Begin your year with revolution! Or at least that’s what I thought when I picked up Suzan Palumbo’s Countess. The novella invokes the anti-colonialist spirit so desperately needed in 2026, and it opens with an inscription that acknowledges the crater of its impact: There is horror here, but there is also always hope.
We meet our protagonist, newly-minted captain Virika Sameroo, as she concludes a great triumph. After the previous captain of her merchant freighter ship fell gravely ill, she assumed command and navigated the ship and its valuable cargo back to her adopted home safely, despite the looming threat of privateers.
But as the only brown-skinned Exterran Antillean captain in the whole of the Æcerbot Empire, she’s filled with worry instead of elation, and she holds her touchstone phrase close: success or perish. It’s a familiar scenario: as an immigrant, Virika can’t just be excellent, she has to be better than everyone else, utterly beyond reproach, otherwise her heritage will be blamed for any mistake.
Despite having had to contend with simmering insubordination among the crew, most especially from her former co-lieutenant, it’s all finally coming to an end. Virika is home. First, she visits the ailing captain, then her lover, and finally, her mother. But as quickly as we were introduced to Virika’s dizzying height of success, it’s all ripped away from her. She’s arrested and tried on suspicion of poisoning the captain. The weight of prejudice hangs heavy over the mockery of a trial, Virika’s guilt already presumed based on the color of her skin.
Described as “a queer, Caribbean, anti-colonial sci-fi novella in which a betrayed captain seeks revenge on the interplanetary empire that subjugated her people for generations,” Countess is also often compared to The Count of Monte Cristo. This novella is a beautiful interpretation, one which also includes an unjust incarceration, a rising star with a promising career imprisoned and left to rot, a jealous antagonist, a daring escape, a mysterious and mind-boggling treasure that finances a quest for revenge, and an enormous scope. In case you couldn’t tell, Countess has earned its place on my list of sci-fi required reading.
Countess contains rich descriptions of meals so tasty-sounding that my mouth actually watered. More than that, the novella beautifully captures an outsider’s perspective on empire and its insatiable hunger, how nothing is ever enough, how it eats your world, steals your triumphs, and hollows you out with endless respectability politics. Countess is an unflinching portrait of the indifference of the machine, showing that no amount of sacrifice, success, or cultural renunciation can make the empire love you; it will crush you just the same.
There is a lot I can forgive if you make me feel. What I have forgiven here is a change in narrative that distances readers from Virika, widening the scope of the novella to encompass revolution. This shift in focus necessitates a loss of connection with the characters, transforming them into symbolic constructs, revolutionary stand-ins for the idealized world to come. It’s a clever way of propelling a novella this slender to its stirring conclusion, but I wanted more of the heart of the story and less of the autopsy report, which makes me think that this story ought to be a full novel. It deserves the space on the page to fully stretch out.
Countess is an aching “what if,” a rallying cry for the dreamers, for the ones who refuse to let hardship render them hardhearted. It reminds us that a better world is possible, and forces us to take stock of the future we’re willing to accept. It asks: What unthinking comforts of the empire do you reap? What would you sacrifice for a better tomorrow?
Susanne Salehi (she/they) is an Iranian American writer and editor who writes queer heroes. They are a 2025-2026 Poetry Coalition fellow and a 2025 Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Voices fellow. Her work appears in Fruitslice, Frazzled Lit, and the anthology By Her Sword. They hold an MA in medical anthropology and an MFA from Emerson College. She also collects silly tattoos—Frog & Toad and the screaming possum are her favs. More at www.susannesalehi.com.
Content Warnings: homophobia, racism
