Gary K. Wolfe, in his LOCUS year in review, calls out R. B. Lemberg’s THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES.

There were, of course, enough worldbuilding fantasies to satisfy an aspiring psychotic, and one of the most interesting fully invented settings I saw was in R.B. Lemberg’s first Birdverse novel, THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES, a poetic tale set on a sparse desert world filled with a rich variety of genderfluid and nonbinary characters – sometimes facing rigid societal restrictions – but perhaps even more unusually featuring two protagonists already well past middle age.

In their SALON FUTURA, Cheryl Morgan praises the novella.

I’m always a little nervous approaching books centring trans characters that everyone else raves about. Of course I shouldn’t have been worried about RB Lemberg. They know what they are doing. But I was pleasantly surprised that there was so much more to THE FOUR PROFOUND WEAVES than the trans elements.

The quality of the novellas published in 2020 is amazing. This book is right up there with the best of them.

LIBRI DRACONIS feels much the same.

I really liked this novella, and I highly recommend it if you like lyrical, magical stories.

In their 2020 Wrap-Up: Statistics & Top Books, TO OTHER WORLDS includes the book among their Top 9 books.

A tapestry of a novella centering two elderly trans protagonists, weaving magic, identity, belonging, and so many other things. Lovely prose, too.