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Originally I gave this 4 stars because of the implausibility of some of the scifi details, such as the translator symbiont. But reflecting on it, I was like, "that really isn't the point, and it's not any worse than the Babel fish." So, I'm giving this a perfect rating for being smutty romance that actually made me laugh and root for the protagonists to prevail in their conflicts.

MC is a wildlife biologist, out on the savannah, studying meerkats. Suddenly she gets attacked by a lion! But then neon-colored bird-like aliens abduct them both! And then she and the lion (whom she names Toto) make friends and escape from the bird aliens, only to crash land on a planet full of dinosaurs as well as sexy goat-man aliens. The sex is pretty hot, but there's a t-rex chasing them as well as a villain they have to fight. The whole thing is entertaining as hell. I just wish that Toto the lion got more air time. His character was hilarious. I would love to read a spinoff novel about his adventures with his sabertooth queen.

Shunas Reise ist zwar erst 2023 das erste Mal auf Deutsch erschienen, stammt jedoch im Original aus dem Jahr 1983 und wurde somit bereits vor der Gründung des Studios Ghibli veröffentlicht.

Die schlichte, aber doch fesselnde Geschichte zeigt bereits vieles, was wir in Miyazakis späteren Manga und Filmen wieder sehen. So erinnern viele Motive und die Welt an das Thal der Winde und die restlichen Landschaften aus Nausicaä, Shuna und sein treues Reittier selbst an Ashitaka aus Mononoke und unsere zweite Hauptfigur Thea wiederum vielen der späteren Frauenfiguren seiner Geschichten. Ich sehe viel von Sophie aus dem Wandelnden Schloss und Nausicaä in ihr.

Trotzdem ist die Geschichte auch sehr anders, als die meisten der späteren überbordenden Welten und Erzählungen. Sie ist langsamer, lässt sich durch die großen Bilder und den wenigen Text viel Zeit und brauch keine großen Worte. Dabei musste ich wiederum an Die rote Schildkröte denken. Auch schwimmt wie so oft die ganze Zeit Kapitalismuskritik mit und es geht um die Themen Ausbeutung und Sklaverei, aber es wird nicht in vielen Details gezeigt, wie Menschen einfach alles, auch ihren Planeten, kaputt machen. Da bleibt das Buch vager. Auch wenn die Botschaft wieder klar rüber kommt.

So viel Meta-Gelaber! Kurz: Ich mag das Buch sehr und auch die vielen Nachworte. 5 von 5.

When a novel feels like it strongly stands alone and ends with such closure, it's hard to imagine what a sequel would be like. This sequel to A Memory Called Empire is different, stranger. I like it a lot, but it is also not what I expected.

It grows a few more points of view, over the original's singular voice from Mahit. It's also a first contact military sf story in space as opposed to the first book's city-centered succession politics and poetry. It's a story about not being able to truly go home again after travelling, about disobeying orders that don't sit well in your heart, about the psychology of different kinds of consciousnesses (in some ways similar to the Ancillary series), and about what peace means to individuals and empires.

One thing I enjoy is that the book gets into the friction between Mahit and Three Seagrass. The first book is a whirlwind week of adventure, and ends with a smooch between them during a momentary pause before the climax of the book. There's no time for conversation or for feelings or for anything other than an emotional moment of connection. This book gives them more space and time, where feelings that were smothered in the first book about the complications of perception rear their head and have to be processed. This also makes it feel much different than the first book, where everybody, and especially Three Seagrass, feel more "on side", even when relationships and goals are complicated.

I don't think either of these books are creating larger worldbuilding that would extend out to a longer series. However, I do think they each are remarkably thematically tight books and both worth reading.

This book follows Mahit, sent as ambassador from the small space station Lsel to a large empire, in order to investigate what happened to her predecessor and to try to prevent the Teixcalaanli Empire from inevitably absorbing that home station.

As you might expect, it's a story about empires (being terrible), but what I like about this book is that it gets at reasons why empires can be dangerously appealing apart from just raw power. Mahit simultaneously wants to protect her homeland but also wishes to be part of larger Teixcalaanli culture that is eating her own. But also, no matter how much poetry she's memorized, she will never truly be a part of this culture.

The reader quickly learns that Lsel secretly has machines that implant the memories of their predecessors, and has sent Mahit off with one of these devices. The extra internal perspective of Yskander commenting or just providing emotional memory on Mahit's experiences adds a fun additional layer to all of the events.

I love the politics; I love the writing; I love the characters. Highly recommended.

This is the book version of the theme-and-variations composition structure used in classical music and sometimes techno. The first chapter is a lovely and sad story in its own right; it almost feels like what Chekhov might have come up with if he'd been writing with today's gender and sexuality sensibility. Each thereafter takes mostly the same set of characters but with progressively larger twists - at first it's very much "what if protagonist had made a different choice at this key moment?", but it gradually shades over into wilder sci-fi speculations.

Strangely, it was the wilder variations that really made the book click for me. Before things got really weird I was starting to question how the book was going to sustain interest for 11 chapters, but North answered that question very effectively. I don't think it would have worked to go directly to those, the smaller variations feel needed for the coherency of the whole, but I loved the effect of the whole set together.

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