{"id":577,"date":"2008-01-28T23:06:32","date_gmt":"2008-01-28T23:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog-test\/?p=577"},"modified":"2024-02-04T17:19:59","modified_gmt":"2024-02-04T22:19:59","slug":"wright_oaths","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/2008\/01\/wright_oaths\/","title":{"rendered":"Wright, Helen S.: Matter of Oaths, A<\/cite>"},"content":{"rendered":"

I put Helen S. Wright’s A Matter of Oaths<\/cite><\/strong> on my look-for list thanks to this LJ recommendation<\/a>, and found it recently in our local speciality shop. I didn’t like it as well as the recommender, but found it interesting regardless.<\/p>\n

Over five thousand years in the future, a war between two immortal emperors is partly limited by a web of oaths between the emperors, the Guild that controls FTL travel, and the members of the Guild. As part of this structure, Oath-breakers are identity-wiped. Except that one officer’s identity-wipe seems to be unraveling, much to the interest of the canny old commander of his new ship and other less savory individuals.<\/p>\n

While this is indeed nicely SFnal, I found myself inordinately distracted by the plot’s dependence on two whopping huge coincidences. I think that one of these was not actually necessary to the plot, as opposed to the angst quotient; but the other is necessary, and unfortunately I can’t see any way to categorize it other than “whopping huge coincidence.” This was large enough and close enough to the end that even the nifty last-page reveal couldn’t keep me from feeling dissatisfied.<\/p>\n

The other thing I noted about this book is its fanfic-compatible feel: I immediately imagined exploring certain aspects of the book through fanfic—other people’s, that is, as I have no creative talent whatsoever. I don’t think this would affect the reading experience of non-fanfic readers, but it may be an additional point of interest to certain of my audience.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I put Helen S. Wright’s A Matter of Oaths on my look-for list thanks to this LJ recommendation, and found it recently in our local speciality shop. I didn’t like it as well as the recommender, but found it interesting regardless. Over five thousand years in the future, a war between two immortal emperors is … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Wright, Helen S.: Matter of Oaths, A<\/cite>“<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,15],"tags":[447],"class_list":["post-577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-sf-and-fantasy","tag-wright-helen-s"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2752,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577\/revisions\/2752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/steelypips.org\/weblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}