[Plura-list] Margaret Killjoy's "The Sapling Cage"

[Cory Doctorow]

Read today's issue online at: https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/24/daughters-of-the-empty-throne/

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TODAY (September 24th), I'll be speaking in person at the Boston Public Library!

https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/66cf2d8bf520192f005fcc50

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Today, Tor Books publishes "Spill," a new, free "Little Brother" novella about oil pipelines and indigenous landback!

https://reactormag.com/spill-cory-doctorow/

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Today's links

* Margaret Killjoy's "The Sapling Cage": Epic fantasy as queer coming-of-age.

* Hey look at this: Delights to delectate.

* This day in history: 2009, 2014, 2019, 2023

* Upcoming appearances: Where to find me.

* Recent appearances: Where I've been.

* Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em.

* Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em.

* Colophon: All the rest.

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🔏 Margaret Killjoy's "The Sapling Cage"

*The Sapling Cage* is the first book in Margaret Killjoy's new "Daughters of the Empty Throne" trilogy: it's a queer coming-of-age tale in the mode of epic fantasy, and it's *very* good:

https://firestorm.coop/products/21646-the-sapling-cage.html

Lorel wants to be a witch, but that's the very last of the adventurous trades to be strictly gender-segregated. Boys and girls alike run away to be knights, brigands and sailors, but only girls can become a witch. Indeed, Lorel's best friend, Lane, is promised to the witches, having been born to a witch herself.

Lane doesn't want to be a witch. She wants to be a knight. So she and Lorel swap places, so when the crones come to their little hamlet to collect the girl who was promised to her, it's Lorel who steps forward, wearing the black dress Lane's mother left behind. None of the townsfolk rate Lorel out to the witches, and just like that, she is on the march with the coven, a whelp - the lowest ranking inductee, aspiring to "apprentice" and then, "witch."

What follows is, in some ways, a very expertly executed coming-of-age story. Lane is getting trained up with the coven, among a new cohort of whelps of varying degrees of friendliness and hostility. The world is a richly realized fantasy landscape of monsters and giants, magic and political intrigue.

Lorel has signed up for witching just as the land is turning against witches, thanks to a political plot by a scheming duchess who has scapegoated the witches as part of a plan to annex all the surrounding duchies, re-establishing the long-disintegrated kingdom with herself on the throne. To make things worse (for the witches, if not the duchess), there's a plague of monsters on the land, and the forests are blighted with a magical curse that turns trees to unmelting ice. This all softens up the peasantfolk for anti-witch pogroms.

So Lorel has to learn witching, even as her coven is fighting both monsters *and* the duchess's knights *and* the vigilante yokels who've been stirred up with anti-witch xenophobia.

This is a good, sturdy, serviceable plot, and in Killjoy's hands, it is expertly handled. There are lots of reversals and double-crosses, brilliant fight scenes, all the things you could want in an epic fantasy. And of course, it's a coming of age, with Lorel seeing the world and discovering who she is and brushing away the comforting half-truths and lies her elders have cocooned her in.

That's where the fact that Lorel is trans comes in. Lorel is figuring out what that means, but she's also *very* worried about discovery. After all, she's entered the company of witches, the last all-female cohort in the land, and these are *powerful* women - what's more, they're anarchists, leaderless and fractious. Who knows what happens if Lorel gets discovered.

So you've got this incredibly well-turned fantasy/coming-of-age story going on, and Killjoy figures out how to work in this gender stuff not just as a way of doing "representation" or "queer joy" or any other value that's orthogonal to the literary merits of this as an adventure tale. Nor does she simply *integrate* trans-ness as an unremarkable fact of life, another kind of statement (indeed, there's plenty of queer characters in this story who are matter-of-fact in this manner).

No, Killjoy uses the special complications of coming-of-age while transitioning to heighten the stakes and thus fuel the suspense of the novel. In addition to all the normal merits of diverse characters, Killjoy is using gender issues to crank up the story, winding it up to a breakneck pace that makes the pages practically fly past.

Thematically, there's a bunch of chewy stuff Killjoy does with the way that magic transforms bodies, making monsters out of witches who push their powers too hard. The story has all these changing bodies - children coming of age, Lorel coming out as transfemme, the transformation of magic-users into monsters. It's just another layer of depth that supports a zippy, run-and-gun quest tale.

I've followed Killjoy's work for more than a decade, ever since her days publishing the seminal zine *Steampunk* (motto: "Love the machine, hate the factory"):

https://firestorm.coop/products/2624-steampunk-magazine.html

Years later, I had the pleasure of instructing her at the Clarion West workshop. She's published regularly all that time, and this is by far her most commercial - and, I think her best! - novel (to date).

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🔏 Hey look at this

* An Abridged History of Safari Showstoppers https://webventures.rejh.nl/blog/2024/history-of-safari-show-stoppers/

* RIP, Dewayne Hendricks https://www.zeroretries.org/p/zero-retries-0170?open=false#%C2%A7my-thanks-to-dewayne-hendricks-wadzp

* Forbes Marketplace: The Parasite SEO Company Trying to Devour Its Host https://larslofgren.com/forbes-marketplace/ (h/t Metafilter)

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🔏 This day in history

#15yrsago British Airways adds a “fly next to your children” fee http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8274200.stm

#15yrsago Al Franken reads the Fourth Amendment to DoJ official at PATRIOT Act hearings https://washingtonindependent.org/60611/al-franken-reads-the-4th-amendment-to-justice-department-official/

#10yrsago Insecure printer firmware hacked to play Doom https://www.wired.com/2014/09/doom-printer/https://citizenlab.ca/2019/09/poison-carp-tibetan-groups-targeted-with-1-click-mobile-exploits/

#5yrsago A list of companies that contract with ICE https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/24/a-list-of-companies-that-contract-with-ice/

#5yrsago 45 Google whistleblowers tell tales of workplace retaliation after reporting abuse https://www.vice.com/en/article/45-google-employees-explain-how-they-were-retaliated-against-for-reporting-abuse/

#5yrsago Dynasties: in-depth reporting on the wealthy, influential political and corporate families that not-so-secretly rule Canada https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/24/dynasties-in-depth-reporting-on-the-wealthy-influential-political-and-corporate-families-that-not-so-secretly-rule-canada/

#5yrsago At the UN, Greta Thunberg excoriates world leaders and her elders for climate inaction https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWEpTok6AJo

#5yrago Trial begins for the “cum/ex” bankers accused of stealing €447m and trying for €60b https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/sep/20/the-men-who-plundered-europe-city-of-london-practices-on-trial-in-bonn

#5yrsago Here’s how to take Wired’s advice and get your own e-scooter, for a fraction of the cost https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/24/heres-how-to-take-wireds-advice-and-get-your-own-e-scooter-for-a-fraction-of-the-cost/

#5yrsago Permanent Record: Edward Snowden and the making of a whistleblower https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/24/permanent-record-edward-snowden-and-the-making-of-a-whistleblower/

#5yrsago Annalee Newitz’s “Future of Another Timeline”: in which punk feminist time travelers battle Men’s Rights Advocates who want to stop feminism from every emerging https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/24/annalee-newitzs-future-of-another-timeline-in-which-punk-feminist-time-travelers-battle-mens-rights-advocates-who-want-to-stop-feminism-from-every-emerging/

#5yrsago Nerf unveils “DRM for darts” https://memex.craphound.com/2019/09/24/nerf-unveils-drm-for-darts/

#5yrsago Far-right Australian billionaire demands $500k and a vow of silence from a satirical vlogger < ahref="https://gizmodo.com/billionaire-threatens-to-sue-youtuber-for-calling-him-f-1838392409">https://gizmodo.com/billionaire-threatens-to-sue-youtuber-for-calling-him-f-1838392409

#1yrago Joe Biden is headed to a UAW picket-line in Detroit https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/24/joe-biden-is-headed-to-a-uaw-picket-line-in-detroit/

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🔏 Upcoming appearances

* The Right to Read, Boston Public Library, Sep 24
https://bpl.bibliocommons.com/events/66cf2d8bf520192f005fcc50

* SOSS Fusion (Atlanta), Oct 22
https://sossfusion2024.sched.com/speaker/cory_doctorow.1qm5qfgn

* TusCon (Tucson), Nov 8-10
https://tusconscificon.com/

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🔏 Recent appearances

* Rethink: Is the internet getting worse?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0022z9r

*  Annie's Book Stop Of Worcester
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYM3WOPOMC0

* DEF CON 32 - Disenshittify or die! How hackers can seize the means of computation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EmstuO0Em8

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🔏 Latest books

* The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/).

* "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/)

* "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245).

* "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/.

* "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com

* "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The *Washington Post* called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html

* "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html)

* "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html

* "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/.

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🔏 Upcoming books

* Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books, February 2025

* Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2025

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🔏 Colophon

Today's top sources:

Currently writing:

* Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay. Today's progress: 797 words (52968 words total).

* A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING

* Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS JAN 2025

* Vigilant, Little Brother short story about remote invigilation. FORTHCOMING ON TOR.COM

Latest podcast:
  Anti-cheat, gamers, and the Crowdstrike disaster https://craphound.com/news/2024/09/15/anti-cheat-gamers-and-the-crowdstrike-disaster/

This work - excluding any serialized fiction - is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.

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"*When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla*" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
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