The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard

(Gollancz, 2022)

Reviewed by Dev Agarwal

Aliette de Bodard is one of the biggest and most highly regarded names in the genre. She is almost hyperactive in producing work of any length, from short fiction to novellas and novels. Additionally, de Bodard consistently features on the short lists for major awards in the US and UK, often claiming the top spot.

Not only busy, she is also a lyricist of noticeable power and range.

Readers of The Red Scholar’s Wake will find that it combines space opera and future history. Like Heinlein and Haldeman before her, de Bodard has built a body of work around an imagined future. In her case this is based on a parallel universe where Chinese and Vietnamese cultures dominated world history from the fifteenth century onwards (the Xuya universe).

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Review from BSFA Review 23 - Download your copy here.