Aliette de Bodard seems fascinated by relationships with huge power differentials – angels and mortals, giant mindships and modest students, dragons and young teachers, etc. Thanh, the protagonist of
Fireheart Tiger, is a princess of Bình Hải, a small Vietnam-like country seeking to gain protection from the more powerful neighbor Ephteria, and Thanh is assigned by her rather too-critical mother to lead the diplomatic negotiations. Those negotiations quickly grow more complicated and personal when Thanh discovers that the delegation from Ephteria includes the princess Eldris, Thanh’s former lover from the time in which Thanh studied in Ephteria, nearly as a political hostage. The prospect of marrying Eldris is a fairly obvious way of forging an alliance between the two nations, though – once again – it would hardly be an equal relationship. Complicating matters even further is the memory of a palace fire in the capital city Yosolis, which Thanh escaped accompanied by a se
I’m a confirmed fan of Aliette de Bodard’s work. Quite aside from her novels,
In the Vanishers’ Palace is perhaps my favourite fantasy novella in a field bursting with excellent novellas, and her Xuya science fiction includes the award-winning
The Tea Master and the Detective – so I’m not alone in valuing her work highly.
Fireheart Tiger is a new novella set in a fantasy world inspired by pre-colonial Vietnam. It is a quiet, powerful story of power and resistance, of control and affection, and of the nature of constraint and alliance in both politics and personal relationships.
The year is 1944, and the daimons are rising. With the Inner Guard thrown into disarray by the German blitzkrieg, the daimon-born nefilim of the Scorpion Court gather in Paris, scheming to restore their rule over the mortal realm. Working as a double-agent, Diago Alvarez infiltrates his family’s daimonic court, but soon finds himself overwhelmed by his kin’s multiple deceits. Meanwhile, Ysabel Ramírez hunts a Psalm that will assist Operation Overlord, the Allies’ invasion of Normandy. Her objective takes her to Paris into the heart of territories controlled by Die Nephilim and her power-hungry uncle, Jordi Abelló, who seeks the same Psalm in his quest to wrest control of Los Nefilim from her father. When their paths cross, he abducts her and leaves her to the mercy of his Nazi followers. But Ysabel is as cunning and bold as Jordi. She knows only one of them can survive to one day rule Los Nefilim, and she’s determined to be the one to succeed her father as queen. Trapped in