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porticosci-fi mystery is one of those genres that is so up my alley (but still relatively niche) that i tend to pick them up automatically. so all i knew about Drunk on All Your Strange New Worlds by Eddie Robson was that it was a sci-fi mystery. it's also near-future sci-fi and alien sci-fi and translation sci-fi and...workplace sci-fi? is that a thing? if that combination of descriptors is making you think of julie e. czerneda, you're not alone! but crucially, also, there is a murder.
lydia is a translator for the logi cultural attaché in new york. she's in many ways an outsider: she's british, but not high class, she's never seemed to mesh with fellow translators, and she spends all her time either with her boss, an alien, or at high society cultural events becoming progressively drunk. because that's the thing about translating for the logi--only a small percentage of people can even learn to speak logisi, a telepathic language, and even if you can speak it, doing so results in a feeling of drunkenness. the drunkenness plus one very persistent theater producer lands lydia in some hot water, professionally, which is where she is when her boss is suddenly killed.
this is a fun whodunnit with an amateur sleuth (lydia) and a really good variety of elements in the mix. my favourite part of the book, however, was lydia's relationship with madison, the logi who is acting cultural attaché after the murder. lydia knows that her late boss, fitz, was at odds with madison, so she's disinclined to do madison's bidding, especially when it prevents her from the legwork required to investigate a murder. madison is very no-nonsense, and seemingly not nearly as cognizant of the toll that translation takes on the human brain as fitz was, and also maybe kind of a bitch? naturally, where the book really took off for me (and which gave me pleasant flashbacks to czerneda's survival trilogy) was when circumstances force lydia and madison onto the same side. just a fun book, start to finish.
lydia is a translator for the logi cultural attaché in new york. she's in many ways an outsider: she's british, but not high class, she's never seemed to mesh with fellow translators, and she spends all her time either with her boss, an alien, or at high society cultural events becoming progressively drunk. because that's the thing about translating for the logi--only a small percentage of people can even learn to speak logisi, a telepathic language, and even if you can speak it, doing so results in a feeling of drunkenness. the drunkenness plus one very persistent theater producer lands lydia in some hot water, professionally, which is where she is when her boss is suddenly killed.
this is a fun whodunnit with an amateur sleuth (lydia) and a really good variety of elements in the mix. my favourite part of the book, however, was lydia's relationship with madison, the logi who is acting cultural attaché after the murder. lydia knows that her late boss, fitz, was at odds with madison, so she's disinclined to do madison's bidding, especially when it prevents her from the legwork required to investigate a murder. madison is very no-nonsense, and seemingly not nearly as cognizant of the toll that translation takes on the human brain as fitz was, and also maybe kind of a bitch? naturally, where the book really took off for me (and which gave me pleasant flashbacks to czerneda's survival trilogy) was when circumstances force lydia and madison onto the same side. just a fun book, start to finish.
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Date: 2024-09-10 01:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-09-10 02:15 pm (UTC)Yeah, I'd happily have accepted any number of quick handwaves about why Logi translators/interpreters didn't follow our time's standard professional practices; I just wanted to get that handwave, lol. But this is one of those "because I care deeply about this and it's my profession, I am both the right audience and the wrong audience for this bit" moments that I'm used to seeing my archivist friends have with different aspects of fiction... Anyway, minor nitpicks aside, I had a great time. Love a locked-room mystery with weird sff stuff!!