Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone
Jul. 4th, 2019 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightreadsEmpress of Forever
3/5. In a near future dystopia America, a queer PoC lady tech entrepreneur attempts to take over the world (to make it better, you know) and finds herself transported to a science fictional universe where a "mysterious"* empress rules all of civilization and erases any culture that gets too advanced and might attract alien predators.
I read this going is this brilliant? Or just weird? Verdict: mostly weird, and like 25% of the way to brilliant. This is stylistically fascinating – it's like the literary version of scifi anime. E.g., when a ship arrives and wants to communicate, a giant face forms on the side and . . . shouts. And when characters need to go sulk somewhere, they just go perch "on an asteroid" (like you do). It's strange and surreal and mostly charming.
And I kept probing it to see what it's really for, and getting not much back. Or not much satisfying. The heart of this book is about community – building it and learning to use it when you are, say, a tech entrepreneur with all the personality disorder that implies. And I can't help reading this entire book as a sort of laboratory of development for the main character, an extended and weird holodeck episode. Which I acknowledge is what most books are. But this one really showed you the constructed aspect of that in a way I found unsatisfying. If anyone has a different reading for what this style is doing, I'd love to hear it.
*Presumably you can spot the plot twist from this single sentence. TBF, I don't think it's intended to be any sort of surprise to the reader.
3/5. In a near future dystopia America, a queer PoC lady tech entrepreneur attempts to take over the world (to make it better, you know) and finds herself transported to a science fictional universe where a "mysterious"* empress rules all of civilization and erases any culture that gets too advanced and might attract alien predators.
I read this going is this brilliant? Or just weird? Verdict: mostly weird, and like 25% of the way to brilliant. This is stylistically fascinating – it's like the literary version of scifi anime. E.g., when a ship arrives and wants to communicate, a giant face forms on the side and . . . shouts. And when characters need to go sulk somewhere, they just go perch "on an asteroid" (like you do). It's strange and surreal and mostly charming.
And I kept probing it to see what it's really for, and getting not much back. Or not much satisfying. The heart of this book is about community – building it and learning to use it when you are, say, a tech entrepreneur with all the personality disorder that implies. And I can't help reading this entire book as a sort of laboratory of development for the main character, an extended and weird holodeck episode. Which I acknowledge is what most books are. But this one really showed you the constructed aspect of that in a way I found unsatisfying. If anyone has a different reading for what this style is doing, I'd love to hear it.
*Presumably you can spot the plot twist from this single sentence. TBF, I don't think it's intended to be any sort of surprise to the reader.