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May. 13th, 2013 04:11 pmThe Best of All Possible Worlds is not quite the book I wanted it to be.
I mean, I love its themes! It's about a culture of stoic telepathic AU!Vulcans -- they're called Sadiri, but, I mean, they're basically Vulcans -- whose home planet gets destroyed, including most of the lady not!Vulcans; they settle on another planet, one that's historically and infrastructurally sympathetic to refugees, and start figuring out how they're going to maintain their culture and heritage.
Enter Our Heroine, Grace Delarua, a scientist with a hobby for linguistics who is assigned to help the new community settle in. Eventually she and a couple not!Vulcans and some other scientists end up going on a ROAD TRIP to visit a bunch of other communities descended from long-ago not!Vulcans and check out their genetic and cultural similarities. Meanwhile, Grace and her buddies repeatedly have this conversation:
BUDDY: So, you and not!Vulcan team leader are totally going to hook up, right?
GRACE: No, I mean, we're just friends!
BUDDY: You guys are going to make such cute babies.
GRACE: .....
Guess who is right on this! Spoiler: it isn't Grace. I am not actually sure this is an effective technique, either from a Watsonian or a Doylist perspective -- it got my back up a little bit both ways -- but oh well.
Anyway, it's an interesting book, but the structure of it -- essentially a set of vignettes arranged alongside each other, rather than a driving narrative -- means that there ended up being a lot of things that I wanted to see explored in more depth instead of the sort of . . . emotional glide we got. There's some serious stuff that happens -- telepathic abuse! near-death experiences! -- and we were told Grace was having a hard time dealing with it, but I'm not sure we saw that as much? Also, there were a couple things that rubbed me the wrong way about the seeking-marriage-partners aspect and the fake Vulcan gender relations stuff; Delarua gets rescued a little too often for my taste, and ( spoilers )
On the other hand, despite the things that rubbed me wrong, there were also a series of things that made me really happy. Linguistics! Cultural contrasts and interesting worldbuilding! Genderqueer character! Delarua's mom trying to seduce her friend away from her husband! The chapter where Delarua's scientific ethics conflict with her humanistic ethics! The colony whose backstory basically goes like this:
FAKE!VULCAN COMMUNITY 1: We interpret our cultural mores differently than you and now we can't stop fighting about it!
FAKE!VULCAN COMMUNITY 2: How will we ever resolve this conflict?
FAKE!VULCAN COMMUNITY 1: . . . fuck it, let's just throw everything out the window and become space elves.
FAKE!VULCAN COMMUNITY 2: GREAT. LET'S BE SPACE ELVES.
And then they elect an official Fairy Queen, and she picks a space elf harem, and they spend the next couple centuries hanging around singing and strumming lutes and having fairy revels in the woods because WHY NOT. (Community 2 become DARK space elves, because they were the Goth ones, I guess.) I laughed so hard!
Also, this does not reflect on the book itself, but the cover appears to have a washed-out white palette to deliberately obscure the fact that the heroine is described as a woman of color. THANKS, DEL REY. >.
I mean, I love its themes! It's about a culture of stoic telepathic AU!Vulcans -- they're called Sadiri, but, I mean, they're basically Vulcans -- whose home planet gets destroyed, including most of the lady not!Vulcans; they settle on another planet, one that's historically and infrastructurally sympathetic to refugees, and start figuring out how they're going to maintain their culture and heritage.
Enter Our Heroine, Grace Delarua, a scientist with a hobby for linguistics who is assigned to help the new community settle in. Eventually she and a couple not!Vulcans and some other scientists end up going on a ROAD TRIP to visit a bunch of other communities descended from long-ago not!Vulcans and check out their genetic and cultural similarities. Meanwhile, Grace and her buddies repeatedly have this conversation:
BUDDY: So, you and not!Vulcan team leader are totally going to hook up, right?
GRACE: No, I mean, we're just friends!
BUDDY: You guys are going to make such cute babies.
GRACE: .....
Guess who is right on this! Spoiler: it isn't Grace. I am not actually sure this is an effective technique, either from a Watsonian or a Doylist perspective -- it got my back up a little bit both ways -- but oh well.
Anyway, it's an interesting book, but the structure of it -- essentially a set of vignettes arranged alongside each other, rather than a driving narrative -- means that there ended up being a lot of things that I wanted to see explored in more depth instead of the sort of . . . emotional glide we got. There's some serious stuff that happens -- telepathic abuse! near-death experiences! -- and we were told Grace was having a hard time dealing with it, but I'm not sure we saw that as much? Also, there were a couple things that rubbed me the wrong way about the seeking-marriage-partners aspect and the fake Vulcan gender relations stuff; Delarua gets rescued a little too often for my taste, and ( spoilers )
On the other hand, despite the things that rubbed me wrong, there were also a series of things that made me really happy. Linguistics! Cultural contrasts and interesting worldbuilding! Genderqueer character! Delarua's mom trying to seduce her friend away from her husband! The chapter where Delarua's scientific ethics conflict with her humanistic ethics! The colony whose backstory basically goes like this:
FAKE!VULCAN COMMUNITY 1: We interpret our cultural mores differently than you and now we can't stop fighting about it!
FAKE!VULCAN COMMUNITY 2: How will we ever resolve this conflict?
FAKE!VULCAN COMMUNITY 1: . . . fuck it, let's just throw everything out the window and become space elves.
FAKE!VULCAN COMMUNITY 2: GREAT. LET'S BE SPACE ELVES.
And then they elect an official Fairy Queen, and she picks a space elf harem, and they spend the next couple centuries hanging around singing and strumming lutes and having fairy revels in the woods because WHY NOT. (Community 2 become DARK space elves, because they were the Goth ones, I guess.) I laughed so hard!
Also, this does not reflect on the book itself, but the cover appears to have a washed-out white palette to deliberately obscure the fact that the heroine is described as a woman of color. THANKS, DEL REY. >.
