In Queen of Faces, the riveting first installment of debut YA author Petra Lord's dystopic, dark academia series, 17-year-old Anabelle attempts to survive in a corrupt world where bodies are fabricated and commodified.
Ana's cheap male chassis is decaying, assuring a premature demise, and she believes her only chance to receive a healthy female body is through gaining acceptance to the prestigious Paragon Academy. After Ana's third failure to pass the Paragon screening exam, however, she desperately tries to steal a female chassis. She is caught by Paragon students, who she outwits and outfights as the Paragon headmaster watches from the shadows. Carriwitch then offers Ana a deal: die for her crime or return to her sickly male body and work as a "witch of the coin." As his mercenary, she and a small team of other mages--including Wes, a former rich kid harboring dark secrets--must hunt down the chaotic revolutionary, the Black Wraith. Failure will mean death, but success will grant Ana a free female chassis and a place at Paragon.
Lord creates a palpable feeling of perpetual unease by juxtaposing the lush excess of Paragon's floating campus with the class warfare of both the non-magic user (humdrum) communities and the mages below. The plot maintains a dynamic pace by alternating between Ana and Wes's visceral first-person points of view. The author honors the complicated trans experience through characters who manipulate themselves with magic but must ultimately return to physical bodies that both contain and cause grief. Teen fans of H.E. Edgmon's The Witch King and Neon Yang's Tensorate series and those craving intricately crafted queer dystopian worlds will likely embrace Lord's work. --Kieran Slattery, freelance reviewer, teacher, co-creator of Gender Inclusive Classrooms