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Translation State
May. 7th, 2024 10:37 pmIn the Imperial Radch universe, Enae's life gets upturned from sie's previous circumscribed existence as sie is given the task to track down someone who has been missing for a couple of hundred years; at the same time, Reet struggles with never fitting in, and Qven grows up in a milieu that is alien to a human POV.
So for some reason, the only part of this I knew before starting was a little bit of Enae's opening dilemma. It was a much more complex and fascinating book than my priors made it sound! Which I should expect from Leckie; I love about her work that it always has a whole lot of threads running through it.
It's the sort of book where there are so many things I could talk about, but it turns out that I really only want to talk about a couple of things enough to type it out:
a) I really really like alien books from the POV of the alien, which probably says something about me, but anyway, I really like the idea that things look very different from the alien's POV and that they might have very different motivations and imperatives than a human in many ways. (This is something I loved about the Ancillary books.) This book kind of did that superficially -- Qven's upbringing is certainly very, very different than a human's and I enjoyed reading that (unsurprisingly, I especially enjoyed reading Qven's viewpoints about human scripts) -- but as the book goes on, I feel like it becomes clear that e's upbringing is just flat abusive and there's just nothing good or acceptable about it, which makes it much less interesting to me.
b) There is one character in the book that was absolutely my favorite -- who does try to do the right thing to the extent they are capable of, for no other reason than that they feel it's the right thing, as they are likely to not have gotten any reward or happy ending from it. I am speaking, of course, of ( Spoilers. )
I'm really glad this was Hugo homework, because like everything I've read by Leckie it was very worth reading. I still prefer Some Desperate Glory for the Hugo because it played to all my tropes, engaged even more with questions that really interest me, and blew my mind in ways that TS didn't, but TS would be a worthy Hugo winner, and I could totally see others preferring it to SDG.
So for some reason, the only part of this I knew before starting was a little bit of Enae's opening dilemma. It was a much more complex and fascinating book than my priors made it sound! Which I should expect from Leckie; I love about her work that it always has a whole lot of threads running through it.
It's the sort of book where there are so many things I could talk about, but it turns out that I really only want to talk about a couple of things enough to type it out:
a) I really really like alien books from the POV of the alien, which probably says something about me, but anyway, I really like the idea that things look very different from the alien's POV and that they might have very different motivations and imperatives than a human in many ways. (This is something I loved about the Ancillary books.) This book kind of did that superficially -- Qven's upbringing is certainly very, very different than a human's and I enjoyed reading that (unsurprisingly, I especially enjoyed reading Qven's viewpoints about human scripts) -- but as the book goes on, I feel like it becomes clear that e's upbringing is just flat abusive and there's just nothing good or acceptable about it, which makes it much less interesting to me.
b) There is one character in the book that was absolutely my favorite -- who does try to do the right thing to the extent they are capable of, for no other reason than that they feel it's the right thing, as they are likely to not have gotten any reward or happy ending from it. I am speaking, of course, of ( Spoilers. )
I'm really glad this was Hugo homework, because like everything I've read by Leckie it was very worth reading. I still prefer Some Desperate Glory for the Hugo because it played to all my tropes, engaged even more with questions that really interest me, and blew my mind in ways that TS didn't, but TS would be a worthy Hugo winner, and I could totally see others preferring it to SDG.
