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sophia_sol) wrote2020-02-09 05:41 pm
sophia_sol) wrote2020-02-09 05:41 pm
In The Vanishers' Palace, by Aliette de Bodard
An f/f retelling of Beauty and the Beast, set in a Vietnamese-inspired alternate world. I really enjoyed the worldbuilding stuff, with the sort of unexplained backstory with the Vanishers, where bits are revealed over time as it's relevant, that's just fully integrated into the characters' understanding of their world.
I also liked how it's clear the characters aren't speaking English even though the book is all in English, with all the references to how first-person pronouns in the language the characters' are speaking are gendered. And queerness is integrated into this - there's multiple nonbinary characters in the book who use gender-neutral pronouns to refer to themselves.
And there's lots of great platonic relationships in this book too, parent-child, and student-teacher, among other things.
But I struggled with the romance aspect because I just didn't feel like I was adequately shown why the Beauty-analogue (Yên) would be interested in the Beast-analogue (Vu Côn) as early as she is, other than Vu Côn being hot? Which like. Ehhhh. There's some very nice revelations where Yên realizes all of Vu Côn's admirable qualities but it's like, in the last 10% of the book, wayyyyyy after Yên was first interested in her.
I also liked how it's clear the characters aren't speaking English even though the book is all in English, with all the references to how first-person pronouns in the language the characters' are speaking are gendered. And queerness is integrated into this - there's multiple nonbinary characters in the book who use gender-neutral pronouns to refer to themselves.
And there's lots of great platonic relationships in this book too, parent-child, and student-teacher, among other things.
But I struggled with the romance aspect because I just didn't feel like I was adequately shown why the Beauty-analogue (Yên) would be interested in the Beast-analogue (Vu Côn) as early as she is, other than Vu Côn being hot? Which like. Ehhhh. There's some very nice revelations where Yên realizes all of Vu Côn's admirable qualities but it's like, in the last 10% of the book, wayyyyyy after Yên was first interested in her.