Walking to Aldebaran, Adrian Tchaikovsky

Received to review via Netgalley

I’m really late to this one, I know, but it caught my eye on my Kindle today and I dug in. It was a longer read than it looked, but it still went down pretty easy; by 60% of the way through, I had a solid idea about where it was going. I hadn’t quite caught all the nuances, though. But this is starting at the end.

To start at the beginning, Walking to Aldebaran is a novella-length story about Gary Rendell, a somewhat Mark Watney-esque character who is lost within the depths of a Big Dumb Object. The Mark Watney comparison is mostly referring to the narration, which has a very similar tone; Rendell, however, is rather less ingenious and rather more to putting his head down and charging at whatever it is that’s bothering him. Mostly, he just wants to go home, but the Crypts (his name for the Big Dumb Object) are vast, confusing, and full of physics that makes no sense.

I’ll be honest: while reading it, I was mostly thinking about how much more it would be up my wife’s alley. There’s a lot of weirdness going on, and some horror elements, that all in all reminds me of the work of Jeff Vandermeer or China Miéville. The narration is fairly straightforward — at times, Gary starts talking about how he got there, telling the story of the expedition and how the Big Dumb Object was discovered, but mostly it’s pretty linear and I thought I knew what was happening by around about 60% of the way through.

However, Tchaikovsky is not without his tricks. I didn’t quite catch on to everything until I peeked at other people’s reviews/discussions on Goodreads. That’s all I’ll say; too much would spoil it. It’s possible that I was having a particularly dim day not to spot it right away, of course, but I still appreciated it very much once I “got” it.

Overall, quite enjoyable, and I think it’s possible this is one that will stick in my head, despite it not being an outright awesome match for my reading tastes.

Rating: 4/5

The Empress of Salt and Fortune, Nghi Vo

Received to review via Netgalley; publication date 24th March 2020

The Empress of Salt and Fortune is described as an “Asian period drama”, which sounds about right to me. It opens with a cleric, Chih, whose job is to document events and stories, in order that they might be remembered and understood in the future. They travel with a hoopoe, Almost Brilliant, who is a neixin. The neixin work alongside clerics, learning stories and passing them on. Chih is eager to catalogue the stories of the place where the recently deceased Empress was originally exiled from the court, prior to her rise to power. They’re lucky enough to meet Rabbit, an old woman who served the Empress before and during her exile.

The story is parcelled out in little snatches: Rabbit curates the story, presenting what she wants Chih to understand and slowly bringing them to the understanding of it. I found myself not very surprised by the reveal by the time we got to the ending, but the slow spinning out of the story worked for me. It feels very fairytale-like, with most of the characters very opaque, but the little glimpses we see are enough to flesh it out — at least enough to keep me interested through the course of the novella.

Just to note, I’m unclear whether Chih is actually non-binary rep. As far as I remember the early part of the book, Rabbit assumes they are female until she realises they’re a cleric. So it sounds more to me like a cultural thing, rather than an identity thing per se, and it isn’t really explored. It’s just a fact. There is also a brief reference to a lesbian relationship, but it’s very brief and not really very important to the story. There’s queerness woven into the story, but I didn’t feel it was particularly intended to be the centrepiece.

It feels like there’s so much potential for more stories in this world — stories about the clerics themselves, as well as the stories they discover and record. I’d be interested to read more if there ever is more, but it does also work as a self-contained story.

Rating: 4/5