I gave myself a comfort reread of this book to remember again how much I enjoy it. It's still great.

Winter's Orbit is a queer romance / science fiction book. Personally, I think folks who like one genre but don't read the other would enjoy this book, but in practice it seems like the combination seems to make folks bounce from the idea. I wonder if perhaps this is why nobody else seemed intrigued to read this for hashtag SFFBookClub. Also, the romance is largely PG rated, if that's important to you one way or the other.

The plot hook is that reticent and duty-bound Count Jainan has recently lost his husband; in order to politically preserve an interplanetary treaty, he is quickly remarried to easygoing and irresponsible Prince Kiem. When Kiem's friendly overtures are rebuffed, Kiem tries to give Jainan space to mourn and not push him or through his silences; meanwhile, traumatized Jainan (who believes himself at fault for everything) feels pushed away but also that he deserves to be.

One trope that can frustrate me in a lot of romances is where two characters don't communicate and I feel like I need to yell "why won't y'all just talk to each other". Here, it feels less that these two don't talk, so much as they continually try, but end up talking past each other and making bad assumptions about why it's going poorly. This dynamic manages to work for me because the writing makes it believable why both of them think what they're thinking and why they don't push each other for better understandings. (But, I could also see this not working for some readers!)

The afterword mentions that this is a book that came from fanfic, and between how grippy it is to read and its use of some popular tropes, I think it shows (in a positive way). It opens with arranged marriage and there is definitely a scene with only one tent. (I don't know which fandom this is meant to have come from.)

But I also think saying this book comes from a fanfic undersells it. What I love is how solidly it intertwines the developing relationship between Kiem and Jainan with the developing space politics. For plot reasons, these two need to uncover the truth around the details of the death of Jainan's former husband, but this also results in uncovering Jainan's traumas and fears. Being vague for spoiler reasons, but the climax of the book has Jainan wrestle with being gaslit about his past, having to trust Tiem, working through his insecurities, and holding true to the strong parts of himself; and all this directly in the context of solving the space politics plot. It's this moment in particular where this book really melds these two genres together perfectly.