What would fantasy be like if it considered the existence of trans people? In Transmogrify!: 14 Fantastical Tales of Trans Magic, editor g. haron davis collects fourteen fantasy stories starring trans protagonists. They create a beautiful balance of styles, between romance and horror, lighthearted and painful. And a lot of the stories have more depth than is common these days in the genre, making the collection especially appealing. “You’re about to dive into so many different worlds, you might get motion sickness, but like, in the best way,” the foreword promises—and the stories bountifully deliver. A lot of the premises in the collection are moreish, making it easy to keep reading “just another story” until it’s been hours and you’re at the list of contributors.
The tones of many of the stories are different in complementary ways. Some are deep and intricate like Dove Salvatierra’s debut publication, “Espejismos.” This is a moving and bittersweet love story between two post-apocalyptic survivors. It raises the question of what society’s bigotry might manifest as when there is no society at all. Other stories offer lighter speculation: for example, in Sonora Reyes’s entry. You might be familiar with Sonora Reyes through the excellent “The Luis Ortega Survival Club,” some of the best representation I’ve read of queer autistic survivors. In the story collected here, “Halloween Love,” a witch from a magical realm obliviously stumbles through Valentine’s Day in a sweet, lighthearted anti-romance romance story.
Some of this collection’s stories are vivid not with humour but with pain, like Cam Montgomery’s “Bend the Truth, Break it Too,” a story about a romantically heartbroken convict. Bound to share a body with a djinn as punishment, they enter a game with an unknowable deity for their freedom. In the game they must share one personal, pure truth—which turns out to be harder than they may have first assumed.
Whatever their particular effect, one theme that recurs here is the pointed response to familiar plots in which trans people are usually glaringly absent. Ash Nouveau’s “Seagulls and Other Birds of Prey,” for example, is a story about teen athletes kicked out of their magical sport teams for being trans; Ayida Shonibar’s “In a Name” explores the possibility of a magical education system being corrupt; “Origin Story” by Saundra Mitchell asks what it might be like to be expelled from magic school when you’re trans, poor, and don’t have many other options. Each of these stories offers engaging writing that takes you into the day-by-day of being a nonbinary person in a world where being trans is part of being the hero.
In this way, the collection is a good starting point for readers interested in getting to know more trans authors. The stories provide samples of different styles and tones of writing, from debut and well-published authors alike. As an example, the collection features alongside its perhaps more unfamiliar names a story by A. R. Capetta and Cory McCarthy, who are known for their Once and Future series. [1] Their “Dragons Name Themselves” is an absolutely charming story from the point of view of a school of magic who is feeling like a friendless outcast. The school, Herman, is lonely and sentient, and explains, “When you’re a school filled with magical teenagers, the magic rubs off, but so does the swearing. It’s a very fucking real occupational hazard.” Herman tries to bring two of the loneliest students together, stealthily intervening in their parenting simulator project with some magical twists.
This and many of the other stories in Transmogrify! have enough substance to be entire books, or even to be developed into series. Another example is Emery Lee’s “The Door to the Other Side,” a story about the rigid gender binary of the keepers of the door through which spirits pass, and what happens when a keeper and a spirit, both outside of the binary, try to solve a mystery against the clock. I would have likewise loved more of Saundra Mitchell’s lovely “Origin Story,” both for its worldbuilding and the ideas it touches upon in its discussion of the social magical system.
The expansiveness of these stories leads to a maximalist reading experience across the collection—one that’s filled with generosity in plot, and a tang of sadness for only getting these shorter stories in which there is so much more still to tell. As such Transmogrify! screams for its own fan fiction. I would absolutely love more stories for some of the worlds described in this collection: ones that explore the implications of having a mirror that reflects one’s true self, from Renee Reynolds’s “Verity”; others that expand upon the charmingly oblivious adventures of Sonora Reyes’s main character experiencing different holidays; ones that spend more time in Ash Nouveau‘s world of sport broom-making, with customized spells and decorations. This is an official request for more stories from those worlds, fan fiction or not—please tag me!
I would add to this request a notion: there is some gorgeous fan fiction out there that we are not reading because it intrinsically and inadvertently promotes transphobic franchises. A lot of that fan fiction has little to do with those franchises other than involving a magic school. But a school like that is a feature in a lot of trans-celebrating fiction, and some of the stories in this collection. Had a fan fiction author lightly edited their work to correspond with these stories rather than those of a transphobic, racist, ableist, fatphobic author, they would be promoting trans rights instead of transphobia. And their readers would be able to read and enjoy their gorgeous writing again.
The collection’s foreword provides a partial list of content warnings, and encourages readers to be kind to themselves and avoid triggering materials. It delightfully states: “Having triggers isn’t shameful, and if anyone tries to shame you for it, they’re unworthy of your time and attention. You aren’t obligated by any means to read every story. If you come across a moment in a story that makes you uncomfortable, stop reading. Don’t force yourself to push through. It’s OK. We still appreciate you. And hopefully, you will find another story among these to fall in love with. Anthologies are magic like that.”
So I have—and so it was! This is a charming anthology that is very much needed. The collection is fairly and delightfully diverse, though I would have loved some more representation of transfemme, fat, old, and physically disabled people. Despite this quibble, the different voices the collection brings together make an appealing and interesting combination. The world of fantasy needs trans and otherwise-outside-of-the binary authors and characters, and Transmogrify! is a good step in that direction.
Endnotes
[1] As a side note, if you’re in a bad mood and want a fluffy fantasy romance, you might also want to pick up Capetta’s The Heartbreak Bakery for brownies, spells gone wrong, and queer communities. [return]