The Fever King by Victoria Lee
IDs: Bisexual, Latinx, Jewish, Black, Gay, SA Survivor, Chronic Illness, Undocumented, Immigrant, Transracial Adoptee, PTSD, Depression
Author IDs: Queer, SA Survivor, Transgender, Nonbinary
CW: Contains depictions and discussion of sexual abuse, child abuse, r*pe, emotional abuse, a pandemic, death, mention of suicide, death of a parent
The Fever King takes place in a militarized city-state called Carolinia in a future America that has been wrecked by magic. In the novel, magic is toxic, and anyone that becomes infected with it will get violently ill. Nearly everyone dies from the fever, and those that live have magical abilities, becoming “witchings.” However, if they lose control of their abilities and use too much magic, they will become “fevermad,” the magic in their body burning them up from the inside until they eventually die. The novel’s protagonist is Noam, a bisexual, Jewish, Latinx, low-income sixteen-year-old boy whose parents are undocumented immigrants from Atlantia. Atlantia is a part of the former-US that was devastated by the original magic outbreak and is now mostly made up of refugee camps. Early in the novel, the Latinx immigrant neighborhood that Noam lives in is infected with the magic virus. Noam is the only survivor, and he becomes a “witching.” In Carolinia, “witchings” are required to serve in the Carolinian military, and Noam, upon waking from the virus, is immediately sent to live in a government complex to be trained as a soldier. Along the way, Noam comes into his power, plots with a nearly-immortal witching about overthrowing the Carolinian presidency in the name of Atlantian and refugee rights, and just maybe develops a crush on a fellow soldier-in-training named Dara who is fighting his own battles.
This novel is brimming with complex intersections of race, sexuality, immigration status, class, and more. Lee uses a concept referred to by science fiction and disability scholars as “defamiliarization” in order to explore these complex intersections. In her book, Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race, and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction, disability scholar Sami Schalk claims that defamiliarization in speculative fiction “makes the familiar social concepts of (dis)ability, race, gender, and sexuality unfamiliar in order to encourage readers to question the meanings and boundaries of these categories” (Schalk 114). Lee cleverly utilizes magic as an embodied experience of disability and power, a political tool, and a devastating global pandemic. In doing so, they distort and reimagine our understanding of disability and magic. Magic kills nearly everyone that it touches. It becomes a source of power for the “witchings,” but it also becomes a lifelong illness that they must manage in order to keep from going “fevermad.” Lee also “defamiliarizes” magic by envisioning the ways that this disabling and fatal kind of magic can be used as a political power. The “witchings” are forced to become soldiers for Carolinia, and the Atlantian people who are most affected by the outbreaks of magic are denied entry into the closed borders of Carolinia. Lee also portrays more intimate ways that magic creates space for power and abuse. Many of the survivors of the magic virus are young people. They are vulnerable, often having lost their entire community in the outbreak that made them sick. These young people are exploited and taken advantage of, and Lee explores this with honesty, sensitivity, and unflinching veracity.