Review: Best Bisexual/Transgender Sci-Fi / Fantasy: The Bacchi by Belinda McBride
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 12 25, 2013
If you want to break some taboos, The Bacchi is probably your choice. First of all, this is not a gay or bisexual or even transgender novel, both Lefi, a Somian, than Afton, a Valoran, are in some way hermaphrodites, so basically they have no gender, or better they have both gender. They are not humans, but an alien breed, and the Somians have lost their hermaphroditism to basically mutate on a female or on a male, but in a way, they still preserve the double characteristic cause they are always twins at birth, and if they are a male and a female, they are a mated pair. Only that Lefi’s twin sister has died, and now for Lefi is like he has lost his heart and doesn’t believe he is capable of loving again.The Valorans instead are fully hermaphrodites, but since young age, they lean toward a gender, and so, even if they have both genitalia, they identify as a male or female; moreover, they are very private regarding sexuality and homosexuality is basically nonexistent; to Afton, who was raised as a male, the attraction he feels toward Lefi, a male, is unsettling, and to add trouble to his worries, Somians are very sexual people, exactly the opposite of Valorans, and Lefi is a sex worker, a Bacchi (basically a high paid and recognized prostitute).There is a second, parallel plot about a slave black market where Valorans are sold to brothels, and Afton, as a police inspector, is required to investigate, and Lefi is his “liason”. But truth be told, this wasn’t the plot I was interested in, more interesting was the slow seduction of Lefi towards Afton, and Afton questioning not only his sexuality, but the entire emotional structure of his own people. This is a sensitive matter and I don’t want to approach it in a way that is indelicate, but my feeling was that, even if Afton start to consider his female genitalia (while instead, previously, he completely ignored them), in no way he changes his male attitude to life; for example, Afton can bear children, but he has never considered the option, as a male, and still doesn’t consider it even when he falls in love for another men.