A review by sashahc
The Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard

adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

“The Red Scholar’s Wake” by Aliette de Bodard has Vietnamese inspired lesbian space pirates!  Xích Si’s ship is captured by the Red Banner pirate fleet and she is offered protection via an arranged marriage between herself and Rice Fish, a sentient space ship and leader of the Red Banner.  She is thrust into piracy politics, interstellar war, sapphic longing, and questioning her view of the universe.  There is tea and dumplings, found family, disaster lesbians, and nerdy engineers.  I’m sure this will scratch someone’s itch!

Aliette de Bodard: “The further away your character is in terms of race, gender, ethnicity, time period . . . from you, the more work you're going to have to catch up with them. And when you're doing a minority culture, there's also a significant risk of misrepresentation: it is very very hard to not perpetuate problematic clichés (the Mystical Asian, the Native American magically in tune with nature, etc.), because, if you haven't had firsthand experience of the culture, the clichés are what feel natural to you. It's a problem both because you continue perpetuating clichés, and because you drown out voices from the culture”

Aliette de Bodard (she/her) is queer, lives in Paris, France, and is of French and Vietnamese descent.  She works as a software engineer specializing in image processing.  She speaks French, English, passable Spanish, and basic Vietnamese.  She likes semi-colons and fountain pens.