This Nebula finalist is a novella published by Tor.com. It ended up with 11 recommendations on the Nebula Recommended Reading List.
Aqib is a royal cousin in the kingdom of Olorum who is talented with animals and works in the city menagerie. His family has recently lost status, and his father expects Aqib to marry well to increase the family fortunes. The boy is young and starting to attract the attention of marriage brokers, but he also attracts Lucrio, a Dalucan soldier stationed in the city for a peacekeeping mission. The two become lovers. Aqib later charms the highborn Femysade and the two wed. The marriage is harmonious and the couple produces a daughter, but Aqib keeps a long term relationship going with Lucrio, even though his brother tries to interfere. Femysade is talented in women’s work, a savant in math and science. She is tapped by the gods to go to their distant city and work, which leaves Aqib to raise their daughter alone. When his tour of duty ends, Lucrio has to go back to Daluz. He begs Aqib to go with him. Should he go or stay?
Well, this is different. I read somewhere that it’s supposed to be epic fantasy, but it’s actually science fiction and a love story. It’s described as a follow up to Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, which presumably explains more about the universe where Aqib lives. It does have characteristics of fantasy, but it’s written in a science fictional framework–it’s just that to the non-technical people of the city, science is the work of the gods and therefore something distant, arcane and magical.
Pros: You have to hand it to Wilson for writing a straight-out love story, which is sort of out of fashion in SFF. Also, you have to give him credit for turning a few social conventions on their heads, making science and math women’s work, for example; for putting the beautiful Aqib on the marriage market, and also for avoiding the subject of race. The figures on the cover are black, presumably because Wilson is an African American writer, but actually he doesn’t give many clues to the racial identity of his characters. The writing also has a good flow which makes it easy, comfortable reading. Cons: The characters aren’t well developed and I didn’t engage with them very deeply. The narrative skips around in time and into alternate realities, so the story has very little in the way of plot or structure.
Three and a half stars.
Lela E. Buis 
Mar 14, 2017 @ 00:41:36
The ending didn’t put you off? I thought the ending alone justified warning people not to read it. Naq gura V jbxr hc naq vg unq nyy orra n qernz!
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Mar 14, 2017 @ 22:41:17
Well, yeah. The whole thing was a little weird, actually, and probably someone told him he needed a twist ending. I would have preferred something different, but I wasn’t really engaged with it. At least he avoided a complete happily ever after (HEA). That would have been too cliche.
I think a lot of people will read it now (or at least pretend to) because it’s a Nebula finalist. I did warn everyone that it’s not got much structure.
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Mar 15, 2017 @ 06:24:01
I think I enjoyed it more than you did because I actually quite liked the way it was structured, the ending was a bit of a let down but I didn’t have any problems connecting to the main characters.
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Mar 15, 2017 @ 09:48:08
Thanks for commenting, Maryam. There are a couple of the other finalists that are similar, plus some others I’ve read this year. I’m thinking there might be a trend to less structure in stories, and a feeling that the “journey” is more important than the plot. The characters were okay here, but not absorbing like Greg is in “The Liar,” for example. Maybe it’s something about the narrative style that prevented me from connecting, or maybe it’s just a personal thing, but somehow I didn’t feel I really got to know these characters.
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Mar 15, 2017 @ 06:24:24
Seriously — did you even READ this book?
“The marriage is harmonious and the couple produces a daughter, but Aqib keeps the affair going with Lucrio on the side, even though his brother tries to interfere.”
No, actually, Lucrio goes back home long before Aqib even meets the princess.
“but actually he doesn’t give any clues to the racial identity of his characters. ”
That’s nonsense. He actually describes their various physical features multiple times.
Cmon. If you’re not even paying attention to simple facts like these, why should anyone take your opinions of the story seriously?
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Mar 15, 2017 @ 10:36:05
I don’t want to give away too may spoilers in the review, but I’ve noted the alternate realities. If you pay attention to the headers, it helps you to sort things out.
So Lucrio is of middling height, broad-shouldered, black or brown-haired, scarred, gallant and handsome, between the ages of 15 and 25. Aqib is also middling height and beautiful, with smooth, unmarked skin. He has exotic features, an aquiline nose and glossy hair that he normally wears braided. People of Olorum do apparently have darker skin than those of Daluz, but there’s nothing here that gives away the black features shown on the cover. The broad nose in particular is notably wrong. What clues do you see?
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Mar 15, 2017 @ 18:04:17
SPOILER ALERT for those who haven’t read the story —
Lucrio went home at the same time in both realities — at no point was Aqib engaged in any adulterous activities at all. In fact, at one point a specific and explicit point is made of that fact.
END SPOILER
As for physical appearance:
Aqib: “his aquiline nose, and a glossy excess of hair no scissors had ever yet checked. Freed just this morning from braids, the heavy tangle of it billowed around his head like ram’s wool.”
Notice “billowed around his head like ram’s wool”. That is not the hair of a Caucasian. And he doesn’t wear **A** braid, he wears braids plural — as in cornrows. These are all things we know **on the first page**. And you’ve already admitted that his skin tone is noted as being dark. More description of skin tone: “Olorumi were brownskinned, and Cousins generally of the duskiest, richest color.” So Aqib has very dark skin.
Lucrio, in contrast: “the pallor of his skin seeming moreso under the godslight, his hair lank as a horsetail.”
Pallid skin and lank hair are not marks of an African race.
There are other examples, but I won’t waste any more time on it.
As for the shape of Aqib’s nose: gee, you mean to tell me that cover artists never get any facial features wrong? Seriously? And yes, some Africans do have aquline noses — see, for just one example, many Somalis.
Again — it’s hard to take anything about your reviews seriously when you ignore even the simplest details.
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Mar 15, 2017 @ 22:53:15
Hm. Like ram’s wool, you say? You haven’t seen my hair on a humid day. Really, it floats. Plus, I’ve worn it in cornrow plaits myself. I did miss that about the Cousins being darker, though. Thanks for pointing it out. And yes, I know Somalis often have light skin and/or hooked noses–they’re actually Afro-Asiatic peoples.
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Mar 15, 2017 @ 23:17:02
You’re just reaching now. Cmon — instead of continuing to try to excuse your failures of attention, it would be more honest to just admit that you weren’t paying attention — and try to do better next time. That would raise your credibility immensely.
As with any review, you are always welcome to your own opinion — but you are NOT welcome to make up your own “alternative facts”.
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Mar 15, 2017 @ 23:29:05
Well no, I was paying attention. I just liked that he underplayed the race angle. Notice it’s one of the pros I’ve listed in the review. I really don’t enjoy in-you-face racial statements. You can read back through last year’s reviews to see what I thought of some of the candidates there.
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Mar 15, 2017 @ 23:38:04
Well, no, you weren’t. You are again forgetting your claim that Aqib committed adultery when he very clearly did no such thing (see location 1284 if you have the Kindle version; do a simple search for the word “faithful” if you have some other version), and your claim that Wilson “doesn’t give any clues to the racial identity of his characters” when he very clearly does (thanks for editing that claim, btw. It’s at least not so egregiously false now).
“I really don’t enjoy in-you-face racial statements.” Well, I don’t enjoy reviewers who misrepresent obvious facts about the stories they’re reviewing. So I guess we’re even.
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Mar 15, 2017 @ 23:54:48
Oh, P.S. — just so other people know how I got to this site in the first place —
You also made this false claim over on File 770, responding to a snippet about book covers getting whitewashed: “Just reviewed “A Taste of Honey” by Kai Ashante Wilson and I think Tor.com has done just the opposite. Men shown on the cover are black, but Wilson gives no clue about race in the text.”
So that’s three false claims about just one book. (I guess we could even say four false claims — because only one of the characters on the cover is actually depicted as black.)
Again — paying more attention in the future will greatly increase your credibility.
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Mar 16, 2017 @ 00:09:31
Why do you think this is false? You and I have a disagreement on racial clues.
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Mar 16, 2017 @ 00:38:17
“Why do you think this is false? You and I have a disagreement on racial clues.”
The racial clues in the story are quite obvious. For instance, if you’ve never heard the terms “woolly headed” or “woolly hair” applied in reference to African-type hair, you’ve been hiding in a cave somewhere. And we know quite clearly that Aqib has dark skin. And similarly, pallid skin and lank hair straight as a horse’s tail are obvious non-African racial clues. As for the cover, it clearly shows one African-type man with an afro (as in the description that Aqib’s hair “billowed around his head like ram’s wool”). And the other man has close-cropped straight hair and beard, paler skin, and is wearing Romanesque armor. Aqib is clearly intended from multiple physical descriptions to be pseudo-African, and Lucrio is clearly intended from multiple physical descriptions, clothing, and language to be pseudo-Italian. There is no mystery here on those scores.
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Mar 16, 2017 @ 00:47:10
Ah, you know that “woolly headed” is a stereotype and therefore sort of racist?
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Mar 16, 2017 @ 01:04:00
“Ah, you know that “woolly headed” is a stereotype and therefore sort of racist?”
Please, give me a break. Just type “woolly hair black” (without the quotes) into Google, and you’ll find almost 3,000,000 pages — many of them created by blacks talking about their own hair. There’s even a wikipedia article on “Afro-textured hair” that includes the adjective “woolly”.
Again — instead of continuing to try to excuse your failures of attention, it would be more honest to just admit that you weren’t paying attention — and try to do better next time.
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Mar 16, 2017 @ 02:24:21
Are you black? You know there’s a double standard regarding stereotypes. Wilson even avoided that particular term. When he says “like a ram’s wool,” he leaving the door open for a lot of different interpretations in the array of human variation.
You’re right that he’s described a darker-skinned person with wild, uncut hair, but I still think there’s little basis in the text for the cover as it’s executed. It’s not my vision of the characters, at any rate.
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Mar 15, 2017 @ 23:51:51
But is that reality? Maybe you’re right that I should take the word “affair” out of the review. Should I say “long term relationship” instead? The narrative runs concurrently, but presumably the realities are different. I notice that most reviewers have avoided trying to deal with the story at all because it’s so mixed up.
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Mar 16, 2017 @ 00:27:18
SPOILERS BELOW
“But is that reality?”
There is no hint of any adulterous behavior anywhere in the story. Period. Lucrio returned to his homeland at the same time in both “realities”, and he went home before Aqib ever even met Femysade. Period. There is no “long term relationship going with Lucrio” in any reality in which Aqib has even met Femysade.
There is also no “reverse whitewashing” of the cover. Period.
“The narrative runs concurrently”
No, it doesn’t.
The sections that have headers saying things like “eleventh day” are days that happen before Lucrio goes home. These are the things that happen before the storyline splits. These scenes have only one reality.
The sections that have headers saying things like “24 years old” are scenes that happen after Lucrio goes home, in the “Aqib let Lucrio leave alone” reality.
The FIRST time we see ANYTHING about the “Aqib left with Lucrio” reality is in the very last section, starting with the “89 years old” heading.
See, this is just another sign of you not paying attention to the story. Yes, it’s a complicated structure — but “complicated structure” is not at all the same thing as “no structure”.
“I notice that most reviewers have avoided trying to deal with the story at all because it’s so mixed up.”
“Challenging” does not mean “bad”. The point of this story is about choices and their consequences. As I said in my review over on GR: “This is a story about opportunities that are — or are not — missed, and lives that are — or are not — led as a result. And whether you do — or do not — regret your choices.”
We don’t actually know which “reality” is real. I personally think that the “reality” in which Aqib lets Lucrio leave alone is the “real” one. We are never told that definitively, but we are told that the sibyl let Lucrio pay her in his future tears, because she expected him to return home alone.
I rated the story overall at 4 stars. I knocked it down a star for some elements of the worldbuilding and plotting that you haven’t mentioned. You can find my review at GR under username “Contrarius” if you’re interested.
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Mar 16, 2017 @ 00:38:32
You noticed that RocketStackRank gave it two stars? I think there’s going to be a lot of disagreement on this one. Sure, I’d like to read your review. You’ll have to tell me what GR is, though.
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Mar 16, 2017 @ 00:45:09
“Sure, I’d like to read your review. You’ll have to tell me what GR is, though.”
Sorry. Goodreads.
“You noticed that RocketStackRank gave it two stars?”
I didn’t, but I don’t much care. As I said earlier, reviewers are welcome to their own opinions. Just not their own “alternative facts”.
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Mar 15, 2017 @ 23:58:32
Thanks for dropping by, regardless of how you got here. I appreciate good discussions, but I’d rather hear what you thought of the book.
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Mar 16, 2017 @ 00:00:23
There, I removed “affair” from the text. Do you think that represents the situation better?
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Mar 16, 2017 @ 09:01:20
“It’s not my vision of the characters, at any rate.”
Your personal vision has nothing at all to do with any justifications for accusing the cover of being a case of reverse whitewashing.
The characters described in the text clearly match the races of the characters depicted on the cover. There is no justification whatsoever for your accusation. Your lack of satisfaction with the accuracy of particular facial features is entirely irrelevant.
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Mar 16, 2017 @ 12:10:08
It’s easy to see how one could end up visualizing the characters as white, though. Their physical descriptions are mentioned briefly, but not repeatedly. Their skin color simply isn’t an issue in the story–not even at the level of worrying about sunburn.
Nor does either character feel marginalized over his race. Sorcerer of the Wildeeps used a variant of African-American Vernacular English to remind us that these characters were black. A Taste of Honey does not. So any reader who skipped over the physical description will likely end imagining the characters look like him or her. (I did read the description, but I somehow ended up visualizing them both as black–one with straight hair and the other with dreadlocks.)
I suspect this is likely to happen whenever an author writes about black people in an SFF setting where their identity isn’t defined by their marginalization. Lacking good illustrations, white readers will imagine the characters are white.
Anyway, this isn’t a story about race. Not even a little bit. The real conflict in the story is over the sexual orientation of the characters. Stories with lesbians are common at the moment, but stories with male gay characters who aren’t tokens are extremely rare.
It was painful to have to recommend against the story, but when the ending was so bad that I wanted to throw the book across the room, there wasn’t any alternative.
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Mar 16, 2017 @ 13:02:59
“Lacking good illustrations, white readers will imagine the characters are white.”
I think what’s going on here with Lela is related to that. It is not that the book “lacked good illustrations”, but that the book lacked marginalization or emphasis on racial differences. And if there is no marginalization or racial divisiveness, then a white reader is likely to assume that all the characters are white — physical descriptions be damned.
“Anyway, this isn’t a story about race. Not even a little bit. The real conflict in the story is over the sexual orientation of the characters.”
Right. Absolutely.
“stories with male gay characters who aren’t tokens are extremely rare.”
I disagree with this claim in recent years, but it’s secondary to the main discussion here.
” when the ending was so bad that I wanted to throw the book across the room, there wasn’t any alternative.”
IMHO it’s easy to see the ending as bad if you blithely assume that it is the “real” ending. But remember — the sibyl took payment from Lucrio in the form of his FUTURE tears because she predicted he would return alone; she told the Aqib of the went-with-Lucrio storyline that he was the dream; AND we know that this scene is occurring when the Aqib of the didn’t-go-with-Lucrio storyline has taken himself off to die. Also, we see many specific details of the didn’t-go-with-Lucrio storyline, and very few of the other. Personally, I think it’s more likely that this is a wish-fulfillment vision of the dying Aqib in the didn’t-go storyline. He realizes as he dies that even though the life he led included interacting with significant people (the Asheans and his wife) and producing children with significant talents, he still would have been happier tramping around the countryside with Lucrio. He’s dying, and his dying mind gives him that version of reality to comfort him as he dies.
There is no proof which “reality” is real. But I very much like this quote from the middle of the story:
“Hope made the letdown worse. In the resolved quiet of the heart it was possible to say, “Give up; it’s done,” but in practice, hopelessness was too bitter wine for drinking day after day. One would steal a little sip of sweetness and wonder, “What if . . . ?” At which point no time at all would seem to pass before— again, already— one was tippling nothing but the headiest stuff, cup after cup of hope, heart leaping at the least little sign, as if this were some fresh new lesson, without years of broken hearts and a sea of tears behind it.”
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Mar 17, 2017 @ 16:17:14
Even if I accept that interpretation, I’m not sure it makes things any better. With my interpretation, the last third of the story was all a dream. With your interpretation, it’s revealed that the last third was about how the rest of his life was a disappointing failure. (And then the bit about the sibyl biting off his hand is really gratuitous.) Either way, it’s nothing I could see recommending to anyone.
Normally, if a tale is good but the ending is weak (or nonexistent) I’ll still give the story three stars. But not for an ending that essentially makes fun of me for having been dumb enough to read the whole thing.
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Mar 17, 2017 @ 16:37:49
Right. That’s where “every reviewer is entitled to their own opinion” comes in.
I think the quote I supplied above as well as the title gives us a pretty good clue that Aqib didn’t actually go with Lucrio — “in practice, hopelessness was too bitter wine for drinking day after day” and so on. He was reaching for that “little sip of sweetness”, that “taste of honey” (recall the title — it’s a taste of honey because most of his life has been pretty bitter). I also think that Wilson is telling us that even if the life you choose gives you a powerful spouse and wonderful offspring, you’ll never truly be happy if you haven’t been true to yourself. Whether that’s a worthwhile message, and whether Wilson told it effectively, is definitely a matter of opinion. And heck, as I mentioned above — Wilson never does tell us explicitly which “reality” he really intended to be real, so we are left to pick for ourselves.
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Feb 27, 2018 @ 23:28:17
I just finished this and I was looking around for reviews. Just a few points about your summary: Aqib is 17 years old at the start of the story. He meets Lucrio and they get together almost daily for the next 10 days. On the 9th day, Femysade sees Aqib dance. 10th day: Aqib and Lucrio have an argument and Aqib decides to wait until nighttime to say goodbye. He is stopped from doing so by his father and brother. On the 11th day, Lucrio leaves to finish his tour of duty. 13th day: Femysade sees Aqib, running with Sabah, from afar. She decides she wants to marry him.
In the alternate reality, the branching off point is the 10th day. In the 2nd timeline, Aqib leaves with Lucrio and leads a happy life.
In terms of race, the author was pretty clear. The Olorum are “brownskinned”. The Cousins are the darkest and duskiest of the Olurum. The “gods” are blackskinned. An unnamed character tells Lucrio, “Thank you, White Man.” Aqib watches Lucrio sleep and remarks that he is pale and “white, indeed.” Regardless of what the book’s cover picture, the text is clear. However, since the book is not about race, they don’t harp on it.
As far as the ending, it was my impression that neither timeline is the “real” one. Rather, I accepted them as true alternate realities or evidence of a multiverse. Aqib wonders about his choices and whether other possibilities exist. The Sybil tells him he is the dream. If one is to believe that she doesn’t lie, maybe Aqib’s thought that they are both the dream and the dreamer is correct because both exist. After all, if what he had seen was just a vision or dream, how else did he emerge with increased abilities to understand animals (i.e. the swan language?
Just my thoughts.
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Feb 28, 2018 @ 08:05:21
Thanks for your comments and for clarifying. I noticed that most reviews of this have avoided trying to do a summary, likely because of the alternate realities and, as you say, the seeming reality of both. It’s a very creative way of putting the story together, but I thought it negatively affected the readability and the issue of identifying with the characters.
I’m sure you can see there’s been an argument about race, and whether this is written specifically about African characters. My inclination was to think it’s not, but others have checked in with the view it definitely is. I thought one of the strong points of the work is that it didn’t harp on race.
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