On A Red Station, Drifting, Aliette de Bodard
I kept not picking this up for the longest time because I had a vague memory of reading it and not ‘getting’ it, and thus I also avoided other books in the same world. Wrong! I’ve no idea what book I was thinking of, but it wasn’t this one: some aspects of the culture are a little bit opaque to me, like the significance of the poem that is a key moment for the characters, but it was a fascinating read. The characters are complex: not necessarily likeable, in fact most of them aren’t, but human. You can see why they do the things they do; it’s complicated, and there’s no easy answer to who is right and who is wrong.
I think I was most intrigued by the Honoured Ancestress, and her place in the story. Of course I thought of Iain M. Bank’s Culture novels first, and the Minds, but clearly this isn’t just like that. I found the AI’s distress at falling apart and failing one of the most affecting parts of the story: feeling your mind crumble from within…
Definitely interested in reading more in this world. Not sure what book steered me wrongly away from this through resemblance in title or cover, but it was lying.
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