The Four Profound Weaves by R.B. Lemberg (Tachyon Publications) | review by Stephen Theaker

This review originally appeared in Interzone #288, September–October 2020).

Uiziya e Lali and the nameless man known as nen-sasaïr live in a world where magic is real and one can change one’s sex. A cloth of transformation, woven from the wind, summons sand-birds of bright fire. They cocoon the summoner, who burns without burning before emerging as the desired sex. They attribute this ability to the goddess Bird – who gives the series of stories of which this novella is a part its overall name, the Birdverse – but from what we see in this book it might well be a symbiotic biological process that has evolved on this world.

The Unbalancing, by R.B. Lemberg (Tachyon Publications) | review by Stephen Theaker

The star in the ocean off the city of Gelle-Geu has slumbered for almost a thousand years, but now it is beginning to have nightmares. And because that star is tethered to the Mother Mountain, a nearby volcano, the twenty thousand inhabitants of Gelle-Geu are in no small amount of danger. Unfortunately, the previous keeper of the Star of the Tides decided that nothing could be done to stop the disaster, and so kept it secret.

When new starkeeper Ranra Kekeri takes over, and discovers how little time remains, Ranra takes a very different view. If there’s a way to calm the star, Ranra will find it, but before that can be done the new starkeeper may have to figure out what the star actually is – all while dealing with the worries caused by an aggressive former partner, Veruma, a cruel and delusional mother, Adira, and a potential new partner, the poet Erígra Lilún.