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Sep. 16th, 2019 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sebastienneI just finished reading the third Becky Chambers book - Record of a Spaceborn Few.
I've heard people saying that they missed the plottiness of the first two, but I actually adored the gentle slice-of-life style of this. Probably I'm just feeling overwrought but I cried quite a few times.
In particular I had Feelings about the socioreligious structure of Archivists and Caretakers - the former providing ceremonies for the recording of births and marriages, the latter a combined undertaker and funeral-officiator. I wanted to understand more about how this evolution of the sacraments intersected with care and community, though - and other big things that People Get From Religion. I suppose the hexes are community units, and a lot of the care/charity work of religions become meaningless in a society where everyone is fed and housed? Perhaps the reason I had so many Feelings is that the whole of the Exodus fleet had the feeling of a monastic life - everything Purposeful, with a good balance of Freedom and Knowing One's Place (in the safe-certainty sense rather than the subservience sense).
And ultimately the whole thing was precisely the hopepunk that I needed this week. Particularly Eyas, whose questioning and ultimate development of her vocation felt very timely to me.
If anyone has recommendations for similarly hopepunk books, I still have a couple of weeks before uni kicks off...
I've heard people saying that they missed the plottiness of the first two, but I actually adored the gentle slice-of-life style of this. Probably I'm just feeling overwrought but I cried quite a few times.
In particular I had Feelings about the socioreligious structure of Archivists and Caretakers - the former providing ceremonies for the recording of births and marriages, the latter a combined undertaker and funeral-officiator. I wanted to understand more about how this evolution of the sacraments intersected with care and community, though - and other big things that People Get From Religion. I suppose the hexes are community units, and a lot of the care/charity work of religions become meaningless in a society where everyone is fed and housed? Perhaps the reason I had so many Feelings is that the whole of the Exodus fleet had the feeling of a monastic life - everything Purposeful, with a good balance of Freedom and Knowing One's Place (in the safe-certainty sense rather than the subservience sense).
And ultimately the whole thing was precisely the hopepunk that I needed this week. Particularly Eyas, whose questioning and ultimate development of her vocation felt very timely to me.
If anyone has recommendations for similarly hopepunk books, I still have a couple of weeks before uni kicks off...
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Date: 2019-09-17 02:05 pm (UTC)http://www.redwombatstudio.com/portfolio/writing/books-for-adults/summer-in-orcus/
I mean, I think Ursula Vernon basically entirely writes stories about people doing their best to solve the problems in front of them with the skills they have to hand, and generally being kind rather than assholes, and I tend to keep going back to them whenever I feel in need of some hope. I just read the entire Hamster Princess series to my younger child over the last three weeks, and it was a great experience.
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Date: 2019-09-27 08:10 am (UTC)Either way I definitely think this is a writer that I'll come back to now that I've made a start, so thank you very much for that :-)
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Date: 2019-09-17 04:04 pm (UTC)It's not exactly the same, but Tansy Rayner Roberts' Musketeer Space is also lovely. And for lighter fluff than the Becky Chambers, Shira Glassman's Mangoverse books are delightful.