Be Transported with The Bird King by G. Willow Wilson

With the release of The Bird King, G. Willow Wilson is, if possible, even busier now than when she was writing a monthly comic. She’s writing Wonder Woman for DC and Invisible Kingdom with Berger Books/Dark Horse Comics. And now she has a new book out, her first fiction novel since Alif the Unseen in 2012. The Bird King is a story about freedom, sacrifice, love without sex, and friendship above all else. I devoured it over Spring Break and can’t think of a better way to have spent my time. Al-Andalus The Bird King takes as its setting not just an empire fading, but an empire faded. This is a fantasy set in the last days of Muslim Granada, just at the moment that the Spanish collected themselves into a kingship and expelled the last of the Muslims who had been ruling the peninsula for 700 years. When I say “at the moment” I mean that seriously. Quickly after the start of the book, a Spanish delegation, complete with Inquisitors, is knocking at the door to the Alhambra asking when the last Sultan will be moving out. This knowledge that the Spanish are coming, and with them all of the pain, degradation, and bigotry that the late Medieval church can muster, gives the book an unexpected urgency. You know the end is not only here for this empire, the end is coming for empires everywhere. Our main character, Fatima, is a prized slave and concubine to the Sultan. Her existence is simultaneously luxurious and tinged with all that she doesn’t have. She wears silks, but they are hand-me…