The story is set in a future in which people in role-playing games choose to fashion their lives on the roles they play. The focus is on the conflict between the \“Free Orcs\” who are anarchists and the fascist Orcines. The Free Orcs live in the town of Gray Morrow located in the remains of a town in the middle of a \“scorched graveyard of a Douglas fir\” forest (170). They use \“Dark Speech\” (related to Tolkien\’s \“Black Speech\”), are matriarchal, which is \“roughly anarchist,\” (the Orcine are patriarchal), and live by their version of \“orcish code of honour\” that stresses \“interdependence between individual sovereignty and collective identity\” (171). The author self-describes as a transgender woman who prefers the pronouns she/her.
}, year = {2018}, journal = {The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction }, volume = {136.3/4 }, pages = {165-186}, month = {03/2019}, issn = {00024-984X }, note = {Rpt. in her We Won\’t Be Here Tomorrow and Other Stories (Chico, CA/Edinburgh, Scot.: AK Press, 2022), 17-35.
}, language = {eng}, }