Call Me Traitor, a sapphic fantasy by Everina Maxwell
After reading this book, I’m convinced. Everina Maxwell is going on my authors to follow list. Call Me Traitor blends so many distinct themes into one beautiful Sapphic story about rebellion, politics, love, academia, and war through a lens of neurodivergency and trauma.
En is a magical wartank, trained for only obedience to the king’s magi and the commanders they assign her to. Tamol, whose name keeps getting infuriatingly autocorrected on every device I own, is a mage on the lam, exiled by her country alongside her college comrades for undisclosed treason. En has been tasked with bringing one of these traitors back alive to face the king’s justice. The rest of the exiles are expendable.
Unfortunately for Tamol, she counts as “the rest.”
The best part of this novel for me is that it addresses some very heavy themes with ample humor that doesn’t detract from the severity of the situations. Tamol is a hilarious wit, and as the reader comes to understand the character of En, we very quickly see that she has a surprisingly sharp sense of humor herself. Their banter adds a lightheartedness to a story that could easily be overwhelmingly dark, and does so without detracting from the importance of the themes.
The novel also uses a partial epistolary format; every couple of chapters we see a transcript from Tamol’s interrogation that slowly reveals the story behind her exile as well as En’s origin. I am a sucker for epistolary novels, and this format was particularly interesting.
The novel is pitched as a romantic sapphic fantasy, which I think is an important distinction to make. This isn’t a “romantasty.” Romantasy is fantastic, but I think publishers have gotten carried away with slapping the term on any fantasy written by a woman or queer person that has the slightest hint of romance. The plot is definitely the focus here, and it is an enthralling one. And while the romance isn’t the main focus of the story, it’s still one I found engaging and delightful, with a fantastic final-act payoff. The universe Maxwell has created is one in which queer identities are normalized and has an explicitly non-binary secondary character as well as a polycule of secondary characters.
I really have nothing bad to say about this book. The plot was at once comfortable and foreboding, and gripped me without a lot of overwhelmingly action-packed battles or unrealistic dramatic tension. I felt compelled to keep reading, and even though I predicted the big climactic twist, the reveal still left me gobsmacked.
I will definitely be purchasing this on release, as well as looking into Maxwell’s other works. I might even purchase a copy for my bestie because I need someone to scream about the reveal with.
Five out of five stars and a new fan of Everina Maxwell.
If you’d like to learn more about Call Me Traitor and the author, you can visit their website or Bluesky. Please consider pre-ordering from the publisher, your local indie bookstore, or Bookshop.org. Call Me Traitor will be released in the United States on December 1st, 2026. This book was provided by NetGalley as an E-ARC in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions are exclusively my own. Thank you to NetGalley, MacMillan, and Everina Maxwell for the opportunity to review.
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