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debbieg 's review for:
Provenance
by Ann Leckie
If there's such a thing as "cosy" science fiction, this is it. What makes it is its heroine, the (not quite) indomitable Ingray, who is the most normal and nice character I've encountered for such a long time. She's so not a Mary Sue, yet she's determined and intelligent and brave. How can you not like a character who has to hitch up her skirts in order to get into a space suit that she's too round to fit into comfortably, and is always worried because her hair pins are falling out?
The author does not make any allowances for her readers, and sometimes the very much "show not tell" narrative provokes a lot of confusion. I spent the first few chapters kind of letting it flow without trying to figure things out. It really gets going once someone gets murdered, however, and you do eventually sort out who's who and what's going on. You don't need to have read the Radch trilogy, but it certainly helps, as you will have a deeper appreciation for some throw-away references to gloves and tea and various alien races and an AI rebellion. I found the gender fluidity here more convincing than the "she only" POV of the trilogy, and liked the gender neutral pronouns - e em eir and so on - and the way characters switch between them and more fixed gender indentifiers. Also any race whose cultural currency is effectively souvenirs is fine with me. There's a really gentle humour to a lot of it: a comedy of manners of aliens. Good stuff.
The author does not make any allowances for her readers, and sometimes the very much "show not tell" narrative provokes a lot of confusion. I spent the first few chapters kind of letting it flow without trying to figure things out. It really gets going once someone gets murdered, however, and you do eventually sort out who's who and what's going on. You don't need to have read the Radch trilogy, but it certainly helps, as you will have a deeper appreciation for some throw-away references to gloves and tea and various alien races and an AI rebellion. I found the gender fluidity here more convincing than the "she only" POV of the trilogy, and liked the gender neutral pronouns - e em eir and so on - and the way characters switch between them and more fixed gender indentifiers. Also any race whose cultural currency is effectively souvenirs is fine with me. There's a really gentle humour to a lot of it: a comedy of manners of aliens. Good stuff.