It’s an impressive piece. Starting off with the audience uninformed about Brio’s history and everything that’s happened to him is really effective in creating a sense of being off-balance, bringing you along in Brio’s confusion and uncertainty about what’s real and what’s not. I also really loved the Hoggit as a symbol throughout the book – as a character, he’s unique but also feels familiar as the hero of an animal fantasy book, and the tone of those novel excerpt sections is really successful in creating the feeling of what a really talented teenager might right, overwrought and clearly allegorical, but still compelling. On the trans and queer themes, the close first person goes a long way to establish that this is a story about specific characters, not saying that every trans person experiences a certain thing or feels a certain way. Overall, these characters are having plausible, complicated experiences, and they aren’t generalized by the narrative to make a statement about what trans people are “really” like. Brio thinks a lot of broad negative statements about trans/queer/gender-nonconforming people, but it’s very clear that those are Brio’s thoughts and that they’re harmful. Maybe there should be a content warning at the beginning to reassure the reader upfront that not all (or any of) the characters’ opinions are the author’s.
