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Feb. 16th, 2010 03:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prusikAgain, a story I loved when I read it, this time at Strange Horizons. Mur Lafferty gives it a terrific reading.
It's definitely not the conventional meet up with the Evil Overlord. What I love about the story is that the main character has a brain and is not afraid to use it. I hate the trope where the main character unquestioningly believes the man who has had her chained and has been cutting her scalp for days is telling the whole, complete and utterly honest truth. (The story undoubtedly explains that she accepts these words due to some heretofore hidden insecurity in our main character that allows her to believe the worst of her friends no matter how non-credible the source.)
Here, the man manages to raise doubt but main character keeps her wits about her, recognizes that if her captain and her lover can lie, well, so can the guy who has kept her shackled for days. She still doubts because she's human and what he says is all too plausible, but she doesn't behave as if he'd taking her brains along with her hair. Implicitly, she recognizes the revelation, even if it is the whole, complete honest truth, is irrelevant to her current situation.
The latest EscapePod story, Wind From a Dying Star by David D. Levine is awesome. I love far future SF. This story has an interesting conception of how spacefarers may organize themselves socially. Terrific world-building that's utterly essential to a heart-felt story.
It's definitely not the conventional meet up with the Evil Overlord. What I love about the story is that the main character has a brain and is not afraid to use it. I hate the trope where the main character unquestioningly believes the man who has had her chained and has been cutting her scalp for days is telling the whole, complete and utterly honest truth. (The story undoubtedly explains that she accepts these words due to some heretofore hidden insecurity in our main character that allows her to believe the worst of her friends no matter how non-credible the source.)
Here, the man manages to raise doubt but main character keeps her wits about her, recognizes that if her captain and her lover can lie, well, so can the guy who has kept her shackled for days. She still doubts because she's human and what he says is all too plausible, but she doesn't behave as if he'd taking her brains along with her hair. Implicitly, she recognizes the revelation, even if it is the whole, complete honest truth, is irrelevant to her current situation.
The latest EscapePod story, Wind From a Dying Star by David D. Levine is awesome. I love far future SF. This story has an interesting conception of how spacefarers may organize themselves socially. Terrific world-building that's utterly essential to a heart-felt story.
