I feel a lot better after getting all that off my chest. So, let's get on to some more straightforward recommendations.
Tricia Sullivan is a writer who is always worth reading; frankly, even her lesser books have more going for them than a lot of sci-fi writers' entire back catalogue.
Lightborn is Sullivan's most recent book and one of her most accomplished as well. I'm not sure that it's quite my favourite, but maybe that's for another post. It is probably the most accessible thing she has written, starting as it does with a fairly standard-seeming apocalypse event triggered by some undefined weirdness. It's not until much later that you get a full understanding of what the Shine - the Lightborn of the title - actually is, but that's ok. I like a book that is confidant enough in it's setting to let you discover it as you go along, otherwise you end up with too much 'as you know, your father, the king,' and everything gets rather stilted.
Sullivan specialises in ideas-heavy stories, where maybe the science is a bit more fluid than a hard-SF purist might like. However, the basic technology is always plausible, even if far-fetched and, crucially, consistent - there's no handwaving or conveniently forgetting/discovering new abilities as the story demands it. Just don't expect it to be an easy ride - you'll have to pay attention the whole way through, but that attention will be rewarded by a piece of work that will keep you thinking long after finishing it.
Lightborn, like a lot of Sullivan's work, is in part about the conflict between the self and, for want of a better word, society: the great connected mass of people that aren't you - about what one loses by going too far into either concept. It is also modern feminist sci-fi at its best, strongly delineating female experiences of the world alongside male ones and not asking that they should be valid, just knowing that they are. These two themes play together to their mutual nourishment and are integral to the story but aren't overstated when not relevant. This makes it a good jumping in point to the rest of her work, where those and other themes are sometimes more explicitly dealt with and discussed within the text.
There's not much more I can say that wouldn't just get into giving-the-plot-away territory, but I will say this. Lightborn could almost be just another post-apocalypse adventure-survival story, and if you like that sort of thing then you won't be disappointed. It's just that it's better than that, because this time it actually explains what the apocalypse was. And why we shouldn't just view it as a convenient reset button on all of our old responsibilities.
Tricia Sullivan is a writer who is always worth reading; frankly, even her lesser books have more going for them than a lot of sci-fi writers' entire back catalogue.
Sullivan specialises in ideas-heavy stories, where maybe the science is a bit more fluid than a hard-SF purist might like. However, the basic technology is always plausible, even if far-fetched and, crucially, consistent - there's no handwaving or conveniently forgetting/discovering new abilities as the story demands it. Just don't expect it to be an easy ride - you'll have to pay attention the whole way through, but that attention will be rewarded by a piece of work that will keep you thinking long after finishing it.
Lightborn, like a lot of Sullivan's work, is in part about the conflict between the self and, for want of a better word, society: the great connected mass of people that aren't you - about what one loses by going too far into either concept. It is also modern feminist sci-fi at its best, strongly delineating female experiences of the world alongside male ones and not asking that they should be valid, just knowing that they are. These two themes play together to their mutual nourishment and are integral to the story but aren't overstated when not relevant. This makes it a good jumping in point to the rest of her work, where those and other themes are sometimes more explicitly dealt with and discussed within the text.
There's not much more I can say that wouldn't just get into giving-the-plot-away territory, but I will say this. Lightborn could almost be just another post-apocalypse adventure-survival story, and if you like that sort of thing then you won't be disappointed. It's just that it's better than that, because this time it actually explains what the apocalypse was. And why we shouldn't just view it as a convenient reset button on all of our old responsibilities.
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