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#aliette de bodard
gollancz · 6 months
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That's right baybeeee - ten years after it first launched, Gollanczfest is back and it's bigger than ever!
WHEN?
16th March 2024
Leonardo Royal Hotel, London
Tickets go on sale Friday 6th October at 10am UK time!
Early presale for tickets available exclusively to our newsletter subscribers
WHO?
Our headliner? Only VICTORIA AVEYARD
Other confirmed authors: Joe Abercrombie, Natasha Pulley, Garth Nix, Dhonielle Clayton, Joe Hill, Ben Aaronovitch, @joannechocolat, Aliette de Bodard, Sarah Hawley, @jonnywaistcoat, Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson . . . and MANY more
Plus: YOU
PLUS
All tickets come with a goodie bag full of Gollancz goodies work at least £30
VIP tickets are available with access to the green room, priority tickets to panels, and additional goodies
FREE SFF quiz run by the greatest quizmasters (allegedly, this may be a title they've claimed themselves and I cannot verify) Joe Abercrombie and Garth Nix!
We'll be announcing panels soon, but this is going to be a fun, friendly and festive day, full of nerdery, excitement and probably a lot of harried looking Gollancz staff stuffing their faces with sandwiches and trying to find where distracted authors have wandered off to.
PARTY TIME
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Sapphic retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo in space, with mindships and Vietnamese culture. Excellent read, love the choices de Bodard made in her adapting, also she's so good at broken people trying to do their best and struggling against the world, so I can't recommend this enough.
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augustinajosefina · 4 months
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A request
Please suggest books to me! Preferably in the glove kink/lesbian space atrocities, urban fantasy or dark academia genres but I'll happily try any SF/fantasy at least once.
So far I've read and loved:
Before 2023
The Imperial Radch (Ancillary Justice/Sword/Mercy) - Ann Leckie
Jean le Flambeur (The Quantum Thief/The Fractal Prince/The Causal Angel) - Hannu Rajaniemi
The Windup Girl/The Water Knife - Paolo Bagicalupi
Memory of Water/The City of Woven Streets - Emmi Itäranta
2023
The Locked Tomb (Gideon/Harrow/Nona the Ninth) - Tamsyn Muir
The Masquerade (Traitor/Monster/Tyrant Baru Cormorant) - Seth Dickinson
Teixcalaan series (A Memory Called Empire/A Desolation Called Peace) - Arkady Martine
Machineries of Empire (Ninefox Gambit/Raven Stratagem/Revenant Gun/Hexarchate Stories) - Yoon Ha Lee
The Murderbot Diaries (All Systems Red to System Collapse) - Martha Wells
The Broken Earth (The Fifth Season/The Obelisk Gate/The Stone Sky) - N. K. Jemisin
Klara And The Sun - Kazuo Ishiguro
Xuya universe (The Citadel of Weeping Pearls/The Tea Master and the Detective/Seven of Infinities plus short stories) - Aliette de Bodard
This is How You Lose the Time War - Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
The Goblin Emperor/The Witness for the Dead/Grief of Stones - Katherine Addison
Some Desperate Glory - Emily Tesh
2024
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab
The Craft Sequence (Three Parts Dead/Two Serpents Rise/Full Fathom Five/Last First Snow/Four Roads Cross/Ruin of Angels) - Max Gladstone
Babel: Or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution - R. F. Kuang
The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling
Last Exit - Max Gladstone
Dead Country - Max Gladstone
Read and liked:
The Moonday Letters - Emmi Itäranta
Great Cities (The City We Became/The World We Make) - N. K. Jemisin
Piranesi - Susanna Clarke
Autonomous - Annalee Newitz
Dead Djinn universe (A Master of Djinn/The Haunting of Tram Car 015/A Dead Djinn in Cairo/The Angel of Khan el-Khalili) - P. Djèlí Clark
Even Though I Knew the End - C. L. Polk
Station Eternity - Mur Lafferty
The Mythic Dream - Dominik Parisien & Navah Wolfe
Shades of Magic (A Darker Shade of Magic/A Gathering of Shadows/A Conjuring of Light/Fragile Threads of Power) - V. E. Schwab
The Stars Are Legion - Kameron Hurley
Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo
Was uncertain about:
Light From Uncommon Stars - Ryka Aoki
The Kaiju Preservation Society - John Scalzi
Paladin's Grace - T. Kingfisher
The House in the Cerulean Sea - TJ Klune
And read and disliked:
To Be Taught, if Fortunate - Becky Chambers
A Psalm for the Wild-Built - Becky Chambers
The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon
The Calculating Stars - Mary Robinette Kowal
The Space Between Worlds - Micaiah Johnson
How High We Go in the Dark - Sequoia Nagamatsu
Shadow and Bone - Leigh Bardugo
(My pride insists I add that I have, in fact, read other books as well. Just to be clear.)
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New video tiktok from Luke Arnold! He reads "The House of Sundering Flames" by Aliette de Bodard for the First Page of Pyjama Party.
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papenathys · 1 year
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i dont know if this is your,,avenue exactly but if you know someone who does have these i'd love to know too <3
i was looking for good sci fi recs; preferably not very long/ dystopian?
sure, here are some short books:
solaris (stanislaw lem): three scientists in a research station are investigating this gigantic oceanic formation on a planet (maybe sentient?) but some experiments go awry and they are left to deal with the deliciously twisted aftermath of their pursuit. very creepy and atmospheric.
the comet (w.e.b. du bois): in this short story, a comet hits new york city and releases poisonous fumes, killing everybody except a black man and a wealthy white woman. they must work together and put aside racial tension if they are to survive.
this is how you lose the time war (amal el mohtar and max gladstone): two women on opposite sides of an intergalactic time war start exchanging letters in increasingly creative ways through the strands of space and time, eventually falling in love.
on a red station, drifting (aliette de bodard): set in a futuristic interstellar version of vietnam, this novella explores the mounting political tension on a space station as all the resources of the inhabitants are depleted ny the empire on space wars, and the artificial intelligence in charge of the station starts faltering.
bloodchild and other stories (octavia e. butler): collection of short stories by the legendary pioneer of afrofuturism, almost all the stories have themes of miscegenation and colonialism. the titular story is about an alien species that use humans (who have settled on their planet) as wombs to host their eggs and what happens when the humans resist.
in the vanisher's palace (aliette de bodard): f/f vietnamese retelling of beauty and the beast. after an alien species invades the earth and leaves plague, rot and destruction in its wake, a young girl is taken to the castle of a dragon lady and tries to understand the nature of the eternal disease her land and people suffer from. yes she has sex with the dragon.
annihilation (jeff vandermeer): four women make a scientific expedition to an uninhabited coastal area named "area x" - all former expeditions have resulted in disappearances, deaths and trauma. really weird stuff starts happening which includes mycological horror and doppelgangers.
hope you find something you like from this list!
kofi: papenathys
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vote yes if you have finished the entire book.
vote no if you have not finished the entire book.
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rhetoricandlogic · 2 months
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Liz Bourke Reviews A Fire Born of Exile by Aliette de Bodard
October 21, 2023
A Fire Born of Exile is Aliette de Bodard’s second novel-length Xuya universe space opera. It’s a compelling, atmospheric tale of consequences, romance, and revenge. (I should note that I’m mentioned in the acknowledgements, which may cause you to consider me a biased observer.)
Minh is the daughter of the prefect of the Scattered Pearls Belt, raised in sheltered luxury, her future laid out for her regardless of her own desires. Her mother is emotionally distant at best, though it would be more accurate to categorise her as abusive. A brief moment of rebellion sees Minh, in disguise, attending the Tiger Games to enjoy the entertainment: in the aftermath of a riot, she’s rescued from a kidnapping attempt by the mysterious ‘‘Alchemist of Streams and Hills,’’ the cultured, cosmopolitan scholar Sương Quỳnh and her companion, the mindship Guts of Sea.
Thiên Hoà is a struggling engineer keeping a business going with her sister, Thiên Dung. Hoà’s elder sister, a scholar, was disgraced in the aftermath of a rebellion, the Ten Thousand Flags Uprising, and is years dead, while Dung, whose skills include working on mindships, is very ill. Dung was supposed to take a job repairing a very badly wrecked mindship, Flowers at the Gates of the Lords, but her illness means Hoà needs to go in her place, pretending to skills she doesn’t have, if they’re to keep going. When she visits her dead elder sister’s grave, she encounters a cultured, at­tractive upper-class stranger who corresponded with the elder sister before the Uprising making offerings there: Quỳnh. Quỳnh offers to help Hoà with the mindship job, and Hoà accepts. But Hoà suspects that Quỳnh is ‘‘hurtling along some private path to some disastrous, distant conflagration.’’ Hoà doesn’t really want the risk of associating with someone who might well set others on fire along with herself.
Quỳnh had a different name, once. A survivor of the Uprising – from the wrong side – she’s planned for revenge for years: Revenge on the prefect who put down the rebellion and on the general, General Tuyết, who stood by her side. Tuyết, who had once denounced Quỳnh to the magistrate to be condemned to death. Now she and Guts of Sea are putting their plans into motion, and she has left her toddler child (also a mindship) in another person’s care in order to execute it. Quỳnh does not expect to survive her revenge, but she plans to ruin the lives of all the wealthy, powerful people who were happy to condemn an innocent woman to death before she dies. She didn’t expect to meet Hoà. She didn’t expect to be attracted to her. There’s – just barely – room for a small kindness to Hoà in her plan. There’s no room at all for attraction.
There’s a saying about best laid plans and how often they go awry. In this case, it definitely ap­plies.
De Bodard has said that A Fire Born of Exile was inspired by The Count of Monte Cristo, and while I can’t remember much of the original (it was not formative literature for me, I do not recommend reading it aged ten), the revenge plot that teeters a little off the rails because the avenger catches an unfortunate case of compassion for the collateral damage – and because other people’s choices tilt the scales – is a fascinating one. This doesn’t mean that Quỳnh abandons her revenge, but it does end up looking different than she anticipated. That happens in part because her burgeoning relationship with Hoà, and Hoà’s resolute determination not to be part of Quỳnh’s revenge, pushes her off-balance. And in part because Minh, and the choices Minh makes as she tries to navigate a way out from underneath her mother and her stepmother without losing herself, end up having consequences Quỳnh didn’t entirely take into account.
De Bodard’s work is often concerned with power: with the indifference or cruelty of people who hold it and the difficulties of finding ethical paths to any kind of real justice or fair dealing in societies that enforce hierarchical structureswith exemplary legal violence and call it just; with the problems posed by power differentials in interpersonal relationships even when all parties try to act with kindness and good faith; with the responsibilities owed by parental figures to their children and the power that parental figures and teachers have to help or harm those children by action or omission. In A Fire Born of Exile, Minh’s family situation mirrors in microcosm the greater injustices of her society, a smaller and perhaps more intensely personal version of the injustice that Quỳnh once suffered at Minh’s mother’s hands. Hoà, who has never expected either justice or revenge but who has not let the injustice in her make her cruel or cynical, changes them both.
Minh’s growing recognition of her mother’s cruelty, her longing to be valued, to be loved, and her eventual realisation that she’ll never get this from her mother, is painfully well-drawn. So too is the romance between Hoà and Quỳnh, a romance that is against each of their better judgement. For Quỳnh, Hoà is a breath of happi­ness but a terrible vulnerability, and though she knows that her commitment to revenge means their romance is doomed, she can’t quite draw back from it either. For Hoà, Quỳnh is unex­pectedly compelling, fascinating, someone who makes her feel something new, but she’s afraid of the consequences of Quỳnh’s revenge, for Quỳnh and for her. Their relationship is fraught with that push-and-pull, but the ultimate resolution feels decidedly earned.
A Fire Born of Exile opens with a riot and doesn’t let up from there. Poisonings, intrigue, terrible secrets and tense confrontations combine in a tense, accomplished space opera, told with de Bodard’s usual vividness and verve. For my money, it’s an even better novel than The Red Scholar’s Wake, which I loved.
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words-and-coffee · 10 months
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Anyway, the fire doesn’t matter. There will be other fires, my love, and we will survive them all.
Aliette de Bodard, Fireheart Tiger
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whimsicaldragonette · 5 months
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ARC Review: A Fire Born of Exile by Aliette de Bodard
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Publication Date: October 12, 2023
Synopsos:
The Scattered Pearls Belt is a string of habitats under tight military rule . . . where the powerful have become all too comfortable in their positions, and their corruption. But change is coming, with the arrival of Quynh: the mysterious and enigmatic Alchemist of Streams and Hills. To Minh, daughter of the ruling prefect of the Belt , Quynh represents a chance for escape. To An, a destitute engineer, Quynh has a mysterious link to her own past . . . and holds a deeper, more sensual appeal. But Quynh has her own secret history, and a plan for the ruling class of the Belt. A plan that will tear open old wounds, shake the heavens, and may well consume her. A beautiful exploration of the power of love, of revenge, and of the wounds of the past, this fast-paced, heart-warming space opera is set against a backdrop of corruption, power and political scheming in the far reaches of the award-winning Xuya universe.
My Rating: ★★★★★
*My Review after the cut.
My Review:
I have enjoyed everything I have read by Aliette de Bodard, but this is my favorite thus far. Something about the characters grabbed me immediately and held my interest for the entire book. They felt incredibly real and believable and I cared deeply about all of them.
Her writing style is very dense, so her books take me longer to read than most others, but I always enjoy the journey. Sometimes it's nice to be forced to slow down and linger over a story rather than speed through it.
The characters and their motivations are complicated. Revenge and fear and hate and greed and love and justice. They're all very powerful emotions and the book itself feels very powerful. It's a grand struggle and epic battles that play out in subtle manipulations and power plays and scholars crafting the perfect response alluding to classic texts.
I love how expansive and complicated this universe is, with the mindships and bots and the avatars and overlays and perception filters, as well as the Vietnamese names and culture that feels deep and consistent. It feels so vast and so physical, and even though I know it's not real, it feels like it is.
I have read a good handful of Xuya universe novels and novellas now so I feel like I have a pretty good handle on the world, where I was confused occasionally even in the previous novel. It's more sci-fi than I normally read, and I love it. It has such a lovely texture.
I also love how queer relationships are treated as normal and unremarkable, and how many examples of them we have in this book (and her others). There is at least one nonbinary character and it is completely normal. The main relationships are all pairs of women. It's so refreshing and validating.
I have not had such a deeply enjoyable and satisfying reading experience in a while and it felt so good. Wading through the dense language that Aliette de Bodard uses felt rewarding and I was swept away by the strong emotions and convictions of the characters. I am sad to leave this world and eagerly await the next Xuya universe novel.
(It should be noted that I am in the process of moving so the only time I have had to read in the past few weeks is when I wake up in the middle of the night and can't sleep. So I read most of this between the hours of 3 and 6am. And I still adored it and happily spent days wading through its complexity. That's how good it is.)
*Thanks to NetGalley and JAB Books for providing an early copy for review.
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libraryleopard · 10 months
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Adult fantasy novella
A princess sent as a political hostage to a foreign country as a child must regain her footing her mother's court upon returning home while haunted by the memory of a terrible fire and the appearance of her former lover
Explores colonialism & emerging from an abusive relationship
Vietnamese lesbian main character
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Blind Beauty by Jasmine Garcia-
On the isolated isle of Sarpedon, cold blood under scaly flesh pumps into a creature with snakes for hair, and serpentine features. Cast from society by the wrath of a Goddess, she is shielded by the bodies of stone along the shoreline. They warn off mortals; victims of her curse that had come to harm her. Soldiers, huntsmen, adventurers. Her curse afflicted all. All but one. A beauty by the name of Mirra washes ashore and doesn't succumb to Medusa's menacing sight. Thus begins the tragically romantic tale of a blind seer, and an untrusting gorgon.
Fireheart Tiger by Aliette de Bodard
Quiet, thoughtful princess Thanh was sent away as a hostage to the powerful faraway country of Ephteria as a child. Now she’s returned to her mother’s imperial court, haunted not only by memories of her first romance, but by worrying magical echoes of a fire that devastated Ephteria’s royal palace.
Thanh’s new role as a diplomat places her once again in the path of her first love, the powerful and magnetic Eldris of Ephteria, who knows exactly what she wants: romance from Thanh and much more from Thanh’s home. Eldris won’t take no for an answer, on either front. But the fire that burned down one palace is tempting Thanh with the possibility of making her own dangerous decisions.
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gollancz · 2 months
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Locus magazine have released their 2023 recommended reading list, and there are so many wonderful Gollancz titles there!
Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon, Wole Talabi
The Sinister Booksellers of Bath, Garth Nix
The Blue, Beautiful World, Karen Lord
Hopeland, Ian McDonald
Airside, Christopher Priest
A Fire Born of Exile, Aliette de Bodard
Creation Node, Stephen Baxter
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bookcoversonly · 7 months
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Title: The Red Scholar's Wake | Author: Aliette de Bodard | Publisher: Gollancz (2022)
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dr-dendritic-trees · 6 days
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Tell us about the Aliette de Bodard fish sauce conversion!!! - Pink
Possibly Aliette de Bodard is a witch, basically.
I am, as you know, whiter than sour cream, so for most of my life, like most British-Canadians I thought that pho was a miracle substance but my wimpy palate was overwhelmed by fish sauce! It was just too much. I tried it once, and then I gave up.
And then I read, like, 3 books by Aliette de Bodard, pretty close together. de Bodard writes a lot of Vietnamese characters and fish sauce features pretty heavily. There's one book specifically that features a character who has been deprived of fish sauce for many years (he's stranded in Paris), finally getting some.
And the next time I went to eat pho, I was thinking about all their fish sauce descriptions, and I decided to try some again, because I like to eat food from books because I'm a dork like that, and suddenly it was delicious.
And I thought it would be just that one time, but no, I have been infused with an enjoyment of fish sauce.
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gaydragontournament · 10 days
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ROUND 1: PART 4
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Propaganda under cut
Rong Minh Thanh Thuan (aka Thuan)
● Thuan is a dragon (of the sort native to Vietnam) from a dragon kingdom under the Seine River in Paris. As a member of the kingdom's royal family and a shapeshifter (who can fake being human as long as no one is particularly spiritually sensitive), he is sent as a spy to House Hawthorn, one of a number of houses ruled by fallen angels in a post-apocalyptic Paris. Hawthorn has been making overtures to the kingdom, you see, and Thuan's cousin was offered in a political marriage to Asmodeus, head of House Hawthorn. Also, someone is smuggling additive drugs into the kingdom, destabilizing things further, and it's one of the Houses or someone connected to them.
Thuan actually did a decent job of keeping his cover, doing his duty to House Hawthorn as a servant trying to learn full dependent status, and making sure his family knew what was up and what information he could find. Only shit hit the fan, and suddenly Thaun is the best remaining choice of the correct gender for the marriage, and the various crises for both the kingdom and House Hawthorn causes everyone to re-evaluate their plans. Especially Asmodeus, who had planned to use the marriage to screw over his consort to save House Hawthorn, but Thuan actually having been doing good-faith work (within what his prior allegiances allowed) made Asmodeus reconsider this as an actual alliance.
Which, surprisingly worked. It turned out that Thuan being bookish, compassionate and having strong convictions worked with Asmodeus, who was loyal to his people, had good people skills and the capability to be utterly terrifying, forming a functional partnership. They spun out into their own set of novellas (Dragons and Blades) dealing with the politics of the alliance, and cross-cultural factors. The two also seem to develop actual affection (and, even before that, sexual chemistry).
Ventuswill
● Ventuswill is a dragon who tries to hide her less serious side from the townspeople who revere her. As the protagonist is the only one who has seen her more casual demeanor, she becomes rather close to them — and while her dialogue is slightly different depending on selected player gender, either comes off as having a bit of romantic tension.
Also, the art book lists her gender as "???".
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mmhawkes · 1 month
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Another one of those books that I can’t wait to recommend to people when it comes out. Mostly because I want someone to talk about it with!
Navigational Entanglements by Aliette de Bodard is a sci-fi novella with just about everything — it’s a propulsive thriller, a political drama, a sapphic romance… there’s found family, personal growth, and so much compassion, while also having some horror and mystery elements. The world building is wuxia-inflected space opera with a complex social structure. This might sound like everything but the kitchen sink, and yet it never feels crowded or belabored. I zoomed right through it, and already want to read it again. The characters are great (and I hope we’ll get to visit them again), the story was face-paced (but never skimped on character study), and the ending was satisfying.
It comes out this summer. Definitely worth keeping an eye out for.
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