For my first ever Aliette de Bodard book, I was pleasantly surprised by just how much I enjoyed this sapphic sci-fi read.

The plot was entertaining, fast paced and full of mystery, suspense, achingly irresistible romance, and wonderfully developed world-building. The pacing of the action lent itself well to the development of the romance between the characters which I thought was wonderful.

Considering one of the main characters was a spaceship, after the initial surprise, the ships character was beautifully human and very well created.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

2.5*

The Red Scholar's Wake had a lot of promise, but ultimately I found the book unfortunately lacking. I did like the Vietnamese inspired world and the concept of sentient spaceships operating within a pirate society.

I think this book could have done with being longer, and with more depth provided as to the descriptions of the setting and politics of the pirates vs the empire, as well as to the characters. Even by the end I didn't feel attached to any of them as the plot moves incredibly fast from the getgo, leaving little time for the development of the relationship between Rice Fish and Xich Si in particular. As a result it felt as though they fell in instalove, when both clearly have their own issues to be resolved which I thought made them quite incompatible, and I struggle to fully understand their deep romantic connection.

This book had a really fascinating world that I really wanted to explore and find out more about BUT NOTHING WAS EXPLAINED. I wanted to know how everything worked. I wanted context for certain thing. This story had LIVING SHIPS that were at least slightly biological in their make up, but do I know how the ship fits together? No. Not even a little bit. They have something called the "mind" that seems to be the biological element, but I cannot even tell you what it looks like. It was just shoved into the scene and left there unexplained.

You may be saying "that's all right, I'm sure I can cope with that" but let me tell you, it was also the most complex and elaborate sci fi world I've ever seen, so much was so different from our world. So much needed an explanation and not one single explanation was given. I had to guess every single thing.

Honestly I have not much else to say. The love story was sweet I guess, but I was so distracted trying to work out how everything actually worked or even looked like so I didn't really get to enjoy it.

I so very nearly DNFd it. I would have if it hadn't been so short.

I was really excited for this book! I do have to say it didn’t live up to my all expectations which is a disappointment, that being said, I was most certainly hooked on this book! I just could not put it down. Sapphic pirates in space?? Yes please!

Recuerdo que hace unos cuantos años la desaparecida editorial digital Fata Libelli publicó en castellano una serie de cuentos en el mundo de Xuya. Reconozco que en aquel momento no terminé de entrar en el juego de Aliette de Bodard. No al menos de la misma manera que con esta novela independiente que puedo deciros que no necesita de haber leído nada previo para ser disfrutada.

El blurb de esta novela está claro: piratas sáficas en el espacio. Eso te resume varias de las cosas que se encuentran en esta novela.

Lo primero es la ambientación en el espacio de este universo donde Asia se convirtió en la cultura dominante a nivel global. Los imperios galácticos tienen una gran influencia vietnamita y china y las naves sentientes son partes de linajes familiares que se extienden por toda la galaxia. Naves cuyas personalidades se representan mediante avatares.

Por otro lado, la relación entre las protagonistas se cuece a fuego lento, algo que en cierta manera me ha recordado a otra novela como El Trono de Jazmín de Tasha Shuri con una ambientación completamente distinta. Aquí las protagonistas son Xích Si y Rice Fish, humana y nave respectivamente cuya relación inicial de conveniencia termina derivando en una historia romántica profunda y con escenas super curiosas (por el trasfondo de unas y lo divertido de otras) en el desarrollo de este vínculo.

Por último, piratas. En este apartado voy a englobar la parte de acción y política de la novela. Aunque durante el primer tercio de libro todo parece orientado a la relación entre las dos protagonistas, el abanico de personajes, relaciones y acciones que suceden posteriormente son, para mi gusto, el gran atractivo de esta historia. El abanico de bandos e intereses políticos me tuvieron atrapado durante toda la segunda mitad hasta su conclusión.

Si ya has leído alguno de los libros de Aliette en el mundo de Xuya encontrarás ciertas referencias que no son imprescindibles (puedo confirmarlo) para entenderlo todo. Si no lo has hecho, a mi me ha parecido un original y buen punto de partida a partir del cual rastrear en otras lecturas de este universo. Una entretenidísima combinación de amor, aventuras y política.

The Red Scholar's Wake is a book that is more than the sum of its parts. I'm really not a fan of arranged marriage plots, and at first, this felt like a particularly contrived and rushed iteration of the formula; coupled with some fairly straightforward political machination plots, I wasn't really sure on it for much of the read. But this is really a lot more than its plot, and more than even its wacky sci-fi setting (this truly feels futuristic beyond just surface details, with the prevalence of bots, avatars, and overlays, while a bit tricky to conceptualise, feeling immensely believable). The heart is the emotional arcs of Xích Sí and Rice Fish, which are as much about their relationships with themselves as with each other. It is an emotionally complex story, and also tries to really engage with the ideology of piracy in the context of empire - none of it has particularly easy answers, and I'm glad this book embraces that. I do think there is probably a version of this where the plot feels a bit less hurried and simple, but I will always favour emotional satisfaction over complex plots.

For me a great book needs relationships and that can be just interactions but also romantic relationships too. The idea od romance in a dramatic rale seems to make some people become the child from The Princess Bride and ask ‘Is this a kissing book’ but as that tale showed you can get invested. Romantic relationships are a part of life and a novel where the world is strangely absent would seem more artificial and emptier compared to our own. Aliette de Bodard’s great The Red Scholar’s Wake offers us far future science fiction drama; pirates (in space) and also complex relationships as well as a rather powerful romance. The combination is too strong to resist.

Space scavenger, data analyst and engineer Xich Si’s luck has finally ran out. Trying to get artifacts to make a living to support her family that she finds herself captured by the notorious Red Banner pirates. She is too poor to be ransomed so this means a life of indentured servitude and as a consequence she will be a criminal on her own home station, and she can never see her young daughter again. However, Xich Si arrives just as the pirate fleet is rocked to learn its lender the infamous The Red Scholar is killed in battle. The leader of the five Banner fleets means the pirate realm is about to go into a flux over who should be in charge.

Xich Si though thanks to her skills has attracted the attention of the Red Scholar’s wife the mindship The Rice Fish Resting and Rice Fish knows in order to secure her own position and show she is able to lead she needs for now to have a wife again particularly to avoid other suitors. Xich Si decides this offers her a better deal and signs the contract. She is also asked to review the data of the Red Scholar’s last battle to see who caused her death. She will now get to experience the pirate’s world from the inside; realise that there are many factions trying to lead it in different directions and meet the people trying to bring all the pirates down too. Her enigmatic new wife is also proving more surprising than she ever expected.

This takes place in the Xuya universe that de Bodard has used in various tales where in the far future the influence is Vietnamese and Chinese culture covering everything from fashion, food, language and systems of government. Human beings also live alongside mindships; the Ais that operate shift who adopt a human avatar and operate also in our world with all rights and responsibilities. You do not need to have read any previous stories (although they’re all great) as de Bodard will nimbly set up all you need to know bout this particular part of the universe which we have not seen before – because this offers space pirates!

The space pirate storyline is fascinating. We have five fleets that The Red Scholar and Rice Fish have spent years slowly moving towards acting as a unified force and also increasingly one that has its own rules of conduct that not all agreed with. The pirates are becoming a power in their own right and so increasingly viewed by the neighbouring Empires as a force to stop. The Red Scholar’s mysterious death re-opens the debate as to what the pirates should do next – return to their old habits for profit with additional violence or continue to and together and keep up a programme of reform. The novel gives us a murder mystery as to how the Red Scholar died and also a tale of intrigue with the fleets led by a mix of humans and mindships all vying for power. Xich Si has to learn quickly to understand this world and decide where she fits in it and also how to stay alive.

Cementing this part of the tale is the dynamic that grows between Xich Si and Rice Fish. Initially this is purely a marriage of convenience for political reasons but the skill that de Bodard has as the story unwinds is that we discover these two characters are both carrying a great deal of personal trauma and unusually have more of a connection than they expected even though they are so very different in natures and stations in life. Both characters we see have had difficult past relationships; neither been able to be who they wanted to be and therefore have had to settle for less than they dreamed about. This story explores these two realising that they understand each other better than anyone else. As well as that emotional connection we get a very skilful building of the attraction these two have for one another. A shared hand, kiss or even touching of hair is here a big emotional release that slowly and achingly builds up the tension before these two finally admit this is no longer a simple contract anymore. You get invested in wanting these two to have a very long honest conversation…and finally be happy!

But of course, love doesn’t run smooth and these two plotlines in the final half intertwine in really interesting ways. Xich Si has to try and get her own daughter back when she discovers she is not as safe as she thought while Rice Fish needs to build bridges with her stepson Ho an ambitious young man far more interested in piracy than diplomacy. The dovetailing of these two sub-plots leads to a bigger confrontation across multiple flanks as the tensions in the fleet finally are released with additional elements on top. Prepare for pirate fights, space battles, betrayals, and reversals of fortune. I really liked that the outcomes felt realistic rather than ultra-convenient as there are some wins for our group but also losses. No one gets to win everything and change the world all at once but you do live to have adventures again for another day. It was a refreshing and emotionally powerful ending I really enjoyed as the final outcome was unexpected. I’d love for it to be revisited one day.

The Red Scholar’s Wake is an immensely satisfying read. An inventive tale, full of drama, characters that you really care about and a grown up romantic core that I got fully invested in wanting a happy ending. A tale that can skilfully make a spaceship battle or a shared glance just as intense as each other is a skill that I wish I saw in more books but this reminds me why I always enjoy de Bodard’s work. Highly recommended!

PS there is a sign more novels in this universe are to come – hurrah!

i really liked the novella set in this same universe so i was really excited to read this. sadly the writing was way too fanfictiony for me (at one point one of the characters feels a twinge in her uterus...which...okay). still i guess fans of cheesy romances won't mind.

I love Aliette de Bodard's books, but they are probably the most intellectually challenging books I read on a regular basis. Especially the mindship books. I think on the one hand there's the Vietnamese-inspired names and foods and customs which are so different than what I'm used to (a *good* thing! Reading is for expanding one's horizons!) and on the other hand there's the whole human-falls-in-love-with-a-sentient-spaceship oh and also there is the physical plane and then there are overlays and avatars and bots that have physical form but can also be used a lot like coding but you can (I think) think the commands at them and have the information appear directly in your brain rather than having to rely on a pesky computer, oh and you can simultaneously have conversations out loud and other conversations virtually in your head -- and my brain refuses to make sense of it all. I don't regularly read a lot of sci-fi, so there's that. I generally spend the first third of these books trying to wrap my head around how it all works and the next two thirds slowly sinking into the story and becoming immersed in it while the details stop being so confusing and fade to the background. And falling in love with the story and characters and romance

Aliette de Bodard's writing is poetic and evocative and also understated, with a tendency to leave things unsaid for the reader to infer. This, too, takes a bit to get used to, but I really love it. I don't especially like having everything spoon-fed to me all the time, and while I read and love a lot of 'easier' fantasy and romance, I appreciate having to really engage my brain to pick up on most of what's happening. (I'm sure I don't pick up on all of it.)

Some of the descriptions, especially of Rice Fish's avatar, with her hair flowing into the floor of the ship and patterned with stars and nebulae, were so satisfying and just gorgeous. I had trouble with a mental picture of the characters (other than Rice Fish), but I think that's just me -- I rarely get a clear mental picture of characters in the books I read. I did get a clear picture of the Pirate Citadel - enough that I felt like I was there, walking beside Xích Si and experiencing it with her.

This is first and foremost a romance, one between a human who has been beaten down for years living on the edge of getting by as a scavenger, and a sentient spaceship who is also an influential leader of a pirate faction in a society she helped to build and carries deep emotional wounds left by her murdered wife, however unintentionally.

Xích Si, the scavenger, has been captured by pirates at the opening of the book and is forced to leave everything she knows - including her young daughter - behind. She understandably is scared and angry and fears the worst. Rice Fish, the mindship she is travelling on and head of the pirate faction who captured her, shocks her by proposing marriage -- a 'business arrangement only.' Together they face a rebellious son, an endangered daughter, authorities determined to erase the scourge of pirates, treachery from within, and questions of the future of the entire pirate alliance. Not to mention their own bruised and bleeding hearts.

They make mistakes, they hurt one another, and -- they learn. They learn to love, they learn to trust, they learn to hope and dream again and how to heal themselves. And the journey of how they get to that point is beautiful.

I would like to add that I have seen some criticism of ace rep in this book and I strongly disagree. I would not categorize Rice Fish's murdered wife as ace, no matter that she did not want the physical aspect of the relationship that Rice Fish did. It's not that simple. It was mentioned several times that she took her lovers outside of the marriage partnership ("Huan, for her part, had collected flings the way scholars collected books and vids", "I watched Ma collect her friends and lovers and never get the intimacy she craved") -- she just did not want such a relationship with Rice Fish. I don't know whether it was that she simply was not attracted to Rice Fish that way or whether she truly believed that any physical / romantic relationship between them would sully the partnership and what they were trying to build. But I think criticizing it for "bad ace rep" misses the point and is not fair. (Disclaimer: I am ace and I wanted to address this criticism because I have seen it more than once.)

The scenes with Xích Si's daughter, and some with Rice Fish's son, tug at the heartstrings. Alliette de Bodard knows how to use a few brushstrokes to create poignant, touching family scenes. I appreciate them more, I think, since having a child myself. It's clear that she gets what it's like, having to guide a child and be strong for them but also show yourself to be vulnerable, and eventually to let them go.

Even though this is a romance, it's very politics-heavy. The different factions within the pirate fleet, the warring empires, the scavengers and wealthier scholars and beaurocrats... There is a lot of information to unpack and a lot of things that aren't quite said out loud that are perhaps easy to miss. At first, it is very hard to grasp what is going on, which actually makes a lot of sense, as Xích Si is also unfamiliar with how the pirate fleet functions and also struggles to grasp it all. She learns and becomes more comfortable with it as the reader does, which makes it easy to identify with her.

Despite the heaviness of the themes (indentured servants are discussed quite a bit from several perspectives, as well as raiding and capturing merchants to hold for ransom, as well as emotional trauma and pain) and the dense, somewhat obscure way the text is written, and the sci-fi aspects, this also has quite a bit of adventure and mystery. I spent the last 40% or so on the edge of my seat wondering how it would all go down. I came away knowing that I absolutely loved and will recommend it, while at the same time I will need to read an easier book next just to give my brain a break.

*Thanks to NetGalley, Gollancz, and JABberwocky Literary Agency, Inc. for providing an advance copy for review.

A unique and enthralling book, I am absolutely 100% looking forward to getting a special edition of this in the illumicrate December box !!!

This was an incredibly creative and absorbing novel, and I enjoyed the powerful and intelligent women, the different societal customs and people as ships - ships! How fantastic. This isn't an idea I've come across before so I found it very intriguing, although it did take a while getting used to it. There was a lot of politics, not only between the pirates but the people of the port as well, but it didn't feel as heavy as some political novels do which was good to see. And whilst I was a little confused at the outset of the book, trying to understand the different types of ships that were mentioned and the timeline (I'm still not sure I quite understood what happened to Xich Si and when!) I was happy to keep reading. The exploration of Vietnamese language was an added bonus, with references to use of certain pronouns, or words which could mean several things.

Unfortunately, I didn't feel there was much chemistry between Xich Si and Rice Fish but I did enjoy the general dynamic of their relationship and that of their family as well. Overall, this was a unique and interesting read and good for anyone new to sci-fi especially.

The Red Scholar's Wake was plentiful buzzed in my corner of the internet and as such I was buzzed to. I have been on a decent Aliette de Bodard reading spree this year too so that helped. I was not initially taken by the story but later on the characters grabbed me.

The book is often thrown around as lesbian space pirates, and while that is mostly accurate, it isn't so whymsical as that line makes it sound. These space pirates are in one collective and each have their own fiction. Some want to loot while others want to build a fair society. I thought that was a really interesting take. Even being associated with pirates or when kidnapped, you cannot return to your previous place in society. They make you an outcast. This world building was very interesting but could have and probably should have been expanded on a lot more.

Xích Si has been taken from her ship by the space pirates and cannot return to her family, her daughter, even if she can get out. It feels hopeless. Yet when the sentient ship Rice Fish comes to her and offers her a partnership by marriage, suddenly there is some sort of an out. She just has to become a space pirate.

Initially this setting with Xích Si and Rice Fish was awkward, they didn't quite feel real yet so the speak. And the plot point of finding proof of who murdered Rice Fish previous wife didn't quite grab me because of the previous point made on world building. But then the characters started to grow. We got more on Rice Fish and her relationship trauma and her strained relationship with her son next to grieving her wife. While Xích Si is trying to find what her place is in this new world and if she can accept the rules.

All in all I found this an interesting and in the end an entertaining read. I do think there is still a lot to be discovered here and things to expand on so I hope Aliette de Bodard will return to this space pirate world.

The Red Scholar's Wake has a strong premise: a scavenger taken by pirates, separated from her daughter, forced into a marriage of convenience with a mindship (who has a female human avatar), which in turn is part of a conflicted fleet of pirates... and is that a romance developing? Loads of natural inbuilt conflict to explore!

The book is a nice, light, compelling read. I enjoyed my time in it. The world is intriguing, and the characters well-described. I liked the political aspects.

Saying that, I would've welcomed the author going a little deeper into some aspects. For example, the romance could've had a slower, deeper burn to give it a stronger foundation when it was put at risk. I'd have liked a more compelling, clear reason for Rice Fish, the mindship, to choose Xích Si for the marriage - her bot/analysis skills didn't seem particularly remarkable on the surface.

Even the piracy gets quite a light hand. Xích Si is upset at how they treat people, but the pirates she's ended up with 'aren't like that'. Plus, while there are no 'misunderstanding' plots as such in the romance, there are still a few times where a good conversation would solve a lot. I suppose that isn't unusual though!

I'll definitely be interested to see what the author does next in this world.

Where to start with this? The three-word synopsis is “lesbian space pirates,” which sounds amazing — even more so when you add in the Vietnamese-inspired culture. On the surface, there are a number of similarities to Everina Maxwell’s Ocean’s Echo, a novel I enjoyed: a spouse has died under mysterious circumstances and their widow/er must immediately remarry for political reasons and for aid in investigating their spouse’s death. Both of the widowed spouses were gaslit by their partners and must learn to feel deserving of love. Ocean’s Echo is m/m and this is f/f and both novels are set in space.

Unfortunately, the worldbuilding in The Red Scholar’s Wake is frustratingly opaque and the romance is unnecessarily angsty. Maybe there are other books set in this universe that explain things more? But if that’s the case, this novel shouldn’t be considered a standalone. One of the members of the relationship is a mindship, which as far as I can tell is a sentient spacecraft who can create a humanoid avatar for herself and can feel human emotions including love and passion. She has a heart room where her “organic matter with metal inserts” core exists, and she had a childhood and a sister growing up. So… was she once human and turned into a ship? If she was created, what is the point of giving spaceships an emotion like lust?

I had many other issues with this book — the rationale for the marriage wasn’t strong enough; the wives called each other “Big Sis” and “Li’l Sis” and while I understand this is a translation of Vietnamese pronouns and they’re ok I suppose for a marriage of convenience, it felt gross to keep calling each other that after they’d had sex; the pirates were rebelling against the Viet empire but it was never clear why. It’s a shame, because the novel’s premise is so intriguing and that cover is stunning.

English is not my native language so, please, excuse any errors that may have escaped my proofreading.
I received this as an advance reader copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All opinions my own.

This book sums up quite a lot of my interests at the moment: space pirates, sapphic protagonists, Asia diaspora authors and comfort reads.

I absolutely adored the opening chapters where we are completely thrown into action and, little by little, we are putting the pieces together until the whole scene blooms before the readers eyes. Following the beginning, they rhythm became a little bit irregular at times, mostly towards the middle of the book, but I was so interested in the story, and the developments between the main characters, that I did not feel it dragging.

If a book is about space pirates, with a sentient spaceship, you bet there is going to have some challenging descriptions to bring that to life, and for my liking Aliette excels at it. The way words were used to put galaxies and stars together are just breath taking. But also, they way the characters bloom from a convenience arranged marriage and very dispar interests to actual deep care and ever loving sacrifice is pure bliss to read. Rice Fish’s character development is just *chef’s kiss*. As I was nearing the end I was realising how deeply involved I was on their dynamic and to be fair, I would absolutely love another book about them.

In this same line, I would have adored to know more about the world. I felt this one slightly short, as if the reader was only on “need to know basis”. It is probably because I am way too spoiled with 600 page trilogies that I felt the need to know more about everything, even though it was not strictly necessary for this story. If Aliette had wanted to give us more about the Banners and the Empire I would have been cheering from my sofa. But then again, I feel like it would have taken the book to another vibe, broader, more intergalactic space opera than actually cozy engineering logic driven family grieving spaceship and passionate, familial driven and emotional warm hearted Xích Si.

The only detail that make me a bit startled was the honorific titles. I don’t know if it is because I am now very used to their use, but it read slightly forced when I came across with translated terms as “little sister” and “child” when referencing her wife. I know it’s entirely up to preferences but I would have felt more natural to me to leave them in their original form. After all, I was reading the accent in Xích Si as a tonal marker, even though it may not have been.

An absolute compelling story that will leave you wanting more, both if you are already familiar with Aliette’s prose, or this was your first taste of her imagination.

I loved the cover and the premise and indeed, the title of Aliette de Bodard's The Red Scholar's Wake. Sadly, I did not love this book. The inciting incident struck me as very similar to that of Everina Maxwell's Winter's Orbit, which I also read this month. When Xích Si is captured by the Red Banner pirate fleet, she's shocked when its leader, the sentient ship Rice Fish, proposes an offer of marriage; her previous wife, the Red Scholar, died in mysterious circumstances, and Rice Fish wants to draw on Xích Si's technical expertise to work out what really happened. Xích Si and Rice Fish are divided by their views of the world: while Xích Si despises piracy and valorises her scavenger lifestyle, deploring the indentures used by the pirate alliance, Rice Fish argues that the haven she has built using the Red Banner offers a better way of living. Despite these differences, Xích Si and Rice Fish begin to fall for each other - but then an escalation of the political struggle within the pirate fleet threatens to tear them apart.

In my review of Winter's Orbit, I suggested that it was really ‘romance with a side of science fiction’ and I think The Red Scholar's Wake falls into that category as well, despite having more superficial SF trappings. de Bodard makes much of the sentient ships, the avatars that both ships and humans project and the bots they then use to interact with their environment, but unlike Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice trilogy, this book has nothing interesting to say about sentience, and indeed treats its ship and human characters exactly the same way. Similarly, there's a gloss of Vietnamese culture that informs the world of this novel, but doesn't ultimately make it any different from a standard SF setting. The political subplot is incredibly simplistic and predictable, making Winter's Orbit look Machiavellian.

The problem is, then, that if The Red Scholar's Wake is really a romance, it needs to be... romantic. And for me, the pairing didn't work at all. Neither Xích Si nor Rice Fish are given much of a character past the different ethical stances that I described above. Because they have no personalities, there is nothing to draw them together, and yet they fall very quickly for each other. There also seems to be no consideration of the fact that ONE OF THEM IS A SHIP. I imagine de Bodard was trying to show that this kind of pairing is very normal in this world, but she needed to do more work to sell this to the reader (I found the 'sex' scene in the middle of the novel INCREDIBLY creepy). Reading this book actually made me reflect on why Winter's Orbit worked so well, and why it might be a bit unfair to describe it as ‘romance with a side of science fiction’. While I was totally won over by the central pairing in that novel, the science fiction setting wasn't merely a backdrop; Maxwell used some of the technologies she introduced to explore the trauma of an abusive relationship and how we can mend ourselves. In contrast, The Red Scholar's Wake was definitely romance plus a bit of science fiction; the two aspects of the novel never speak to each other, and at some points (the aforementioned sex scene!!), are directly in conflict.

With thanks to NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is the first Xuya Universe novel, set in a world where Vietnamese imperialism colonised space. You don’t need to have read any of the novellas to understand mindships (it unfolds within the novel) although there are some extra details in another story if you get curious. Interestingly this story is set in a pirate-occupied part of space between two space empires, so no prior experience of scholarly officials will help - although politics, family, love, and children are important as ever.

I think I’m used to Xuya Universe stories in shorter form and discovering the characters, the situation, the mystery and the resolution. This story has that and power dynamics along with other the politics but I didn’t feel the distance of space, or passing of time. I did appreciate the romance such as it was (one or two intimate scenes are in there) which is between two people who have had relationships before and are very much adults but not necessarily good at expressing themselves and both with grief to deal with. Which is to say despite a contract marriage and their partnership being central to the story, the romance doesn’t dominate the narrative even if their feelings are a form of motivation.

I really wanted to like this book. However, the more I think about it, the more issues I have. 

I liked Rice Fish and Xích Si as characters. Rice Fish is a sentient spaceship and the recent widow of the titular Red Scholar, meaning she had become the de facto leader of the Red Banner, a collective of pirates which forms a part of a wider pirate society. Her position is a precarious one, and she’s convinced that her late wife’s death was the doing of the leader of another one of the pirate banners. She’s idealistic, and often conflates her idea of how pirate society should run with how it actually runs, and this is a big weakness of hers when it comes to the politics of it all, but she cares deeply about the people she’s suddenly become solely responsible for and never stops trying her best. I loved the descriptions of her humanoid avatar, which she usually manifests when she wants to have a conversation with somebody. The concept of someone’s hair gradually turning into nebulae and stars is so cool!

Xích Si is the sole survivor of a pirate attack. The harsh rules of her home means than unless she is explicitly ransomed back she’ll be accused of cooperating with the pirates and executed for it, and as a scavenger she’s nowhere near important enough to be ransomed. She can’t even risk contacting her young daughter because her daughter will be assumed to be involved with piracy and executed along with her, regardless of the fact that she’s six years old. Xích Si contrasts Rice Fish and provides her with a much needed reality check, that the norms of pirate society mean that most people are understandably terrified of them, and that when everybody they touch is forced to join, often in such a way that they’ll never be free, there isn’t anything fair about that.

I liked their eventual relationship! I did not like how it started. Their marriage of convenience didn’t make any sense. Rice Fish wanted to marry Xích Si because of her technological prowess, but Rice Fish at that point had hundreds if not thousands of banner people who were supposedly loyal to her and her late wife Huân, including some she considered to be personal friends, and I find it hard to believe that none of them were as skilled as the random prisoner they had in the brig after a random raid. I don’t see why Rice Fish couldn’t trust anyone else to look into her late wife’s death. Surely somebody already a part of the Red Banner would’ve been more willing to help her than someone who’d just had most people she knew brutally killed by the Red Banner? And then, despite both agreeing that their marriage would be purely a business transaction, they both immediately started acting as if they were in love with the other but no it could never be requited they simply could not let themselves feel this way. They’d known each other for about a day. The late Red Scholar, Huân, who Rice Fish had genuinely been in love with, had been dead for less than a week at this point. Xích Si had every reason to still be afraid of Rice Fish. I enjoy mutual pining as much as anyone else with taste, but the jump from ideologically opposed strangers to mutual pining happened way too quickly in my opinion. The in-between stage when they’re in the process of falling for each other is just as important for me, and that was missing here.

Both Rice Fish and Xích Si are parents, and I enjoyed reading about both of these relationships. Rice Fish’s relationship with her late wife’s son had been strained since many years before the story’s start, and the conversations they have throughout this book are some of the strongest scenes. Things are broken between them, perhaps irreparably, but they still love each other despite it all. In contrast, Xích Si has a very good relationship with her six year old and they love each other deeply. Although I did find the six year old acting kinda like a relationship therapist for Xích Si and Rice Fish at times to be a bit odd. She’s six. And she also only just met Rice Fish, so what does she know?

This book is part of a wider universe, which I didn’t know until I was already about 20% through and went searching for more information because I was so lost. Having read over the author’s website I’m now a lot clearer on the historical worldbuilding. It’s just that those weren’t the questions I had. Almost every single visual element is said to be in ‘overlay’ and there’s never any explanation as to what that actually means. And how does a sentient ship have parents and siblings who they are related to and who they grew up with when they’re AI ships? Are some of them not AI? Were they born/made as something other than an AI, and then had their minds uploaded? I realise that these questions and more are most likely answered in other books and novellas that are part of the Xuya universe. As a newcomer, it felt a little inaccessible.

Some things are just untranslatable. Throughout the whole book, the honorifics that the characters would be using for each other in Vietnamese are written out in English, which mostly works okay, except when it leads to the married couple calling each other ‘big sis’ and ‘lil sis’ all the time and even while they’re actively having sex. In my opinion, there would’ve been zero problem with the honorifics being written out in Vietnamese. They don’t work in English.

All of this was totalling up to making the book Fine. Not really objectionable, just not to my personal taste. But then we got onto the aphobia issue.

The world in this book is very queer. Nobody who’s mentioned to have a partner is heterosexual. I don’t recall there being any openly trans characters, but they wouldn’t feel out of place in the world. Also throughout the narration there were mentions of people who don’t experience romantic or sexual attraction existing, that these people were valid, and that Rice Fish and Xích Si just happened to not be in that category. I would’ve been happy with this. Delighted, even. As an arospec ace person who does enjoy reading romance with allo characters, the bare minimum I ask for is for sex and romance to not be treated like a universal necessity, and this was an excellent example of that. I was ready to point to this as an example of how to do it right. Unfortunately the final chapters of the book had to go and ruin it.

If the only openly asexual character in your novel is the antagonist who’s a bureaucrat who’s super gung ho about wiping out the leads and everyone like them purely due to her ideological opposition to them, then that feels uncomfortably close to the online ‘discourse’ from the last decade or so accusing asexual people of being inherently homophobic. Was this the author’s intention? I doubt it! I really doubt it! But we see how queer pirate society is, and we don’t get that same view into non-pirate society, and as an ace person it’s ringing alarm bells for me that the only ace character just happened to be an antagonist and especially this kind of antagonist.

This isn’t the biggest problem, however. The biggest problem with aspec characters is Huân, Rice Fish’s late wife.

The issue is that Huân was aromantic, and Rice Fish fell in love with her. Huân of course rejected her advances because she wasn’t interested in her like that. This, on its own, is fine. This happens. Sometimes people fall for someone with an incompatible orientation, and it sucks, but you get over it and move on. But that’s not what happened here! Instead of Huân telling Rice Fish that she wasn’t interested in romance, or that she just wasn’t attracted to Rice Fish, she told her that romance itself is always a recipe for disaster and that for a partnership to survive there always has to be no romance at all between the participants or it’s guaranteed to ruin everything. Rice Fish believed her, internalised this, and this belief legitimately traumatises her. It informs her approach to romantic relationships throughout the whole book, and the emotional climax of the book is her realisation that Huân had lied to her and that strong partnerships can contain romance, actually. Quick question. What the fuck. Huân is the only textually aromantic person in the whole book, and her aromanticism directly leads to the trauma of one of the lead characters. There was no need for this. Huân could’ve just not been romantically interested in Rice Fish specifically and the plot would’ve played out literally exactly the same. There was no need to specify that Huân wasn’t interested in romance in general. There are so few aromantic characters out there, and I cannot stress enough how much I do not appreciate that this is one of them. I’m even more disappointed that this isn’t even the first time I’ve read a queer book where the main character falls for an aromantic person and has an awful experience because of it due to that aromantic character choosing the course of action that would hurt the main character the most rather than handle the situation with an iota of sense. It feels deliberate. It feels targeted. It’s not acceptable.

Yes, real aromantic people can make bad decisions like this. Real aromantic people, just like everybody else, can be messy and can fuck up. But, crucially, Huân is NOT a real aromantic person and so doesn’t have agency of her own outside of the author. She was written that way. One day, when there’s a plethora of aromantic characters in fiction, a depiction like this won’t be a problem because there’ll be plenty of other characters whose aromanticism doesn’t directly lead to trauma for one of the story’s leads. We’re not at that point yet.

Again, was this what the author intended? I genuinely don’t think so. I think that these were just poorly thought out throwaway lines, with the intention of adding more aspec characters to the world without giving much thought to the implications of only having aspec characters in these roles. Sadly the result is a book that ends with a jolt of aphobia that sours the entire reading experience. I wouldn’t advise people to never read anything by this author, but I would advise caution around this one, especially for aspec readers.

The cover is gorgeous, though.

I recently read The Tea Master and the Detective and loved the concept of the mindships as characters, so I was delighted to see The Red Scholar’s Wake was set in that universe (and with the mention of dragons with antlers, is this the future of the Dominion of the Fallen books?).

Following a pirate raid, those taken hostage are either sold into bondage or face torture and death, maybe both. When Xích Si’s scavenger ship is captured, she doesn’t expect an offer of marriage. As a bot maker and data analyst, she is useful to Rice Fish, the leader and mindship of the infamous Red Banner. Following the death of her wife, Rice Fish’s grasp on the banners has been tenuous and the only way she can offer protection to Xích Si, is to marry her.

Of course, what starts as a marriage of convenience grows into more, once they both realise the other is more than they seem on the surface. Xích Si expects cruelty from the pirates, and they can be, they take slaves after all, but she also realises the world she came from can be just as bad. The pirate have some rules, and when the daughter she has been forced to leave behind is threatened, help comes from unexpected sources.

The mindship is grieving, and learned to push love away in her previous marriage. Her son is resentful and around her pirates vie for position. Is she strong enough to lead the banner? If you’re wondering how a spaceship and a human have a romantic relationship, you’ll just have to read it!

This has been very heavily pushed as “lesbian space pirates” and while is does indeed contain lesbian space pirates, it’s lighter on the action than you might expect. Less piracy, more introspection and a lot of politics. I think it helps to have read one of the novellas set in the Xuya universe, just to get up to speed with the worldbuilding faster, but this is a standalone novel that can be read by itself.

Content warnings and AO3 tags can be found on Aliette’s website. Most the violence and icky stuff is off page or hinted at. The gorgeous UK cover art is by Alyssa Winans.

This is an utterly fantastic book from Aliette De Bodard which utterly knocked everything I was expecting out of the park. Never have I been more excited to utter the phrase 'Lesbian Space Pirates' to everyone I know as I recommend this book.
Where in the past I've sometimes found De Bodard's writing a tad inaccessible this book flowed perfectly, I was always clear where I was and what was going on. I found the pace to be just right, and despite the fact that this book is on the shorter side I didn't feel like anything was missing.
The romance is at the centre of the story and is absolutely delightful. I've read a number of other science fiction books that similarly explore romances with an element of healing from past trauma and this is yet another one that made me feel a whole range of emotions (in a wonderful way).
But alongside the romance is a fantastic plot involving conspiracy, intrigue and no small amount of moral dilemma over the ethics of piracy - it is exactly what I was hoping this book would be and a great addition to the already fabulous romance. I truly cannot wait until this book is on shelves so I can recommend it to everyone I know and also their mums.
My rating 5/5 stars
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher. All opinions are my own.