We are left with the assumption that Gale and January's relationship will just be an asexual one. Which is fine, Gale gives a-spec energy. Though it would be nice if that were explicit. I understand the lack of labels in Pulley's historical works. I feel like in this futuristic world such labels would be much more embraced. Well, one would hope.

I think the wishy-washy sexuality in this book is an attempt to make it a culture where the norm is pansexuality as a result of their lack of gender. Though this doesn't seem to be the case with the immigrants because, as mentioned earlier, Gale notes that people from Earth still like to know what's in their partner's pants before they have sex. We don't know what January's sexuality is, but he ends up feeling like most of Pulley's other protagonists, who seem to fall into that "gay for you" thing where they are only explicitly into women before they end up with their love interest. January seems more attracted to unattainability and kindness. This is really just a personal opinion, but I wish Pulley's protagonists could/would be unabashedly queer outside of their romances. All of Pulley's characters are divorced from any sort of queer culture. Sure your sexual orientation is just who you're attracted to and whatever, but actually being queer for a lot of people is more than that; I mean, it's part of your identity. It affects how you experience the world. And maybe in the future Pride is dead, maybe it's not needed anymore or whatever. Though I don't know if I buy that misogyny still exists on Earth without homophobia, since they are very much linked.

I think the romance in this book is weird but somewhat better handled than Natasha Pulley's other books. Though maybe it's because January admits he just falls in love with everybody so it just makes more sense that he likes Gale. Gale is smart and nice and sometimes funny so at least I get it if we ignore their politics. But we cannot ignore their politics.

"The Senator's fear is not irrational." Such is the problem with fantasy oppression. Racism is irrational. Whatever is in this book is not.

I was left feeling conflicted about the way everything wrapped up. The author tries to make every single character sympathetic and we are left trying to come to terms with Gale's politics, which have not changed that much. I suppose we are just suppose to agree with them now because they're nice and January likes them so I guess we're supposed to like them too. Things just wrap up much too nicely. January throws away most of his political opinions because Gale is nice.

Spoiler

Cages end up being the best solution. The immigrants continue to be literally caged as the best solution.

January gets bruises from his cage. They are mentioned like once.

January does not dance again and it is not mentioned again after all his injuries. I guess he will just never dance again.

I saw in some other reviews that Bethlehem was said to be in Israel. I think it's been changed because now Gale just vaguely says it's in the Middle East. However the other character still has a "homely Israeli accent" and one can only assume that "homely" is meant in the sense of "unpretentious," though it is still a bad word choice in this time and age. Of course this book was written before everything escalated to what it is now, but let's not forget this conflict has been going on for seventy-five years.