This one had me completely lost.

Without any explanation of where we are or how we got here, we suddenly find this squabble between the Rong, the Vermilion Seal, and the Galactics — whoever they all are — all played out with Halls of the Dead and V-Space and some old battle between continents and a memorial being thrown into the mix.   I have no idea how this fits into the Universe of Xuya.   It’s all a bit of a confusing ramble me thinks.

But, anyway, i worked my way through this story taking it at face value but not really understanding any of it because there’s no real context to understand it in; then i moved onto Memorials, which is the next book in the Xuya series, which is also in the same context as this one and slowly things began to make a bit more sense.

After i finished Memorials i came back to The Weight of a Blessing and re-read it and it finally made a lot more sense.

So a part of me says that this should be after Memorials, but i don’t think the story’s timeline would fit that way around and i also think it would then leave Memorials without a context and then you’d have to come back to Memorials and re-read that after this — i know, confusing, right?

And having read both and re-read The Weight of a Blessing and finally made sense of it all, i still don’t understand where it actually fits into Xuya.

But you can read it for free over at Clarkesworld.

Ho hum.   As i say, next up is Memorials.

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A short little story with the war between the Empire and the rebels hotting up while also giving us a whole new mindship/human interaction thing that we haven’t encountered before.

It feels like this is just a step between On a Red Station, Drifting and where ever it is we’re going next: an inbetweeny setting us up for some more interesting things to come.

I know, it’s not much of a review, i agree, an inbetweeny too.

You can read it over at Subterranean Press, and it’s also in the collection Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight.

And next we will be going to: The Weight of a Blessing.

Aliette’s Page

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More from “The Universe of Xuya”.   This one comes with some high credentials as it was on the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2012, and also a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards for Best Novella — which is nothing to be sniffed at for all you weirdos who claim to prefer the smell of real books.

You can buy your very own copy over at Amazon.

So, in sticking with our theme of Vietnamese family culture and ties, and mindships, and all that; we now find ourselves on one of the big space stations that is, like a mindship, run, maintained and controlled by one of these shipminds.

Just like the shipminds, the station’s minds are also born to humans and families and it is those families that ultimately get to control the stations.   And so along with a good story about this station’s mind heading for a total break down and desperately needing fixing, we also have a good story about the family from which that shipmind was born — all while there’s a rebellion/war going on and mixed into the story.

So yeah, plenty going on, and plenty to keep all us fans of Xuya happy and content.

Next up: The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile.

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Free to read over at Clarkesworld, and also in the collection Of Wars, and Memories, and Starlight.

Another short from “The Universe of Xuya”.

One of the really good things about these huge sci-fi universes is that there’s always a space somewhere to tell a story about anything you want to.   Immersion is a story that very much warns humanity of its folly with modern technology and how we use it to hide the truth of our selves from others while also, at the same time, allowing it to filter out the truth of others from ourselves.   Facebook, and it’s other entities, are very much the beginning of the immersion technology discussed in this story: the way people have created their on-line personas that they window dress to impress others for a few more likes, covering up the truth about their shitty little dull lives while eagerly consuming an equally fictional illusion of the reality of other people’s lives.

It’s all lies, all bullshit, all an illusion!!!

How far down this rabbit hole do people go?   How lost in the addiction?   At what point does it end?   How many suicides?   How much depression?   How deep the anxiety?   When will people pull the plug and get back to living their real lives and is that even possible any more with the internet being so pervasive?   People are now having their fridges and other appliances hooked up to wifi and the internet, FFS — Oooh, look at all the nice food in my fridge, gloat, gloat, gloat, please hit that like button please, please, please!!!

Or maybe i’m just over-thinking everything too much while i’m under house arrest.

Ho hum.   One day we will be free.   Sadly, it will most probably be the day we die.

And thus endeth my cheerful review.

Seriously though, it’s a good story and one well worth reading for a lot of people.

Next up, On a Red Station, Drifting.

Aliette’s Page

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