Hardcover, 96 pages
English language
Published April 5, 2018 by Subterranean.
Welcome to the Scattered Pearls Belt, a collection of ring habitats and orbitals ruled by exiled human scholars and powerful families, and held together by living mindships who carry people and freight between the stars. In this fluid society, human and mindship avatars mingle in corridors and in function rooms, and physical and virtual realities overlap, the appareance of environments easily modified and adapted to interlocutors or current mood.
I read this on the heels of Citadel of Weeping Pearls, and found this story to be more up my alley. Citadel had gotten me curious about the Xuya universe, but this book told a story that grabbed me more strongly. It packs a lot of nuance and richness into such a short story, and it only has me more curious to see more of what Xuya has to offer.
The Tea Master and the Detective is my first experience of Aliette de Bodard’s fiction. A novella set in her Xuya universe, it’s a quick and engaging murder mystery set in a unique and imaginatively realized science fiction setting. There is a lot to love about this story, and I’ll definitely be reading more of de Bodard’s work in the future.
What may shine the most in this brief story is the setting. The entire novella is less than a hundred pages, but de Bodard is able to rivet her readers with a fully realized setting. She excels at this from the first pages, painting a setting that is home to amazingly unique characters. The titular tea master is a mindship—a living, organic(?) intelligence whose body is a ship, but a ship which can project its consciousness visibly to those nearby and interact with physical objects by controlling small robots. …
The Tea Master and the Detective is my first experience of Aliette de Bodard’s fiction. A novella set in her Xuya universe, it’s a quick and engaging murder mystery set in a unique and imaginatively realized science fiction setting. There is a lot to love about this story, and I’ll definitely be reading more of de Bodard’s work in the future.
What may shine the most in this brief story is the setting. The entire novella is less than a hundred pages, but de Bodard is able to rivet her readers with a fully realized setting. She excels at this from the first pages, painting a setting that is home to amazingly unique characters. The titular tea master is a mindship—a living, organic(?) intelligence whose body is a ship, but a ship which can project its consciousness visibly to those nearby and interact with physical objects by controlling small robots. This particular mindship has a traumatic past and now brews “teas” to help people survive deep spaces, a sort of hyper/other space dimension that mindships use as they travel. The world loses its luster when one tries to summarize it, but de Bodard does an amazing job of cultivating not only the setting but the characters within. I found myself gripped from the first pages, devouring the novella in record time.
If there is a weakness to this story, it’s a result of the format. Because it’s a novella, de Bodard doesn’t go into the detail you might find in a full-length novel. This does leave some open questions in terms of the world. But even so, these open questions never affect the plot of the novella itself, only the background.
If you’re looking for a unique, imaginative sci-fi read that’s quick to boot, you need look no further than The Tea Master and the Detective.
4/5 stars.
5 – I loved this, couldn’t put it down, move it to the top of your TBR pile
4 – I really enjoyed this, add it to the TBR pile
3 – It was ok, depending on your preferences it may be worth your time
2 – I didn’t like this book, it has significant flaws and I can’t recommend it
1 – I loathe this book with a most loathsome loathing
