Dear Corinne, I got so excited when I found out that there was a book in the sci-fi/fantasy genre with an autistic character, written by an autistic person. You have no idea. The moment Otherbound hit my radar, it was on my wishlist, an eventually, I managed to snag a copy. It's on my shelf, waiting, and I'll get to it, too, but I haven't quite yet. I wasn't expecting that I would read On the Edge of Gone so soon. I have serious anxiety comorbid with my autism, and end-of-the-world/apocalyse scenarios are a trigger for me sometimes. It's a hangover from being a child of the time before the Berlin Wall fell. There's so many books from the Soviet era that are all about what happens to a kid after the bombs fall. It was so normal that when someone a few years back asked for recs for this subgenere, I came up with about thirty books. We were brought up in the shadow of our imminent extinction. Let me tell you, the current POTUS isn't helping that. But fate stepped in - my library had a copy that I found by accident on the shelf in Young Adult. Both Otherbound and On the Edge of Gone, just sitting there, waiting for me, and On the Edge of Gone was the one I didn't own, so I grabbed it. And once I started reading it, I didn't stop. My attention issues make it hard these days to hyperfocus enough to read a book in one sitting, but I did it. It wasn't just the autistic character. It was the others - the queer secondary characters, that I saw a lot of myself in, too. The sister. The couple, helping out any way they could. I even saw myself in the mother, though her burden isn't one of my own, I saw myself at my most dependant, my most weak, and I ached for her. You shone a light on the side of society that most people forget exists - the queer, the disabled, the addicted, the different, and you didn't just make it a narrative of horrendous loss. You made it heart-breaking, yes, but you made it hopeful. You gave your characters choices that weren't always right or wrong but were always HUMAN, and made me feel my inherent connection to a species I often feel has marginalised me for my neurotype, my gender, my sexuality. It took the common 'they all die, obviously' trope and turned it on its head and created something beautiful. I still have Otherbound waiting for me, but reading it isn't stepping into the unknown. I know now what you can do, and how you can make me feel, so I'm anticipating what it will be with excitement. Thank you.
