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Nov. 6th, 2022 10:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsAfter a lovely but extremely extremely busy past several weeks, I spent all afternoon hibernating on the couch reading Ocean's Echo, the follow-up to Everina Maxwell's Winter's Orbit. This one is set in a different corner of the same Big Messy Space Polity that Winter's Orbit takes place in and is really deeply and enjoyably engaged with The Problem Of Intense Telepathic Bonds: in the backstory, the military of this particular corner of space did some experiments to create telepathic soldiers who could either give telepathic commands OR read minds; in the present, command-givers have been integrated into society but mind-readers are mistrusted and frequently subject to military conscription and forcible mind-bonding to a trusted command-giver. Tennal Halkana is both an important politician's nephew and a deeply unstable mind-reader who has crossed his illustrious aunt's lines too many times; Surit Yeni is a command-giver who has been ordered to get him under control by telepathically bonding with him but is too honorably to actually do so as it is technically illegal and definitely unethical. As a result, they decide to team up and fake a telepathic mind-bond until conditions are right for Tennal to escape!
"Let's fake a mind-bond" is of course an extremely fun twist on thee trope and having read Winter's Orbit, I expected that the protags would of course fall in love along the way, but I did not expect the stakes to escalate so fast and in such big Space Operatic ways! I also really appreciated the various times and ways in which the power dynamics shifted over the course of the book, and the way in which both of them choose at various times to consciously even the playing field, as well as how dangerous and unpleasant the actual telepathic mind-bond was when it actually happened and that the happy ending involved both of them getting to be completely separate and independent people! although I will say Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint has ruined me a little for plots in which someone's shattered personality has to be reconstructed and rebuilt on a metaphysical plane by a person who loves them; it is of course Sweepingly Romantic, the mortifying ordeal of being known, etc., but not being a particularly sweeping romantic myself I am of the opinion that this is the kind of work that takes a village. I also found the military experiments backstory very effectively creepy and wish there had been even more of it as I still do not entirely understand how the architect | reader divide worked or the subsequent societal/sociopolitical developments there. I would be pleased if Maxwell chose to return to this corner of the universe but would also gladly explore other areas of it.
"Let's fake a mind-bond" is of course an extremely fun twist on thee trope and having read Winter's Orbit, I expected that the protags would of course fall in love along the way, but I did not expect the stakes to escalate so fast and in such big Space Operatic ways! I also really appreciated the various times and ways in which the power dynamics shifted over the course of the book, and the way in which both of them choose at various times to consciously even the playing field, as well as how dangerous and unpleasant the actual telepathic mind-bond was when it actually happened and that the happy ending involved both of them getting to be completely separate and independent people! although I will say Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint has ruined me a little for plots in which someone's shattered personality has to be reconstructed and rebuilt on a metaphysical plane by a person who loves them; it is of course Sweepingly Romantic, the mortifying ordeal of being known, etc., but not being a particularly sweeping romantic myself I am of the opinion that this is the kind of work that takes a village. I also found the military experiments backstory very effectively creepy and wish there had been even more of it as I still do not entirely understand how the architect | reader divide worked or the subsequent societal/sociopolitical developments there. I would be pleased if Maxwell chose to return to this corner of the universe but would also gladly explore other areas of it.
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Date: 2022-11-10 04:47 am (UTC)