On a Red Station, Drifting
Aug. 7th, 2013 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylAnd so to the novella category of the Hugos, with Aliette de Bodard's beautifully nuanced On a Red Station, Drifting. Set about a Dai Viet space station on the edge of a decaying empire, it is a close, psychological story about two powerful women who are almost completely incapable of understanding each other even though their true concerns are somewhat similar.
Events are set in motion when Lê Thi Linh arrives on Prosper Station as part of a group of refugees from the Twenty-Third Planet. Linh, a proud and highly educated magistrate, has been forced to abandon her position and her tribune by the gradually rising rebellion. Unable to see sanctuary elsewhere Linh is forced to cast herself on the mercies of her distant relative Lê Thi Quyen, the de facto ruler of Prosper Station. Preoccupied by the gradual failure of Prosper's AI, Quyen has little time for her arrogant relative and contemptuously engages Linh as the family tutor.
The story unfolds primarily through a series of formal and hostile encounters between the two principals. There are moments of high drama, such as when Linh improvises a savage and angry poem in the middle of a banquet for a powerful official or the moment when the family are finally forced to employer her forensic abilities as a former magistrate, but much of the action is quiet and internal.
Quite excellent.
Events are set in motion when Lê Thi Linh arrives on Prosper Station as part of a group of refugees from the Twenty-Third Planet. Linh, a proud and highly educated magistrate, has been forced to abandon her position and her tribune by the gradually rising rebellion. Unable to see sanctuary elsewhere Linh is forced to cast herself on the mercies of her distant relative Lê Thi Quyen, the de facto ruler of Prosper Station. Preoccupied by the gradual failure of Prosper's AI, Quyen has little time for her arrogant relative and contemptuously engages Linh as the family tutor.
The story unfolds primarily through a series of formal and hostile encounters between the two principals. There are moments of high drama, such as when Linh improvises a savage and angry poem in the middle of a banquet for a powerful official or the moment when the family are finally forced to employer her forensic abilities as a former magistrate, but much of the action is quiet and internal.
Quite excellent.
