by Rachel A. Rosen

I won’t shut up about Notes From a Regicide until everyone I know reads it. Griffon, a teenage trans boy living in a post-apocalyptic, flooded New York, is adopted by an older trans couple, Etoine and Zaffre. Both of them are artists and refugees from a city called Stephensport, which is frozen in time in something vaguely akin to, but not quite, Renaissance Italy. They do their best by Griffon, who has had to flee his transphobic and abusive father, but Etoine and Zaffre are brittle, damaged people, full of secrets, with no idea how to open their strange, private world to a newcomer. In their youth, they were part of a revolutionary movement that left them with both physical and mental scars, and it’s only after their deaths that Griffon reads through Etoine’s journal and learns the truth (or at least Etoine’s truth) of what happened.

I doubt Fellman set out to write something so perfectly tailored to my tastes but he sure did. This novel could have easily been heartwarming glurge about the importance of found family. It’s not. Notes From a Regicide is instead a haunting and elegant story about art, revolution, and the damage it leaves behind.