(no subject)

[skygiants]

I 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.

Comments

[lilysea]

I'm listening to the audiobook of Plain Kate by Erin Bow at the moment, and enjoying it.

[skygiants]

I liked Plain Kate a lot as well! I think I only have one Erin Bow yet to read (Sorrow's Knot) and based on previous evidence it seems VERY LIKELY that I will enjoy it.

[sovay]

...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 feel as though Phyllis Gotlieb may have written a robot bar mitzvah, but maybe I only think she should have.

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.

You will also need to file M. John Harrison's Light (2002) on that shelf, as one of its characters is a particularly savage (and awesome) rebuke to that series.

[skygiants]

SOMEONE ought to write a robot bar mitzvah, anyway. I release the idea unto the world.

(I am convinced there must be Talmudic scholarship somewhere on whether it's appropriate for a thirteen-year-old golem to become a bar mitzvah.)

I have never read anything by M. John Harrison!

[sovay]

(I am convinced there must be Talmudic scholarship somewhere on whether it's appropriate for a thirteen-year-old golem to become a bar mitzvah.)

I own a book in which I can check this very question once I get it unpacked! I can't imagine it didn't come up at least once.

I have never read anything by M. John Harrison!

I have liked almost everything I've read by him, but I especially adore his short fiction, his novel The Course of the Heart (1992), and the Viriconum sequence, which starts as better-than-average dying-earth science fantasy and in time vanishes brilliantly up its own metafiction. Many readers seem to find him depressing, but I don't. He does great numinous—and anti-numinous—and his language is beautiful.

[rymenhild]

...

*_____________________*

[skygiants]

:DDDD

[lacewood]

Is this an ongoing series or is it complete at 2 books? I ask because I have tried to Google it but neither Goodreads or the author website are being helpful.... >_>

[skygiants]

I HAVE NO IDEA AND IT'S DRIVING ME WILD. The ending is the kind of thing where it could just as easily be the setup for a third book, or the kind of ending where it's like 'EVERYTHING IS DIFFERENT NOW, OUR STORY IS DONE' and I JUST DON'T KNOW.

[lacewood]

Ok at least I am not ALONE IN MY CONFUSION. I will add these to the list and see if the library has them at some point... eventually.... maybe even before the hypothetical third book does or doesn't come out....

[ambyr]

The cake is not a lie!

(I was actually a little annoyed that Talis references Portal explicitly a few pages after the party scene, because I liked it better as subtle inference. Oh well. In general, I found the Talis PoV sections a little...self-indulgent? They were fun, lots of fun! But they seemed structurally awkward in an otherwise tight first-person narrative and didn't really add anything to my understanding of plot or themes.)

Everything else about the book, though, I loved.

Okay, no, one other thing that sort of bothers me, which High Holidays brought sharply to mind: given Elian's Jewishness, how did we go two books without anyone making the obvious Abraham and Isaac reference in regards to the hostage system? I know you're a classicist, Greta, but the world did not start with the Greco-Romans. I may feel a plot bunny (or at least a Drabble bunny) coming on, here.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I think I agree; I didn't dislike them, in some ways they added to an understanding of his character, but you got just as much I think out of the suddenly-jarring contrast between Michael and Two. I definitely get the temptation to have your ONE character who can spout references spout all the references you'd like to be making, though.

LOL it was only after I finished the book that I suddenly remembered that Elian was supposed to be Jewish; I don't think the fact is even mentioned in Swan Riders. But you should DEFINITELY write that drabble! I would love to see someone write fic where Elian's Jewishness was more ... an actually integrated aspect of his character ..........

[ambyr]

He makes latkes in the final scene! How much more Jewish do you want, ne?

...I agree that the diversity in these books is sometimes a little weirdly pasted on. Although I am fascinated by questions about religion in this 'verse in general, because, okay, clearly it exists (because Xie is a goddess), but also Talis fills a lot of the roles traditionally filled by "god," or at least by an Abrahamic one? So what does god mean to these people, who grew up with centuries of knowledge that there really is a great big daddy figure in the sky who knows all your thoughts and can smite you at will, and that this person is definitely not God? I have a feeling Elian's Jewishness looks very different from mine, and I want to know more about that differences.

[skygiants]

OMG I DIDN'T EVEN REGISTER THEM AS LATKES

BECAUSE I'D FORGOTTEN HE WAS JEWISH

....but yes, I agree, I would VERY MUCH like to know more about what religion (in general) and Elian's Judaism (in specific) look like five hundred years on and how it incorporates the existence of artificial intelligence. I would read a whole book of Midrashic discussion re: Talis.

[ambyr]

They are explicitly called latkes. Which I admit confused me, because why was he making latkes? Was it Chanukah? Did Greta just [spoiler spoiler spoiler] AS A CHANUAKH PRESENT? Because that would be kinda awesome. (Hard to top, though. What do you do for the other seven nights?)

I would read a whole book of Midrashic discussion re: Talis.

If you write it, I promise to read it!

[vass]

You had me at ROBOT BAR MITZVAH.

[skygiants]

AIS NEED CAKE TOO

[luzula]

I don't in general shelve my books by theme, but I have Watership Down sitting next to Joseph Campbell's The Hero With a Thousand Faces, and also Miéville's The City and the City next to a book on internalized social control and political repression. So I guess I like to pair up fiction with thematically similar non-fiction!

[skygiants]

Ha! I have in actuality a rather boring sorting of nonfiction by subject and fiction by author, because I have been too well indoctrinated by standard cataloging schema I suppose, but I quite like the idea of pairing fiction and non-fiction together. :D

[aamcnamara]

Sold! I have requested it from the library. People doing things totally different with their second-book-in-a-series fascinate me.

[skygiants]

Like, it's not out of left field -- everything she's doing in the second is there in the first to be picked up on and discussed -- but all of it is suddenly very much in primary focus in a way it wasn't before. (Or such is my memory, anyway, having read the first several months ago. Perhaps it wasn't as different as I think!)

[alias_sqbr]

Would it suit being read without having read the first book?

[skygiants]

Hmmmm. You could and understand it, but I think it works best as a build off the first -- there's some relationships/dynamics that are only present in the second book as memory, and are significant enough for the protagonist that I think you would lose something not having full context for them.

(Most especially you would miss most of the lesbian love story, as the protagonist's girlfriend is off in another place doing something else all through Swan Riders, and that would be a shame!)

[alias_sqbr]

you would miss most of the lesbian love story

Sold.

[okrablossom]

Thank you for this review! While I have loved most of Bow's work, the first in this series didn't grab me enough to want to continue but knowing that it does something very different is making me intrigued :)

[skygiants]

Yeah, it's very definitely not a 'second verse, same as the first' kind of thing -- it builds off the first book in a way that makes perfect sense but is also very much a shift in focus and attention. At least in my opinion anyway! Yours of course may vary. :D

[annotated_em]

Ooooh, the sequel is out! I picked up The Scorpion Rules based on your review and was not disappointed. *runs off to update her to-be-read list*

[skygiants]

It was one of the sequels I was most excited for this year and I was not disappointed in that, either!

[melannen]

This has not come in from the library yet but I'm first on the list and so looking forward to it! Your review only makes me want it more.

still ships Talis/Anaander

[skygiants]

READ IT AND THEN COME BACK AND TALK TO ME ABOUT RACHEL AND TISARWAT

[melannen]

IT'S A DATE.

[starlady]

I've been trying to sell people on these books with "It's like Ancillary Justice, but as a YA dystopia with sacrificial monarchs!" which maybe hasn't gone over so well but w/e. I'm so excited to read this on the plane next week.

[skygiants]

IT'S SO ACCURATE THOUGH. This one, even more so! I'm super looking forward to hearing what you think. :D

[dhampyresa]

...it's not actually a robot bar mitzvah

Well now I'm disappointed.

[skygiants]

Someday, someone will write one!