Navigational Entanglements
These days Aliette de Bodard’s books are best known for their themes of Sapphic romance. That’s not really my thing, but if it wins her extra sales I’m all in favour because it means that more people are reading interesting SF.
The plot of Navigational Entanglements revolves around a creature known as a Tangler. They apparently live in the void between worlds, the place where spacecraft go to travel between stars. One of these creatures has escaped into our world. It is dangerous. A group of young people from the Navigators’ Guild have been tasked to capture it before there is an unfortunate incident. Complicating matters, the Guild is divided into rival clans. Because of the importance of the mission, each clan has to have a representative, and of course they all despise each other.
Our main characters are Viêt Nhi from the Rooster clan, and Hḁc Cúc from the Snakes (my apologies about the lack of fully correct accents on some of the vowels, I got as close as the fonts I have allowed). Nhi is smart and good at manipulating others, which frankly is just what the mission needs, but really doesn’t like people. Cúc is an assassin, with the sort of massively over-developed sense of morality that comes from having to live with the fact that your job is killing people. Inevitably they will fall in love.
However, that isn’t really what the book is about. The main theme is one of politics. The main questions that confront our heroes are ones such as, “how did the tangler get free in the first place?”, “who is responsible for the murder that takes place early on in the story?”, and, most importantly, “who stands to gain from all of this chaos?”
Ultimately, Navigational Entanglements is a book about old people who will do anything to stay in power, and young people who have to choose between their careers and doing the right thing. I’m afraid that’s rather more interesting to me than who gets to kiss who.
Title: Navigational Entanglements
By: Aliette de Bodard
Publisher: St. Martin's
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
See here for information about buying books though Salon Futura