Sometimes you hear about a book and you get that tingling sensation that it might be exactly what you never knew you wanted. Sometimes when you finally read it, it fails to live up to your exceedingly high expectations. And sometimes, as with Gabe Cole Novoa’s young adult historical fantasy The Wicked Bargain, it doesn’t just hit all your marks but surpasses them.
Aboard La Catalina, Mar is free to be themself, in all their magical, transmasc nonbinary glory. It’s 1820 and the Spanish fleet has all but decimated the largely Latinx, Black, and Indigenous pirates terrorizing the colonial seas. La Catalina and a handful of other pirate crews make a living stealing from the Spanish and redistributing goods and treasure to locals and revolutionaries. Mar’s Papá, known as el Embrujado amongst the pirates of the Caribbean, has spent the last several years teaching them to use their magia with strict control. After their mother died in a terrible accident when Mar was a child, Mar has treated their powers as if they were a wild beast ready to rip them apart. Fire and ice burst from the tattooed marks covering their limbs, but Mar is petrified of what they may be capable of.
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The Wicked Bargain
On the night of their sixteenth birthday, a monster nearly destroys their life. El Diablo, a high-ranking devil, comes to claim el Embrujado’s soul. Sixteen years ago he traded it in exchange for keeping his crew alive and safe, but now payment is due. Papá is taken, the crew is killed, and Mar is left adrift at sea. Luckily they’re rescued by the crew of La Ana, led by Pirata Vega and his very chatty yet also very cute son Bas.
As Mar settles in on a new ship, they must hide themself away from prying eyes. If anyone finds out they have magia, no, they can’t think about that frightening possibility. Mar has only two months to figure out how to get their father’s soul back from el Diablo before he’s lost forever. A nosy demonio called Dami offers Mar a deal of their own, but things get even more complicated when the La Ana crew are captured and threatened with execution. Everyone wants a piece of Mar, and the lives of everyone they care about are in their hands.
The premise—Mar must save Papá’s soul and the La Ana crew from the maw of the Spanish empire—is viciously anti colonial. The way Novoa weaved the two subplots together was an unexpected delight and a clever bit of writing. Interestingly, Novoa chose third person POV and present tense, as opposed to first person POV and past tense that most YA fiction is written in. The style choice works well for this story. It keeps the action front and center while also allowing Novoa to keep secrets from the reader.
For readers who are also transmasc and/or who identify beyond the gender binary (or who may not realize they are until they read a story about a teen struggling through the same things), having a little distance from the protagonist allows us to process our own feelings through Mar’s journey. Mar binds their chest and thrills at being called “boy” even as they don’t feel like “man” fits for an all-the-time label. Novoa avoids modern queer labels while still describing and exploring queerness in a way that will resonate with modern readers. It’s a lovely nod to how people in the past navigated queerness. They may not have had our labels, definitions, or conceptions, but they were still queer.
Although Bas and Mar are both sixteen, the story is a good option for tweens and younger teens looking to move up from middle grade. The romance is minor and subdued, and while the action is intense, most of the worst of the violence happens off screen. The writing style and premise will hook in fans of Rick Riordan Presents middle grade fantasy as much as older teens eager for battles against colonizers and high stakes adventure.
2023 has been a spectacular year for queer YA fantasy, and it’s not even spring yet. The Wicked Bargain by Gabe Cole Novoa is a must-read for anyone still obsessed with Our Flag Means Death, Black Sails, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever; anyone in desperate need of more gender expansive BIPOC young adult fantasy; and anyone who wants a rollicking adventure full of magic and mayhem. The only thing about this book that made me sad was that it is not a series. I need more in this fascinating world!
The Wicked Bargain is published by Random House Books for Young Readers.
Alex Brown is a Hugo-nominated and Ignyte award-winning critic who writes about speculative fiction, librarianship, and Black history. Find them on twitter (@QueenOfRats), instagram (@bookjockeyalex), and their blog (bookjockeyalex.com).
