There were defiant firecrackers; noisy, screaming processions of mourners; drunken meals which degenerated into fights; all the while, Xích Si, leaning against a wall in the darkness of the hold where the pirates had imprisoned her, prayed to her long-dead ancestors to be forgotten. When her friend Ngá suggests they join a trade ship, she has no choice but to take the risk and head out into the void. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. She is the Rice Fish, a mindship and leader of a notorious band of space pirates, and she makes the proposal to Xich Si, a young captive, who accepts for the protection her status as wife will afford.

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But they are indeed being watched, and as the viewpoint shifts to that of the watchers, there are more revelations to come.In 1643, a small group of civil war soldiers make a hasty retreat from the battlefield, hoping to find safety in the trees. When her feelings change, she initiates sex in the normally forbidden “heartroom” of the ship with the semi-solid avatar, in an orgy of surreal perversity.

The Red Scholar’s Wake: A Xuya Universe Romance (Xuya

A traditional structure and simple yet elegant style add to the impression that these modern tales could be timeless classics. With little options (even indentured pirates face corporeal punishment in the empire), Xích Si accepts the offer. This debut novel taps into that fascination, telling parallel stories on separate timelines in a fictional patch of English woodland.It turns out that Soviet cosmonauts have discovered a hatch set into that very structure, and in a desperate attempt to beat the Russians at understanding their discovery, Ziggy is to be one of the crew sent on a mission to the moon. I had not read any other books from this universe previous to this one so I was a little lost at first regarding the technology and world building.

The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard: Book Review The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard: Book Review

I seriously can’t get enough of the antics of intergalactic infidels nor the infinitely delicious potential of sentient spaceships. For a moment its owner was only a dark silhouette in the doorway, and then the lights came on in the hold, and some kind of ambient filter descended, silencing the noises from outside.

Rice Fish’s robes reflect swirling stars and nebulae, her eyes are the black of the void and – “she tasted like brine, like oil – a sharp tang on Xích Si’s palate – the lips under her faintly oily, faintly pulsing with a beat too slow to be a human, tightening in response and pressing back, and Xích Si was afire now, breasts and belly aching…” Phew! In her thesis, Ziggy concluded that these “gods” may have been aliens, and a cigar-shaped structure revealed in photographs of a lunar crater could be their spaceship, the “Thunderbolt Vehicle” described in Buddhist writings. The tension and weirdness keep ratcheting up in both narrative strands, making for a memorable, spooky tale. Xích Si is a scavenger, scraping together a meager living salvaging and selling whatever tech she can.

There are quite a few content warnings for this book including torture, violence, death, and the indenture of captives.The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard is the latest science fiction story from the author’s Xuya universe. The words, at first barely a whisper, passed through the fleet, gaining strength as they went – from the largest midships to the smaller three-plates craft, from the open-the-voids to the planet hoppers. Fortunately, the worst of which, child abuse and rape, do not occur on page but they are referenced in the narrative. A ship and a human, the founders of the Red Banner pirate alliance that plagued the Twin Streams, the two asteroid groups stretching in the shadow of the Fire Palace, the red-hot mass that was long-dead civilization’s destroyed homeland. Prepared for the worst, she is surprised by not only who her captor is, but also by what she proposes.