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Notes from a Regicide is a heartbreaking story of trans self-discovery with a rich relatability and a science-fictional twist from award-winning author Isaac Fellman.
When your parents die, you find out who they really were.
Griffon Keming's second parents saved him from his abusive family. They taught him how to be trans, paid for his transition, and tried to love him as best they could. But Griffon's new parents had troubles of their own – both were deeply scarred by the lives they lived before Griffon, the struggles they faced to become themselves, and the failed revolution that drove them from their homeland. When they died, they left an unfillable hole in his heart.
Griffon's best clue to his parents' lives is in his father's journal, written from a jail cell while he awaited execution. Stained with blood, grief, and tears, these pages struggle to contain the love story of two artists on fire. With the journal in hand, Griffon hopes to pin down his relationship to these wonderful and strange people for whom time always seemed to be running out.
In Notes from a Regicide, a trans family saga set in a far-off, familiar future, Isaac Fellman goes beyond the concept of found family to examine how deeply we can be healed and hurt by those we choose to love.
"[A]n intimate and vivid portrait of a queer family weathering a dystopian world...Fellman explores themes of political dissidence and the power and limitations of art, especially as a means of giving voice to the oppressed. Prescient, emotionally nuanced, and remarkably well told, this offers plenty to sink one's teeth into." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Expansive and empathetic, this novel is a stunner." ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A triumphant and blistering chronicle of found family, love, and resistance. Brimming with wit and queer joy amidst the violence of rebellion, Notes from A Regicide is a multigenerational saga set in a distant (but eerily recognizable) future." —Booklist (starred review)
"Fellman writes a literary sci-fi novel about trans identity that will appeal to fans of Charlie Jane Anders or Izzy Wasserstein's These Fragile Graces, This Fugitive Heart and those who were fascinated with the play on histories and identities in T. Kingfisher's "Sworn Soldier" series." —Library Journal
"Isaac Fellman's enchanting and wholly original Notes From a Regicide is a dystopian trans saga and a loving yet unflinching reflection on family." ―BookPage
"A glittering, empathetic story about the pains and pleasures of loving eccentrics...Marvellous, and heart-breakingly unsentimental." ―Jennifer Giesbrecht, author of The Monster of Elendhaven
"Notes from a Regicide is a dazzling meditation on art and desire...it is also quite simply the best kind of book there is―dangerous because it is beautiful, and because it is true." ―Jedediah Berry, author of The Manual of Detection and The Naming Song
"Unapolgetically queer, [Notes from a Regicide] is a somber, joyful treat of a tale that clearly comes from a place of knowing, and one that will linger in your memory." ―Kit Mayquist, author of Tripping Arcadia
This information about Notes from a Regicide was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Isaac Fellman is the author of Dead Collections as well as The Breath of the Sun (published under his previous name), which won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for queer science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He is an archivist at the GLBT Historical Society.
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