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• 1 media/1920_lightning-2.jpg media/fever king.jpeg 2021-03-02T12:34:02-08:00 The Fever King by Victoria Lee 19 plain 2021-05-02T16:19:23-07:00

  IDs: Bisexual, Latinx/e, Jewish, Black, Gay, Sexual Assault Survivor, Chronic Illness, Undocumented, Immigrant, Transracial Adoptee, PTSD, Depression
  
  Author IDs: Queer, Sexual Assault Survivor, Transgender, Nonbinary
  
  CW: Contains depictions and discussion of sexual abuse, sexual assault, 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 is infected with it becomes violently ill with a magic fever. Nearly everyone dies from the fever, and those that live have magical abilities, becoming “witchings.” If a witching loses control of their abilities and uses too much magic, they 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/e, 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 has never recovered. Early in the novel, the Atlantian 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. 

  The Fever King is brimming with complex intersections of race, sexuality, disability, mental illness, immigration status, and class. Lee deploys recognizable identities such as bisexual, Latinx/e, and PTSD alongside less familiar identities such as "witchling" and "fevermad." 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. They "defamiliarize" magic by turning it into a deadly virus and chronic illness. They "defamiliarize" disability by tying it with magic through the virus. 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 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.
  
  
  Discussion Questions

  1. What does Lee’s depiction of the magic virus say about magic? About disability?

  2. How does magic empower or disempower the witchlings? How is the witchling's power impacted by their other intersecting identities (race, class, mental illness, sexuality, etc)?

  3. Why does Lee choose to locate magic in the body through illness? How does this differ from other depictions of magic (embodied or otherwise) in popular media?