Women are controlled, have always been. Their bodies, their minds, their agency—all are always up for someone’s taking, always up for negotiation. As Grady Hendrix’s Witchcraft for Wayward Girls explains: “We’re loathed and despised in every time, in every country, in every culture. In New Guinea they say we dig up the bodies of dead babies and eat them. In Zambia they say we sleep with our brothers and fathers and murder newborns. The Hopi say we kill our kin to prolong our lives. In Germany they say we steal men’s penises and hide them in birds’ nests. (…) They say we spoil milk and steal children.

This is science fiction for readers who think that they like SF, but who don’t know what it can do to jolt people out of complacency, or who don’t care.

This is a book—and a trilogy—that can be characterised in very different ways.

There’s beauty in the imagery. There’s hope in it, even. But it’s inspiration, not application.

Many of Fu's stories revolve around real and imagined technologies’ effects on how people connect with each other.

I know I said romcomantasy.

When fantasy combines wit, humour, and magic as The Inescapable March does, while refusing the quick fix of happy ever after, it allows us to imagine worlds where life is not just a tedious linear repetition of nasty, brutish and short days until we die.

Longing is woven through these stories.

This is not comfortable reading. It is not intended to be.