Lina Rather

Lina Rather packs a lot into her slim novellas, including well-drawn characters that you come to care a lot about. This is a tale of cosmic horror, the monstrous conceptions of the title, witnessed by apprentice midwife Sarah, who has been hired by architect Chistopher Wren’s wife Faith. It brought to mind The Dress Lodger by Sheri Holman, but set in 1675 London rather than 1831 London. The two novels share a feminist concern with the raw deal women of little means have historically been show more handed, as well as malformed babies and the men who take advantage of them. The denouement moved maybe a bit too quickly—I would have really enjoyed more detail. But if Lina Rather ever decides to write a novel that’s twice the length of the two I’ve read, or even twice the length of the two of them together, I’m there for it—it will surely be magnificent. show less

'Sisters Of The Forsaken Stars' continues the story that was started in ‘Sisters Of The Vast Black’, a book that Lina Rather described as being about ‘Nuns living in a giant slug in outer-space’.

When we met the Sisters of the Order of Saint Rita in the first book, they were a small community of nuns travelling in their convent, Our Lady of Impossible Constellations, a vast, genetically engineered mollusc called a Liveship, to tend to the sick and carry out marriages and baptisms in show more the outer reaches of mankind’s colonies in the stars. By the end of the book, some dark secrets about the sisters had been revealed and they’d managed to entangle themselves in a brutal covert struggle between Earth and its colonies. The ending was action-packed, explosive and surprising.

One way to write a sequel to a book like that is to ramp up the violence and the struggle and lead towards an even more explosive ending with even bigger consequences for humanity.

Lina Rather went a different way. She'd been writing about nuns in space, not Marines in space. The women in her story have chosen to live a religious life of service to others. Whatever their background before they joined the Order of Saint Rita, they are now women who bring peace and solace, not women who challenge governments and lead revolutions. Yet their actions have turned them into a legend that the Earth government wants to suppress and that some of the Colonists want to turn into a rallying cry of the revolution. So Lina Rather goes for the personal rather than the big-picture political. She explores how the Sisters find a path that allows them to honour their faith, to support each other and to minister to those who need them without either being killed or turned into a weapon.

The strength of the novella lies in its ability fully to imagine the reactions of the Sisters, a disparate group of women from many backgrounds and with different views on faith and responsibility but who have chosen to live as a community with a duty to serve God by ministering to others.

No one has any easy answers. Faith is tested. Trust is hard to gain. Threats keep multiplying and options keep narrowing.

I loved watching how these women thought through their problems and worked hard to maintain themselves as a community.

The story and the ending were lower-key than the first book but no less powerful for that. I hope there'll be a third book in the series. If there is, I'll be there, rooting for the Sisters in the Liveship. show less

This is a slim novella that is jam-packed with characters and drama. A group of nuns whose convent is a space-faring sea slug (which brought to mind Moya of Farscape, though less sentient and no empathic Pilot) travel among far-flung colony planets, rendering aid and performing sacraments as needed, after a great war that defeated Earth Central Governance (the opposite outcome of the war against the Alliance in Firefly). The religious dilemmas of the nuns brought to mind Canticle for show more Liebowitz a bit too, though in 155 pages, it has nowhere the scope and breadth of that novel. Though it uses some familiar space opera and other science fictional pieces, they’re recombined in a way that’s fresh and thoughtful, and the characters are interesting individuals, which is a lot to accomplish in such a short book. I’m definitely planning to read the second book in this series. show less

The premise of A Season of Monstrous Conceptions appealed to me, but the book simply isn't substantial enough to fill the promise of its premise. It has wonderful elements: a setting in 17th Century London; a bisexual apprentice midwife wife with unclearly defined otherworldly powers; Christopher Wren and the rebuilding of London after the great fire; and those monstrous conceptions of the title—babies with too many eyes, too much hair, scales, tails, the wrong number of limbs.

At 160 show more pages, this book moved quickly, too quickly, with not nearly enough detail. Readers were told all those elements were there, but never allowed to sink into them sufficiently to feel as if they were experiencing them. I left it feeling as if I'd read a preliminary sketch that was never fully realized as the novel it might have been. I makes for a fun evening's reading, but doesn't have the kind of riches that call for rereading.

I received a free electronic review topic of this title from the publisher via NetGalley; the opinions are my own. show less