Author: Aliette de Bodard

A- #BookReview: In the Shadow of the Ship by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: In the Shadow of the Ship by Aliette de BodardIn the Shadow of the Ship by Aliette de Bodard
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: alternate history, science fiction
Series: Universe of Xuya
Pages: 96
Published by Subterranean Press on September 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Nightjar, sentient ship and family matriarch, looms large in Khuyên’s past. Disappearances drove teenage Khuyên from it, but death will steer her back.
Now an adult and a magistrate, Khuyên came for her maternal grandmother’s funeral but finds herself unwittingly reliving her past on the decaying Nightjar. Children are still disappearing as her childhood friends once did; and worse, her beloved Cousin Anh vanishes after pleading for her help.
Khuyên sets out to save Anh alongside Thảo, a beautiful and mysterious woman who seems to know more than she should about Khuyên and the ship. But saving Anh requires doing what Khuyên couldn’t do before: face her family, face the ship, face her own hopes and fears for the future—a future that might well include Thảo, but only if Khuyên can stop listening to the critical voice in her head.
A voice that sounds an awful lot like Nightjar’s...

My Review:

The Universe of Xuya isn’t so much a series as it is a sprawl of alternate history that extends from the early 15th century – the point where the butterfly flapped its wings differently from the history we know – all the way out to an undetermined point VERY far in the future.

It’s a vast, sprawling canvas of a universe that hinges on a single year in history (1411) where two events turned left instead of right. An internal political struggle at the Imperial court of Ming-dynasty China sent the Empire looking outward instead of in (as it did in our history) and a fleet of Imperial ships that planned to head east along the coast was struck by typhoons and found itself drifting north, across the Bering Strait to Alaska, resulting in an earlier “discovery” of North America, from Asia instead of from Europe.

And with those two almighty flaps of the butterfly’s wings, history goes down the other leg of the trousers of time (to thoroughly mix my metaphors) and results in the universe of this series, where China and eventually an independent Việt empire become the dominant influences in the world instead of the West – not that, by the time of this particular entry in the sprawl, the West hasn’t established its own hegemonies in the greater galaxy.

The past is another country, they do things differently there. And if they did things differently than what we know, the future would be an even more different country that it will be on history’s current trajectory.

But the thing about the Xuya Universe is that even though the author has a broad outline of what brought it about and some stories set in the historical past that illustrate some of the points, most of it is set in the future. The galaxy is big, the history and future history is potentially very long indeed, and there’s plenty of scope for pretty much anything to happen pretty much anywhere.

Which leads back to the Universe of Xuya being more of a sprawl than the way we usually think of ‘series’. Each story set in the Xuya Universe is intended to be standalone, and while it might link thematically with other stories, that doesn’t mean it will feature any of the same characters as previous or future entries. There’s obviously a publication order for the series, but the internal chronology is ever changing, and considerably more fluid than is usually the case.

I fell into this series, somewhere in the middle, with The Tea Master and the Detective, because it’s a Sherlock Holmes pastiche and that was an entry point that worked for me – as it usually does. (Also, Tea Master is one of the longer works in the series so it has time and space to get a new reader stuck into the world that’s already been built.) I’ve read around Xuya, but not thoroughly – at least not yet – ever since. Although I’ve just had the light dawn that several of the short stories that were in various SFF magazines are also available as podcasts and that’s an avenue to be explored.

I know I haven’t talked about this particular entry in the series yet, and that’s a bit by design as I have mixed feelings about whether this story is a good place to start. I found it fascinating but I don’t think it’s a good entry point. The author has an excellent precis of the history of Xuya, with a list of stories that give both a loose chronology and some suggestions of stories that might make good places to start on her website – so if you’re looking for an entry point or have visited Xuya and are wondering how it all fits together, take a look.

The story of In the Shadow of the Ship is deceptively small and at first seems simple. It’s the story of a young woman who left a conservative and restrictive home because she didn’t fit in. The life that was mapped out for her, even before her birth, was one she had no interest in or desire to follow. That it seemed like she never had a chance to earn her mother’s love or acceptance made it that much easier to leave the world of her birth behind.

She’s been successful, if lonely, in the intervening years. But when she learns of the death of her grandmother, duty and respect call her home. But home is not a planet, or even a station. Home is a decaying mindship, a refugee from the galactic war that destroyed so much and left so many refugees, ship-bound and planet-dwellers alike. A war that her home, her ship, her family, was on the losing side of.

A home that wants her back – even if her mother still does not.

As an adult, Khuyên has knowingly kept the secret of her family’s status from the empire she serves, even though she knows they are war criminals and that she is guilty by association – and silence. She can’t make herself turn them in, and she can’t bear losing her job and her purpose in the universe she’s made her own.

At the same time, as an adult, when she returns for the funeral, she is able to see that the ship is manipulating her and everyone around her, and that the terrible things she was told to ignore when she was a child are no longer ignorable – or honorable. And that they are wrong.

And that there is no second escape. This time, the only way out is through – no matter the cost.

Escape Rating A-: I enjoyed In the Shadow of the Ship, although it is a very shadowed story indeed and probably needs to be read with the lights on. There’s an underlying creepiness that is totally justified but isn’t revealed until past the halfway point.

Although there’s also a lovely sapphic romance that redeems that darkness – it just takes a while to get there.

That two of the characters of this story were mindships felt like the one, solid link to the Xuya Universe, at least so far as I’ve read into it. A reader who has come at this series from different angles might find more linkages, but it was fine as it was.

The story that it did remind me of, however, was the author’s “The Mausoleum’s Children”, one of this year’s Hugo nominees for Best Short Story. (BTW the award was won by “Better Living Through Algorithms” by Naomi Kritzer, which I read and loved.)

In my review of “The Mausoleum’s Children”, I said that the themes were a bit too big for the package, that it would have worked better in a longer format. Those themes; survivor’s guilt, living with trauma, returning to the place that broke you in the hopes of saving others, and more, received that longer treatment here In the Shadow of the Ship, which made me like both stories just that much better.

A- #BookReview: Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de BodardNavigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction mystery, space opera
Pages: 176
Published by Tordotcom on July 30, 2024
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Award-winning author Aliette de Bodard presents yet another innovative space opera that broadens the definition of the this time bringing xianxia-style martial arts to the stars.

Using the power of Shadows generated from their own bodies’ vitality, Navigators guide space ships safely across the a realm of unreality populated by unfathomable, dangerous creatures called Tanglers. In return for their service, the navigator clans get wealth and power―but they get the blame, too. So when a Tangler escapes the Hollows and goes missing, the empire calls on the jockeying clans to take responsibility and deal with the problem.

Việt Nhi is not good with people. Or politics. Which is rather unfortunate because, as a junior apprentice in the Rooster clan, when her elders send her on a joint-clan mission to locate the first escaped Tangler in living memory, she can’t exactly say no.

Hạc Cúc of the Snake clan usually likes people. It says so on her “information gathering”―right after “poisoning” and “stabbing.” So she’s pretty sure she’s got the measure of this they’re the screw-ups, the spares; there isn’t a single sharp tool in this shed.

But when their imperial envoy is found dead by clan poison, this crew of expendable apprentices will have to learn to work together―fast―before they end up cooling their heels in a jail cell while the invisible Tangler wreaks havoc on a civilian city and the reputation of all four clans.

My Review:

The ‘navigational entanglements’ of the title aren’t just a bit of clever phrasing – not that it isn’t a clever and evocative phrase! In the case of this novella, it’s also a literal description of the whole story – in more ways than one.

This SF mystery, shot through with political shenanigans and a tart but gooey center of sapphic romance, begins its entanglement with its solution for the faster-than-light travel conundrum with actual creatures called Tanglers who live in the realm of unreality that makes faster than light travel and the galaxy-spanning empires it makes possible, well, possible.

As is often the case in stories that use this method of FTL travel, navigating the Hollows requires highly skilled navigators who are born with special gifts. In this particular universe, the power of Shadows generated from their own bodies’ life force.

It could be considered magic, at least magic of the Clarke’s Law variety that “Any technology, sufficiently advanced, is indistinguishable from.’ However one thinks of it, it takes special training and special talent and is especially valuable. Particularly to the clans who have a near monopoly on intergalactic shipping because of their success in nurturing navigators.

A hegemony that is under threat when this story begins. Which is why this story begins. The exact nature of the threat, and the clans’ decision on how to meet that threat, is the exact thing that Hạc Cúc of the Snake clan is pretty sure she’s not supposed to figure out.

The clans, or at least her own clan, should have known better. Because if there is one thing that Hạc Cúc can’t resist, it’s a secret. Especially not the kind of secret that is intended to get her killed whether she figures it out or not.

Escape Rating A-: I grabbed this book because I’ve been picking my way through the author’s vast, sprawling, Xuya Universe series and figured that this would be similar without being an actual part of THAT tangled mess.

Two things at the top, Navigational Entanglements is NOT part of Xuya. I’m not saying there aren’t similarities in style and in the way that the culture and history work, but this is a standalone. So if you’re looking to sample the author’s work, this is a good place to start.

Howsomever, one of the characteristics of Xuya is that the publication order and the chronological order don’t have even a nodding acquaintance. Each story in the series is intended to be read without prior knowledge and starts a bit in medias res of the whole series. As in the reader is thrust into the middle of a story that they may or may not have read the background of, or the background may or may not yet exist, and is supposed to sink or swim with what they have in front of them.

Navigational Entanglements is written in that same manner, even though there aren’t any previous or succeeding stories – at least not yet. (If we get more stories in this universe this reader at least would be very happy because the politics are just so fascinatingly messy.)

In other words, this is a story that requires the reader to figure things out as they go. Not that these characters don’t turn out to be doing exactly that, but going with their flow means that the reader has to jump in feet first and that’s not every reader’s comfort zone.

Part of what makes the story work, however, is that this is very much an SF mystery from the top and at the top. It’s just unusual in that the team was purposely created to fail, because they all hate each other. It’s only that Hạc Cúc’s love of secrets allows her to stand outside of the group’s bickering, see it for what it is, and redirect their weaknesses and their enmity into a productive, if not always harmonious, team.

Which allows friendship, love and trust to all blossom – rather like a cactus flower complete with spikes! – and provides this novella with its surprising – especially to the protagonists – happy for now with the possibility (hopefully) of more political and investigative shenanigans to come.

#BookReview: The Mausoleum’s Children by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B- Reviews> book reviews
#BookReview: The Mausoleum’s Children by Aliette de Bodard"The Mausoleum's Children" by Aliette de Bodard in Uncanny Magazine Issue 52, May-June 2023 by Aliette de Bodard
Format: ebook
Source: supplied by publisher via Hugo Packet
Formats available: magazine, ebook
Genres: Dark Fantasy, science fiction, short stories
Series: Uncanny Magazine Issue 52
Pages: 20
Published by Uncanny Magazine on May 2, 2023
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

The May/June 2023 issue of Hugo Award-winning Uncanny Magazine .

Featuring new fiction by Aliette de Bodard, Kylie Lee Baker, Lindsey Godfrey Eccles, Fran Wilde, Ewen Ma, Theodora Ward, and K.S. Walker. Reprint fiction by Chimedum Ohaegbu. Essays by Caroline M. Yoachim, LaShawn M. Wanak, Hana Lee, and Sam J. Miller, poetry by Nnadi Samuel, Jennifer Mace, Tehnuka, and Angela Liu, interviews with Kylie Lee Baker and Ewen Ma by Caroline M. Yoachim, a cover by Antonio Caparo, and an editorial by Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas.

Uncanny Magazine is a bimonthly science fiction and fantasy magazine first published in November 2014. Edited by 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, & 2022 Hugo award winners for best semiprozine, and 2018 Hugo award winners for Best Editor, Short Form, Lynne M. Thomas and Michael Damian Thomas, Meg Elison, and Monte Lin, each issue of Uncanny includes new stories, poetry, articles, and interviews.

My Review:

Welcome back to my bounce through this year’s Hugo nominations. Today’s foray into my quest to read the nominees that I didn’t get to last year is back in the Best Short Story (under 7,500 words) nominees with Aliette de Bodard’s “The Mausoleum’s Children”.

I put this particular story towards the front of the list because of the author. I’ve very much enjoyed her Universe of Xuya series – which is nominated for Best Series, BTW – and hoped for something in that series – although I should have known better because that’s against the rules – or at least something like that series – which would have been allowed.

I didn’t get what I was hoping for, but I think it did help that I have dipped into Xuya, as this is a story about returning to a place of former trauma, which just so happens to be a crashed ships’ graveyard.

Those crashed ships were once the kind of ship minds – at least sorta/kinda – who are some of the marvelous characters in Xuya. So I had the feeling this story was walking through their graves – and that bits of those minds still lingered, battered and broken and lost in endless nightmares.

But they’re not really the story. Instead, the story follows one human – or maybe I should say one person – who escaped from that ships’ graveyard as a child. Thuận Lộc is now an adult, forever scarred by her experiences, never fitting in anywhere in the world outside the mausoleum and desperate enough to return and attempt to save the people with whom she belongs – even if that attempt might mean her death.

In other words, she’s been living her whole, entire, supposedly ‘free’ life with a heaping helping of survivor’s guilt and she’s come to the conclusion that the only way out is through. One way or another.

Escape Rating B-: There’s a lot to unpack in this story and perhaps the suitcase it’s packed in wasn’t quite big enough in the first place.

The obvious bit is wrapped around Thuận Lộc’s need to belong, her guilt about not bringing her peeps out with her, and her attempt to assuage just a piece of that trauma. But there’s also more than a bit about abuse and its victims, Stockholm Syndrome writ very, very large, and the rapaciousness of greed for power in all forms and the way that some people try to escape evil by getting on top of it or allowing themselves to be co-opted by it.

I was, honestly, hoping for better from this story than I got. It wasn’t bad, I did like the central character and did feel for her, but the ending only worked because I was equating the ships in the mausoleum to the living ships from Xuya and that wasn’t in the text at all, it’s just the connection my brain went to in order to grasp something.

The premise at the heart of the story, trauma and survivors’ guilt and Stockholm Syndrome and the dangers of getting sucked back in but needing to go to expiate one’s demons – well, that’s been done much, much better in Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest – a story that seems even better in comparison with “The Mausoleum’s Children”.

Two down in the Short Story category, four to go in the weeks ahead.

A- #BookReview: The Citadel of Weeping Pearls by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
A- #BookReview: The Citadel of Weeping Pearls by Aliette de BodardThe Citadel of Weeping Pearls (Xuya Universe) by Aliette de Bodard
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction mystery, space opera
Series: Universe of Xuya
Pages: 164
Published by Jabberwocky Literary Agency on September 12, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

The Citadel of Weeping Pearls was a great wonder; a perfect meld between cutting edge technology and esoteric sciences-its inhabitants capable of teleporting themselves anywhere, its weapons small and undetectable and deadly. Thirty years ago, threatened by an invading fleet from the Dai Viet Empire, the Citadel disappeared and was never seen again. But now the Dai Viet Empire itself is under siege, on the verge of a war against an enemy that turns their own mindships against them; and the Empress, who once gave the order to raze the Citadel, is in desperate needs of its weapons. Meanwhile, on a small isolated space station, an engineer obsessed with the past works on a machine that will send her thirty years back, to the height of the Citadel's power. But the Citadel's disappearance still extends chains of grief and regrets all the way into the fraught atmosphere of the Imperial Court; and this casual summoning of the past might have world-shattering consequences... A new book set in the award-winning, critically acclaimed Xuya universe.

My Review:

I wasn’t expecting to go down the “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey” rabbit hole again after yesterday’s book, but here we are all the same. Only further back and further forward, with MUCH bigger consequences, even though the motives for the time travel are every single bit as personal and emotional as they were in before.

I’ve been nibbling at the vast, sprawling Universe of Xuya ever since I read The Tea Master and the Detective and fell hard for the way that the author dips in and out of a vast history and galaxy-spanning empire that takes root in a version of Earth’s history that simply managed to go down a different leg of the trousers of time.

If China founded a colony on the west coast of North America in the 15th century and started growing both eastwards and southwards, shoring up the Aztec, Maya and Incan regimes in Central and South America, bringing the scourge of smallpox to the continent early enough that immunity has developed before the conquistadors and the pilgrims invaded, the world changes. A lot.

As with all alternate history SF, once the butterfly has flapped its wings in a different direction, the changes ripple out in all directions, resulting in the universe we find in this amazing saga. A universe where human expansion from Earth is based on Chinese and Viet traditions – because they became different types of world powers than they did – or did not – in our history. (The author goes into the history and how it changed in quite a bit of helpful and fascinating detail on her website. An explanation I’ve been staring at for several days that probably had more than a little bit to do with my picking this book up now instead of the other things I had planned.)

But human is as human does, which ties back to those “wibbly wobbly, timey wimey bits” and the all too human regrets of an Empress who faces the threat of war and wishes she had not exiled her brilliant, untraditional, defiant heir many years ago, a daughter who has carried on sailing the same sea of regrets and recriminations, and a young girl grown up without the mother who was lost in that same explosion of fear, love and war.

In this SFnal universe, however, lost does not necessarily mean dead, and advanced engineering makes entirely too many things possible – including some that it quite possibly should not. Like time travel, even if, as in yesterday’s book, it’s not possible to change the past – only to visit.

And perhaps, just a little bit more.

Escape Rating A-: The more times I dip into this series and to the author’s work in general, the more I realize that all her stories are SF mysteries to some extent, and that most of them were published ahead of the current trend for that fascinating blend.

In Citadel, the mystery begins when a famed scientist and engineer disappears just as she is getting results in her greatest and most speculative experiment. She was searching for the Empress’ heir, Bright Princess Ngoc Minh, who disappeared into deep time, or the space between the stars, or somewhere believed to be utterly mythical – and took her entire rebellious colony of ships and orbital stations, collectively known as the Citadel of Weeping Pearls, along with everyone aboard them with her wherever it is she went.

With war on the horizon, the Empress needs her daughter’s genius and the weapons and technologies it created. But the promising trail has winked out of existence along with the missing engineer, only to reappear in the hands of a pair of amateurs on a far distant orbital station.

A station that seems to be in the process of going to join the Citadel though a time portal – with someone trapped on the other side.

But nothing is quite as it seems, as the possibility of going back and bringing the Citadel forward forces everyone who has been touched by its disappearance to rethink what they did then, what they’ve felt in the absence of the shooting star that is/was Bright Princess Ngoc Minh, and what they might do with a second chance.

Whether that’s a chance for closure, a chance to say goodbye, the possibility of reconciliation or the question of whether a miracle will be enough to save an empire rests in the minds, and the hearts, of every compelling character in this glimpse into the workings of the Universe of Xuya.

I’ll certainly be back the next time I have a flail and bail week like this one. Either with On a Red Station, Drifting which looks like it might be a bit of a direct prequel to The Citadel of Weeping Pearls, or Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight because it gathers together so many of the early stories in the series that were published in a scattered array over the years.

Review: Seven of Infinities by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Seven of Infinities by Aliette de BodardSeven of Infinities by Aliette de Bodard
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction mystery
Series: Universe of Xuya
Pages: 176
Published by Subterranean Press on October 31, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Vân is a scholar from a poor background, eking out a living in the orbitals of the Scattered Pearls Belt as a tutor to a rich family, while hiding the illegal artificial mem-implant she manufactured as a student.
Sunless Woods is a mindship—and not just any mindship, but a notorious thief and a master of disguise. She’s come to the Belt to retire, but is drawn to Vân’s resolute integrity.
When a mysterious corpse is found in the quarters of Vân’s student, Vân and Sunless Woods find themselves following a trail of greed and murder that will lead them from teahouses and ascetic havens to the wreck of a mindship--and to the devastating secrets they’ve kept from each other.

My Review:

This entry in the Universe of Xuya begins as a murder and a whole bunch of mysteries – not all of which are wrapped around the murder. Although, more are than first appears – which is true for the whole marvelous thing. There’s way more under every single surface than the characters initially believe. Still, it all begins when Student Uyên admits a forceful woman into her rooms, goes to make tea because she’s been taught to be a good hostess, and returns to find that her unidentified guest is dead on the floor.

Uyên may be on the cusp of adulthood, but she definitely needs a MUCH adultier adult to help her figure out this mess, so she calls for her teacher, Vân. Who, fortunately for them both, is in the midst of a discussion with her friend and fellow scholar, the mindship Sunless Woods. And an extremely fortunate happenstance for Vân, Uyên, and very much to her own surprise, Sunless Woods.

Van has secrets she can’t afford to have revealed. Sunless Woods has grown tireder and more BORED than she imagined keeping her own. While Uyên is in danger of being caught in the midst of a militia investigation designed to provide a guilty party for trial whether or not the party is guilty or not. Which Uyên, at the very least, most definitely is not.

Not that THAT little fact has ever stopped such an interrogation. After all, under enough torture, even the innocent will,  sooner or later, confess to something, as Vân knows all too well.

Except that Vân really was guilty of the crime her best friends were executed for. It just wasn’t murder. And they weren’t innocent either. Then again, they also weren’t executed – at least not until the levers of justice finally ground one of them under and deposited the body in her student’s rooms.

Not that Vân knows that, yet. Not that much of what Vân thinks she knows is remotely still true. Not the identity of that first corpse, not the reason her former friends have come hunting, and not an inkling of the true nature of the prize that they seek.

All Vân is certain of is that she and her student are in deep, deep, trouble, so she reluctantly reaches out to her only real friend, the mind ship Sunless Woods. Only to discover that she had even less idea about the secrets that her friend was keeping than even the mind ship had fathomed about her own.

Escape Rating A-: I had heard of the author’s vast, sprawling Universe of Xuya and was always intrigued by its loosely connected galaxy of short stories and novellas, but didn’t get the round tuit to actually pick it up somewhere in its vastness until The Tea Master and the Detective was nominated for the Hugo and the Nebula a few years ago and won the Nebula. That particular entry in the series was a great hook for this reader, as it is a science fiction mystery, a reimagining of Holmes and Watson as mind ships(!) and just a cracking good story all the way around.

So I kept my eye out for more entries in the series that were long enough to warrant separate publication, and therefore had a chance of eARCs. Which is rarer than one might think as most entries in this series are short stories that have been published in pretty much every SFF short fiction publication extant. They’ve not been collected, at least not yet, although I hope that happens.

Which led me, admittedly in a bit of a roundabout way, to Seven of Infinites, which I only remembered to unearth from the virtually towering TBR pile because the eARC of a new book in the Universe of Xuya popped up on NetGalley and I remembered I had this.

It turned out to be the right book at the right time, which is always lovely.

The Universe of Xuya, with its alternate Earth history deep in its background and its sentient population of both humans and mind ships – and possibly other species I haven’t’ met yet, puts together three things I wouldn’t have expected in the same ‘verse.

Which is a bit of a hint, because the leg of the trousers of time that produced the Universe of Xuya seems adjacent to Firefly’s deep background. It’s a history where the U.S. did not emerge as a world superpower and China has a much larger place on the pre-diaspora world’s stage.

As did Mexico, and that combination of cultural influences leads by a slightly more circuitous route to a culture that carries some resonances from Arkady Martine’s Teixcalaan in A Memory Called Empire, particular with its lyrical language and long story-filled names and titles and the way it centers and preserves its traditions over everyone else’s through implanted memories. .

But the central question of this universe as a whole is one that is asked often in SF, and is one of the central points of Ann Leckie’s short story Lake of Souls, coming in the collection of the same name next spring.

It’s the question of what, exactly, are ‘people’? Not what are humans, because that’s a relatively easy question – or at least it can be. But what makes a human – or a member of another species, even one from another planet or another origin story – people? Is it sentience? Is it sapience? Does it require physicality? Does it require that physicality in the same way that humans manifest it?

In the Universe of Xuya, mind ships are people. No more and no less, albeit more differently, than humans are. Society, built on big ships and small space stations out in the black of space, is made to contain both, together and separately.

At the heart of Seven of Infinities is a story about the privileges of power to perpetuate itself, the ties that bind teacher and student in true respect and scholarship, the importance of having old and dear friends who will be there for you when you need to bury a body – even if its your own – and the sure and certain knowledge that the heart wants what the heart wants, whether the heart is made of blood and tissue or wires and circuits.

I came for the mystery, stayed for the world and universe building, and fell surprisingly hard for the romance at its heart. I’ll be back the next time I’m looking for heartbreaking, lyrical, captivating SF. Or for Navigational Entanglements next year, whichever comes first.

Review: Of Charms, Ghosts and Grievances by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Of Charms, Ghosts and Grievances by Aliette de BodardOf Charms, Ghosts and Grievances (Dragons and Blades #2) by Aliette de Bodard
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: fantasy, mystery
Series: Dragons and Blades #2, Dominion of the Fallen #3.6
Pages: 110
on June 28th 2022
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo
Goodreads

From the author of the critically acclaimed Dominion of the Fallen trilogy comes a sparkling new romantic adventure full of kissing, sarcasm and stabbing.

It was supposed to be a holiday, with nothing more challenging than babysitting, navigating familial politics and arguing about the proper way to brew tea.

But when dragon prince Thuan and his ruthless husband Asmodeus find a corpse in a ruined shrine and a hungry ghost who is the only witness to the crime, their holiday goes from restful to high-pressure. Someone is trying to silence the ghost and everyone involved. Asmodeus wants revenge for the murder; Thuan would like everyone, including Asmodeus, to stay alive.

Chased by bloodthirsty paper charms and struggling to protect their family, Thuan and Asmodeus are going to need all the allies they can—and, as the cracks in their relationship widen, they'll have to face the scariest challenge of all: how to bring together their two vastly different ideas of their future...

A heartwarming standalone book set in a world of dark intrigue.

My Review:

I still need to read the Dominion of the Fallen trilogy, of which the Dragons and Blades series is an offshoot. But I really enjoyed the first Dragons and Blades book, Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders, so this followup has been whispering my name for a month now and I decided to listen to that whisper.

Little did I know that it was the whisper of blades dragging across silk and piercing the hearts of everything they touched.

This charming little story starts out as a bit of a family tale. A dragon prince and his fallen angel spouse take their adopted children on a bit of a picnic. It’s supposed to be fun. It’s supposed to quell the restlessness that both the children and the fallen angel are all too frequently subject to.

It’s supposed to keep the children from wrecking any further destruction on the dragon palace that is destroying itself with rot and mold entirely too quickly as it is.

It’s supposed to keep the fallen angel from threatening, maiming or killing any of his husband’s imperial relatives. Or anyone else who might or might not deserve it.

It’s not supposed to turn into a ghost story. But then, Asmodeus the fallen angel isn’t supposed to adopt a ghost child, either.

The dragon prince Thuan sees a hungry ghost who might (most probably, will beyond a shadow of a doubt) either kill his husband or get his husband killed or both. Not that it will matter after the fact either way.

Asmodeus sees a child who died terribly and alone for reasons that should never have happened in the first place. The ghost child starved to death in an empire that is supposed to at least feed all of its people.

But when it comes to Thuan and Asmodeus, not even a ghost story is simply about a ghost. Because Asmodeus sees a child who witnessed a murder, even if that murder happened after the child became a ghost. And Asmodeus can’t let either the murder or the ghost child go.

Not even if he has to tether the ghost child to his own life. Not even if his husband is scared to death that the ghost child is either going to kill him or get him killed before any of them can figure out the mystery that started it all.

Escape Rating A-: As I said I still haven’t read Dominion of the Fallen, so I know I’m missing some stuff, but after Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders I figured I had enough background to be going on with. Not that I wouldn’t love more – because I always love more backstory – but this read like it followed directly from Of Dragons and that the original trilogy was a bit more distant both in time and place.

Or I was just looking forward to this and didn’t care about the backstory for a change.

One of the bits that fascinates me about this subseries is the setting. The imperial court that dragon prince Thuan came from is underwater and his people all seem to be shapeshifters – or shapeshifter-ish. Thuan is a dragon who appears human – except for the horns. That’s Thuan on the cover of Of Charms, which makes me even more certain that it’s Asmodeus on the cover of Of Dragons – even though Asmodeus is not the dragon of the pair.

I’m wandering because this story does so much in its rather short length.

What I started with was the underwater nature of the dragon’s imperial capital. One of the pervasive elements of the capital is that everything is rotting. Water, even water kept back by powerful magic, still manages to do the damage that water naturally does all the time and everywhere. It’s constantly somewhat damp and damp causes mold and rot and rotting things eventually disintegrate.

But the story of the ghost and the murder and the reasons why those things happened are also about rot. The child should not have died of starvation. The shrine where the child became that ghost and witnessed the murder is a shrine that should never have been neglected and fallen into disrepair. The worship that was supposed to occur at the shrine should not have fallen into dust and rumor. It’s all rot.

And the story here is about something rotten, and it’s not really about the ghost. It’s about the murder and the reasons for it. The resolution of that part of the story was all the more chilling because underneath all of the fantasy setting and characters, the reasons for the murder were all too human, much too possible, and entirely too familiar – not from fantasy but from real life and real tragedy and unfortunately, dammit, the real news.

Just as the motives for murder and even god-killing (would that be “deicide” or deity-cide?) were entirely familiar, the heart of the conflict that arises between Thuan and Asmodeus, feels equally familiar. What shakes their marriage is fear of losing each other’s respect, regard and affection. Some of the reasons it occurs may be fantasy, but the emotions at the heart of the story, and in their hearts, felt equally real.

A slice of life story that seems like it’s going to be eaten by a hungry ghost, but in the end is almost consumed by someone entirely human and all the more dangerous for that.

Review: Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> book reviews
Review: Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders by Aliette de BodardOf Dragons, Feasts and Murders (Dragons and Blades, #1) by Aliette de Bodard
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: fantasy, mystery
Series: Dragons and Blades #1, Dominion of the Fallen #3.5
Pages: 80
on July 7, 2020
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads

Lunar New Year should be a time for familial reunions, ancestor worship, and consumption of an unhealthy amount of candied fruit.
But when dragon prince Thuan brings home his brooding and ruthless husband Asmodeus for the New Year, they find not interminable family gatherings, but a corpse outside their quarters. Asmodeus is thrilled by the murder investigation; Thuan, who gets dragged into the political plotting he’d sworn off when he left, is less enthusiastic.
It’ll take all of Asmodeus’s skill with knives, and all of Thuan’s diplomacy, to navigate this one—as well as the troubled waters of their own relationship….
A sparkling standalone book set in a world of dark intrigue.
A Note on ChronologySpinning off from the Dominion of the Fallen series, which features political intrigue in Gothic devastated Paris, this book stands alone, but chronologically follows The House of Sundering Flames. It’s High Gothic meets C-drama in a Vietnamese inspired world—perfect for fans of The Untamed, KJ Charles, and Roshani Chokshi’s The Gilded Wolves

My Review:

Is it my imagination or are there a lot more fantasy/mystery and SF/mystery blends then there used to be? And isn’t it a wonderful thing?!

Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders is a marvelous little fantasy mystery wrapped inside a bloodthirsty bit of political upheaval and tied up with a bow of romance sprinkled with the ashes of a fallen angel’s wings.

I picked this up because I had grabbed the second book in the Dragons and Blades series from Netgalley because I fell in love with the author’s work after reading The Tea Master and the Detective. Upon discovering that Of Charms, Ghosts and Grievances is the second book, I had to get the first book so I could read it first.

Little did I know that Dragons and Blades is a subseries of the author’s Dominion of the Fallen series and that I probably should have started there. Not that I couldn’t get into and didn’t enjoy Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders – because there are plenty of all three  so I most certainly did – but because the relationship between the married protagonists Asmodeus and Thuan hinted at depths that I couldn’t fully appreciate.

Which did not make this little gem sparkle any less, only that I wish I’d gotten ALL the nuance. Something I’ll have to remedy one of these days (I bought the rest of the series immediately!)

The mystery in this book is steeped in court intrigue. I wanted to say “degenerate” court intrigue to capture some of the flavor, but that’s not quite right – although it is close.

The undersea dragon court that Thuan came from is quite literally rotting from within and without. Whether the spells that keep the sea out of the palaces are fraying around the edges, or the empire is no longer able to attract and/or capable of supporting enough “people” to keep the rot and mildew out of the walls is an open question.

(I put “people” in quotation marks in the above because the “people” in this story are, for the most part, anthropomorphized sea creatures. Thuan is a dragon, as is the rest of the royal family of which he is a very minor part. The assistant who helps with their investigation is a crab. One of the court functionaries that Thuan deals with is a shark literally as well as figuratively.)

Thuan and Asmodeus are visiting Thuan’s former home to celebrate the Lunar New Year, Tet. While the reader is not quite certain whether Thuan’s marriage to Asmodeus – whose throne is in a Gothic, devastated Paris – constituted an actual ‘escape’ from the intrigues of his Second Aunt’s court or not, Thuan is very clear that while he does miss some members of his family he doesn’t miss being part of that court at all.

Considering that the beginning of their visit is punctuated by the murder of a member of the staff, Thuan’s departure may very well have saved his life.

But he still cares. They are still his family. Even the ones he doesn’t like all that much. Which makes it easy for his cousin to guilt him into solving one of her problems for her.

His cousin is the head of the secret police, and the murder was part of a plot to undermine the regime. His cousin wants Thuan and his husband to solve the murder and foil the plot to overthrow the empress. Thuan can unofficially question people and explore places that she cannot. And Thuan’s husband Asmodeus is a fallen angel, or something similarly demonic and bloodthirsty. (Exactly what Asmodeus is isn’t quite clear, but his name is a fairly big hint. This is one of those things that’s probably a bit clearer if one has read the Dominion of the Fallen series.) But whatever Asmodeus is exactly, he is clearly one scary dude.

From this point, the story becomes one of political intrigue, political skullduggery, and poking one nose or the other, whether Thuan’s or Asmodeus’, into places and people that shouldn’t concern them, while trying to figure out exactly what the nature of this nebulous plot against the empire is and how its perpetrators expect whatever they are doing to result in whatever they hope to achieve.

There are false arrests and true kidnappings and too many people who think that revolution will solve their problems without understanding what their problems really are, while Asmodeus just wants to get Thuan out of harm’s way before his sense of duty gets them both into water hotter than they can stand – or survive without creating an even bigger diplomatic incident then they are already in.

It’s a very frothy comedy of manners and mayhem couched in a murder mystery and wrapped in a rebellion. And it’s way more fun than I was expecting it to be.

Escape Rating B: This is not what I was planning to review this week. But we spent most of the weekend either taking the cat (Freddie) to the vet, sitting at the vet or worrying about the cat that was staying at the vet. (He’s still there but on the mend.) As a result I went hunting for something quick and absorbing and this looked like enough of a puzzler to get me hooked.

And so it proved. I know I didn’t get anywhere near all the references or the backstory, but it was still a very enjoyable fantasy mystery. Admittedly now I feel almost compelled to start The House of Shattered Wings, the first book in the Dominion of the Fallen series of which this is a part. (My virtually towering TBR pile towers ever higher…)

But even though I didn’t know nearly as much as I would have liked about Thuan and Asmodeus’ backstory, the way that the story worked hooked me the same way that Katharine Addison’s The Witness for the Dead did, in that it’s a mystery set in a fantasy world where the investigator is a minor court functionary who is poking their nose into things that no one in power really wants any noses poked into. And who will not let go no matter what the provocation – or the threats.

So it has the appeal of a mystery in that there’s a dead body and an investigator, while it also has the things that make epic fantasy work so well, just on a smaller scale. There are political shenanigans and court intrigues, everyone is trying to get one over on everyone else – whether they’re part of the murder plot or not – and the throne is under threat by forces unknown who either committed the murder or plan to take advantage of it.

All of which makes for a fascinatingly good time for readers who love those elements, of which I am most certainly one.

Now that I have both the previous books in the series and the next one I know I’ll be back to see what I missed AND to see what happens next!

Review: Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> book reviews
Review: Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de BodardFireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genres: fantasy
Pages: 112
Published by Tordotcom on February 9, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads


Award-winning author Aliette de Bodard returns with a powerful romantic fantasy that reads like The Goblin Emperor meets Howl’s Moving Castle in a pre-colonial Vietnamese-esque world.

Fire burns bright and has a long memory….
Quiet, thoughtful princess Thanh was sent away as a hostage to the powerful faraway country of Ephteria as a child. Now she’s returned to her mother’s imperial court, haunted not only by memories of her first romance, but by worrying magical echoes of a fire that devastated Ephteria’s royal palace.
Thanh’s new role as a diplomat places her once again in the path of her first love, the powerful and magnetic Eldris of Ephteria, who knows exactly what she wants: romance from Thanh and much more from Thanh’s home. Eldris won’t take no for an answer, on either front. But the fire that burned down one palace is tempting Thanh with the possibility of making her own dangerous decisions.
Can Thanh find the freedom to shape her country’s fate—and her own?

My Review:

I was expecting this to remind me of When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain, and it did, but not because of the tiger. It’s more that it reminded me of both of the books in the Singing Hills Cycle, not just Tiger but also the first book, The Empress of Salt and Fortune. Now that I think about it, it reminds me much more of Empress, in spite of that Tiger.

Like The Empress of Salt and Fortune, this feels like a story that is creating a legend along with its secondary world. And both stories feature women that their contemporaries saw as disposable and forgettable.

Thanh has spent her whole life living under her mother the empress’ disapproving eye – and thumb. Her accomplishments, her achievements, her very person swallowed up by the long shadows cast by her two older, more accomplished, more favored sisters.

Even the one time that Thanh was sent away in order to further the goals of her empire and empress, she failed to impress, she failed to learn, and she was sent home early and in disgrace.

But Thanh brought back more than anyone imagined from her time as a political hostage in powerful, dominant Ephteria.

The love, or at least the romantic obsession, of Ephteria’s Crown Princess Eldris, and the fire that destroyed the royal palace where she was held captive for her country’s “good” behavior.

Now Ephteria has come to Thanh’s home, to take possession of what she believes is hers by right of her superior power. Not just Thanh, but also her country. Not as outright conquest, but through the latest in a long list of political maneuvers where Eptheria trades guns for the autonomy of countries, including Thanh’s, piece by inexorable piece.

Until Thanh says “No”. To her mother, to Eldris, to Ephteria. And finally embraces the fire at the heart of the tiger – and her own.

Escape Rating A-: While a romance occurs, or rather an affair occurred and as the story ends it seems like a real romance is about to happen, this is not a romance. It’s a coming-of-age and/or coming-into-power story.

In fact, it’s Thanh’s realization about the truth of her relationship with Eldris that helps her come into her power. Her own power and not power derived from her relationship to anyone else.

Because this is also a story about politics and history. These events may take place in a fantasy setting, but this has all happened before and it will all happen again. Specifically, what is happening sounds all too much like the way that the British Raj swallowed up India, and the way that the British and other Western forces inserted themselves into China.

So it’s clear what the Ephterians want. They want control – and they’re taking it – one concession at a time. In order to maintain her country’s security, Thanh’s mother needs to acquire more weapons to protect herself from the surrounding regions. But Ephteria encroaches just a little bit more on that precious independence in every negotiation and with every shipment.

Eldris’ desire for Thanh, to capture the one who got away, is part and parcel of that encroachment. Their relationship was never about love – at least not on Eldris’ part no matter what she might call it.  It’s always and only been about possession, and eventually, subjugation. A situation that Thanh almost falls back into, with eyes wide shut, in order to save her country the only way she knows how, by giving in to the greater power – in this case the power of Eldris – in order to stave off the depredations of an even greater threat, Ephteria’s armies.

So this whole story revolves around the politics of the relationship of Thanh’s subservient country to Eldris’ dominant one, and it’s personified in the relationship between Thanh and Eldris.

But Thanh can only come into her power when she steps away from that subservient path, subservient to both her mother and Eldris. When Thanh takes hold of the reins of her own life, of the fire in her own heart and mind and soul, she’s able to forge a new path for her country and most of all, for herself.

And that’s what sets this story on fire – along with the heart of fire elemental in the shape of a tiger.

Review: The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de Bodard

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A Reviews> book reviews
Review: The Tea Master and the Detective by Aliette de BodardThe Tea Master and the Detective (The Universe of Xuya) by Aliette de Bodard
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: mystery, science fiction
Series: Universe of Xuya
Pages: 96
Published by Subterranean Press on March 31, 2018
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

Welcome to the Scattered Pearls Belt, a collection of ring habitats and orbitals ruled by exiled human scholars and powerful families, and held together by living mindships who carry people and freight between the stars. In this fluid society, human and mindship avatars mingle in corridors and in function rooms, and physical and virtual realities overlap, the appareance of environments easily modified and adapted to interlocutors or current mood.

A transport ship discharged from military service after a traumatic injury, The Shadow's Child now ekes out a precarious living as a brewer of mind-altering drugs for the comfort of space-travellers. Meanwhile, abrasive and eccentric scholar Long Chau wants to find a corpse for a scientific study. When Long Chau walks into her office, The Shadow's Child expects an unpleasant but easy assignment. When the corpse turns out to have been murdered, Long Chau feels compelled to investigate, dragging The Shadow's Child with her.

As they dig deep into the victim's past, The Shadow's Child realises that the investigation points to Long Chau's own murky past--and, ultimately, to the dark and unbearable void that lies between the stars...

My Review:

The Nebula Awards shortlist came out this week. I was reminded to take a look at it by someone on the Library Journal Committee that picked the best SF and Fantasy for 2018 for their annual wrap-up because four of our picks are on the Nebula shortlist, as well as a couple of titles that ALMOST made it.

Looking at the list, I noticed a book that I picked up a while ago, as it was recommended in the context of being an “out of this world” Sherlock Holmes pastiche. It has been said that every generation reinvents Sherlock Holmes for themselves, and The Tea Master and the Detective definitely qualifies as one of the more inventive futuristic reinventions, right up there with Sara Holmes and Janet Watson of A Study in Honor.

In The Tea Master and the Detective, we have a tale set in this author’s loosely connected Universe of Xuya series. It’s an alternate history universe where China discovered America before Christopher Columbus. That discovery altered the history of the world, as such a momentous change would. China turned outward instead of inward, and seems to have become the dominant power on Earth before humanity reached the stars.

An influence that is still felt at the time of this story, probably taking place somewhere in the alternate 22nd century – if not later. (The series is made up of short stories and novellas, and they have been scattered in publication throughout every magazine currently publishing SF and Fantasy. I wish they were all collected somewhere because I’d like to read them ALL!)

As I have not yet read the series, I came into this story with no previous knowledge – and I absolutely loved it. While the entire history of the universe isn’t explained – and it shouldn’t be – this little gem still feels complete. I just want to know more. (I always want to know more.)

The detective, in this case the mysterious Long Chau, claims to be writing a thesis on the decomposition of bodies in the deep places of space. Places that seem to be both theoretical and real, although a bit more of each of those elements than might be presupposed at first glance.

The thing about the deep places is that they are both real and unreal, and the unreality of those places affects the human mind – to its detriment. Humans usually travel those deep places safely within the bounds of a ship controlled by a “shipmind”. A ship that is self-aware.

What makes this story so interesting is that the “Watson” to Long Chau’s “Holmes” is a damaged shipmind named The Shadow’s Child who is psychologically unable to travel the deep places – so she makes her living brewing teas that help humans survive the unreality of the places she no longer feels able to go.

Long Chau goes to the fringes of the deep places to find a dead body. But what she’s really looking for is a lost soul. Her own. That she also finds the soul of the scarred shipmind forges a unlikely partnership.

One I hope to see again.

Escape Rating A: This is lovely. It combines two ideas that really shouldn’t have much to do with each other, but work together anyway – much as the two protagonists really shouldn’t have much to do with each other.

Shipminds are people. And this society has places for them and recognizes them as people. The Shadow’s Child has to deal with many of the things that anyone else does, including meddling family members and paying the rent. She will also remind readers of Anne McCaffrey’s classic stories of the brainship Helga, The Ship Who Sang.

The Shadow’s Child is the Watson to Long Chau’s Holmes. The pastiche part of this story is fairly subtle – if you’re not interested, it’s not there. If you are interested, the way that Long Chau refers to herself as a “consulting detective”, her endless deductions of what people, including shipminds, are thinking, feeling and doing as well as her constant use of drugs to stimulate her mind are there to remind readers of some of Sherlock Holmes’ habits, both the more and the less savory of them.

The case that they ultimately find themselves on is an investigation that no one wants solved – and it nearly gets them both killed. But along the way they learn to respect if not necessarily trust each other, and we get to explore a fascinating universe that has plenty of stories in it that are worth telling.

I look forward to ferreting out more of this series as soon as possible!