Compelling Queer Romance Eclipses Sci-Fi Stakes in 'Winter's Orbit'

Is there a romance plot more audacious than the fake-dating scenario? Netflix's Bridgerton recently plumbed the depths of a false courtship in scandal-obsessed Regency-era London to great acclaim. But at its heart, the trope concerns two near-strangers forced into the intimacies of a relationship, and the surprising partnership that inevitably springs from an initially unemotional arrangement.

In her debut novel , Everina Maxwell rockets this surefire premise into space, uniting Prince Kiem (lesser royal of the Iskat Empire) in a political marriage