Ace Book Review: "This Golden Flame" by Emily Victoria
“Different doesn’t mean lesser” I am, rather ironically, a sucker for the “fish out of water” trope – stories in which someone is taken from their usual circumstances and dropped into something else entirely. I love these types of stories because they allow characters to grow and adapt in ways that are often fascinating, and sometimes allow us to experience two different worlds in the form of the world they came from and the world they now find themselves in. I say “ironically” because, for as much as I love these stories, many of their core concepts also make me anxious or even uncomfortable. I think both this discomfort and this fascination arise from the same source: the fact that these stories are essentially about feeling a sense of disconnect and a lack of belonging, as well as a deep desire to find that belonging again, and these are lessons I know well as an aspec person living in what often feels like an unfriendly world. For that reason, “fish out of water” stories a
