I loved the context
of this book as much as the story itself. As part of the “Own Voices” movement,
the speculative fiction community has examined not only the inclusion of
transgender characters but asked who writes about them. This book is the first
fantasy novel featuring a transgender character and written by a transgender
author to be published by a major house. Alina Boyden sets her tale in a
non-Western culture in which transwomen have an established cultural niche. She
draws her inspiration from the Indian tradition of hijras, which dates back as far as 3000 years ago, referring to third
gender or trans-feminine people. Texts such as the Rigveda, Mahabharata, and Ramayana
mention such people in a respectful way, in contrast to the actions of the
British Empire in attempting to erase the hijra
community entirely. In India, hijras
who are assigned male gender at birth sometimes castrate themselves, wear
feminine clothing and adopt feminine names, live together in households, relate
to each other as female kin (sisters, daughters, etc), and perform at
events such as births and weddings.
One such is this
novel’s protagonist, Razia Khan, born as the Crown Prince of one of many small
kingdoms in this alternate pre-British India, including training with the
magical feathered dragons called zahhaks,
which are a rare and powerful military asset. Now she works as a skilled dancer
and courtesan, working and living in a tightly knit household, a dera, ruled by an insatiably greedy madam.
In addition, she’s a thief whose booty supplements their income. After being
engaged to provide entertainment for a wealthy merchant, she falls in love with
the handsome prince of Bikampur and gains his affection in return. But all is
not well, for her very life is at risk should her father learn of her
whereabouts, a bully from her tormented childhood appears at court and
recognizes her . . . and war is brewing. Razia’s training and natural aptitude
make her a genius at the use of dragons in military strategy, and her sound
advice brings her the esteem of her prince’s father.
The style and pacing
of the story invites the reader to savor this world and its culture. The enumeration
of settings and details, including jewelry and clothing, and the beat-by-beat
descriptions of action and interactions, which are then repeated, create a slow
spiraling effect. All of this is interwoven with Razia’s own internal
monologues, so that we are able to experience her world and her personal
history through gradually evolving lenses. At first, I questioned the slow pace
and repetition, but as I noticed how the descriptions – what Razia notices and
the context in which she places it – reflected and embodied Razia’s own
personal growth, I found it highly evocative and satisfying. Small details,
like the conversation between Razia, who chose castration as a gift, and a
eunuch who had to come to terms with the involuntary loss, evoked a much larger
world of consent, choices, and power.
Razia begins the story terrified of discovery, uneasy about stealing but so grateful to her madam that she feels she has no choice, and pathetically desperate for love. As she comes to accept being valued, she discovers her own courage – a trait she believed she lacked because she had been told – and beaten – so many times as a child for being unmasculine. She doesn’t take the easy way out, whether it’s accepting the likelihood of betrayal to her father, and subsequent assassination, or the risk of losing Arjuna’s love by telling him the truth about her thieving, standing up to those who once bullied her, or always, always remaining true to herself as a transgender woman. It would have been so easy for the story to follow the typical Romance tropes based on misunderstandings so easily cleared up by a single conversation, and Stealing Thunder avoids them all. By the end, I not only cheered Razia’s commitment to a genuine life, I had a greater understanding of how she has managed to find empowerment within the superficially submissive, dependent role of a hijra courtesan.
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