29 March,2026 11:46 AM IST | Mumbai | Debjani Paul
Queen of Faces poses a pertinent question: does gender really matter when one can dwell in a woman’s body today and a man’s tomorrow? Representational Pic/iStock
If we could swap bodies like clothes, would we still be so hung up on gender? Would our identity still be tied to how the world perceives our body, or would we pay more attention to the essence of the person before us?
These are questions we confront while reading Queen of Faces (HarperCollins Publishers, Rs 899) by debut trans author Petra Lord. This is a fantasy novel with the most original premise we've seen recently: Protagonist Ana is trapped in the wrong body, and it's literally killing her. In a world where the rich can afford to trade bodies regularly, becoming immortal, the poor simply rot away. Ana has a choice to make: die, or turn assassin with her fledgling magical ability so she can upgrade her "chassis".
It's quite the middle finger to the transphobic author of a famous British series about a wizarding school. There's a magical school in Lord's book too, and an ostensibly benevolent headmaster who is all too willing to send mere teenagers off to fight dark forces.
But Ana could never have existed in the other series. Through Lord's heroine, who discovers love and her found family, we too experience the magic of queer joy.
We also join Ana in peeling back the glamour of this fantastical universe to uncover its grotesque underbelly - class and race wars, and the erasure of immigrants.
The rules of the magic system are fleshed out well, without overwhelming the reader. The one place Lord's writing stumbles, in our opinion, is in the love scenes (which are quite chaste).
The character arcs are the standout feature of the book. In fact, students' magical prowess is directly tied to personal growth, which makes it all the more relatable. "Magic," says Ana during an epiphany, "is the ability to change yourself."
Available on www.amazon.in
