skygiants: Jadzia Dax lounging expansively by a big space window (daxanova)
[personal profile] skygiants
Normally six months in advance is a bit earlier than I'd post about a forthcoming book, but in the case of Under Fortunate Stars a.) I am friends with the author b.) I have friends at the bookstore handling signed preorders so c.) I am extremely biased and d.) I just finished rereading the final version as an ARC so I am at this moment exceptionally hyped!

What I love most about Under Fortunate Stars is that it's an entirely second-world time travel story that fully leans into all the neat and twisty things that time travel stories can do -- predetermination and paradox and contradictions in the historical record -- while wrapping itself around its own, internal history rather than our own, which tbh is not something I think I've ever encountered before. (Though if you have recs, please do tell me!)

Half the cast are engineers and admin personnel on a corporate research vessel, ZeyCorp's Gallion, which has unfortunately run into some mysterious technical trouble on a routine trip through deep space. The only comms signal they can receive is a request for aid from a scrappy little smuggling freighter called the Jonah, which does in fact seem to be the extremely famous Jonah that brokered a miraculous peace between humanity and an alien force after a decades-long devastating war, saving billions of lives. Exciting! Also, distressing and confusing, given that the peace accords happened 152 years ago for the Gallion crew, the Jonah hasn't reached them yet, and everyone onboard the Jonah -- only half of whom appear to be the actual famous individuals associated with the peace treaty-- vigorously denies any connection with any extremely illegal peace project.

Everyone on board the Jonah just wants to escape this weird dead zone and go about their various and dubiously legal business. Everybody on board the Gallion, on the other hand, is now not only stressed about their own survival, but also the survival of humanity in general if the Jonah crew don't do what history says they did. Additional complications:

a.) the current skeleton crew of the Gallion includes several stressed engineers, several even more stressed admin personnel, a deeply pretentious publicity liaison, and an alien diplomat (plus telepathic assistant) who really needs to be kept secret from the Jonah crew at all costs
b.) the current crew of the Jonah includes two ex-criminals with a tangled interpersonal past, one attempted hitchhiker, one attempted hijacker, and an engineer who really, really, really hates aliens
c.) the Gallion is rapidly running out of power
d.) and any decisions to resolve the situation need to be run through all appropriate ZeyCorp bureaucratic procedures

On the other hand, they do have some small advantages!

a.) the Jonah is even worse off than the Gallion and needs their help to go anywhere!
b.) Jereth Keegan, the captain of the Jonah and Sir Not Appearing In the Historical Record, seems perfectly willing to lie to anyone on his crew to get their buy-in so long as the staff of the Gallion can convince him it's worth it
c.) the Gallion's chief engineer is a big old historical nerd who's read every unlicensed biography of the Jonah's crew that she can get her hands on and is more than happy to share any conspiracy theories that could enlighten the rest of the staff ... you're my favorite, please don't turn out to be any more of an asshole than I already knew you were is one of my favorite lines in the book. who amongst us etc.

The book comes out in May of 2022, and, as aforementioned, if you happen to wish to preorder it from my local indie (the Brookline Booksmith) you will get a signed bookplate with it, but however you wish to do so I hope you put it on your radar; I'm very stoked for other people to get to read it and to talk with me about time travel!

Date: 2021-12-08 06:36 am (UTC)
sovay: (Rotwang)
From: [personal profile] sovay
an entirely second-world time travel story that fully leans into all the neat and twisty things that time travel stories can do -- predetermination and paradox and contradictions in the historical record -- while wrapping itself around its own, internal history rather than our own, which tbh is not something I think I've ever encountered before.

DWJ's The Crown of Dalemark (1993) is the major example of secondary-world time travel coming to mind right now. I want to say that Maeve Henry's The Witch King (1987) involves a character sent back in time to a famous event in his secondary world's history, but I read it once in eighth grade and remember very little about the actual plot. I don't know that I have encountered one that sounds as twisty as this book.

Date: 2021-12-12 09:39 am (UTC)
ethelmay: (Default)
From: [personal profile] ethelmay
And of course DWJ's A Tale of Time City.

Date: 2021-12-12 09:45 am (UTC)
sovay: (Rotwang)
From: [personal profile] sovay
And of course DWJ's A Tale of Time City.

I don't think of that one as entirely secondary-world! History as we know it goes sideways fairly fast, but it does at least begin anchored in our own.

Date: 2021-12-08 11:57 am (UTC)
gumbie_cat: Book shop with motto: "Wear the old coat, buy the new book." (old coat new book)
From: [personal profile] gumbie_cat
This sounds amazing! Pre-ordering immediately!

Date: 2021-12-08 01:09 pm (UTC)
shadaras: A phoenix with wings fully outspread, holidng a rose and an arrow in its talons. (Default)
From: [personal profile] shadaras
Oh, this sounds delightful! :D

Date: 2021-12-08 01:57 pm (UTC)
osprey_archer: (Default)
From: [personal profile] osprey_archer
you're my favorite, please don't turn out to be any more of an asshole than I already knew you were is one of my favorite lines in the book. who amongst us etc.

INDEED. That is such a "I have just met my problematic historical fave" line!

Date: 2021-12-08 03:56 pm (UTC)
lirazel: Felicity Jones as Catherine Morland reading by candlelight with a shocked look on her face ([tv] spend my whole life in reading)
From: [personal profile] lirazel
SUCH a good line!

Date: 2021-12-08 03:13 pm (UTC)
larryhammer: a wisp of colored smoke, label: "softly and suddenly vanished away" (disappeared)
From: [personal profile] larryhammer
This sounds like my cup of tea.

:glances at the row of packaged teas on the shelf:

Maybe in six months, I'll be ready to read it?

Date: 2021-12-08 03:37 pm (UTC)
ellen_fremedon: overlapping pages from Beowulf manuscript, one with a large rubric, on a maroon ground (Default)
From: [personal profile] ellen_fremedon
Oh wow, that sounds awesome. I can hardly wait until I have enough slack in my French Romantics hyperfocus to read it!

Date: 2021-12-08 03:56 pm (UTC)
lirazel: An illustration of Emily Starr from the books by L.M. Montgomery ([lit] of new moon)
From: [personal profile] lirazel
This sounds very, very interesting and I am very much looking forward to reading it!

Date: 2021-12-08 04:03 pm (UTC)
aurumcalendula: gold, blue, orange, and purple shapes on a black background (Default)
From: [personal profile] aurumcalendula
This sounds cool!

Date: 2021-12-08 04:30 pm (UTC)
chestnut_pod: A close-up photograph of my auburn hair in a French braid (Default)
From: [personal profile] chestnut_pod
Ooh, twisty! Also, as someone with Complex Feelings about *mumble* Napoleon Bonaparte that line about "please don't turn out to be any more of an asshole than I already knew you were" is very tempting.

Date: 2021-12-11 09:38 pm (UTC)
luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)
From: [personal profile] luzula
Please tell me about your Napoleon feelings!

I have actually written two fics where he features (they are Laurence/Napoleon from the Temeraire series) but really I did barely any research about him and the fics are very much based on the fictional canon and not on actual history. To my slight embarrassment they are my most popular fics ever (by kudos).

Date: 2021-12-13 08:51 pm (UTC)
chestnut_pod: A close-up photograph of my auburn hair in a French braid (Default)
From: [personal profile] chestnut_pod
Well, you got me that Temeraire!Napoleon is at the root, but as a legal sociologist interested in citizenship and historical emancipation movements, I spend all day in the Napoleonic Code and its descendants. It's pretty hard to understate the impact (on the legal category of citizenship, and on subsequent European history) of his emancipation of the Jews -- and yet this was the same guy who reinstated slavery. He was a megalomaniac with a very particular vision of his own grandeur, which, in terms of "nuts who want to take over the world" actually ranks him higher than those nuts who are driven by some kind of ideology. Few people realize how deeply their everyday lives in democracies are still influenced by the law that became code during his tenures, and fewer people realize how much deep human devastation was behind those laws. idk! He's a fascinating historical figure who, in my head, represents a lot of the best and worst things about the shift to the nation-state.

Also, Temeraire!Napeolon/Laurence is A+.

Date: 2021-12-17 06:20 pm (UTC)
luzula: a Luzula pilosa, or hairy wood-rush (Default)
From: [personal profile] luzula
Thanks for your Napoleon thoughts! : )

It's strange, in history, how sometimes things go together which seem incongruous today. Emancipation of Jews...and slavery. And yeah, some of the good things in present societies are coupled to some truly terrible things.

Date: 2021-12-17 03:16 am (UTC)
chestnut_pod: A close-up photograph of my auburn hair in a French braid (Default)
From: [personal profile] chestnut_pod
Someone take my money for that *please.*

Date: 2021-12-08 09:28 pm (UTC)
superborb: (Default)
From: [personal profile] superborb
Mildly alarmed by how many times stressed appears in your rec; would you say it is stressful to read or is there some distance from the stress of the charas?

Date: 2021-12-09 02:23 am (UTC)
scintilla10: Blue teapot (Stock - blue teapot)
From: [personal profile] scintilla10
This sounds delightful!!

Date: 2021-12-09 06:12 pm (UTC)
caprices: Star-shaped flower (Default)
From: [personal profile] caprices
This sounds like a Cool and Excellent use of time travel paradox (paradoces?). The summary sounds a little...complicated. Honestly, I'm finding your summary here is much more intriguing than the official blurb, which seems to threaten taking its subject matter seriously.

Date: 2022-07-11 04:45 am (UTC)
rymenhild: Manuscript page from British Library MS Harley 913 (Default)
From: [personal profile] rymenhild
I have just read this and loved it. Lots of great twists and turns and relevant backstories we find out at the last minute. Yay.

One extremely minor point that delighted me: the side character with a ship named Aeglaca. That is a terrific character note. It's a word (well, aglæca is, but it's easy to get the letters switched) that appears frequently in Beowulf to mean either "monstrous, villainous" when applied to Grendel or "famous, illustrious" when applied to Beowulf himself, or so say the editors who want you to think that Beowulf would never be called monstrous and Grendel couldn't be described as famous. What a great name for the ship of an amoral criminal leader with a probably-good heart.

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