Trumping the Future
The antagonist of the novel is a Jean de Men. He begins life shilling empty-headed self-help advice before becoming a best-selling author and then a television celebrity and billionaire snake oil salesman. All this ultimately ends with what seems to be inevitable by this point in history: becoming a fascist authoritarian dictator with delusions of everything. The narrator describes him as a cross between a warmongering huckster and a spiritual charlatan. The full extent of his position as comprehensive fraud is not revealed until a shocking plot twist. Jean de Men’s role in the story pursues several interrelated themes: the power of propaganda on gullible minds, the inherent fascism of those who thirst for authority, and how history has a way of constantly repeating itself. It is of supreme importance to keep in mind this novel was published in 2017.
Storytelling
Both the nature and power of storytelling is a major theme throughout the novel. In this dystopian future, a new sort of storytelling aesthetic is created through a process combining tattooing and skin grafting. The title character’s story is actually told through the processing of this art form on the skin of the story’s protagonist, Christine Pizan. Joan’s importance in the narrative derives in large part from the mythic story which springs up around her which is intricately tied to the legend surrounding Joan of Arc. And ultimately, the novel relies on a story-within-a-story to defeat Jean de Men.
Gender
The increasing acceptance of the fluidity of gender rather than the traditional binary view attached to sex organs is deeply important to the novel’s thematic structure. The narrator flatly states early in the story “I am without gender, mostly.” Basically, in this vision of the future in which earthlings have been forced to escape to a space station circling above the planet and are not allowed to live past their 50th birthday, humanity has become completely trans—as in transparent. They have evolved into genderless beings but have devolved into much weaker manifestations of the species. And then there are those special select mutants known as “engenderines” that have evolved to a higher state of partially characterized by pure energy and partially by the remnants of their humanity.
