The Unbalancing

2023 Locus Awards Finalist, First Novel

2023 Subjective Chaos Kind of Awards finalist, Best Fantasy Novel

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2022 Locus Recommended Reading List

“This first full-length novel in Lemberg’s acclaimed Birdverse (The Four Profound Weaves, 2020) shines with the author’s signature lush, dreamlike prose and nuanced explorations of trans and queer identity. The islands of Gelle-Geu are disturbed by a star that sleeps fitfully beneath the waves, its nightmares rocking the land with earthquakes increasing in frequency and severity. New starkeeper Ranra is determined to do whatever it takes to learn what is wrong and fix it to save her home from destruction. Poet and gardener Erígra Lilún is descended from the first starkeeper, Semberí. Semberí insists that Erígra is the only one who can wake the star and end its devastating nightmares, but Erígra has no interest in being starkeeper. Ranra and Erígra are instantly drawn to one another and fall into a romantic relationship even as the danger to Gelle-Geu increases. Both Ranra and Erígra have challenging and gratifying personal growth arcs, approached with the same thoughtfulness and determination the characters bring to bear on the threat facing their community. Lovingly crafted with a deep and rewarding world full of complex characters who are often LGBTQIA+ and/or neurodiverse, this is an outstanding novel from a rising star in fantasy fiction.”
—Booklist 

“In all their fiction from the fascinating Birdverse world, Lemberg centers marginalized identities: queer, trans, neurodiverse, elderly, and more. The Unbalancing is Lemberg’s first novel-length book to take place in the Birdverse. It’s a poetic and magical Atlantis-esque novel and a perfect introduction to the Birdverse.”
—Buzzfeed

“In a narrative by turns gentle and implacable, Lemberg writes movingly and magnificently about disaster, survival, and hope.”
—Kate Elliott, author of the Crown of Stars series

“Set in Lemberg’s Birdverse, this lyrical fantasy novel is a queer, nonbinary Atlantis retelling about a starkeeper and a poet who fall in love while working together to save the island they live on. There is found family, ghosts, neurodivergence, a unique magic system, and a wonderful balance of thoughtful world-building with intense character work.”
—Autostraddle

“The lush lyricism of the mythology, culture and history in The Unbalancing is illustrious and transportive. It’s an enchanting world of star lore, magic and gender identity with a roster of heartfelt characters told with such rich prose that kept me rooting for Ranra.”
—Tlotlo Tsamaase, The Silence of the Wilting Skin

“The finely wrought first full-length outing into Lemberg’s inclusive and lushly folkloric Birdverse universe (after the novella The Four Profound Weaves) begins centuries after the goddess Bird carried 12 stars into the world….. Brisk action balances the meditations on gender and glimpses of the complex magic system as this unpredictable tale wends to an intense and deeply moving climax. It’s bittersweet and lovely.”
—Publishers Weekly

“[The Unbalancing] impacted me greatly, yes, you should read this book. [It] is a respite and a consolation. It made me cry, and gave me strength.”
—Trans Narrative

“There’s so much to cherish in The Unbalancing, a stand-alone novel in Lemberg’s Birdverse series. The relationship between Lilún and Ranra beautifully captures the spikiness and tenderness of a new connection that could turn into something beautiful. The world-building is full of deep lore and casual queerness, and Lemberg’s magic system is appropriately wild and poetic.”
—Washington Post

“The first full-length novel in the expansive Birdverse series, The Unbalancing is an LGBTQ+ fantasy overflowing with heart….No prior knowledge of the Birdverse is necessary to appreciate the worldbuilding of this novel.”
—Foreword

“What could have been a clear-cut apocalyptic thrill ride becomes something much more thoughtful in the hands of Lemberg, who weaves together a gentle romance and an examination of what holds people together. Lemberg’s characters — an unlikely couple facing the death of their city — wield both social and magical power, and the difference between the two adds spice to a beautiful story about saving what you can.”
—Charlie Jane Anders, author of Victories Greater Than Death

“Lemberg’s prose is soaked in magic, magic that’s full of space and light and sound. The Unbalancing manages to be both ethereal and earthy.”
—Craig Laurance Gidney, author of A Spectral Hue

“R.B. Lemberg’s The Unbalancing unfolds under the weight of impending disaster, the characters and plot caught in the gravity of a grief and pain that’s existed for a thousand years. Next to that, the hopes and passions of a relative few might seem insignificant, but Lemberg rejects apathy in the face of inevitability. Instead, they craft a story around the importance of identity and consent, of action and compassion in the face of historical complicity. The result is a novel at times raging, at times romantic, but through everything beautiful and powerfully human. A magnificent read!”
—Charles Payseur, author of The Burning Day

“Beautiful and queer and challenging and tender. And it’s a story that could not have been told without Erígra’s autistic point of view, without a deep respect for needs like Erígra’s, which comes from lived, thoughtful experience. I love all of R. B. Lemberg’s work, but I might love this book most out of any of them.”
—Autistic Book Party

“The Unbalancing is a heartrending book about power and responsibility; the courage to act and the wisdom to think before acting; about relationships and collaborations that cross differences; about traumas and attempted healings, large and small; about what we can do and what we can save when it’s too late to avert the worst. It’s beautiful and queer and challenging and tender…. I love all of R. B. Lemberg’s work, but I might love this book most out of any of them.”
—Ada Hoffmann, Philip K. Dick Award finalist and author of The Outside

“R. B Lemberg’s  Birdverse is one of my favorite places to visit, full of queer possibilities and deep emotional and philosophical musings. In The Unbalancing they give us wonder, devastation, resilience, and love. Lemberg’s poetic voice makes even the harshest explorations of loss beautiful, and manages to balance grief and horror with hope and joy.”
—Julia Rios, Hugo Award-winning editor of Uncanny Magazine

“R. B. Lem­berg returned us to their evocative, lyrical Birdverse with its first full-length novel, The Unbalancing, featuring a decidedly complex, conflicted, and neuroatypical central charac­ter with a truly distinctive and poetic narrative voice.”
—Locus

“In R. B. Lemberg’s Birdverse world of meticulous social structures that feel celebrating the countless variations in which real people exist, a poet and a leader, each profound, compassionate, and terrified, delicately navigate their new relationship, their connections with others both like them and different, and their immersions in the world around them as an ecological disaster threatens their homeland.”
—Scott H. Andrews, World Fantasy Award-winning Editor/Publisher of Beneath Ceaseless Skies Magazine

“The Unbalancing is the latest glimpse into the great tapestry of Birdverse, and it’s inspiring and contemplative and hot and tense. It finds a group of queer nerds thrust into a place of power, tasked with the impossible, and faced with the legacy of loss, despair, and inaction. Through that, though, they find strength in each other to act, and to reach for an outcome that might not be victory, but which isn’t entirely defeat. It’s a beautiful and nuanced work about love, power, and magic.”
—Quick Sip Reviews

“Reading this book is like diving into the most beautiful language exploring various aspects of human possibility. Everything in this book is so fluid from the words, the setting itself, but also the characters—the way they think, the way they feel, and the way they present.”
—Infinite Text

“This is a story about a magical star with dark origins, a beautiful archipelago, a wise and appealing culture whose people are free in their lives and loves, some of the best nonbinary rep I’ve seen in SFF fiction, and two people who find deep connection when they least expect it. . . . a beautiful novel, and a welcome ramping-up of Lemberg’s Birdverse.”
—M. Crane Hana, author of Moro’s Price

“That is why we write fantasy, and it is why we read it: to imagine different worlds than ours, and examine the way forward. In that, Lemberg has crafted a much-needed novel for the inhabitants of a tired world.”
—The Fantasy Review

“Queer and, well, wholly wonderful.”
—Llama Reads Books

“Full of love, and connection, and hope; and a sense that destruction is worth struggling against even when the odds are overwhelming.”
—Nerds of a Feather

“In The Unbalancing, one protagonist begins at the center of her society’s power structure, but her desire for the novel’s other lead opens her up to understanding a positive self-abnegation in relationships—even at the cost of her home . . . a character at the center of her society’s hierarchy finding a new sensitivity and humility.”
—Strange Horizons

“The Unbalancing is amazing. R.B. Lemberg is a skilled worldbuilder, and the Birdverse is a perfect and rich example of what speculative fiction is meant to do. The world they’ve created is one in which ‘they’ is a given: there’s room for all kinds of fluidity, neurodivergence, sexual preference (or not) and gender expression. Chances are that if any of these things are especially important in your life, you’ll feel seen here in a way that is joyous, powerful and necessary.”
—Dori Mondon

“The Unbalancing is a powerful and poetic read. Lemberg’s use of language and storytelling is a delight to savour and combined with the themes and overall approach make this twenty-first century fantasy that should stand attention. It is brilliant and a tale many readers will never forget. Strongly recommended!”
—Run Along the Shelves