All I needed to know about Thornfruit was that it was an F/F secondary-world fantasy novel with lots of mutual pining before I one-clicked the hell out it. I am happy to report that, having finished the book, I really enjoyed it!

Thornfruit is the story of two young women living on a tidally locked planet in the perpetually-sunlit city of Arishdenan. One girl, Alizhan, is a neuroatypical, face-blind, powerful mind-reader who works as a spy for the beautiful and powerful Iriyat ha-Varensi. Her mind-reading magic makes it so she cannot touch other people without incapacitating them or herself. The other, Ev, is a biracial martial artist and “unfeminine” farm girl who longs for adventure. They meet as children and spark up a kind of nonverbal friendship in which Alizhan steals thornfruit from Ev’s family’s market stall every market day. This friendly non-speaking acquaintance lasts for a decade, until Alizhan approaches Ev for help escaping from Iriyat. Ev agrees because she is a) a good person and b) thinks Alizhan is cute. They are thereafter both embroiled in a magic-related conspiracy that involves the entire city.

There’s also a B-plot interspersed throughout the book that involves an initially unidentified first-person narrator relating events from her past, diary- or letter-style. This was less compelling than the A-plot for me, but it is a source of important information revealed to the reader but not to any of the main characters. This creates some compelling dramatic irony.

I was intrigued by the basic premises of this book, but what hooked me was the quality of the writing. Craft-wise, many aspects of this book are masterful. The world-building is excellent, the prose is gorgeous, and the characters and their relationships are phenomenal.

The world felt real to me, as though Arishdenan was a city I could hop on a boat and visit. Oftentimes, fantasy worlds, even pretty good ones, feel more like interesting thought experiments to me than actual places. This may be because so many books spend considerable page space reporting on the “rules” of the world. As a result, I find myself constantly reminded that I am not reading about an actual place. But in Thornfruit, the world just is. Nothing is over-explained, but all of the details fit together in a way that made me feel like I was reading about a real city. I could picture walking through the finger-shaped cliffs with neighborhoods cradled between them, with the glimmering palaces of the wealthy and powerful up top and the poorer neighborhoods spread out over the treacherous low shoreline below. In fact, I’m disappointed I can’t actually go there!

The gorgeous descriptions in the prose definitely help establish the vividness of the world. As a child, on her first visit to Arishdenan with her father for market day, Ev thinks:

The sun was indeed constant and fierce, scattering gold reflections on the water and striping the red cliffs with shadows. The water near the city was dark and brownish, not the brilliant red reflection of legend, but even that struck Ev as strange and beautiful.

Landscapes, buildings, neighborhoods, gardens, food, and ever people: the sights and sensory details of Arishdenan and its environs are rendered in almost painterly detail. Some of the turns of phrase are simply striking. When Ev first meets Djal, a magician and sailor from the same country as her father, we get this description:

He was a long, graceful, calligraphy stroke of a man.

Oops, I know this book isn’t supposed to be about Djal, but I’m already in love!

This leads into another big strength of the book, which is the characterization. Basically every single character, no matter how insignificant in the long run, seems like a complete person with their own inner life. This is true for everyone from the cranky priest at the Temple of Doubt to Kasrik, the prickly, proud, orphan who warns of doom and conspiracy. Part of this depth of knowledge is probably due to the fact that because Alizhan is a mind-reader, we are actually privy to most of the characters’ inner lives. But even the characters who are primarily encountered during Ev’s narration are rendered with life-imbuing care.

Ev and Alizhan are both winning characters (more on that below), but for me the true stars of the show were Ev’s father Obin, who provides important support to his daughter when she needs it, and the sailor-magicians Djal and Mala, who take Ev and Alizhan under their wing. They are like the charming, sexy, and slightly mysterious older sibling types that Ev and Alizhan look to for critical guidance and assistance. (GIVE ME A BOOK ABOUT DJAL AND MALA!!! PLEASE!!!! Okay, I’m done.)

I enjoyed both of the protagonists, Ev and Alizhan. In some ways, they are very different: Ev has a strong caretaking and protective side and a solid sense of who she is and what she wants, even if those things are unconventional. Even with all her young-adult anxiety, and the fact that she gets in lots of fights, there’s a certain steadiness about her.

By contrast, Alizhan is frustrated and disoriented by the world around her because of her face-blindness, neurotypicality, and magic, and struggles to maintain a sense of self in the face of constant bombardment with the thoughts of others. But the two young women also have some key similarities: they are both very stubborn, curious, interested in justice, and have a lot of mettle. They are also both very lonely due to feeling like they don’t adequately meet the expectations of the world at large.

I found the relationship between them to be incredibly sweet. The foundation of their connection is a radical acceptance they have not been able to find in other people. This does not mean they don’t set boundaries with each other; Ev requests that Alizhan not poke around in her mind or respond to thoughts she hasn’t said, and Alizhan warns Ev away from hoping for a more conventional romantic relationship Alizhan is not sure she can provide. But they see each other for what they are and don’t wish the other person was fundamentally different. For me, this encapsulates the relationship:

Everyone looked at Ev and wanted her to be someone she wasn’t. Someone prettier. Someone more feminine. Someone who got in fewer fights. Someone who spent less time daydreaming about books.

Alizhan looked at Ev and saw Ev. Too much of Ev, sometimes. But Alizhan liked Ev for who she was, not for who she could be.

Ev owed it to Alizhan to treat her the same way. To let her be herself. Her frustrating, foolish self. But Alizhan was also funny and fearless. Cute, too. And she thought Ev was loyal and heroic and kind, and knowing that made Ev want to be those things.

There’s just something very powerful about two people seeing each other clearly and accepting each other with fondness in their hearts. Even if they spend over half of the book exasperated with each other. Their tall fighting girlfriend and smol magic girlfriend vibes helped power me through another week of our current grim reality. (Just a heads-up, though: while there are definitely Feelings Developing on both sides, there’s very little heat in this book. Alizhan makes a concerted effort to tamp down her physical desires because she is not sure she will ever be able to touch anyone for most of the book.)

There’s also a strain of dry humor in the dialogue that I appreciated. For example, Ev’s father Obin warns her about getting mixed up with Alizhan:

“Be extra careful with her. I remember that girl from your first time working in the market, and that means she’s been working for Varenx house for a long time. Keep that in mind. And I see the way you look at her.”

“I look at her the same way I look at everyone else! With my eyes!”

UGH, DAD, WHY DO YOU HAVE TO BE SO UNCOOL ABOUT MY SMOL MAGIC GIRLFRIEND!?

In addition to some JOKES, there is also some very on-point political commentary about social inequality that feels deftly interwoven. The most direct moment is when a helpful priestess says to Ev and Alizhan:

“We revere God’s Balance in nature and we distort it in our communities.” Eliyan said. “For Iriyat to be so rich, how many hundreds or thousands of other people must live in poverty? Her charity patches over something fundamentally broken.”

Yes, you can have a little anti-capitalist rhetoric in your novel as a treat!!

I don’t have a lot to say about the plot, but that’s not a bad thing. It’s just that the plot flows so clearly from the characters and their motivations that it feels like a seamless extension of the characters. This is not to say the book is not action-packed. There are lots of hijinks, including daring escape, a mansion robbery, reckless gambling, a sword fight in a temple, and a dramatic rescue orphanage break-in. But the characters are driving the plot and not the other way around.

So, seeing as how I have now praised the world-building, prose, characters, relationships, dialogue, and plot of this book, why wasn’t this book an A?

Truly, the only thing that stopped me from giving this book an A grade was its structure. While I loved what was in the book, it did not quite feel like a complete, standalone book. Instead, it’s more like the first part of one much longer book cut off fairly abruptly. We don’t end at a cliffhanger, exactly; it’s not as though we leave the characters at a moment of extreme tension. But most of the plot threads introduced throughout the book still feel wide-open when the book ends. I think some slight rearranging and trimming to better cue the reader what the central plot of this book only was would have made it a killer standalone, even with many of the larger mysteries and conspiracies remaining unresolved. With that in mind, it did not seem fair to give this book an A-grade since I do not think it stands alone particularly well.

However, I am definitely eager to read the rest of this series (which is already all out, so I don’t have to wait!). I strongly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys slow-burn F/F romance, innovative secondary world fantasy, and ensemble stories with lots of winning characters—with the caveat that you are really committing to the whole trilogy if you want any sense of resolution.