<blockquote>Grandmother kept her cloth of winds in the orange room, a storage chamber painted in fire and lit to a translucent glow by dozens of floating candlebulbs created by the older women’s magic. As a small child, I remember hiding between the legs of a polished pearwood commode, safe and stuffy-warm behind the ancient embroidered material that draped it, hiding—just to be sure—also behind the veil of my hair. Grandmother-nai-Leylit would come in always just before the afternoon meal, and her smell—saffron and skin and millet dough—spread through the room like perfume. Her shuffling steps rang for me a music more exalted and mysterious than the holy sounds of the dawnsong that drifted each morning from behind the white walls of the men’s inner quarter.</blockquote>
➤ interesting gender-related and relationship-style worldbuilding. Contains a trans character and an autistic character, though neither are the main character.
➤ I really enjoyed it, and cared about the characters. But I feel like the ending isn't quite enough of the ending; I kind of wanted to read a novel about this!
