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Oct. 13th, 2016 09:12 pmI have read some great sequels this sequel season, but I think my actual favorite sequel so far is the sequel to Erin Bow's The Scorpion Rules, The Swan Riders. In fact it is probably one of my favorite books this year.
The titular Swan Riders are an army of UN-aid-bringers/hostage-executioners/convenient-bodies-for-possession at the service of Talis, the five-hundred-year-old manic artificial intelligence who keeps peace on earth through the use of hostage children and the occasional missile strike. In this book, our heroine Princess Greta of the Pan-Polar Alliance ends up on a wacky road trip with Talis and several Swan Riders. It's a fun time!
The Scorpion Rules is a YA dystopia -- it hits all the beats, and then it goes on to subvert most of them in a way I really enjoy, but, I mean, it's still got the shape of it. It's poured into that structural mold.
The Swan Riders launches off of The Scorpion Rules, but it is definitely not Book Two of a YA dystopia trilogy. In no way is it poured into that mold at all. Like, there is a resistance and our heroine has been adopted as a figurehead, but that's not really what Erin Bow cares about, Erin Bow is BUSY focusing on complex negotiations of humanity and artificial intelligence and sacrifice and loss of self and she just does not have TIME to conform to the standard story beats of a YA dystopia while she's at it.
(As I said on Twitter: people becoming AI! AI becoming human! IT'S A ROBOT BAR MITZVAH.
...it's not actually a robot bar mitzvah, but there is at one point a thematically significant party with cake, plus a number of angry robots in tiny boxes, SO.)
I would put The Swan Riders next to the Ancillary Justice series on my bookshelf if I was sorting my books thematically (which I don't in reality, but enjoy as a thought exercise). It's not that they're all that similar, as far as actual reading experience goes, but I would bet money that both Erin Bow and Ann Leckie read the Ship Who... series in their youth before going on to write something much, much better.
The titular Swan Riders are an army of UN-aid-bringers/hostage-executioners/convenient-bodies-for-possession at the service of Talis, the five-hundred-year-old manic artificial intelligence who keeps peace on earth through the use of hostage children and the occasional missile strike. In this book, our heroine Princess Greta of the Pan-Polar Alliance ends up on a wacky road trip with Talis and several Swan Riders. It's a fun time!
The Scorpion Rules is a YA dystopia -- it hits all the beats, and then it goes on to subvert most of them in a way I really enjoy, but, I mean, it's still got the shape of it. It's poured into that structural mold.
The Swan Riders launches off of The Scorpion Rules, but it is definitely not Book Two of a YA dystopia trilogy. In no way is it poured into that mold at all. Like, there is a resistance and our heroine has been adopted as a figurehead, but that's not really what Erin Bow cares about, Erin Bow is BUSY focusing on complex negotiations of humanity and artificial intelligence and sacrifice and loss of self and she just does not have TIME to conform to the standard story beats of a YA dystopia while she's at it.
(As I said on Twitter: people becoming AI! AI becoming human! IT'S A ROBOT BAR MITZVAH.
...it's not actually a robot bar mitzvah, but there is at one point a thematically significant party with cake, plus a number of angry robots in tiny boxes, SO.)
I would put The Swan Riders next to the Ancillary Justice series on my bookshelf if I was sorting my books thematically (which I don't in reality, but enjoy as a thought exercise). It's not that they're all that similar, as far as actual reading experience goes, but I would bet money that both Erin Bow and Ann Leckie read the Ship Who... series in their youth before going on to write something much, much better.
