S. L. Huang

I genuinely do not know what to rate this book. Like, the characters and the general setup are so id-appealing to me that I'll pretty much always be delighted to read about them, but the structure of this book was weird and it was, in places, actively uncomfortable to read. It definitely wasn't as good as the first two books (both of which are GREAT), and yet I read it intently and quickly and cared deeply about it. I wasn't just engaged; I was well on my way to marrying it. So: four stars. show more But I think an honest rating would be more like two stars for the first half, five stars for the next 25%, three stars for the 5% after that, and then four stars for the remainder.

It's that kind of book.

So, basically, Cas Russell is back, and if you've read the first two books you know exactly what that means. More math! More action! More weird memory issues and total inability to handle or even recognize feelings! More bizarrest-found-family ever! (You can't even call them a family of choice, because Cas didn't choose them. She doesn't even really know the definition of family. And yet.) In this case, there is a problem involving two major (and I mean MAJOR) mathematical discoveries that miiiiiiiight possibly lead to the end of the world as we know it. (And no one feels all that fine about it.)

So far, so great, right? I mean, if you like action SF with spacetoasters, THIS IS YOUR JAM. But. But. The first half of the book is an overlong series of Cas making seriously bad decisions while getting injured. And injured. And injured again. For me, it ended up being like reading about a character holding their breath. And then after 30 pages, they still haven't breathed, and your lungs are starting to hurt, and also your disbelief is crashing to the ground because humans can't survive this, and it's anxiety-inducing and uncomfortable and it rips you out of the novel. I hope, I hope the point of this was to drive home that there are other weird things about Cas, that she can sustain more damage and heal more quickly than normal humans. Even so: weird and unnecessary and, for me, unfun.

During this part, Huang also walks back Cas's character significantly from the point in her overall arc that she reached in the last novel. Which, again, I did not enjoy all that much.

Then the nonstop action cabaret ends, for which I was devoutly grateful, and Cas takes a giant step forward on her arc, or is sort of dragged along it, anyway. That was great! And then Cas does the Bad Decision Boogie, and when she does it, she really does it. Which, again, uncomfortable. But it does allow her to move forward on her character arc yet again, so it's an understandable justification for my cringing.

So, I was actively uncomfortable through more than half of the book. But I finished it and hit the next button several times, hoping against hope for more. And I will now commence haunting Amazon, waiting impatiently for the next one.

Basically: I don't know for sure how I feel about this book. But WOW do I need more of it. show less

I honestly can't tell you how good this book is; it could be objectively terrible and I'd still love it, since it was apparently written to my exact specifications by an extremely willing and able party. Like. Wow, could this be any closer to precisely what I want from my fiction? Only if someone fell in love with a robot or built a spaceship out of spare parts, pretty much.

Our hero (ish) is Cas Russell, applied mathematical genius -- she's not finding her Erdos number or proving the show more Riemann hypothesis, she's using vector calculus to win gunfights. Which, fine, whatever. That's fun and excellently robotic, but not JUST FOR ME or anything. But she is also a spacetoaster. This is a woman who would much rather kill people than have feelings about them, who can identify the physical symptoms of emotions without figuring out that she is even having a feeling (let alone what the feeling might actually be), who is completely apart from and weird to everyone around her. I love her unreservedly, and this character alone would be enough to make me love the novel.

But wait! There's more. Much of this novel covers Cas's attempts to build a team. And when the spacetoaster is the person who is trying the hardest to build a team, well, you've got trouble, my friends. I love that the characters working together feels necessary for most of the book but only actually possible in the last half. (It never really gets to probable, let alone functional, but they do get all their guns pointed in sort of the same direction eventually.) Yes! People who exist on the fringes and struggle with feelings and morals and ethics and whether or not they are even actually human SHOULD have trouble making a team, especially with somewhat more normal types.

And then there's the Ominous Background that you only get glimpses of in this novel, and the fact that the major enemy of this book is a telepath, and the way most of the book is set in an instantly-recognizable Los Angeles, and and and. Just bonuses upon bonuses for me, all of this.

And then there's the cleverness of the writing itself. It's hard to explain this one without spoiling the book, but -- you know how sometimes you're reading and you KNOW the character is going to do a thing, even though they wouldn't, because the plot needs them to? In this story, either the character doesn't do the thing (because they wouldn't), or if they do the thing, that, in itself, is important and relevant. This book never lets its characters read ahead, and it never lets the plot control the characters. I love that.

Basically, I read this entire book with increasing wonderment. It wasn't even my birthday! And I don't know this author! But they apparently wrote a book for me anyway, and I think that's swell.

I love this book to bits. show less

S. L. Huang's The Language of Liars is a linguistic parable about colonialism and language theft. In a vast galaxy of diverse alien species, protagonist Ro is a linguist on a small world that depends on imported commodities like oxygen to survive. The interstellar trade that supplies his world is made possible by an arcane substance called meridian, which can only be mined by a species known to outsiders as Star Eaters. By immersing himself in Star Eater language and culture, Ro hopes to use show more his species' innate empathic abilities to "jump" into a Star Eater's mind and make sure that meridian is distributed fairly throughout the galaxy. However, jumping is a one-way trip that swaps out a Star Eater's consciousness for the jumper's, meaning Ro will be permanently stuck in a stolen Star Eater body. Still, the millions of lives on Ro's world mean it's worth the trip, even if it effectively erases a Star Eater mind every few generations. A story that opens with a contemplation on the semantics of "lying", The Language of Liars is at the same time a fun and intriguing linguistic mystery and a cautionary tale about how even colonizers who claim to respect and appreciate the cultures they colonize still hurt them. show less

I read this as part of my Nebula finalist packet, and obtained a copy from my local library.

The Water Outlaws is a wild romp in the spirit of classic martial arts movies, but with a strong feminist twist. There are trigger warnings galore here, as women are abused in various ways, but it's never done gratuitously or to please the male gaze. No, Huang describes the wrongs and then establishes a cast of strong, savvy women and queer folks with a craving to survive and find justice. This is an show more incredibly satisfying read in that regard--a touch predictable, perhaps, but in the way of a cozy with a dark bent. Great book. show less