The Red Scholar's Wake: Shortlisted for the 2023 Arthur C. Clarke Award

Product Information

In her thesis, Ziggy concluded that these “gods” may have been aliens, and a cigar-shaped structure revealed in photographs of a lunar crater could be their spaceship, the “Thunderbolt Vehicle” described in Buddhist writings. The Soviets are in attack mode when the Americans arrive, and there are casualties, but before long members of both crews have entered the alien vehicle, where distinctions between hallucination and reality are blurred. Rice Fish’s robes reflect swirling stars and nebulae, her eyes are the black of the void and – “she tasted like brine, like oil – a sharp tang on Xích Si’s palate – the lips under her faintly oily, faintly pulsing with a beat too slow to be a human, tightening in response and pressing back, and Xích Si was afire now, breasts and belly aching…” Phew! Sworn to secrecy, she learns the reason is connected to her postgraduate studies into ancient religious beliefs about gods on the moon. They would press her into service as a bondsperson on their own ships, using her until she broke, if she was lucky.

The Red Scholar’s Wake: A Xuya Universe Romance (Xuya

Settings range from a library in Bangkok to a rundown hotel in Berlin, from a prison to an artist’s studio, and most of the characters have connections to the arts or scholarship. This is the third book in a sequence that began with the award-winning Children of Time, but can be read on its own as a thoroughly absorbing and enjoyable novel. Once inside, their phones and GPS units fail, and they are soon hopelessly lost, seeing the landscape change before their eyes and feeling an invisible, malevolent presence at their backs. Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties.It turns out that Soviet cosmonauts have discovered a hatch set into that very structure, and in a desperate attempt to beat the Russians at understanding their discovery, Ziggy is to be one of the crew sent on a mission to the moon. Xích Si tried to fold herself as small as possible against the bulwark, hands scrabbling for purchase against smooth, oily metal. A traditional structure and simple yet elegant style add to the impression that these modern tales could be timeless classics. The words, at first barely a whisper, passed through the fleet, gaining strength as they went – from the largest midships to the smaller three-plates craft, from the open-the-voids to the planet hoppers.

The best recent science fiction and fantasy – reviews roundup

Xuya is an alternate history inspired universe where Asia rose to Terran dominance and subsequently, Vietnamese and Chinese empires have spread across the galaxy.What starts as a business arrangement slowly morphs into something more personal and more pleasurable, but can Xích Si face life as a pirate, and can Rice Fish keep her promise of protection when the forces conspiring against her are more powerful and closer than she had imagined? The tension and weirdness keep ratcheting up in both narrative strands, making for a memorable, spooky tale. She is the Rice Fish, a mindship and leader of a notorious band of space pirates, and she makes the proposal to Xich Si, a young captive, who accepts for the protection her status as wife will afford.

The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard: Book Review The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard: Book Review

She was one of their only captives: taken from a small and insignificant scavenger the pirates had attacked almost as an afterthought, charring her battered-down ship and breaking her bots with frightening ease, then marching her into this small and suffocating space. A ship and a human, the founders of the Red Banner pirate alliance that plagued the Twin Streams, the two asteroid groups stretching in the shadow of the Fire Palace, the red-hot mass that was long-dead civilization’s destroyed homeland. With little options (even indentured pirates face corporeal punishment in the empire), Xích Si accepts the offer.The latest novel set in the Hugo-nominated, Vietnamese-inspired Universe of Xuya begins with that cliche of genre romance, two people entering into a marriage of convenience.

In 1643, a small group of civil war soldiers make a hasty retreat from the battlefield, hoping to find safety in the trees. Each story can be read as a standalone however, it helps to have an understanding of the history and the current composition of the universe before jumping in to this book.Prepared for the worst, she is surprised by not only who her captor is, but also by what she proposes. If you are a fan of space opera, excited by pirates, or intrigued by sentient ships, then you should read this. There were defiant firecrackers; noisy, screaming processions of mourners; drunken meals which degenerated into fights; all the while, Xích Si, leaning against a wall in the darkness of the hold where the pirates had imprisoned her, prayed to her long-dead ancestors to be forgotten. It was a quick fix, thank you google, and looking into the background definitely helped with the enjoyment of the story. There are quite a few content warnings for this book including torture, violence, death, and the indenture of captives.