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bibliogrammaAliette de Bodard’s novella The Tea Master and the Detective is set in her secondary Xuya universe, and is both an intriguing mystery tale (with a crusty and damaged consulting detective who carries more than a hint of the original of that profession in her character) and a powerful story about finding truth and facing fear.
Long Chau calls herself a consulting detective. She has a murky past, and a mind that naturally turns toward deduction. She investigates that which interests her, whether she has a client or not. And at the moment, she is interested in what happens to the body of a person left in deep space - the unreal dimension through which shipminds - formerly human intelligences integrated into the bodies of transport ships - can carry people quickly from one place in the galaxy to another without passing through real space. But Long Chau, like most humans, does not function well while in deep space. To counteract its effects, most people turn to a tea master - a person trained to create a blend of substances to be consumed as a tea that stabilises their minds in deep space.
The tea master that Long Chau seeks out is a shipmind, known as The Shadow’s Child. Once a military vessel, she was lost in an accident in deep space, her crew dead, and her psyche deeply affected, as even that of a shipmind will be after too much time in deep space. Dismissed from the military, unable to enter the deeper parts of deep space because of her trauma, The Shadow’s Child has become a tea master, her specialised blends enabling embodied humans to function in a space she can no longer trust herself in.
The slow development of a partnership, even, eventually, a friendship, between these two very damaged people as they combine their talents to solve a mystery concerning the body they find in the edges of deep space is a marvellously crafted, and emotionally delicate negotiation.
And as an added bonus for Sherlock Holmes fans, you can always count the ways in which Long Chau and The Shadow’s Child are like Holmes and Watson.
Long Chau calls herself a consulting detective. She has a murky past, and a mind that naturally turns toward deduction. She investigates that which interests her, whether she has a client or not. And at the moment, she is interested in what happens to the body of a person left in deep space - the unreal dimension through which shipminds - formerly human intelligences integrated into the bodies of transport ships - can carry people quickly from one place in the galaxy to another without passing through real space. But Long Chau, like most humans, does not function well while in deep space. To counteract its effects, most people turn to a tea master - a person trained to create a blend of substances to be consumed as a tea that stabilises their minds in deep space.
The tea master that Long Chau seeks out is a shipmind, known as The Shadow’s Child. Once a military vessel, she was lost in an accident in deep space, her crew dead, and her psyche deeply affected, as even that of a shipmind will be after too much time in deep space. Dismissed from the military, unable to enter the deeper parts of deep space because of her trauma, The Shadow’s Child has become a tea master, her specialised blends enabling embodied humans to function in a space she can no longer trust herself in.
The slow development of a partnership, even, eventually, a friendship, between these two very damaged people as they combine their talents to solve a mystery concerning the body they find in the edges of deep space is a marvellously crafted, and emotionally delicate negotiation.
And as an added bonus for Sherlock Holmes fans, you can always count the ways in which Long Chau and The Shadow’s Child are like Holmes and Watson.