AUTHOR’S NOTE

This book was not meant to be timely. To paraphrase the bard, it had timeliness thrust upon it.

Albern is a trans man—referred to in Underrealm as “ander.” If you’ve read this novel, you likely heard about Underrealm in the first place because it is meant to be a diverse and inclusive fantasy universe. When I started working on this story (the very earliest roots of which are over a year and a half old), Albern was “only” supposed to be another form of representation. We had no trans main character in an Underrealm book series. As with all our representation, this aspect of Albern’s identity wouldn’t be the main focus of the story, but it would of course be a significant part of him.

Things have changed since then. Trans people in the real world have come under attack in new and horrifying ways, and it has been especially explicit in America. 

The attacks are baseless, horrific, and without reason. There is no purpose to them other than to inflict pain on a community that has already had more than its fair share of pain. There is no reason for a society to hate its own citizens who have done nothing wrong, but who instead have been at the forefront of every significant push for social justice for decades.

Underrealm was designed to be a world that could demonstrate the needlessness and uselessness of bigotry and hate. Now more than ever, I hope that idea is a comfort to those who need it.

I hope you will join me in contributing to PFlag, an organization that has been incredibly helpful to one of my friends when he needed them most. You can see their work and donate at PFlag.org.

Garrett Robinson,

November 2018