Travel Documents 89: The Fifth Gender
Genre: Near Future, SF, MM Romance, Social Change
The Dust Cover Copy
A species that has no word for murder has a murderer aboard their spaceship!
New York Times bestselling romantic comedy author Gail Carriger (writing as G.L. Carriger) brings you a light-hearted science fiction mystery featuring an adorable lavender alien and his human crush.
ALIEN
Tristol lives in exile. But he’s built a life for himself aboard a massive space station. He’s even begun to understand the complex nuances of human courting rituals. Detective Hastion is finally flirting back!
MURDER
Except that Tristol’s beloved adopted home is unexpectedly contacted by the galoi – a xenophobic species with five genders, purple skin, and serious attitude. They need the help of a detective because there’s a murderer aboard their spaceship. Murder is so rare, the galoi don’t even have a word for it. Tristol knows this because he is galoi.
ROMANCE
Which means that he and Detective Hastion are on the case… together.
The Scene
Worldbuilding
In a space station that crosses DS9 with the small town I grew up in, the best of intercultural exchange happens in the kind of community I hope will come to exist one day. I really appreciated the supportive society built up on the space-station, the queer-normed, flexibly egalitarian social structure, and the organic—for want of a better term—coziness of the setting, so rare in a genre that usually leans towards the terse, the austere and the sterile. Juxtaposing space station life against Galoi society underlined the fact that no matter what a social structure is, making it rigid is a disservice to the people living according to its rules and a disaster waiting to happen. That said, it’s great seeing a well told and (finally!) nonviolent story of culture clash and cultural learning processes.
I have to add that the concepts of color in this book make me really happy. Too often, alien cognition is represented fairly crudely, and is really just a facet of human cognition taken to extreme. Color in this book really makes you think about what it would be like to have a whole different set of senses and a different visual spectrum. The sex scenes also offer some…mmm, interesting differences. See what you think, but it definitely amused me.
The Crowd
Characterization
In the same way that the space station reminds me of my small town, the cast of characters takes me back to small town life. There’s the crotchety neighbor who always needs you to help out with things, the law enforcement type, the chatty lady at the cash-register (of course in this story, she’s an avian lady with feathers) and all of them serve to give the society a sense of vibrancy. Once or twice they felt a bit too Northern Exposure, but the overall effect is charming.
Our two main characters are no less vibrant. Tris comes off as a bubble-head at first, all sudden enthusiasms and awkwardness. But if you’re patient, he reveals a core of will and a depth of wisdom that will surprise you. Drey is the kind of guy who’s been told to be strong so often that he wears ‘tough’ like armor. But I really appreciated the way he was shown relaxing when he was allowed to take the armor off and be soft, and kind, and human.
The Lingo
Writing Style
Written in a sweet, irreverent and delightful manner with a lot of depth below the froth, it’s a quick and endearingly energetic style.
The Moves
Plot
This is the one area where the story stumbles. In the opening pages, it’s stressed again and again that Drey is distant and difficult to get to know…and then he’s falling into bed with Tris and getting sweet and gooey. That gave me, as a reader, some serious whiplash. I actually had to go back, double check that I’d read what I thought I had, and say to myself ‘hunh…well, okay?’
That was a bit of a stumbling block. But other than that, the story flows beautifully, and what happens in it subverts all your expectations for this genre. In the best possible ways.
Overall Rating
Sweet, heartbreaking and saucy by turns, this story is the best of several genres: the bubbly whimsy of a good anime, the deep insights of great science fiction, and the sweet energy of really fun romance. This is a truly adorable story.