The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard

I was not a fan of Aliette de Bodard before  reading this book. I had previously read The Tea Master and the Detective when it was nominated for the Hugo Award and found it did not make an impression on me. But then I heard a lot of buzz about this book, and so I figured those people might know something I don’t, so I requested an eARC from NetGalley and the publisher in exchange for an honest review. I later saw the book on some best of lists and I was like, I really have to get to this one. So I read it. 

I don’t know exactly why, but this book did NOT work for me. It was a slog from start to finish. I disliked all of the characters, except the Censor, who I believe I was supposed to dislike. This book was billed as a pirate romance novel between a woman and a mindship. I guess it was that? But in the worst possible way. The protagonist is effectively captured and forced into marriage with the mindship, in a way that if the mindship was a corporeal man would feel very rapey. The mindship is a pirate who doesn’t seem to see anything wrong with rape, theft, and murder, and is completely unsympathetic, although I don’t think she’s supposed to come off that way. The protagonist is supposed to be sympathetic- her partner is dead, her child is left alone on a planet with friends! But there is no emotional core to her abandonment of her child, and she goes out drinking and partying pretty quickly once they get to a pirate space station. She does nothing to try to reconnect to her daughter and gives up very quickly. Then, when she find out her daughter is going to be sold into slavery she decides to go get her, and the author breezes past the child sex trafficking going on so quickly that I had whiplash. 

None of the characters feel real or lifelike, the sex scenes felt needlessly graphic and also out of character, and the spouses calling each other things like “little sis” came off as creepy instead of affectionate. I regret the time I spent reading this book.