Crier’s War & The Importance of LGBTQ+ Rep in Fantasy

Nina Varela
spoilers: no
rating: ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾ ☾
publication date: october 1st, 2019
tw: n/a
rep: lesbian poc main character, bi poc main character, side f/f and m/m couples.
age range: ya (12+)

summary: After the War of Kinds ravaged the kingdom of Rabu, the Automae, designed to be the playthings of royals, usurped their owners’ estates and bent the human race to their will.
Now Ayla, a human servant rising in the ranks at the House of the Sovereign, dreams of avenging her family’s death…by killing the sovereign’s daughter, Lady Crier.
Crier was Made to be beautiful, flawless, and to carry on her father’s legacy. But that was before her betrothal to the enigmatic Scyre Kinok, before she discovered her father isn’t the benevolent king she once admired, and most importantly, before she met Ayla.
Now, with growing human unrest across the land, pressures from a foreign queen, and an evil new leader on the rise, Crier and Ayla find there may be only one path to love: war.

Initial Thoughts

If you’ve followed my content for a while, you’ll know that Crier’s War has been one of my most anticipated books of the year. Sapphic hate to love? Unique world state where androids and humans live side by side? Sign me up. As soon as my library ordered it, I was the first person on the wait list. Sadly, it took them until the end of October to get the story in, so started reading it later then planned. However I am happy to say this book didn’t disappoint and I am extremely excited to write about how great it is. (Warning: This does turn into a small discussion near the end so prepare yourself.)

Character Driven

I’m going to hit this section first because I have a LOT of thoughts about my two girls Ayla and Crier. The fantastic thing about the story itself is that it is more character driven, so Ayla and Crier both feel like authentic characters. Varela puts a lot of heart into them and it really shows. Ayla is a serious, focused character. She is on a mission and by god she is going to get her revenge no matter what pretty face stands in her way.
Crier, is an automaton literally just trying her best. She wants to care for both the automaton subjects and her human subjects, preaching peace and tolerance instead of the cruelties that her people commonly resort to with humans. In the process she gets mixed up with Ayla and takes her on as a handmaiden because she is fascinated by her… Cue the pining. Crier was already sympathetic to humans but now she is willing to use all her power to help them and Ayla.
I think its admirable to see a character work so hard to use her power to help others. And while Crier is still learning about how the world works, Varela never writes her as this naive, young girl. Instead she uses her moments of weakness to build character development, she learns from her mistakes and uses this newfound knowledge to fight back. It’s a very empowering way to show a character make mistakes without turning to the common stereotypes that often haunt YA fantasy stories.

Intriguing plot

The story itself is incredibly interesting because Varela has created an intriguing political system, where no side is technically “good”. Everyone is self-serving and manipulative except for our homegirl, Crier. She is actively working towards attaining more power so she can use it to help humans and automae coexist peacefully. When you add a vengefully motivated Ayla into the mix, the story goes from being about a princess navigating navigating court duties to a princess involved in court intrigue and spying. I quite enjoyed seeing Crier and Ayla’s personal development as they worked together throughout the story. Crier becomes a little more hardcore and realistic after her interactions with Ayla, whereas Ayla learns to be more vulnerable and communicative after her interactions with Crier. However it’s all for naught because Nina Varela loves angst and these girls still have a lot of things to work through, especially plot related.

Unsurprisingly, I’ve gotten off topic. I originally was talking about how intricate the political system of the book is. There are multiple powers throughout the book that are struggling to one-up each other. There’s a faction of automae that want complete separation, there’s Crier’s kingdom that wants to co-exist but still treat humans like scum, and there’s a faction that want to treat humans like equals. There’s a lot of different perspectives in this story and the great thing is that they’re all working towards their own selfish goals. This is an incredibly necessary element to include in any political fantasy because it makes the story that much more interesting. It keeps you trying to guess who’s the real bad guy, and is a trope I great enjoy seeing in books.

World Building that stands out

The world building in this book was actually galaxy brain. Crier’s War features a world with power imbalances and oppression but throughout the story you never encounter any sort of wide spread homophobia. It’s stated many times throughout the books that various side characters have same sex partners and other characters never react in any way that makes readers feel like same-sex partners aren’t a norm in this world. Plus, they never experience oppression based on the fact that they are gay. This is a very specific trope that I always look for in my fantasy/sci-fi stories because its a norm for world building in these stories to just include homophobia.

Consider Game of Thrones, its a prominent high fantasy but the gay characters are all looked down on or made fun of for their sexuality and most if not all end up dead. It a disappointing thing to see in fantasy because there’s so much you can do with your world building that you don’t need to write that in. That’s right I said it. It’s absolutely a writer’s choice to put homophobia into their world and honestly its just lazy writing at this point. Think outside the box! That’s the point of fantasy as well as sci-fi as a genre. “But Emily” you say, “Some people like writing fantasy/sci-fi with dark themes.” Here’s what I’ll say, I’m aware that stories like Game of Thrones are part of the grimdark genre. Hell, I enjoy reading grimdark stories from time to time, but there are ways to build your fantasy world to demonstrate how dark and twisted it is, without glorifying homophobic, misogynistic and pedophilic tropes. A series that really does this well is The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang, however I’ve written an entirely separate review to hype that story up.

Back to my original point, there is no actual need for fantasy/sci-fi worlds to include homophobia in them because the point of those genres is to be inventive, create new standards for your world. You don’t have to write homophobia into your stories, you really don’t. Building a world where LGBT+ characters are able to live freely is honestly one of the best things you can do. So many of us in the LGBT+ community face homophobia in real life that it’s nice to find a story where you can see yourself represented (and respected) in a safe environment. ANYWAYS, I said all that because reading this story where no characters get harassed or die specifically because they’re gay was incredible. Nina Varela builds a world where LGBTQ+ readers like me, can see themselves represented without the underlying homophobia that makes them feel isolated.

Overall

I know this review has been all over the place, but I really wanted to talk about some of these issues I’d seen in fantasy worlds. I also wanted to highlight a story that has gotten it right and Crier’s War has really nailed it, in terms of positive LGBT+ representation in both characters and world building. Nina Varela has truly created a masterpiece that every LGBT+ teen should check out. This will definitely make it onto my classroom shelf and I’ll be hyping this book up along with my other favorite f/f books the rest of the year.

Have you read Crier’s War? If so what did you think? If not, what is your opinion on fantasy/sci-fi world building?