In the Vanishers’ Palace in Do Better: SFF without Sexual Violence

Nov 02, 2018 Kaa rated it really liked it

Shelves: queer-sff, queer-romance

Intense, dark, and very lovely. Aliette de Bodard is marvelous at building broken, grimly beautiful worlds. I loved the fairy tale feel of this book and the way Viet culture is woven into the retelling of a classic story. It was also fantastic to see a Beauty and the Beast story that made freedom of choice and personal autonomy such strong themes. I think I was a little thrown at first because I was expecting more of a romance and this is really about attraction and potential rather than a full ...more

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Dec 07, 2020 ♥Xeni♥ rated it it was ok

Shelves: novella, ebook, dragon, lgbtq, medical, romance, 2020-books-read, protag-female, fantasy, science-fiction

There were some really cool concepts in this story. I loved a lot of it. Specifically I enjoyed the weird futuristic sci-fi post-apocalyptic state the world is in, being ravaged by various biotech diseases. I love the magical words floating around (can non-magic users see them the way magic-users can?) - concepts tied together to create a greater whole. Even the foreign-shores setting of Vietnam with it being clear that the language being spoken is not English was not only neat, but also well do ...more

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Oct 14, 2018 Jen rated it it was amazing

Shelves: arc, novella, netgalley, own-paper-copy, own-kindle-copy, post-apocalyptic, dark-fantasy, fantasy, lgbtq, nonwhite-protagonists

Full disclosure: I received an ARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for my honest review.

I loved this book. It's set in a dark and gritty post-apocalyptic alternate Earth where an alien(?) race, the Vanishers, ravaged the land and left behind all sorts of terrible viruses which devastate the surviving humans. Humanity clings to survival, but communities don't have the resources to support people they deem insufficiently useful. Amidst all this, failed scholar Yên is trad ...more

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Jan 03, 2021 Leticia rated it really liked it

Shelves: story-bundle-the-world-sf-3, fantasy, 300_less_than, a_to_z_2021, novella, lgbt, world_beyond_the_margins_challenge

I often struggle when a story is mainly focused on the characters and their relationships, but in this case the resolution was masterfully done and the character's arc of Vu Côn and all other characters was deeply tied with their situation and setting, in a way that this Novella's theme development is complete on its own.
I would nevertheless want to read more about this post-Vanisher's World past or future so that I could better grasp it's puzzling nature. ...more

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