The Best of All Possible Worlds, Karen Lord

The Best of All Possible Worlds is not a perfect book. I can sympathise with various of the lower-star reviews out there. It’s a quiet book, contemplative, and ultimately despite the backdrop it’s basically a romance against a sci-fi, post-disaster backdrop. It’s not quite Ursula Le Guin, but I quite liked the slow progression. It had the feel of something unfolding, rather than a roller-coaster ride, and that’s just fine by me.

I think some potentially problematic things are brought up by the plot and dealt with varying degrees of success. The domestic abuse by telepathy ties in with the plot in a couple of ways, so I don’t understand people saying that doesn’t fit. I’m very tired of the whole “you included this [minority] character just to get brownie points” idea. Maybe there are some people out there who do that, but I don’t see why a character has to be fully explored with all characteristics plot-relevant to be included. Finding a big long explanation for a gender neutral, essentially asexual character isn’t necessary, if that’s the way the character works. And Lian worked fine in that sense, for me — and I think that aspect of their identity was relevant, in some ways.

I mean, you don’t include other stripes of queer characters and then look at them with a magnifying glass to justify their inclusion. Some people are just queer, why can’t characters just be queer? And why oh why do you need to know what’s going on downstairs for trans* people?

All in all, I didn’t love this the way I enjoyed Redemption in Indigo, but I’m glad I got round to reading it. (Finally.)