Way back in the aughts during that brief period when steampunk was cool, my spouse got me a subscription to a very small self-published steampunk magazine (it was called, I believe, Steampunk Magazine). In addition to all the usual gears and airships, this publication really embraced the “punk” part of steampunk. There was a definite DIY, anarchist vibe to the non-fiction side, and while I was mostly reading it for the fiction and art, I found this window into another way of thinking pretty interesting. One author (and maybe editor? it’s been a long time and about half a dozen moves since I had those mags, they’re lost to the mists of time) who stood out to me was Margaret Killjoy. She had a cool name and was possibly one of the first openly trans writers that Baby AJ* ever read.
Fast forward something close to twenty years, and after publishing some anarcho-fantasy books that I haven’t picked up yet, Killjoy recently published The Sapling Cage which looked like it had some real 90s vibes but way queerer than anything I was reading in the 90s, so I decided to check it out.
The Sapling Cage by Margaret Killjoy will probably be a real nostalgic read for anyone who, like me, spent the late 90s and early 00s reading the likes of Raymond Feist, Robert Jordan, and Tamora Pierce. It starts out like so many of those epic fantasy books did back then… two small-town teenagers, desperate to go see the big world, chafing against the life that has been laid out for them. A deception to gain access to adventure. Slowly realizing that the world is vaster and scarier than they ever realized. And of course, falling in love.
Books in the 90s gave us stableboys who dreamed of adventure, and girls who disguised themselves as boys to gain access to male-only spaces. The Sapling Cage gives us Lorel, a stableboy who wants to take his best friend’s place and be a witch, so he disguises himself as a girl. The difference between Lorel and all those 90s and 00s heroines dressed as boys is that Lorel wants to be a girl, in a world that really doesn’t have openly trans role models to give Lorel the language for these feelings.
Going forward, I’ll use she/her pronouns for Lorel, since that’s the identity she eventually fully claims for herself, but it takes her some time to come to the decision that she’s not a boy who wants to be a girl, she’s a girl.
While trans identities don’t seem to be common in this world, same-sex relationships are, and there’s a-spec representation too, as well as some really important friendship relationships.
So that’s all a great update on those books I grew up with.
Unfortunately, just as it engages in a lot of beloved coming-of-age fantasy tropes, it also engages in a more tedious one: the first 25% of this book is mostly a cycle of travel-camp-train. While these scenes do manage to convey some stuff about the world and further character growth, they are still so repetitive that I found myself bored and wishing for some more “random encounter” type scenes to break things up (I had a similar problem recently with the historical medieval M/M romance One Night in Hartswood by Emma Denny). Things do eventually pick up, and we get some more action and big reveals, before an incredibly rushed ending.
I did appreciate that while this is the first book of a trilogy, the plot is wrapped up, so it feels like a stand-alone with potential for things to heat back up. You can easily read this and then decide whether you liked it enough to continue the trilogy, without being left on a cliffhanger.
Interestingly, this doesn’t appear to be marketed as a YA, despite the teenage protagonist. I suspect that like a lot of those 90s adult fantasy books with stableboys going on adventures, we’ll see Lorel and her friends grow into adulthood across the course of the series. But given how much I devoured this sort of story as a teen, even when it was shelved in the adult section, I suspect today’s teens will like this, especially if they’re looking for epic fantasy that’s super queer.
For me, the pacing issues made this book good when I was really hoping it would be great. It did have enough interesting elements that I’ll probably pick up the second book. I liked that there was an uprising in the past that overthrew the king and curtailed the power of barons and duchies. I liked the magic system. And I liked that Lorel was squeamish about killing and eager to find other ways to solve problems, even if the people around her always seem to decide that violence is the answer. I hope the trilogy will really see her come into her own and have the power to enact more peaceful solutions.
If you’re feeling a bit nostalgic for the books you grew up with (assuming you’re around my age…) but worried about how those books may have aged, definitely give The Sapling Cage a try.
*Obviously since I was already married at this point, I was an adult, but barely, and looking back at my young, naive self, I feel like I was still a baby in some ways.
CWs and TWs: Violence, transphobia, misgendering, off-page child death.
Source and Format: I borrowed an ebook from Pierce County Library System.
Book Bingo Prompts
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): Growing Up & Getting Older. I thought I might read a book more focused on the “getting older” side of things since I read a “coming of age” novel last year, and I’m in the “getting older” stage of life myself. But this book was a pretty classic fantasy coming of age novel, and with the end of the year fast approaching, I’m gonna fill these squares when an opportunity drops in my lap!
Book Bingo Progress
Nook & Cranny (Card 1): 25 out of 25 prompts complete. BLACKOUT!
Nook & Cranny (Card 2): 21 out of 25 prompts complete. 5 bingos.