August 17, 2022
There is truly nothing the restive embrace of a good story cannot fix; and Winter’s Orbit is a damn good story.
I had the opportunity to read an early copy of this book a few weeks ago, while caught in the dreary throes of finals and deadlines, and the story was like a rope thrown into a churning sea, mooring me to some semblance of sanity. Those moments when I would step outside myself and step inside the story were the only moments my mind could shut off its rigor and everything in me would settle like silt. I yearned for the escape I knew the story would bring, and for the space of a few hundred pages, I felt weightless, like all the trouble in the world had lifted from my shoulders.
Ironically, trouble finds our characters from the outset of the novel.
The high concept of “a wayward, scandal-magnet prince and an intensely serious, duty-bound scholar are drafted into a political marriage and forced to work together in order to prevent an interplanetary war” tells you all you need to know about this book, but it only scratches the surface of the story’s many delights. Winter’s Orbit represents everything in the genre for which I have an unaffected fondness: an extraordinarily believable and imaginative world with varied forces forming a tremulous web of fraught coexistence, complicated political machinations, the racy adventurous feel of a mystery left unsolved, deftly rendered characters that drive straight to your heart, and an ineffably tender romance that wraps around you like a thick wool robe—all woven through a superbly assured prose to create the kind of masterful storytelling that wells up to pull the reader into a unique and unforgettable experience.
The novel is also, thrillingly, just as emotionally satisfying.
(spoilers ahead)
Jainan’a chapters are some of the novel’s most painful and wounding sections. From the moment we meet him, Jainan carries himself with the flinching weariness of a man with memories that require iron cages, kept still and quiet and captive so they did not devour him whole. This comes with a sense of foreboding, a whisper of wrongness. The reader does not immediately understand why Jainan moves so timidly through his life, always guarded, always careful, like he was waiting for a blow; why he often has to realign his whole world around a single act of kindness; or why everything he thought and did tends towards an all-pervasive self-loathing. Most chilling, however, is the sense that Jainan’s private, repeated mantras carry the echo of someone else’s voice.
The full picture soon begins to bloom like a stain across the paper: the full arc of Jainan’s traumatic relationship with his abusive ex-husband, who, for five years, had used his position as an imperial prince to etch the knowledge of powerlessness directly into Jainan’s heart, cutting all Jainan’s tethers—his family, his friends, his dreams—and making sure Jainan had no ally but his abuser, which is to say, that he had no ally at all. Through Jainan’s character, the author plumbs the cavernous depths of domestic abuse, tracing the interwoven strands of shame, anger, guilt, and sometimes even grief, that cling to survivors after they’re freed from their abusers. It’s a devastating topic, but Maxwell handles it with sensitivity, complexity, and so much care. Abuse, the novel hauntingly illustrates, carves a wound so deep and so hidden it takes a very long time to find it and address it. It casts a vast, horrible shadow over your relationships and leaves you unmoored. There are so few literary accounts of domestic abuse in queer relationships (something I read a while ago about it still haunts me: “when your love is taboo, so are its violences.”) so stories like Winter’s Orbit are crucial in expanding the scope of the queer experience.
Prince Kiem, on the other hand, offers a very good counterpart to Jainan. Kiem has carefully constructed his reputation as the evanescently charming, scandal-prone prince who leads an unfettered life, and he did it in much the same way one might erect a brick façade, or drape armor around their body. One of the novel’s most rewarding moments is seeing Kiem with his defenses lowered, his shields abandoned on the ground, the barricades abraded, revealing someone who’s so achingly familiar and undeniably loveable. Beyond the charming façade is someone who is insecure and self-effacing, tragically concerned and affected by other people’s unfavorable opinions of him. Kiem can also be naive sometimes: by his own admission, he had not cared for the intricacies of war and politics and has banished from his thoughts all of the Empire and its tumultuous affairs. But when the fog of complacency and ignorance lift, forcing Kiem to confront several uncomfortable truths, he throws himself headlong into unearthing the secrets lodged under the Empire’s skin, holding them into the light and calling for wrongs to be set aright, in what is a beautiful display of character-development.
Jainan and Kiem could not be any more different. Where Kiem is loud and chaotic and draws all eyes like a flare, Jainan is a world unto himself, intense and quiet and with a shadow’s talent for passing unremarked. And for long stretches of the novel, they both keep an invisible barbed wire between them. I loved how Kiem falls in love with Jainan in one swift motion, clear and unmistakable, and how slowly he eases open Jainan’s heart like a book, mindful of the places, still tender and aching, where the past left its bruises. On the other hand, I loved how Jainan always stood by Kiem’s side, and how, in turn, he slowly learns to let go and trust that Kiem’s embrace would break his fall. Winter’s Orbit is truly about the longing. At times, Kiem and Jainan’s relationship feels as delicate as a sigh, fragile and tentative. The will-they-won’t-they back and forth drove me INSANE, and I wanted to scream at them to “PLEASE JUST KISS”.
All in all, Winter’s Orbit is a smart, tender, and deeply rewarding gem of space opera. I could have gladly spent twice as long with Jainan and Kiem, and still longed for more!
I had the opportunity to read an early copy of this book a few weeks ago, while caught in the dreary throes of finals and deadlines, and the story was like a rope thrown into a churning sea, mooring me to some semblance of sanity. Those moments when I would step outside myself and step inside the story were the only moments my mind could shut off its rigor and everything in me would settle like silt. I yearned for the escape I knew the story would bring, and for the space of a few hundred pages, I felt weightless, like all the trouble in the world had lifted from my shoulders.
Ironically, trouble finds our characters from the outset of the novel.
The high concept of “a wayward, scandal-magnet prince and an intensely serious, duty-bound scholar are drafted into a political marriage and forced to work together in order to prevent an interplanetary war” tells you all you need to know about this book, but it only scratches the surface of the story’s many delights. Winter’s Orbit represents everything in the genre for which I have an unaffected fondness: an extraordinarily believable and imaginative world with varied forces forming a tremulous web of fraught coexistence, complicated political machinations, the racy adventurous feel of a mystery left unsolved, deftly rendered characters that drive straight to your heart, and an ineffably tender romance that wraps around you like a thick wool robe—all woven through a superbly assured prose to create the kind of masterful storytelling that wells up to pull the reader into a unique and unforgettable experience.
The novel is also, thrillingly, just as emotionally satisfying.
(spoilers ahead)
Jainan’a chapters are some of the novel’s most painful and wounding sections. From the moment we meet him, Jainan carries himself with the flinching weariness of a man with memories that require iron cages, kept still and quiet and captive so they did not devour him whole. This comes with a sense of foreboding, a whisper of wrongness. The reader does not immediately understand why Jainan moves so timidly through his life, always guarded, always careful, like he was waiting for a blow; why he often has to realign his whole world around a single act of kindness; or why everything he thought and did tends towards an all-pervasive self-loathing. Most chilling, however, is the sense that Jainan’s private, repeated mantras carry the echo of someone else’s voice.
The full picture soon begins to bloom like a stain across the paper: the full arc of Jainan’s traumatic relationship with his abusive ex-husband, who, for five years, had used his position as an imperial prince to etch the knowledge of powerlessness directly into Jainan’s heart, cutting all Jainan’s tethers—his family, his friends, his dreams—and making sure Jainan had no ally but his abuser, which is to say, that he had no ally at all. Through Jainan’s character, the author plumbs the cavernous depths of domestic abuse, tracing the interwoven strands of shame, anger, guilt, and sometimes even grief, that cling to survivors after they’re freed from their abusers. It’s a devastating topic, but Maxwell handles it with sensitivity, complexity, and so much care. Abuse, the novel hauntingly illustrates, carves a wound so deep and so hidden it takes a very long time to find it and address it. It casts a vast, horrible shadow over your relationships and leaves you unmoored. There are so few literary accounts of domestic abuse in queer relationships (something I read a while ago about it still haunts me: “when your love is taboo, so are its violences.”) so stories like Winter’s Orbit are crucial in expanding the scope of the queer experience.
Prince Kiem, on the other hand, offers a very good counterpart to Jainan. Kiem has carefully constructed his reputation as the evanescently charming, scandal-prone prince who leads an unfettered life, and he did it in much the same way one might erect a brick façade, or drape armor around their body. One of the novel’s most rewarding moments is seeing Kiem with his defenses lowered, his shields abandoned on the ground, the barricades abraded, revealing someone who’s so achingly familiar and undeniably loveable. Beyond the charming façade is someone who is insecure and self-effacing, tragically concerned and affected by other people’s unfavorable opinions of him. Kiem can also be naive sometimes: by his own admission, he had not cared for the intricacies of war and politics and has banished from his thoughts all of the Empire and its tumultuous affairs. But when the fog of complacency and ignorance lift, forcing Kiem to confront several uncomfortable truths, he throws himself headlong into unearthing the secrets lodged under the Empire’s skin, holding them into the light and calling for wrongs to be set aright, in what is a beautiful display of character-development.
Jainan and Kiem could not be any more different. Where Kiem is loud and chaotic and draws all eyes like a flare, Jainan is a world unto himself, intense and quiet and with a shadow’s talent for passing unremarked. And for long stretches of the novel, they both keep an invisible barbed wire between them. I loved how Kiem falls in love with Jainan in one swift motion, clear and unmistakable, and how slowly he eases open Jainan’s heart like a book, mindful of the places, still tender and aching, where the past left its bruises. On the other hand, I loved how Jainan always stood by Kiem’s side, and how, in turn, he slowly learns to let go and trust that Kiem’s embrace would break his fall. Winter’s Orbit is truly about the longing. At times, Kiem and Jainan’s relationship feels as delicate as a sigh, fragile and tentative. The will-they-won’t-they back and forth drove me INSANE, and I wanted to scream at them to “PLEASE JUST KISS”.
All in all, Winter’s Orbit is a smart, tender, and deeply rewarding gem of space opera. I could have gladly spent twice as long with Jainan and Kiem, and still longed for more!
