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Unprecedented: Black Blossom
Oct. 26th, 2021 02:23 pm13. A book with a premise you'd never seen before quite like that
Black Blossom by M.C.A. Hogarth
Black Blossom – tagline: "a fantasy of manners among aliens" – and the rest of Hogarth's Kherishdar series take place among an utterly fascinating alien culture, that of the "Ai-Naidar".
Ai-Naidari society is based on (or at least extraordinarily similar to) Plato's Republic, but it's a version that actually works. Spending time in Hogarth's meticulously fleshed-out world is deeply enjoyable. The plot of Black Blossom is also intriguing, and the characters are all well-developed and sympathetic – the conflicts all arise from people who are acting in good faith, and reasonably think they're doing the right thing, but have differing ideas of what that is.
The first two works in the Kherishdar series – The Aphorisms of Kherishdar and The Admonishments of Kherishdar – are novella-length compilations of connected short stories; Black Blossom and Kherishdar's Exception are novels. I read Black Blossom first, and I didn't have any problems understanding it, so I'd say you can start with any of the first three, though I don't think Exception can be understood without Black Blossom.
Because of bad experiences earlier in her career, Hogarth has requested that no one write fanfic based on her books, and I respect that...but it does make me sad, because I definitely have fannish feelings about Kherishdar. How do you feel about these types of authorial requests? Does it matter whether an author is a mainstream success (e.g., Anne Rice) or relatively obscure, like Hogarth? Does the current expectation that authors engage with their readers via social media - and the correspondingly increased likelihood that authors will be shown or otherwise encounter fanfic of their work - impose additional obligations to respect authors' wishes? My instinct is that it does make a difference, but I'd like to hear other folks' thoughts on it.
The remaining questions: ( Read more... )
Black Blossom by M.C.A. Hogarth
Black Blossom – tagline: "a fantasy of manners among aliens" – and the rest of Hogarth's Kherishdar series take place among an utterly fascinating alien culture, that of the "Ai-Naidar".
Ai-Naidari society is based on (or at least extraordinarily similar to) Plato's Republic, but it's a version that actually works. Spending time in Hogarth's meticulously fleshed-out world is deeply enjoyable. The plot of Black Blossom is also intriguing, and the characters are all well-developed and sympathetic – the conflicts all arise from people who are acting in good faith, and reasonably think they're doing the right thing, but have differing ideas of what that is.
The first two works in the Kherishdar series – The Aphorisms of Kherishdar and The Admonishments of Kherishdar – are novella-length compilations of connected short stories; Black Blossom and Kherishdar's Exception are novels. I read Black Blossom first, and I didn't have any problems understanding it, so I'd say you can start with any of the first three, though I don't think Exception can be understood without Black Blossom.
Because of bad experiences earlier in her career, Hogarth has requested that no one write fanfic based on her books, and I respect that...but it does make me sad, because I definitely have fannish feelings about Kherishdar. How do you feel about these types of authorial requests? Does it matter whether an author is a mainstream success (e.g., Anne Rice) or relatively obscure, like Hogarth? Does the current expectation that authors engage with their readers via social media - and the correspondingly increased likelihood that authors will be shown or otherwise encounter fanfic of their work - impose additional obligations to respect authors' wishes? My instinct is that it does make a difference, but I'd like to hear other folks' thoughts on it.
The remaining questions: ( Read more... )
