Book recommendation: A Matter of Oaths
Mar. 26th, 2010 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterAs a backup for when I have neither newspaper nor a physical book on my commute, I have MobiReader installed on both my phones (the personal Toodo and professional Lucheni). I have a variety of free e-books to tide me over, and I tend to pick things that are either not too engrossing - like Dickens - or that come in small chunks, since each time I'm looking at my 10-minute commute or a similar period of waiting for someone. The other factor in favour of short reading times is the smallness of the phones' screens, especially Lucheni's.
Guess which phone I loaded up with Helen S. Wright's A Matter of Oaths.
The thing is, it's her only book. She published it in 1988, and she's only now gearing up to write another. (She's arkessian@Dreamwidth.) I. Can't. Wait.
A Matter of Oaths is a space opera without infodumps, a political novel with a spare cast, a tapestry condensed into the one thread of weave and one of weft that still conveys it all. There's the man who broke an oath, but he cannot remember why he broke it, because the punishment is taking away your memories. There is the woman who refuses to acknowledge age, weakness, or anything but the strength of her will. (Rallya, incidentally, is awesome.) There are all those mysteries that - just like in real life - pass by on the edges, and you don't have time to look because of how fast you're rushing by. My eyes hurt, significantly, from staring at the small screen once I was done.
(And there's definitely something for the slash fans. And for fans of strong female characters not defined by either their sexuality or reproductive potential. And both romance and platonic friendship and everything in between.)
And best of all: it's out of print, but Helen made it available as an ebook, for free, in PDF and e-Pub and MobiReader.
Helen S. Wright, A Matter of Oaths
(Mind you, after this much fun out of it, I dropped a few quid in her PayPal tip jar. And if it were reprinted, I'd buy it. In a heartbeat.)
Guess which phone I loaded up with Helen S. Wright's A Matter of Oaths.
The thing is, it's her only book. She published it in 1988, and she's only now gearing up to write another. (She's arkessian@Dreamwidth.) I. Can't. Wait.
A Matter of Oaths is a space opera without infodumps, a political novel with a spare cast, a tapestry condensed into the one thread of weave and one of weft that still conveys it all. There's the man who broke an oath, but he cannot remember why he broke it, because the punishment is taking away your memories. There is the woman who refuses to acknowledge age, weakness, or anything but the strength of her will. (Rallya, incidentally, is awesome.) There are all those mysteries that - just like in real life - pass by on the edges, and you don't have time to look because of how fast you're rushing by. My eyes hurt, significantly, from staring at the small screen once I was done.
(And there's definitely something for the slash fans. And for fans of strong female characters not defined by either their sexuality or reproductive potential. And both romance and platonic friendship and everything in between.)
And best of all: it's out of print, but Helen made it available as an ebook, for free, in PDF and e-Pub and MobiReader.
Helen S. Wright, A Matter of Oaths
(Mind you, after this much fun out of it, I dropped a few quid in her PayPal tip jar. And if it were reprinted, I'd buy it. In a heartbeat.)