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''But sometimes, the hollows left by absence were worse than those left by death.''
A deeply weird and marvellous tale of time travel, deep space, broken families, mindships, and court intrigue in a Vietnamese-influenced space empire. Strange, absorbing, lyrically written and moving as well as mind-expanding. Loved it, got the companion book at once. Also, what a cover.
The Citadel... is a novella full of interesting concepts, but a little light on character development. I loved how many mind-expanding ideas were crammed into its space-faring empire setting. A character travels in time but finds herself trapped in a ghost-like state. The preserved personalities of dead emperors whisper to their descendants. A woman with a spaceship for a daughter struggles to manage her mixed feelings about her offspring. And war is looming.In brief, there's a ton going on here...
3.0 StarsOnce again, I enjoyed the cultural details and other worldbuilding, but I found the actual plot a bit thin. Cool concepts, but imperfect execution.
“That's impossible.” “Everything is possible, if you listen to the right people.”Set in the alternate timeline universe of Xuya (diverging from this universe in the fifteenth century), Citadel is richly woven science fiction independent of earth references except for culture.“But this wasn't battle. This didn't involve ships or soldiers; or at least, not more than one ship. He could handle this. He just wished he could believe his own lies.”Characters have compelling inner lives: hopes, fears, l...
This is the third story set in the Xuya universe I’ve read; the wonderful, futuristic Vietnamese scifi world, where truly unique technology intertwines seamlessly with old tradition.Sadly, it left me wanting. I shruggled with getting under the skin of all the characters we’re presented with and to understand their motivations, which I felt was never really elaborated on. I kept mixing up the three simultaneous mother/daughter relationships described, and lost track of how many siblings there wer...
The Citadel of the Weeping Pearls is brimming with fascinating worldbuilding ideas and important representation, but, alas, I don't feel this novella was a very smooth entry into this universe. De Bodard has built an intricate alternate history with this series, and her writing is as engaging and lovely as ever, but the many POV shifts prevented me from feeling very close to the characters or able to follow along with the story very well at times. That, combined with the heavy worldbuilding and
This was a beautiful story about family and the shit it does to you, about memory and but de Bodard is fully in the category of authors who are just too sparse for me; I kept reading single sentences and going, “But this should be paragraphs!” I wanted more — more depth, more story, more details. But what was there was fascinating and lovely.
'The Turtle's Golden Claw was mostly sweet; but sometimes she could act with the same casual arrogance as the Empress.'Oh my god, this novella! There is so much here from an impending war to time travel to strange experiments to deep spaces where everything gets distorted to an Empress ordering to kill her disobedient heir and a thirty-year-old mystery.The Empress is a complex character battling conflicting emotions for decades but honestly, I love a good rebel who defies her parent, declares fi...
My favorite piece by de Bodard that I've encountered so far. Court intrigue meets space opera meets family drama. The setting reminded me of Vernor Vinge's 'Fire Upon the Deep,' with it's sentient ships and bizarre zones of space where physics works differently. It also reminded me of Somtow Sucharitkul's Inquestor series, with a glittering panoply of an Asian-inspired society with aristocrats, soldiers and scientists.Thirty years ago, threatened by her mother the Empress, the Bright Princess di...
