The novel “The Red Scholar’s Wake” by Aliette de Bodard was published for the first time in 2022. It’s part of the series set in the Xuya universe.
When Xích Si is captured by the Red Banner Pirates, she expects to be killed, probably not quickly. Instead, Rice Fish, the sentient ship that leads the pirates, proposes a marriage of interest between them.
Rice Fish lost her wife, who was the Red Scholar, the leader of the Red Banner, in circumstances she finds suspicious and believes there’s a mole in her fleet passing information to their rivals. Xích Si is very skilled at scavenging robot parts to reassemble and program, so her technical skills could be the key to shedding light on the situation.
In 2007, Aliette de Bodard started writing stories set in the so-called Xuya universe. That’s a parallel timeline in which Asia became dominant on Earth and in particular Chinese and Vietnamese cultures led the expansion into space and, among other things, brought Confucian principles into interstellar empires. The stories set in this fictional universe are full of references of many types to East Asian cultures ranging from linguistic subtleties to social and political concepts such as Confucian-style scholar-rulers.
The stories of the Xuya universe range across space and time, spanning very different places and eras. “The Red Scholar’s Wake” is set in a future where one of the existing interstellar empires in this universe is caught between internal problems such as corruption and external ones such as piracy. Groups of pirates prey on commercial starships under various banners who formed a sort of federation in which they made their own rules. However, there are different ideas and power struggles among the various banner leaders.
Despite the centrality of the pirates, “The Red Scholar’s Wake” isn’t exactly full of action and space battles. Even the story of the rivalries with intrigues and betrayals sometimes seems functional to what is the most important part, centered on the relationship between the sentient spaceship Rice Fish and Xích Si.
The plot ends up being pretty simple and is used by Aliette de Bodard to develop characters and parts of the Xuya universe. Even the parties linked to intrigues in the world of piracy are almost always linked to individuals and the relationships that exist between them. The various groups linked to the banners generally follow their leaders and very few secondary characters have any relevance.
In the end, the story revolves around the relationship between Rice Fish and Xích Si, which begins as an arranged marriage celebrated out of interest but develops very differently. Honestly, those developments seemed too fast to me but I’m not an expert in this type of story. To me, it seemed like an obvious way to advance the plot and develop the parts I found most interesting.
The contrast between an empire with various problems and the pirates shows various social and political facets. They are all elements that can exist in any era in which Confucian teachings exist and in “The Red Scholar’s Wake” they are placed in a science fiction setting where the technological elements are very strong.
This is not exactly a hard science fiction novel in the sense that no details are offered regarding how the technologies work but they are always present in one way or another. Xích Si is very good at tinkering with robots and computer systems of various types and Rice Fish is a sentient spaceship. Throughout the novel, there are robots, avatars, virtual reality systems, and more, all elements used to enrich the setting making it even more engaging for the reader.
All this makes “The Red Scholar’s Wake” a novel I found fascinating and intriguing due to the blend of elements that are quite heterogeneous for a result that in my opinion, works thanks to Aliette de Bodard’s skills. It’s an autonomous work within the Xuya universe, so it can be appreciated by anyone interested in an original blend of the various narrative elements. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
