Bookshelf

 Tattoo 

Ursula Le Guin fans
rejoice: Kirsten Imani Kasai's Tattoo
(Del Ray, $15) —her follow up to 2009's brilliant Ice Song — tackles the same kind of paradigm-shifting worlds
Le Guin did so well. Tattoo is set
in an ecologically fragile world where human and animal genes combine, and
individuals with a rare mutation can instantly switch genders. Those gender-benders are known as Traders. Sorykah is a Trader, a woman who is battling her
male alter (Soryk) for dominance and the right to live her life fully female.
Transgender readers will especially enjoy the parable inherent in the concept
of Sorykah and Soryk as bitter enemies trapped beneath the same skin. The fact
that there are addictive aphrodisiacal tattoos in the story is just a kinky
bonus.  Diane Anderson-Minshall