Isaac Fellman’s latest novel, Notes from a Regicide, stands as a testament to the power of narrative innovation, weaving together science fiction, family drama, and trans literature in a way that feels both revolutionary and deeply intimate. Following his Lambda Award-winning The Breath of the Sun and the critically acclaimed Dead Collections, Fellman continues to push boundaries while crafting stories that speak directly to the heart of what it means to find—and lose—yourself in the family you choose.
A Structure as Complex as Memory Itself
At its core, Notes from a Regicide is a Russian doll of narratives: Griffon Keming’s quest to understand his deceased parents through his father Etoine’s prison memoir, written while awaiting execution, which itself contains layers of history, revolution, and love. The book oscillates between three distinct worlds—Stephensport (a fantasy city-state with political intrigue and frozen electors), the Nameless City (born from revolution), and modern-day New York, where Griffon pieces together the fragments of his family’s past.
This narrative structure mirrors the way we often discover our parents’ true selves—fragmentarily, through artifacts they leave behind, stories half-told, and silences that speak volumes. Fellman handles this complexity with remarkable skill, allowing each layer to inform and enrich the others without becoming unnecessarily convoluted.
The Revolution of the Self: Trans Identity Across Generations
Perhaps the most poignant aspect of Fellman’s work is how it handles trans identity across different generations and contexts. Etoine and Zaffre’s experiences in Stephensport—where medical transition is forbidden but gender expression is somewhat accommodated through “sworn” identities—contrast sharply with Griffon’s relatively accessible path to testosterone and top surgery in New York.
The generational gap in trans experiences includes:
The trauma of living before medical transition was possible
The internalization of societal judgments about “worthy” versus “unworthy” trans people
The complex relationship between personal identity and revolutionary politics
The ways communities create their own forms of care when official systems fail
Zaffre’s character—a trans woman artist who forges paintings for revolution funding while battling mental illness—particularly embodies this intersection of identities. Her journey from hiding her femininity to eventually accessing estrogen through the underground network of nuns reveals how resilience can manifest in unexpected forms.
The Weight of History: Political Art and Personal Revolution
Fellman excels at exploring how personal identity cannot be separated from political context. The famous “Antoninos Portrait”—painted by Zaffre but attributed to Etoine—becomes both a catalyst for revolution and a symbol of how art can be weaponized for change. This painting, initially misunderstood as propaganda for an aristocratic rebel, transforms into an emblem of popular uprising.
Key themes of political engagement include:
The responsibility artists bear for how their work is interpreted
The impossibility of remaining apolitical when your existence is politicized
The complex morality of revolutionary violence
The personal cost of fighting systems of oppression
The novel particularly shines in its portrayal of how revolution affects individual lives. Neither Etoine nor Zaffre emerges unscathed from their involvement in overthrowing Prince Stephen, and their physical and psychological scars become part of the legacy they pass to Griffon.
Love in the Time of Revolution
At its heart, this is a love story—not just between Etoine and Zaffre, but between parents and child, between artists and their craft, between revolutionaries and their cause. The romance that blooms between Etoine and Zaffre after decades of friendship is rendered with exquisite tenderness, particularly as they navigate the complexities of transitional bodies and the fears that come with finally having something to lose.
Fellman’s prose in these intimate moments is particularly striking:
“She was a magnificent woman, and I would do anything to press my face once more to the hollow of her breast, to feel her firm hands at the small of my back. Those hands touched me more intently than other hands. They always had just enough pressure in them to relieve the ache of my muscles, the ache inside my skull.”
The tragedy of their love—constrained by political circumstances, separated by imprisonment, and ultimately ended by violence and suicide—gives the novel its emotional core.
The Art of Memory and the Memory of Art
Throughout the novel, Fellman employs art as both metaphor and mechanism for understanding identity and history. Etoine’s tarot deck, featuring friends and revolutionaries alike, becomes his way of processing trauma and preserving memory. Zaffre’s abstract paintings evolve from her struggle with mental illness to become her most honest form of expression.
The relationship between art and memory manifests in:
Paintings as historical documents
The way trauma shapes artistic vision
Art as both personal therapy and political statement
The preservation of identity through creative work
Griffon’s eventual understanding that he cannot publish his parents’ story without fundamentally altering it reflects Fellman’s nuanced approach to questions of truth, memory, and the ethics of representation.
A Critique of Paradise Lost
While the novel’s strengths far outweigh its weaknesses, there are moments where the dense layering of narratives can feel overwhelming. The shift between Etoine’s prison memoir, Griffon’s contemporary narrative, and Zaffre’s occasional interjections sometimes creates a disorienting effect that, while intentional, may challenge some readers’ patience.
Additionally, the world-building of Stephensport, while fascinating, occasionally overwhelms the more intimate human drama at the story’s center. The concept of the electors (ancient beings kept in suspended animation to choose rulers) and the complex political machinations sometimes feel underdeveloped compared to the richly realized emotional landscapes of the characters.
A Legacy of Love and Loss
Perhaps the novel’s greatest achievement is how it handles grief—not just the loss of individuals, but the loss of possibilities, of identities left behind, of revolutions incomplete. Griffon’s journey to understand his parents becomes a meditation on how we inherit not just genetics, but trauma, resilience, and the capacity for extraordinary love.
The novel’s ending, with Griffon choosing to keep his parents’ story private, suggests that some forms of love are too precious for public consumption—a fitting metaphor for the trans experience itself, where the most intimate journeys of self-discovery often occur in the liminal spaces between public and private life.
A Modern Classic in the Making
Notes from a Regicide stands alongside works like Becky Chambers’ A Psalm for the Wild-Built and Casey Plett’s Little Fish as essential reading for anyone interested in how speculative fiction can illuminate the trans experience. Fellman’s novel manages to be simultaneously epic in scope and painfully intimate, creating a work that resonates on multiple levels.
For readers familiar with Fellman’s previous works, this novel represents a maturation of themes present in Dead Collections and The Two Doctors Górski—the exploration of chosen family, the weight of history, and the transformative power of art. Yet Notes from a Regicide pushes these concepts further, creating a multi-generational saga that speaks to the complexity of trans identity in both fantastical and contemporary settings.
Final Verdict
Isaac Fellman has crafted a novel that refuses easy categorization, blending genres and narrative techniques to create something uniquely powerful. While occasionally challenging in its structure, the emotional core of Notes from a Regicide remains crystal clear: the profound love between parents and child, partners and comrades, artists and their creations.
This is not merely a book about revolution—it’s about the daily revolutions required to love, to transition, and to survive. It’s about understanding that our parents are never quite who we think they are, and that sometimes the greatest gift we can give them is to let their mysteries remain unsolved.