Ancillary Reviews
Oct. 9th, 2013 02:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bluegargantuaHey,
So I forgot to mention that I'd picked up a copy of Boxers and Saints by Gene Luen Yang. This a box set of graphic novels one called Boxer the other called Saint. It looks at the Boxer rebellion in China through the eyes of two young people. One a young man who joins the Boxer rebellion to fight off the foreign devils and the other a young girl who is abandoned by her family and taken in by Christian missionaries.
Their stories intersect and both of them end pretty badly.
The story and artwork is very good and one common theme is that both protagonists see visions of a world informed by their worldviews. Bao, the hero of Boxers, sees visions of iconic Chinese Opera characters and soon transforms into them -- his culture arming and armoring him to defeat the invaders. In Saints Vibiana receives visions of Joan of Arc and sees her struggle to free the French as parallel to her struggle to protect he new-found home.
There's one aspect of Saints that's either a criticism or a notable feature, I'm not quite sure which. Vibiana sees Christianity through the lens of her village beliefs and upbringing -- she initially likens Christ with a devil or supernatural being not much different from local gods. It's not clear that she fully understands what's being imparted to her. So on one hand, it's a bit of a knock because her story seems to be muddied on that misunderstanding. On the other hand, a muddied misunderstanding seems appropriate.
The books can be read in any order. I read Boxer and then Saint and I think that's possibly the better way because of how Saints provides a more complete closure (well I think).
The other book I recently finished was Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. This is a sci-fi novel that wrestles with some big ideas and was quite entertaining.
The book follows One Esk. At one time, she was the Justice of Toren, a massive troopship filled with former enemies of the Radch who had been converted to drone soldier service and frozen until needed. One Esk was one of those troopers, an extension of the ship. On a routine annexation of a planet, things went wrong and One Esk escaped the destruction of her ship and in the process becoming the totality of Justice of Toren. Now One Esk has a new mission, to kill Anaander Mianaai, the Emperor of the Radch. The Emperor has also split her mind over dozens of bodies and control over the most advanced tehcnology. To kill the Emperor, One Esk is going to need some very special tools.
One of the delightful conceits of this book is that the Radch are human (almost no aliens appear in this book), but they are fairly androgynous people and their culture plays down differences in gender leaving only the pronoun "she". Further, One Esk, despite inhabiting a human body is still an AI and humans all look alike to her. So she refers to everyone she encounters as "she" unless otherwise corrected or tipped off by someone else. Thus, the gender of pretty much everyone in the book is indeterminate. It made for interesting reading.
Despite galactic empires, high-tech assassination plots and the like, the book is relatively light on action and much of the story is told in flashbacks that build up to the reasons why One Esk is out to kill her maker. The book also focuses on how an AI might think of itself when "itself" is a dozen troopers stationed about a city on a planet being orbited by her ship-self, on which more of its troopers are assisting the small human crew. Once it starts down this road there's a fair amount of rumination over a sense of self and what that all means.
The book is docked points for clearly indicating a sequel, but the book is pretty complete on it's own. It's not quite space opera like Banks (this might be viewed as pre-Culture level space opera), but it's an intriguing book to read.
later
Tom
So I forgot to mention that I'd picked up a copy of Boxers and Saints by Gene Luen Yang. This a box set of graphic novels one called Boxer the other called Saint. It looks at the Boxer rebellion in China through the eyes of two young people. One a young man who joins the Boxer rebellion to fight off the foreign devils and the other a young girl who is abandoned by her family and taken in by Christian missionaries.
Their stories intersect and both of them end pretty badly.
The story and artwork is very good and one common theme is that both protagonists see visions of a world informed by their worldviews. Bao, the hero of Boxers, sees visions of iconic Chinese Opera characters and soon transforms into them -- his culture arming and armoring him to defeat the invaders. In Saints Vibiana receives visions of Joan of Arc and sees her struggle to free the French as parallel to her struggle to protect he new-found home.
There's one aspect of Saints that's either a criticism or a notable feature, I'm not quite sure which. Vibiana sees Christianity through the lens of her village beliefs and upbringing -- she initially likens Christ with a devil or supernatural being not much different from local gods. It's not clear that she fully understands what's being imparted to her. So on one hand, it's a bit of a knock because her story seems to be muddied on that misunderstanding. On the other hand, a muddied misunderstanding seems appropriate.
The books can be read in any order. I read Boxer and then Saint and I think that's possibly the better way because of how Saints provides a more complete closure (well I think).
The other book I recently finished was Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. This is a sci-fi novel that wrestles with some big ideas and was quite entertaining.
The book follows One Esk. At one time, she was the Justice of Toren, a massive troopship filled with former enemies of the Radch who had been converted to drone soldier service and frozen until needed. One Esk was one of those troopers, an extension of the ship. On a routine annexation of a planet, things went wrong and One Esk escaped the destruction of her ship and in the process becoming the totality of Justice of Toren. Now One Esk has a new mission, to kill Anaander Mianaai, the Emperor of the Radch. The Emperor has also split her mind over dozens of bodies and control over the most advanced tehcnology. To kill the Emperor, One Esk is going to need some very special tools.
One of the delightful conceits of this book is that the Radch are human (almost no aliens appear in this book), but they are fairly androgynous people and their culture plays down differences in gender leaving only the pronoun "she". Further, One Esk, despite inhabiting a human body is still an AI and humans all look alike to her. So she refers to everyone she encounters as "she" unless otherwise corrected or tipped off by someone else. Thus, the gender of pretty much everyone in the book is indeterminate. It made for interesting reading.
Despite galactic empires, high-tech assassination plots and the like, the book is relatively light on action and much of the story is told in flashbacks that build up to the reasons why One Esk is out to kill her maker. The book also focuses on how an AI might think of itself when "itself" is a dozen troopers stationed about a city on a planet being orbited by her ship-self, on which more of its troopers are assisting the small human crew. Once it starts down this road there's a fair amount of rumination over a sense of self and what that all means.
The book is docked points for clearly indicating a sequel, but the book is pretty complete on it's own. It's not quite space opera like Banks (this might be viewed as pre-Culture level space opera), but it's an intriguing book to read.
later
Tom
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Date: 2013-10-09 07:54 pm (UTC)