I picked up the Mad Scientist's Daughter by Cassandra Rose Clarke, because "that sounds like your sort of book" as my eldest put it, but looking at other books by the writer I ended up reading the Assassin's Curse
first. The Mad Scientist's Daughter was clearly going to be a bit of a
downer, and the other book looked to be a bit of an adventure story so I
went with that one.
The Assassin's Curse follows the
story of Ananna of the Tanarau, a daughter of pirates in a nation of
pirates. The book starts with her fleeing an arranged marriage, only to
be pursued by an assassin hired by the family of the groom that she has
spurned. Ananna is supremely competent and would be the match of
anything thrown against her save magic, but at a key moment, a curse on
the assassin saves her and condemns both the pirate and the assassin to
the curse.
The
main character is a delight. When she commits to fleeing her marriage
she's all in, dropping everything and immediately making plans for her
future, even though it appears that none of her dreams will now be
possible. The assassin, Naji, persists on treating her as fragile
(partly because of the curse), which she confounds at every opportunity.
Other than in terms of magic and knowledge of the magical world, she is
the more competent one in every respect.
If I have a quibble with the book, it's that it completely fails to tell you that this is part one of a series. That's not something I mind if the series has distinct books (N. K. Jemisin's Hundred Thousand Kingdoms
leaps to mind), but this is just part one of a bigger book and leaves
it without any resolution. I understand why publishers do it; it's for
exactly the reason that I'm cranky about it: I wouldn't have read it
until all the books were available. But, in my opinion, it shows a level
of contempt for the reader that I personally find frustrating, and
which I doubt was the author's intent.
That
being said, it just whet my appetite for The Mad Scientist's Daughter
which was an even better read (not as much fun though, but then I kind
of expected that.) This one is more adult and science fiction rather
than fantasy.
The story follows the titular character, Cat, as she grows up. She is the only child of a pair of cyberneticists, although her mother does not appear to be practicing. The story starts with Cat at 5 years old when her father brings home an android to live with the family. The android's name is Finn and he's much more human-like than any of the other robots that are nearly everywhere in this world.
Which brings me to the world-building, which is brilliant. Near future science fiction that attempts to be reasonably extrapolative is quite rare at the moment. A lot of it is like the Hunger Games, not too different from what we have now, but it takes quite a stretch to imagine how the world got like that. This one reminds me a lot of the sort of world-building you see in the Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (except that I don't get an urge to slit my wrists after reading it), only much more optimistic.
The world has been through climate change, and the worst of the Disasters as they are referred to with huge loss of life. Robots are everywhere. They need to be: there aren't enough humans. But all the things that need to be done to maintain a technological society have largely been done. For instance, Kansas is a desert, but it's also a state-encompassing wind farm.
Cat is utterly self-absorbed, which serves the world-building exposition well, because it's all so obviously backdrop. Effectively, everything and everyone but a select few characters, her parents, Finn and a couple of lovers, are nothing but backdrop to her life. The central story of the book is her trying to consign Finn to that backdrop because he's only a robot, and continuously and spectacularly failing to do so. She's also incredibly intelligent, but only interested in art. When she needs to apply her intelligence to something technical, something she wants desperately, it comes as easily to her as any of her artwork.
This is a beautiful and tragic love story that I recommend to anyone.
Currently Reading: The Valerie Dearborn books by Caroline Hanson (because, obviously after reading something as brilliant as these two, I need asudden sharp drop in quality something lighter.)
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| Available in July (grumble) |
The story follows the titular character, Cat, as she grows up. She is the only child of a pair of cyberneticists, although her mother does not appear to be practicing. The story starts with Cat at 5 years old when her father brings home an android to live with the family. The android's name is Finn and he's much more human-like than any of the other robots that are nearly everywhere in this world.
Which brings me to the world-building, which is brilliant. Near future science fiction that attempts to be reasonably extrapolative is quite rare at the moment. A lot of it is like the Hunger Games, not too different from what we have now, but it takes quite a stretch to imagine how the world got like that. This one reminds me a lot of the sort of world-building you see in the Windup Girl by Paolo Bacigalupi (except that I don't get an urge to slit my wrists after reading it), only much more optimistic.
The world has been through climate change, and the worst of the Disasters as they are referred to with huge loss of life. Robots are everywhere. They need to be: there aren't enough humans. But all the things that need to be done to maintain a technological society have largely been done. For instance, Kansas is a desert, but it's also a state-encompassing wind farm.
Cat is utterly self-absorbed, which serves the world-building exposition well, because it's all so obviously backdrop. Effectively, everything and everyone but a select few characters, her parents, Finn and a couple of lovers, are nothing but backdrop to her life. The central story of the book is her trying to consign Finn to that backdrop because he's only a robot, and continuously and spectacularly failing to do so. She's also incredibly intelligent, but only interested in art. When she needs to apply her intelligence to something technical, something she wants desperately, it comes as easily to her as any of her artwork.
This is a beautiful and tragic love story that I recommend to anyone.
Currently Reading: The Valerie Dearborn books by Caroline Hanson (because, obviously after reading something as brilliant as these two, I need a
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