Locus, November 2007
Aliette de Bodard’s
“Deer Flight” is an affecting fantasy about Lesper, a wizard whose wife had
been a deer-woman, and had returned to the forest. He meets another deer-woman,
and learns that she has been attacked – and his wife killed – by his successor
as the King’s wizard. The ending, and the sacrifice to be demanded of Lesper,
is a well-done surprise.
Locus, May 2009
Aliette de Bodard
has caught my eye with some strong traditional fantasy tales and some fine work
set in an alternate history ruled by the Aztecs. “The Lonely Heart”, from Black
Static for February/March, is a different and darker tale. (Though de
Bodard has always shown a great deal of range of both subject matter and tone,
perhaps influenced by her mixed background: a French/Vietnamese writer working
in English.) This story concerns a woman who rescues a forlorn teenaged
prostitute only to find her husband too interested in her – and to learn that
the girl is something rather different than she had expected.
Locus, February 2011
And Aliette de Bodard,
in “Shipmaker”, deals with an
unusual means of growing the minds that control spaceships in her Chinese/Aztec
dominated future: they are gestated in human wombs, matched to newly built
ships. This story concerns a ship designer who wants her own children, but
feels denied that opportunity due to her sexuality, and her ambivalent feelings
about the woman who is to bear the mind for her latest ship.
De Bodard returns to that idea in the February Asimov’s, with “Shipbirth”, set in the same future. Here a Mexica doctor comes to
examine the mother of a newly born mind that died before implanting in its
ship. The mother seems to have been fatally damaged by the problem birth. The
doctor was born a woman, but chose to change her gender after her sister died,
also birthing a ship’s mind. She feels, it seems, almost trapped between male
and female roles, and tortured by her responsibility to decide if the woman she
is examining can be saved. It’s a pretty effective sad story.
Locus, July 2010
The veterans show well, but the most interesting work comes
from a couple of newcomers. Aliette de
Bodard offers “The Jaguar House, in
Shadow”, set in her alternate history in which China
reached the New World before Europe , which
resulted among other things in continued Aztec prominence. (Similar ideas of
course motivate Chris Roberson’s long series of novels and stories, some of
which also appear in Asimov’s.) This story deals with a revolt of Knights of
the Jaguar House against the corrupt leadership of their nation – a revolt
opposed by the Commander of the House, once a friend of the rebels. The action
centers on an attempt to rescue one Knight from torture, but the heart of the
story is a question of pragmatism vs. honor, and it works quite well.
Locus, February 2012
Still better is a remarkable Aliette de Bodard story,
“Scattered Along the River of Heaven”. It presents a series of snapshots
from the life of Xu Anshi, one of the leaders of a revolution by the Mheng
against the San-Tay on a space colony, alternated with the visit of one Xu Wen
to San-Tay for her grandmother's funeral. The story cunningly fills in the most
of the blanks – who these people are, what they did, why they did it, and where
they ended up; wrapping it up with the realization that there were other key
players along. It's a story of political promises and betrayal, of different
sorts of oppression, of loyalty and family – and it's a deeply science
fictional story as well.
Locus, August 2012
Aliette de Bodard's “Immersion”, in June's Clarkesworld,
addresses cultural imperialism. As we have come to expect from de Bodard, the
story is thought-provoking and challenging, and also built around a nice Sfnal
idea. The story is set on a space station inhabited by apparently
Asian-descended people. Quy's family runs a restaurant often catering to
“Galactic” tourists. The central Sfnal maguffin is “immerser” technology, which
helps people take on different appearances, and speak different languages, to
deal with people of other cultures. Quy uses it, begrudgingly, to deal with
customers. Her more rebellious sister is more interested in understanding how
the technology works. And, more affectingly, one visitor is the wife of a
Galactic man, and she seems to use the tech to fit in better with her husband's
milieu. But this only distances her from her own self, her own history. All
this is very intriguing, and as I said quite thought-provoking.
Locus, October 2012
Also enjoyable is another of Aliette de Bodard's
stories of spaceships controlled by human brains born to human women. “Ship's
Brother” deals with the reaction of the older brother of one of these
“ships” to the effect this birth has on their mutual mother. Well done, pretty
powerful stuff.
Locus, December 2012
Best of all is “Heaven Under Earth”, by Aliette de
Bodard. Liang Pao is the First Spouse of a man on a planet where for some
reason women are rare. Liang, thus, is genetically male but has been altered to
be able to bear implanted children, as with his fellow Spouses. But now he must
welcome a surprise – an expensive female bride. His first concern is for his
own position, but he soon understands that the woman is in a difficult position
herself – an aging ex-prostitute who had no interest in this marriage. Again,
the hints of the society in the background are very interesting, and the
predicament and position of Liang Pao is involving and affecting.
Locus, Feburary 2013
Aliette
de Bodard's On a Red Station, Drifting, is another in her Xuya alternate
history, in which the Chinese and Mexica (i.e. Axtecs) have become great powers,
including, eventually, space-based powers. Several recent stories have been set
in a colonized Galaxy, on space stations, some controlled by the Dai Viet. This
one is set on a remote station, Prosper, controlled by an obscure branch of a
powerful family, and run by a Mind, who is also one of the family's ancestors.
To this station comes Linh, a cousin, fleeing an uprising against the Emperor.
Linh has spoken out against the Emperor for his failure to confront the rebels,
and so she is potentially a traitor, and also racked with guilt for leaving her
previous post under threat. Quyen is the leader of Prosper, and she is not
confident in her abilities, and also worried that the station's Mind seems to
be decaying. All this seems to portend disaster, amid small betrayals and
slights between everyone involved. The authentic (to my eyes) non-Western
background powerfully shapes an original and ambitious tale.
Locus,
January 2014
“The Waiting Stars”, by Aliette de Bodard, is
one of the stronger ones – telling in parallel of a mission to rescue an
abandoned Ship – and its Mind – from a “graveyard”; and of the difficult lives
of a group of refugee children brought up in an Institution in the country of
their enemies – with the memory of their true heritage gone. The connection
between the two threads takes a while to come clear, and when it does it's
pretty striking. Alas, the resolution strained my belief a bit – but the story
is pretty neat on the whole.
Locus, May 2014
Aliette de Bodard's “The Breath of War” has a
really neat science-fantastical premise: women in this world breath people into
life from stone, who become their companions, and are necessary to breath life
in turn into children. Rechan is a somewhat rebellious woman, who abandoned her
stone brother in the mountains as war broke out – and now that the war is over
she climbs back to the place she left him. There's a secret of course: the true
nature of the Stoneperson she gave life to, and it's an interesting secret
leading to a moving resolution. This, I suppose, is Science Fantasy at its
purest: a mostly rational-seeming world, with mostly Sfnal imagery, but with a
thoroughly implausible, but very fruitful, central conceit.
Locus, March 2015
Aliette
de Bodard's “Three
Cups of Grief, by Starlight”, is a moving look from three points of view at
the legacy of a dead scientist: her son, cheated of her mem-implants because
her knowledge was too important; her daughter, a spaceship, struggling to
properly grieve for her; and her protegée,
less grateful for the mem-implants than stifled by them. De Bodard's extended
future is rich enough by now to allow seemingly endless small pieces set in its
interstices: this is a good example.
Locus,
December 2015
Asimov's had another of those months full of
pretty solid stories with none that quite overwhelmed me. The anchor story is a
huge novella by Aliette de Bodard, “The Citadel of Weeping Pearls”,
a time travel story about the escape of the Empress' daughter in the title
Citadel, and the quest of a variety of people to find her, perhaps in the past;
while the Empress worries about her succession, and about the threat from a
neighbor empire. Lots of cool stuff here.
No comments:
Post a Comment