A Fire Born of Exile

Or, de Bodard does Dantès. Not that A Fire Born of Exile is the first science fiction novel to be inspired by The Count of Monte Cristo. Gwyneth Jones’s excellent space opera, Spirit, also borrowed the plot from Dumas’s novel.

In A Fire Born of Exile, a naive scholar was tricked into expressing sympathy with the rebels during the Ten Thousand Flags Uprising and promptly executed by being thrown out of an airlock. But against all odds she survived. Ten years later, using the name Quỳnh, the Alchemist of Streams and Hills, she arrives at the Scattered Pearls Belt to exact her revenge. The official who sentenced her to death is now prefect of the Belt, and Quỳnh’s lover of the time, who did nothing to save her, is now a show more general.

Minh is the daughter of the prefect and completely under the thumb of her overbearing mother. She is being groomed to become a scholar and follow in her mother’s footsteps, but she doesn’t really want to do that. In the panic following an incident at the Tiger Games, bandits try to kidnap Minh but she is saved by Quỳnh. The two become tentative friends.

Hoà is a technologist, low caste, who bumps into Quỳnh at her dead sister’s shrine, and it turns out Quỳnh knew her. The two are immediately attracted to each other. Hoà has been contracted by Minh and her friends to fix the mindship Flowers at the Gates of the Lords (or rather, Hoà’s sister has, but she’s ill so Hoà, who has no skill in Mindship repair, has to do it instead - with help from Quỳnh). Flowers at the Gates is actually Minh’s Great Aunt and the head of the family lineage, meaning she has control of all the family funds. But she was badly damaged during the Ten Thousand Flags Uprising.

Quỳnh easily unseats the general by revealing an ex-lover who was a serial killer known to, and ignored by, the authorities. The prefect is a much harder target. Quỳnh has evidence of punishments that were over and above what the law decreed, such as execution instead of exile, including her own execution, but that’s not enough. She tries to manipulate Minh into declaring unfilial piety, but Minh is too browbeaten. There’s Flowers at the Gates too, of course, who is head of the family, but will she be fixed in time?

Quỳnh underestimates the prefect’s power, but the prefect in turn underestimates Flowers’, er, power. It comes to a head when an Imperial Censor visits to make the prefect the head of the lineage.

Dantès had it much easier than Quỳnh, and not just because the prefect comes across more like Malificent than Danglars. There’s plenty more going on in A Fire Born of Exile, and it’s all built up from the relationships between the various characters. I liked the novel preceding this one, The Red Scholar’s Wake, a great deal, but I liked this one more. I’m frankly surprised A Fire Born of Exile didn’t make any award shortlists. Recommended. show less

This book is engagingly written; the stakes are high but not world-ending, and the principle characters, all women or brain ships, sometimes female brain ships, are distinct individuals. But it is subtitled as a romance, and the romance feels arbitrary and unbalanced. Also, the good/bad divisions are overwhelmingly abrupt in characters crucial to the action, which flattens the emotional resonance throughout.

I obtained this book as a free copy from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Unfortunately, it was only available as a PDF download, which meant the font settings on my Kobo required tweaking.

A novel set in Aliette de Bodard's Xuya Universe setting. It's billed as a Xuya romance, like The Red Scholar's Wake, and isn't linked to any of the other threads in the universe, which are more straight SF.

I found it mildly confusing as characters can have aliases or nicknames - at different stages in life or as part of the literati. Also, there is the Eastern tradition of referring to others by addressing respectfully them as relatives; this can be confusing where actual relatives are also present. I had encountered this phenomenon show more previously in Robert van Gulik's Judge Dee books, so wasn't phased by it, but it did mean I had to concentrate on the context of the conversation.

Apart from this, it was a rattling good story, better than The Red Scholar's Wake (where I disliked the insta-love trope). The main theme was vengeance against official actions - not necessarily corrupt actions, but overly legalistic actions.

Yes, there was a happy ending! show less

Another super good story from Aliette's Xuya universe.   I'm thinking this is probably the longest one so far: it'll certainly keep you occupied for a good while.

Our protagonist, and her mindship friend, have both come back from the dead (that's the exile bit) hell set on revenge against those who executed them.   But revenge isn't quite as straight forward as they would like it to be.

If you haven't read any Xuya stories yet then get yourself over to Aliette's "all things Xuya page" and find out where to start and what it's all about.   Basically, it's just really good sci-fi, from a really good writer, with a wonderful Asian flavour to it all.