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Yang - The Red Threads of Fortune
Nov. 7th, 2019 07:56 pmSo! I read The Black Tides of Heaven earlier this year and enjoyed the story, even though I found the pacing very odd. But now that I finished The Red Threads of Fortune, I want to go back and read the first novella so I can compare.
The Red Threads of Fortune is a lot better-paced, and I can’t help but feel at least part of that’s because it isn’t struggling to compress as much time into a limited wordspace. Where The Black Tides of Heaven was compressing several decades by picking out key events in the protagonist’s life, The Red Threads of Fortune instead takes place over several days, so allows for a much smoother transition between scenes. It also benefits because I am already familiar with the setting and characters, so I am more easily able to slip into the story being told.
Also, it has our first actual adult nonbinary character!!! One of my disappointments with the previous story was that despite being billed as ‘nonbinary characters written by nonbinary author,’ there were no actual nonbinary characters. Children aren’t given genders until they are old enough to choose their own, which is still an interesting piece of worldbuilding, but didn’t feel quite satisfying for me craving actual nonbinary representation.
The book deserves a few content warnings for child death and domestic violence, but the actual events are in the character’s histories, even if we revisit through dialogue and flashbacks.
( More spoilers and nattering beneath the cut: )
The Red Threads of Fortune is a lot better-paced, and I can’t help but feel at least part of that’s because it isn’t struggling to compress as much time into a limited wordspace. Where The Black Tides of Heaven was compressing several decades by picking out key events in the protagonist’s life, The Red Threads of Fortune instead takes place over several days, so allows for a much smoother transition between scenes. It also benefits because I am already familiar with the setting and characters, so I am more easily able to slip into the story being told.
Also, it has our first actual adult nonbinary character!!! One of my disappointments with the previous story was that despite being billed as ‘nonbinary characters written by nonbinary author,’ there were no actual nonbinary characters. Children aren’t given genders until they are old enough to choose their own, which is still an interesting piece of worldbuilding, but didn’t feel quite satisfying for me craving actual nonbinary representation.
The book deserves a few content warnings for child death and domestic violence, but the actual events are in the character’s histories, even if we revisit through dialogue and flashbacks.
( More spoilers and nattering beneath the cut: )
