Winter's Orbit — Book Review

I desperately need somewhere to talk about the books I've been reading and this seems like as good of a place as any, so, okay.

Spoiler warning.

Today I finished Winter's Orbit, which I had seen advertised as similar to A Strange and Stubborn Endurance (I'll review that one later.) and though I really wanted to enjoy it, the best way I can describe it is… boring. I'm not even mad, I don't fault the author, really, and I'm not shocked that so many people seemed to enjoy this book so much. But it just fell so flat for me.

It doesn't really feel like Fantasy Sci Fi. Somehow, some way, over multiple galaxies and 7 planets, all the characters are human. All of them. They're even described as such in the book. There's nothing special about any of them. The main characters, Jainan and Kiem, are both described as having brown skin. Several other characters are describes as pale. All of this leads me to believe that, despite coming from different planets that are allegedly a 2-year space flight apart, somehow they are all the same species, that come in the same typical human colors.

They make it clear that separate planets have separate cultures— this coincides with intergalactic racism and xenophobia, but I'll get to that in a sec— and yet they all speak the same language... (English?) So really it just left me wondering, why is space even a part of this? Why didn't the author just write about separate cultures that exist on the same planet? They were clearly trying to parallel real-world politics, but it doesn't really work, because every fucking character and culture in this book feels the same! It's supposed to be "we come from two different worlds" yet it reads like they grew up in the same suburb of Minnesota.

The mentions of wildlife in this book are ALSO Earth wildlife, which just does not help. At one point, they get stranded on a snowy mountain and get attacked by a bear. Except this bear is apparently bald, has 6 legs, and Jainan calls it an "oversize reptile." Jainan also mentions that bears on his planet have 4 legs, fur, and are docile, and that just confused ME more! Because what do you mean, bears exist on both their planets! And then you describe 2 different animals?? And why is this HAIRLESS BEAR living on top of a snowy mountain?

The only other mentions of wildlife are "creeper flowers," an unnamed kind of ground nesting bird, and, well, I'll just quote this: “Prince Kiem,” she said, in a preoccupied tone. “What is a kingfisher?”
“Oh—they got culled into extinction,” Kiem said, his mouth on autopilot as he ran his fingers over the side of what he now recognized was a tank drone. It was the last one of a whole row. “Two-meter wingspan. Venomous. The bioengineers didn’t realize their prey instinct would include humans.” He looked over and saw Gairad’s expression. “There were some weird design fashions around the time Iskat was terraformed.”

If you don't know, the real-life Kingfisher is just a small bird that eats fish. I don't know why the author chose to use that name, or why Iskat Kingfishers needed to be venomous 7-foot-wide dinosaurs, when Iskat bears are just bears with extra legs. The world building… it baffles me.

The only science aspect of this book is the fact that they use techo-wristbands as cellphones, and happen to be trying to uncover the secrets of an alleged mining operation—which, as far as I can tell, does not seem to be very based in real-life science? Oh, and they have spaceships, I guess.

Something mentioned early on that really interested me was the mention of the "galactic links" which is. Mayybbee a parody of Stargate?— WAS THIS STARGATE FANFICTION? I mean, I knew it was originally published on Ao3, but saw contradicting answers on whether it was fanfic or not. Oh, but that would make so much sense… Anyway, these "galactic links" ended up being entirely unimportant, never used, and barely mentioned.

The politics in this story revolve around the sci-fi, and yet the sci-fi is so fucking convoluted and confusing that even in the last couple chapters they're STILL introducing brand-new things that should have been introduced or hinted at several hundred pages ago. Did I mention this is an over 400-page book? Because it really, really, did not need to be. Half the "plot" of this book is random 'plot twists' that make no sense. As if the author didn't know where to go next, but needed to fill pages anyways, so they just decided to suddenly change everything and say that everything we know is wrong. Several. Times.

The political plot felt circular. In fact, everything about this book is circular. This entire book is just Bad Thing Happened > We Figured It Out, Guys! > Oh Wait, Other Bad Thing Is Related > We Figured It Out, Guys! > New Bad Thing Happened > We Figured It Out, Guys! > Oh Wait, Other Bad Thing Is Related > are you understanding me? They get literally nowhere, so fucking slowly. And at the end of the book, all their "investigating" is for absolutely nothing!! The Ultimate Bad Guy takes them hostage anyway, and somehow they miraculously "win" because Jainan is forced to retraumatize himself and out the abusive relationship he was in to the public, which is somehow the perfect trump card to get his planet (which everyone on Iskat is repeatedly racist towards) what they want.

And, can I just say, the racism allegories in this book are insane. Prince Kiem's planet, Iskat, is wholly ruled by his families' empire, and the people on Iskat make it very, very clear that they do not respect the other planets that are forced to be in their empire. They often, disrespect Jainan's home planet, Thea, (from which he is THE fucking diplomat) IN PUBLIC, TO HIS FACE, and literally no one questions it. Through the book we uncover that Jainan was forced by his deceased first husband, Prince Taam, to assimilate entirely to Iskat culture. Jainan had a box filled with his Thean belongings that was 'forgotten about', his husband didn't like for him to wear his Thean clan's colors, or Thean clothing at all, and he didn't like it when Jainan called himself Thean. Taam cut off Jainan's ability to speak to Theans, including his family, and this went on for several years.

The other Theans described in the book are "radicals," meaning they… don't want their home planet destroyed, and their people killed, by Iskat's mining operations… which I thought might go somewhere good! I thought we might get an interesting take on the concept of educated people (the majority of Thean expats are described to be college students) who organize grassroots movements to help liberate their planet from an oppressive empire. No. The one on-page "radical" we meet is an 18-year-old student who is initially very upset with Jainan since she's from his clan, and he abandoned them. She starts off being depicted as an aggressor with the "radicals," and then the last mention of these "radicals" is in a paragraph that felt very tone-deaf and inappropriate for a book released in 2021.. I'll let you read it:

“Oh, sweet God. The protest.”
“What protest?” Bel said sharply.
“There are protests scheduled for Unification Day,” Gairad said. “Our student society was coordinating with some other activist groups. Sit-ins and marches, nothing violent. But I guess”—she swallowed, her face an even more unhealthy color—“I guess an outsider could start something, if they wanted. We wouldn’t vet everyone who joined.”

Even if this part happened to be written before the BLM protests/riots, I literally don't know how this managed to pass editors, sensitivity readers, arc readers, etc, and no one pointed out that, given so many recent events, it's just a crazy thing to add as a throwaway line in your sci-fi romantic fantasy novel. And it was a throwaway line. They make Gairad leave to "call off the protests" and that's the last we hear of that, it's never brought up again. Also, there was never any plan to mess with the protests, the Ultimate Bad Guy makes that clear. I think the author just didn't want the little girl there for the big climax scenes because her being there wouldn't make sense lol.

So, even though Thea technically gets their "happy ending" (which is that their demands for the treaty between their planet and Iskat are fulfilled. yay, our country is still owned by colonists!*), even in the last fucking chapter of this book, the characters are somehow managing to say shit that feels vaguely racist. We (and Jainan) meet Kiem's mom, and she says to Kiem, "Your Thean must be a good influence." Which, after it was JUST confirmed that Taam abused and dehumanized Jainan, Kiem's mother essentially talking about Jainan like he's a foreign breed of puppy that Kiem owns, feels fucking nasty.

*They straight up call Iskat colonists in the book, this is not me being overly political. They also describe Thea's "peaceful" assimilation as assimilation. Were we supposed to like Iskat? It doesn't feel like it.

Jainan was the one thing I enjoyed about this book, and even then, the "romance" felt awful, and it didn't feel like he got to heal at all before he was suddenly in love with this man who he has no chemistry with, and who clearly does not understand him at all. Even when Kiem is trying to be decent about Taam's abuse, he oversteps boundaries and hurts Jainan. Because for some reason, Kiem cannot fathom that saying "That wasn't okay!" once, and then proceeding to yell at Jainan for not being receptive to his "help," is not going to undo 5-years of abuse.

Believe it or not, I didn't hate Kiem as a character, he had a couple of nice moments, but ultimately his only personality traits are boundary crossing and stupidity. Their entire relationship is miscommunication that would've been solved if Kiem had just been honest and asked Jainan anything, instead of saying/doing the things he (wrongly) assumed Jainan wanted.

On Jainan's part, it's more understandable. He comes into the relationship with valid fears that were instilled in him during his first marriage. Kiem is scared of accidentally causing a minor diplomatic incident (with a diplomat who'd been absent from his diplomatic duties for 2 whole years… and no one noticed besides Theans.) but Jainan is scared of being physically and/or sexually assaulted.

Jainan, in my opinion, is a well written character because he's kind of a dick sometimes. That happens, when you were abused and are suddenly in a situation where abuse isn't occuring, sometimes it's frustrating and you lash out. I liked that about him. I wish he'd had the chance to truly heal. Even in the lead up to the fade-to-black sex scene in this book, Jainan is scared. He's genuinely afraid that by being attracted to Kiem, he's done something wrong, and will be punished. And then he has this realization that he's behaving like a pillow princess, and panics for a second about it. This makes more sense after a scene later in the book, where we see a memory in which Taam sexually assaults and berates Jainan, saying he could "pay for better," and that Jainan lays there "like a damp flannel in bed."

That moment of panic is followed by:

“Tell me what you like.”
The question took Jainan off guard. “What?”
Kiem caught Jainan’s hand and laced their fingers together. “We’ll do what you want. What do you like?”
Jainan only just stopped himself from saying, I don’t know. He couldn’t remember being asked. But he could feel Kiem’s expectation and his stirring of surprise when Jainan didn’t have an answer. Something dark and defensive rose up inside Jainan; it would be easy to make Kiem move on by bringing up his last partner. He could ask if Kiem wanted to be compared. He didn’t know any other way out.

Which feels realistic. He's terrified and unsure, and self-sabotage feels like it can lead to the punishment abuse victims may feel they deserve. This is a good scene! This is developing their relationship! Jainan is showing growth, choosing not to self-sabotage!

The book immediately goes back to miscommunication for the next 200 pages.

They never talk about the abuse. It's turned into a public scandal for political leverage so that Jainan can prove that Kiem didn't abuse him and get him out of jail, and so Thea can leverage their demands. That felt fucked up. There is no closure. One minute he's horrifically traumatised so badly he refuses human touch, the next he's magically fixed and suddenly a grade A diplomat, no conversation in between.

Somewhere near the end it's basically confirmed that Taam abusing Jainan was super obvious. Taam's military group knew, obviously, and somehow the fucking empire's own personal security team who controls all the tech didn't notice that Taam revoked Jainan's "security priveleges" for two whole fucking years. This entire book reeks of people turning a blind eye to abuse, and worse, when they find out, they don't fucking care!

In the blurb of this book, it compares itself to Red, White, & Royal Blue. I agree with that assesment. Both these books are boring and rely too much on trendy tropes.

All of that being said, I want to point out that if you like this book, I'm happy for you. I don't mean that sarcastically. I had such high hopes for this book, I'm so dissapointed that it didn't live up to them, but I can understand why other people would enjoy this book.

The writing is something I'm going back and forth on. This is an adult novel. So why is it written like some light and airy YA high school romance? It's not BAD prose. However, considering the topics, it just makes the serious moments seem silly and unimportant. I've seen many complaints that it's too Ao3, but I don't think that's inherently bad. There are other fic authors who write amazing, acclaimed, beloved works. I really, really wish this were one of those books.

The plot doesn't make sense. Nothing is fleshed out. The characters feel as one dimensional as plywood. I encourage any M/M book readers to pick this one up and read it so that maybe you can help me understand what I can't see here.

I will probably be reading the sequel, hopefully it will be better.

FYI: I didn't even mention the boring gender shit going on in this book because it didn't even feel important or interesting enough to mention.