Alex Brown Reviews The Dragonfly Gambit by A.D. Sui
The Dragonfly Gambit, A.D. Sui (Neon Hemlock 9781952086793, $13.99, 142pp, tp) April 2024.
For generations, the Rule expanded its empire by colonizing planets and systems, but for the last few decades many of the colonized have been rebelling against their overlords. Nez, Shay, and Kaya, three young adults from the system Oran, were conscripted into the imperial air force only to watch the empire destroy their homeworlds. After a flight accident, Nez was disabled and kicked out of the military. Now Shay and Kaya have fully assimilated into the empire and ascended in the ranks while Nez wastes away in ignominy. Until the empire comes calling and she’s forced to help the leader of the Rule, the Third Daughter, find a way to help them win the war for good. Nez has a few cards up her sleeve, but while she works the kinks out of her plans, she finds herself in the arms of the ruler she hates. Nez wants the empire to pay for its crimes, against the galaxy and against her specifically, but old friendships and new lovers complicate matters.
I’ve been a fan of A.D. Sui’s short fiction for a while now, so I was excited to get the opportunity to read her debut novella. Being published by Neon Hemlock didn’t hurt. There hasn’t been a single novella of Neon Hemlock’s I’ve read that I didn’t immediately and totally love. A lot of people (including me) have auto-read authors, and Neon Hemlock is for me an auto-read publisher.
The Dragonfly Gambit made for an interesting reading experience. I spent the first half frustrated and annoyed by Nez. I went into this novella expecting a story about a woman trying to take down an empire and instead got a woman who seemed to cave to the empire’s will at the first provocation. Not only caved, but sided with them, albeit reluctantly. However, being familiar with Sui’s work, I trusted that she knew what she was doing. Nothing in her background as either an author or as a person who is self-described as “Ukrainian-born, queer, disabled” – or, frankly, in Neon Hemlock’s background, a company who Publishers Weekly once described as “the apex of queer speculative fiction publishing” – would make me seriously consider she would write pro-fascism fiction. I can’t tell you how glad I was that I trusted Sui and stuck with it, because the twist is a kicker.
Speaking of disabilities, Nez has a variety of disabilities due to a piloting incident years before. That incident killed her career, which was all she had left after the Rule destroyed the planetary system she grew up on. It also shattered her relationship with her only friends, Shay and Kaya. Part of my frustration with the first chunk of the novella had to do with the ableist language Nez and others use. It felt like the story was ticking the boxes on the worst disability stereotypes and tropes, ones that all too often end up in science fiction. Without spoiling too much, Sui lays out those harmful tropes then gradually eviscerates them, one by one. Nez relies on ableds making assumptions about her physical and cognitive abilities based on her disabilities and exploits the hell out of them. All they could see were the negative aspects of her disabilities and how they mark her as different, not how her disabilities shape her identity and let her experience the world in her own way.
Sui doesn’t swing the pendulum too far in the other direction, either. It’s not that Nez’s disabilities are her “superpower” or something that makes her “special,” something I (a disabled person) often hear from ableds. Disabled people don’t always love our disabilities, but they are also a part of who we are. I’m less worried about getting rid of my disability or “fixing” it with futuristic tech than I am about building a world where accommodation is standard operating procedure. That space is where Nez lives, even if everyone else doesn’t. Nez gets by because she has to. She is who she is, disabilities included. The Dragonfly Gambit feels like a novella written for disabled queer people. Our experiences and perceptions of the world are centered.
This novella is also about fighting fascism. To make a Star Wars comparison, it has strong Andor vibes. The Dragonfly Gambit is all about ordinary people who have nothing left to lose confronting the empire. They might not win today or ever, but the fight is what’s important. Rebellions may be built on hope, but resistance is driven by desperation and rage. And Nez is filled with both. She literally has nothing left in the entire universe. She lives in a dreary apartment with no friends, no family, and no future. All that fuels her is her seething hatred of the Rule and her hope for its eventual demise. She loathes that Shay and Kaya willingly assimilated into the empire and erased their Oran heritage, and she loathes that she did the same thing for so long that now she’s forgotten her cultural traditions. Spite goes a long way.
With The Dragonfly Gambit, A.D. Sui has demonstrated her skill with longer-form fiction. This is an excellent debut novella, full of twists and turns and characters who are too clever for their own good. I’m eager to see what Sui does next.
Alex Brown is a librarian, author, historian, and Hugo-nominated and Ignyte award-winning critic who writes about speculative fiction, young adult fiction, librarianship, and Black history.
This review and more like it in the July 2024 issue of Locus.
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