Aliette de Bodard

The Tea Master and the Detective

Denaiir

Interesting story, I liked the world-building but the mystery was a bit confusing sometimes. I think I will try other books in the same universe.

The Shadow's Child is a living mindship that was discharged from military transport service after an injury and now makes a living brewing mind-altering teas to help space travelers. When abrasive and eccentric scholar Long Chau requests a corpse from space for scientific study, the ship accepts the odd assignment. When the body she brings back turns out to have been murdered, Long Chau feels compelled to investigate, dragging The Shadow Child with her.

Lauren Sullivan

This is part of a series of novellas and short stories set in the Xuya Universe, a Vietnamese-influenced science fiction series. It’s the first I’ve read, but certainly won’t be the last! It was wildly immersive, well-paced, and ever so much fun!

“The world is chaotic and without sense. But in the smallest of spheres it’s sometimes possible to straighten things out; to make it seem as though everything means something.”

What starts out as an eccentric woman asking a traumatized war vet for help retrieving a corpse from deep space to study for a scientific paper turns into a murder investigation. Sound familiar? Why yes, it’s Sherlock in space! In this universe, traveling at faster than light speeds requires going into deep space, a weird and frightening area of unreality, something that only mindships – ships that are somehow fused with a human – can accomplish. Deep space isn’t particularly friendly to the ships, and even less so to humans, so specialized brews of tea can be customized to help a person cope, by making them braver or more calm or simply doping them up.

“Long Chau was an expanding star, burning loud and bright, mesmerising in her relentlessness, and ultimately one that would swallow you whole.”
The Shadow’s Child is one such mindship and tea-brewer, a war vet who’s barely scraping by selling customized brews for dock workers and other mundane customers. One such not-so-mundane customer is Long Chau, a scholar of sorts. She’s abrasive and blunt, but The Shadow’s Child accepts her commission because she can’t afford to be too picky. But things aren’t quite what they seem, with either the corpse they retrieve or Long Chau, and The Shadow’s Child has to navigate her need for justice – and to possibly save lives – with her traumatic past and jumbled feelings about her. Men, it seems, often get a pass on being harsh and socially tone deaf if they're talented, so it was fascinating to see the roles of both Sherlock and Watson filled by women.  A large portion of the story - besides the mystery of the dead woman they find - centers on whether The Shadow's Child can trust Long Chau, and whether her dislike of her stems from her not-so-stellar personality or a gut feeling that something more sinister is going on.

I’ve read a few things by Ms. de Bodard before, and once again, I found myself immersed in her wordlbuilding and writing style. Rather than just pay homage to an Asian-influenced future (*cough* Firefly *cough*), this universe is more steeped in Vietnamese culture, from the names of the ships to cultural traditions. I was fascinated by the idea of mindships, though I didn’t quite understand exactly what they are, as The Shadow’s Child refers to being born and having living people as family. However it works, she reads as human, albeit a severely traumatized one, full of anxiety about money, her past, and whether she can trust Long Chau. Long Chau, for her part, is by turns frustrating and sympathetic, and I, for one, got a laugh out of watching The Shadow’s Child – a ship – trying to soothe the ruffled feathers of the witnesses they’re trying to question. For all her faults, though, it’s Long Chau and her sharp insight that finally forces The Shadow’s Child to deal with her past, and that, for me, was the best part of the novella.

Overall, this was an amazingly fresh and immersive take on a Sherlock-type mystery, and I’m definitely hoping Ms. de Bodard will write more novellas starring this pair!

I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Sahi K

It’s probably more of a 3.5 but I’m rounding up. 

This is probably the first Xuya book I ever got to know about and it’s a Sherlock Holmes retelling, so I should have read it a long time ago. But I somehow was able to get the other books first, so here I am finally. 

This was interesting. I thought it was a bit on the shorter side compared to the other Xuya novellas I’ve read, but I think the page count worked for this kind of story. It’s more like the first time meeting of the Holmes and Watson-esque characters in this universe - only the detective Long Chau is a woman and The Shadow’s Child is a mindship. Ofcourse their relationship starts off rocky because Long Chau comes across as arrogant and emotionless, as well as someone with a possible troubled past. The Shadow’s Child on the other hand suffered a traumatic event years ago and those memories and grief still haunt her. But to solve the case of the death of a woman, they have to reluctantly team up and both have to dig deep into their memories, and relive their pasts in order to save the day in the present. It’s a beautifully written story about grief and how there’s no one way to handle it in the long term, and how coping with it is all one can do sometimes, unable to move on. The mystery itself is not very fascinating or predictable and I was probably even confused for a bit. But it’s the characters and writing who make up for any small issues. 

Overall, this felt like a cool setup story more than something on its own. And I think it will make for a great series of its own within Xuya. So I’m surprised the author hasn’t written anymore featuring these two wonderful characters. But I still look forward to anything the author comes up with in this setting because I’ve come to love this world of space empires and mind ships, peppered with Vietnamese culture.

Scott Vandehey

This is a reimagining of Sherlock Holmes, where Sherlock is an abrasive drug-addicted scholar and Holmes is a starship with PTSD who retired from active duty to sell medicinal teas. The scholar hires the ship to brew her a special tea so she can still think while she investigates a murder in hyperspace.

It’s from the author’s Xuya series, an alternate history exploring what would happen if China discovered the Americas before Europe. But aside from sharing the setting, this novella is stand-alone. I loved it, and if you enjoy new spins on Sherlock Holmes, you’ll dig it too.

Jennifer

Brief review: (written on June 6th 2021)

Despite the creative Vietnamese inspired space-opera backdrop, I found this novella not very engaging & had difficulties following through what's happening. 

As you have noticed, I had a pretty disappointing reading month in April 2021 while I've spent weeks recovering from a book hangover so during that time not many books really stuck with me (and I wasn't faring well with dense prose at the time).

(2.5 stars out of 5)

This novella was a fun, very fast-paced female-Sherlock-Holmes-in-space story with a murder mystery (or was it?) and cool world-building, told from the perspective of a sentient space ship. 

Even though it was a really enjoyable read, I found myself wishing the author had turned it into a full-length novel instead. The characters' back stories, their traumatic, mysterious pasts and current relationships, as well as the setting deserved a more intricate treatment, a slower pace, and more resolution (e.g. actual treatment of the space ship's trauma). Same with the mystery plot: almost no time passes from discovering the body to solving the entire thing, even though the dead woman was an interesting person, belonged to a strange cult, and I had all kinds of further questions I would have wanted to see explored. 

I was also a little mystified by the setting's mono-culture, in which everything is Asian-inspired and everyone drinks tea and loves poetry, no exceptions. A culture that is this homogenous made sense in the past when a culture was fairly isolated from other influences, travel, extensive trade and immigration. But here, space travel seems to be easy, cheap and swift with frequent exchanges, and access to news and entertainment from all sorts of sources seems equally unrestricted. So why would it become so seemingly homogenous?

But perhaps this is explained in the author's other works set in the same universe. Anyway, this point was just an unanswered question (I had many!), not something that truly affected my enjoyment of the story. 

If you like a very fast pace, then this story truly has it all: quirky, memorable characters, great world-building, mysteries, cults, detective work, and even a bit of action and life-or-death tension at the end. If only it hadn't left me with so many questions and unsatisfied curiosity! But I'll certainly read more by this author, since this was a nice little appetizer.

Tomas Vadovic

Didi Chanoch

Natalie

Magnus Dahl

Phileas Fogg

Taran Snodgress

Moray Lyle McIntosh

Arthur

Steve Barnett

Sarvagnan S

Winner of the 2018 Nebula Award for Best Novella Finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Novella “A window onto a beautifully developed world that widens the meaning of space opera.” —New York Times Once, the mindship known as The Shadow's Child was a military transport. Once, she leapt effortlessly between stars and planets, carrying troops and crew for a war that tore the Empire apart. Until an ambush killed her crew and left her wounded and broken. Now the war is over, and The Shadow's Child, surviving against all odds, has run away. Discharged and struggling to make a living, she has no plans to go back into space. Until the abrasive and arrogant scholar Long Chau comes to see her. Long Chau wants to retrieve a corpse for her scientific studies: a simple enough, well-paid assignment. But when the corpse they find turns out to have been murdered, the simple assignment becomes a vast and tangled investigation, inexorably leading back to the past--and, once again, to that unbearable void where The Shadow's Child almost lost both sanity and life... “[The Tea Master and the Detective] is a window onto a beautifully developed world that widens the meaning of space opera, one that centers on Chinese and Vietnamese cultures and customs instead of Western military conventions, and is all the more welcome for it.” —Amal El-Mohtar, New York Times “The Tea Master and the Detective is the Sherlock Holmes retelling I always wanted and now I have it. And I want so much more of it.” —Ana Grilo, Kirkus “The Tea Master is an astonishing Holmesian mystery, in which Holmes is a woman and Watson is a spaceship. It is everything I wanted it to be. Tea, space, and mysteries within mysteries.” —Mary Robinette Kowal “Ingenious... As a classical blend of far-future SF and traditional murder mystery, The Tea Master and the Detective should satisfy readers unfamiliar with the Xuya universe, but at the same time it’s an intriguing introduction to that universe, much of which seems to lie just outside the borders of this entertaining tale.” —Gary K. Wolfe, Locus “De Bodard constructs a convincingly gritty setting and a pair of unique characters with provocative histories and compelling motivations. The story works as well as both science fiction and murder mystery, exploring a future where pride, guilt, and mercy are not solely the province of humans.” —Publishers’ Weekly

The Tea Master and the Detective

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