The Red Scholar’s Wake/Some Love Transcends All Barriers by Aliette de Bodard (book review).

‘The Red Scholar’s Wake’ is a standalone novel by Aliette de Bodard, and is notable as a space opera written by an award-winning female author. de Bodard has previously won the BSFA Award for Nest Novel for ‘The House Of Shattered Wings’. ‘The Red Scholar’s Wake’ itself has been nominated for several awards.

The exact copy that this reviewer has is an uncorrected proof. The back cover proudly announces ‘An epic sapphic space opera…’. It certainly counts as space opera, being set in a future that is an indeterminate number of years in the future and set against a background of daring and viscous space pirates preying on a stellar empire. Sapphic? I guess so, but don’t expect vividly described lesbian pornography here. What we do get is some gently erotic tales of unrequited passion and denial of the characters’ inner desires. Epic? Honestly, not really. This is a great SF novel and lots of fun, but it is just one novel with a relatively short story. de Boddard wraps the book up in 291 pages.

Enough of the blurb and on to the text. de Bodard writes in a pleasing style that seems unique to her. In some ways, it is as fun to read as easily approached authors like Anne McCaffrey or David Eddings. However, de Boddard is almost flamboyantly creative with her characters and the setting. I found myself turning the pages not to advance the plot so much as to enjoy the characters’ interplay.

As the novel starts, we focus on Xich Si, who is one of our main protagonists. Xich Si, we learn, has been eking out an existence as a scavenger and trying to find enough money so she can escape her squalid home with her daughter Khanh. We quickly learn the Xich Si has a talent for tinkering with bots, which are personal robots that see to clothing, communication, etc. The book starts with Xich Si having been taken by pirates in a raid and now a prisoner in a cell on board the pirate ship Rice Fish. This is a female ‘mindship’ having a biological core and a sentient personality. Xich Si is visited in her cell by the fantastically beautiful avatar of Rice Fish, who talks to this bot tinkerer and informs her that Rice Fish’s wife, The Red Scholar, leader of the Red Banner of pirates, has been killed. Rice Fish believes her wife was assassinated and now proposes a contractual marriage to Xich Si both for political reasons and so Rice Fish can employ Xich Si to investigate. Xich Si is repelled by the idea of marrying a pirate ship who so recently slaughtered her scavenger companions but feels she has little choice.

de Bodard is described as being French-American with some Vietnamese ancestry. She draws on her Vietnamese culture to base her setting on. All the characters have, presumably, Vietnamese names, although this reviewer’s knowledge of far eastern culture is far too poor to be sure. Further, much of the political manoeuvring concerns saving face and demonstrating honour and lots of tea is offered in ceremonial fashion. This is a fine paradigm which feels internally consistent yet not too familiar to a western reader. It would be interesting to know how a reader from Vietnam or other far eastern country would find it.

If I had been asked to read the text without knowing who the author was, I would have quickly guessed the author as being female. There are two basic clues to this. Firstly, the descriptions of the characters tend to dwell heavily upon their spectacular mode of dress. The level of technology in this book allows characters to overlay images and presumably holographic decoration as projected by the wearer’s bots. de Bodard has great fun with fantastic descriptions of mythical beasts, star fields and almost anything else essentially used as clothing. The only other author I can recall who focussed so heavily on clothing is Anne McCaffrey with ‘The Coelura’ but I have occasionally noted other stories by ladies that also had this sensibility.

Secondly, a lot of the ‘dialogue’ in the book is actually internal monologue. This is nothing new as lots of authors do this. But I don’t think I have ever encountered an author who used the internal thoughts in such an emotionally intelligent way. Very often, we find characters who are both thinking and emoting at the same time, often at odds with themselves and thoroughly confused as a result. This is a tremendously refreshing approach that I applaud. I cannot recall any male author managing to cram so much internal emotion into characters within a SF story.

Most SF fans will recognise the phenomena in SF from the Golden and Silver Ages (1920s through 1960s), where very few female characters feature in novels. Those that do are often supporting characters and often one-dimensional at best. Either intentionally or unintentionally, de Bodard has reversed this imbalance. There are only two male characters in this book and they are supporting characters, well realised but not core to the story. The main protagonists, the opposition and every other supporting character are female. This is not commented on and no reason is given, it just is. This does not damage the book at all. I will admit I initially found it challenging but, once I started to enjoy the characters, it ceased to matter.

I don’t have many criticisms for this book. I have wondered if it is strictly necessary for Xich Si and Rice Fish to have and eventually act on passionate feelings for each other. After all, in the many SF novels having all male cast, I can’t bring to mind any that feature similar relationships between the male protagonists, but I do feel that the two characters’ emotional journeys do lead to a natural conclusion and, as such, the sapphic elements are not jarring. Upon reflection, it is quite possible that the classic books of the golden era might have actually featured more homosexual relationships if they had been written in a more permissive time. Certainly, authors like Arthur C. Clarke might have brought this kind of content into earlier books had he felt he was free to do so.

What else can I say? Read this book. It is great fun and I think will have a wide appeal to all kinds of readers. Challenging in all the right ways, fantastically inventive and lots of entertainment that ends all too soon. Thoroughly recommended.

Dave Corby

September 2023

The Red Scholar’s Wake/Some Love Transcends All Barriers by Aliette de Bodard

(pub: Gollancz, 2022. 291 page enlarged paperback – advance copy. Price: £14.99 (UK only). ISBN: 978-1-39960139-9)

check out websites: www.gollancz.co.uk  and www.orionbooks.co.uk