Review of The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard
I initially heard The Red Scholar’s Wake (JABberwocky Literary Agency, 2022) pitched by the author, Aliette de Bodard, as “lesbian space pirates” (which is from a blurb quoted on the front cover of the book). I immediately bought a copy, a month before the book came out, based on those three words. It was exactly what it said on the tin and so much more.
Xích Si is a scavenger; Rice Fish is a sentient pirate ship. When the former finds herself on board the latter, the ship offers the human a literal proposal of marriage. It’s a marriage of convenience, to be sure, as they each need something the other can offer. But it hauls Xích Si into the turbulent world of space piracy, and along the way, it drags Rice Fish into feelings of which she she never believed herself deserving. Along the way, there are politics, treachery, and some of the most gorgeous descriptive language. But it’s not just a book about piracy and unusual marriages, it’s a book about what is right and wrong (regardless of legality), love, and sacrifice.
Fans of space opera science fiction with strong romantic subplots will adore this book. For me, there are faint whispers of Farscape with a dash of the spectacle of Jupiter Ascending, and of course some parallels to the space piracy of Firefly. But even these fragments pale in comparison to The Red Scholar’s Wake.
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