kyrielle: painterly drawing of a white woman with large dark-blue-framed glasses, hazel eyes, brown hair, and a suspicious lack of blemishes (Default)
Laura ([personal profile] kyrielle) wrote2003-01-26 10:33 am

Book recommendation.

K.D. Wentworth's Black on Black is excellent. It's science fiction; while set in a space-faring culture, there's not much in the way of space-faring involved. It's...amazing.

I picked it up on a whim, and almost put it back, as the back cover makes it sound (to me) amazingly stupid. However, I've very much liked this author's fantasy books, and it was a used book, so I gave it a chance.

I'm so very glad I knew of the author. Because putting this book back and forgetting about it would have been a huge mistake. This...is just incredible.

Unfortunately, I'm not sufficiently detached to explain why without spoilers. But I can say that, like Amy Thomson's The Color of Distance, this is a book where the aliens are both alien, and sharply real, intimately real. They are not humans with funny bodies.

Oh: DO NOT READ THE INSIDE FRONT COVER. As a policy, I never read story outtakes till after I have read the story. Books like this are the reason why. The outtake is from page 282 and gives away multiple major plot points by implication.
the_rck: (Default)

[personal profile] the_rck 2003-01-26 07:00 pm (UTC)(link)
Are you aware that there's a sequel? It's called Stars Over Stars. I haven't read it yet, but it's on my list of things to pick up soon.