This has probably one of the best beginnings of any book I’ve read recently: a bandit comes reluctantly to the defense of a mouthy waitress at a coffeeshop; a totally avoidable brawl ensues. The book then proceeds to unfold in layers: the barmaid turns out to be a nun; the bandit has his own secrets; the bandits’ mission is not quite what it seems. The characters are hilariously sarcastic to one another but also thoughtful and tender; the wuxia/fantasy element is fantastic as well. I really enjoyed this book. I also loved how the Malaysian turns of phrase weren’t presented as an exotic English accent, but simply the language of the characters; all too often dialect is used as a way to set characters apart from the main, but here it is acknowledged as normal.
Tag: genre-lgbt
Black Water Sister, by Zen Cho
This phrase is overused, but: I felt seen. Narrator Jess, getting ready to move back to Malaysia with her parents, begins to hear a voice in her head. She chalks it up to the multiple stresses in her life: moving back to a country she barely remembers; feeling like a failure for being unemployed after graduating from Harvard; being afraid to come out to her parents, and having to constantly hide the existence of her long-distance girlfriend. But when the voice keeps feeding her facts that actually turn out to be true, Jess eventually finds to her dismay that she is a medium, and that the ghost of her grandmother Ah Ma has her own reasons for wanting to drag her Americanized granddaughter into the world of spirits and gangsters that she’d left behind. I loved Jess’s relationship to her parents and extended family, which reflected my experience of being mostly familiar with your birth culture, but occasionally encountering unexpected pitfalls that remind you that you didn’t really grow up immersed in the culture the way the previous generation did… though of course my pitfalls didn’t involve demons or a powerful crime boss. The book manages to cover a ton of ground, touching on various conflicts from homophobia and sexism to the tension between capitalist development and the respect due tradition and nature, while never losing track of the personal and familial relationships that drive the story. Jess is a strong character who tries her best to take control of her own story, even as the plot events yank her around (often literally). I actually loved most of the characters, and their conversations and interactions were delightful. If I had a criticism of this book, it would be that I felt it moved a bit too fast, without giving Jess (and therefore me) time to process what was happening. Still, I really liked it and will definitely be reading anything else the I can find from the author.
Persephone Station, by Stina Leicht
Perfectly decent SF caper; traumatized ex-space marine teams up with a ragged band of criminals to save a pacifist alien species from uncaring corporate takeover / megalomaniac colonizer. The story got extra spice from the characters, a rainbow cast of representation that I would have loved to see in SF growing up. I really liked the AI character as well; I actually found her the most relatable of the bunch.