Review copy provided by the publisher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s so satisfying when there’s a tendency in a subgenre that annoys you and then someone comes along and writes a novella that does the exact opposite. I get very frustrated with solarpunk that uses magic to move its characters into a more sustainable society–it depresses me, because it makes me feel like the author doesn’t see any way to a better world other than<\/em> magic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ulibarri is doing the opposite here. There’s a speculative conceit that’s basically magic–very minimal handwavium applied to make it “sciency” but we all know it’s basically magic, it’s fine–and that is not the part where they build themselves a better community<\/em>. The part where they build themselves a better community is hard work and human relationships. YES GOOD THANK YOU. And in fact quite a lot of this book is about how to do it but also how it can go wrong in significant but non-catastrophic ways and need a course correction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s also about people having scientific access to their own past lives, and the various reactions this would cause as new tech. There’s quite a believable range of reactions from “I don’t care about that, it’s irrelevant” to “that is vitally important and I will treat you as equivalent to your past self” with a lot of spread in between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think one of the things that I like best, though, is that the protagonist, Galacia, is hard-working, well-intentioned, very determined…and no more perfect at self-knowledge than any of the rest of us. Even without<\/em> her previous life woven in. She’s doing her best, her best will not make everything perfect, but that doesn’t mean she can’t make some things better. What a lovely balance for a solarpunk work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Review copy provided by the publisher. It’s so satisfying when there’s a tendency in a subgenre that annoys you and then someone comes along and writes a novella that does the exact opposite. I get very frustrated with solarpunk that uses magic to move its characters into a more sustainable society–it depresses me, because it […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-3736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bookses-precious"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3737,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3736\/revisions\/3737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marissalingen.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}