This book is a companion piece to The Red Scholar’s Wake. I kept looking to see if there were any through lines, but the only one that I found was a mention of The Fire Palace near the end of this book. Otherwise, consider it as taking place in the same time area of the Xuya timeline as Red Scholar, but without any intersecting plot lines.

This is my second novel-length story by deBodard. Previously I knew her from short stories in the Xuya universe that had appeared in various SFF magazines I’m subscribed to. Over the course of these two novels it has become quite clear that deBodard excels in writing character relationships. The plots exist in each book, but they almost seem to exist as a means throw characters into contact with each other. Perhaps because this was the second Xuya book and I was familiar with the overlays and Mindships being considered children and so on, I found the relationships to work on a much stronger level here than they did in Red Scholar. I enjoyed Red Scholar, but the love story seemed slightly forced. Here each relationship seemed to make perfect sense as the characters interacted with each other.

Up until last week I had only ever used AI to find bugs, migrate dependencies, or implement small features in projects I had already spent years coding up on my own. Last weekend that changed when I asked an AI to develop a web app for me. I have a 3D printer and, sometimes when it notifies me the print is completed, I will go to retrieve my print only to find a mess of spaghetti and wasted filament. The 3D printer company sells a specialized camera that works with their printer, but I didn’t want to spend $35+ when I already have an old, unused webcam sitting unused in a drawer. I wanted to be able to pull up a website choose to record a video or a set of images on a timelapse. Once I started the print I wanted to be able to go on to that same site and see a live feed or, if I set it to a timelapse, I wanted to be able to see the last frame captured. I have no idea how to do any of that. On top of that I have a dozen other projects that I wanted to work on. So I thought I would give this AI-developed (vibe coding?) workflow a try.

If you’ve been programming long enough, you know the old joke: the programmer needs to do a task and they aren’t sure how to code it up. Surely at this point someone has already asked how to do it on Stack Overflow. The programmer goes to Stack Overflow and may not even understand how the code works (depending on the joke teller’s opinion of this programmer) and copies and pastes that code into the production code. It’s common enough to become a meme:

I first encountered de Bodard’s Xuya Universe through a short story I read in one of my SFF magazines. A science fiction world based on Vietnamese culture was fascinating. But what sucked me in was the way that de Bodard writes her characters. The emotional interplay between characters is key to the stories.

Like some other SF universes, the Xuya universe (and this book in particular) have the concept of mind-ships; ships controlled by an entity that is a fusion of biological and mechanical technology. If I read things correctly in this book (and remember from other Xuya stories) it is implied that the bio part of the ships comes from someone who was once a human being. This story is a romance between a mind-ship and a human. On the surface is sounds absurd. In practice it works out quite well for the story’s purpose.

The consequences of Silver and Lead continue to spin out throughout the fae communities. Turns out that it really messes with your head to have memories of 2 lives lived - especially one so dramatically different than the real one. We are also seemingly close to ending the major story arc for Rayseline (if this book wasn’t the end of focusing on it for now).

Very few people crazily jump straight into book 20 of a series, so I’m assuming if you’ve made it this far and are perusing this review to consider whether or not to keep going - you’ve read the prior 19 books. (And perhaps the associated novellas and short stories. If you’re not, you REALLY should join her patreon - the $1 level gives you 1 Seanan McGuire short story per month) Ever since Titania’s Matrix (as we call the events in my household) I feel like the October Daye books are stuck on neutral. To take things to a SF analogy, since that’s the book’s setting, it’s like we can’t quite crest the hill and get to the next intersection. I am enjoying the books. Last night I made a bad choice and stayed up until midnight to get to the penultimate chapter and would have probably stayed up later if I didn’t have a bunch of meetings today.

I thought the last book was terrifying, but this one is way, way worse. Although both books involve both mankind making bad choices as well as supernatural forces, this one is one that is more likely to happen in real life. Because it is mentioned in the first paragraph or two, I do not feel like it is a spoiler to say that this book involves Cleric Chih going to gather stories from a town that suffered from an incredible famine some 11 years prior.

This story starts quite abruptly, a change from the usual Singing Hills novellas. I noticed, but figured it was Vo wanting to try something different fore the 5th entry. I should have paid a bit more attention.

This story seemed to me to be a mix of a European folktale and asian mythology, but there are also a lot of themes that seem to be universal among humans. For example, I just learned today of a historical myth around one of the big samurai families that involves a swordsman meeting a monk at a bridge and engaging in battle that is reminiscent of Robin Hood. As usual, it’s hard to talk too much about the story or themes of these novellas without ruining the twist (they almost all have a parallel story structure to a mystery story). I would say that another clue things are off within this narrative is that Chih doesn’t quite ever get the stories she seeks.

A very different environment for Cleric Chih, but no less about stories than the other entries in the series. We even learn a bit more about Signing Hills and the neixin. A great story that has hit me extra hard this year due to some family stuff, but I don’t want to spoil the story.

As always, I love Nghi Vo’s magical realism version of China. The cleric Chih and their mission to document all the knowledge reminds me somewhat of Sazed from the first Mistborn trilogy, another favorite character of mine. This time she’s in the Riverlands, which seems to be a kind of asian version of the American wild west (at least as depicted in movies and tv shows). It also introduces (I think…I don’t remember seeing it before) some wuxia into the Singing Hills series.