Reviews

The Red Threads of Fortune, by Neon Yang

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alondonreader's review

3.0

My reading this year has featured a lot of books that range from meh to liked-but-didn't-blow-me-away. The red threads of fortune falls in the latter camp. It's a novella, a quick and easy read. The narrative structure is tropey -- lone wolf protagonist dealing with troubled past, masters new (magical) skills at unrealistic speed -- but its treatment is interesting enough. It was refreshing to read a well-written female protagonist who is flawed and volatile, and is allowed to be so without judgment, but this compensates for a pretty thin plot. This book also was my introduction to a genre called silk punk. It's a rather visual book and I suspect it will work well as a graphic novel. I liked it, but not enough to want to read the accompanying novella.

brokenbacktango's review

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Just isn’t grabbing me like the first novella did. May return to it later.

griffinthief's review against another edition

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challenging emotional sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Content Warnings

lolajoan's review

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4.0

I read the twin to this over a year and a half ago and didn't know how well I'd remember the world, but within a page or two it all came flooding back, which is a testament to a well-built world I think. The plot and devices and characters are all complex and thoroughly developed, but what really got me were some absolute gut-punches of grief and loss that are so well written they took my breath away. Absolutely gorgeous.

aliromans's review against another edition

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2.0

This was a step down for me after the first entry in the series.

I didn't particularly like Mokoya in the first novella but I felt for her character at the start of this one when you started to explode the grief she is going through after the loss of her daughter and how that tragic event has shaped her since. And here lies my problem with the story: because this is a novella sometimes there is not much room to do everything with the same depth that you can find in a full-length novel. So while I liked the themes explored with the protagonist in the beginning when that got sidelined for an instalove romance I lost interest. I wish the story just focused on Mokoya's grief, her working through it and her accepting the death of her daughter and possibly starting her healing journey. You kinda got that but not executed as much as I would have liked.

The plot was interesting enough but the rest was a miss for me.

chiccad's review against another edition

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4.0

EDIT: gli ultimi tre capitoli hanno fatto guadagnare 4 stelle piene a questo libro! Yes, Neon, COME THRUUU!

3.5 (perché 3 mi sembra poco e 4 mi sembra troppo).

description

Sono interdetta.
Se qualcun* mi chiedesse di cosa parla questa serie non credo che saprei rispondere. Nonostante questo e i forti dubbi che mi assillano mentre leggo, non riesco a mettere giù questi libri. La scrittura è molto piacevole, scorrevole e coinvolgente. Dopo aver letto i primi due volumi di questa saga, mi sembra di aver capito che la struttura è concepita in ascendenza: quando stai per arrivare alla fine, ecco che la storia diventa davvero appassionante!
Credo che il problema di questa serie sia la sua brevità. Non c'è abbastanza spazio e tempo per conoscere davvero ogni personaggio (ed è un peccato perché sembrano tutt* ben concepit* e interessanti) e per entrare appieno nello spirito dell'universo ideato da Yang. I cosiddetti world building e lore building sono quindi un po' carenti.

Consiglio spassionato: meglio leggere i 4 volumi della saga uno dopo l'altro. Io ho letto il primo e, dopo diverso tempo e dopo altre letture, ho iniziato il secondo, ma mi sono ben presto accorta di essermi dimenticata alcuni elementi importanti. È il rischio che si corre quando si leggono storie fantastiche in cui l'autor* inserisce concetti inventati (come la "Slasca", in questo caso).

just_one_more_paige's review

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adventurous emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

The second book in the four novella Tensorate series, and of course a reminder to everyone following along that this is the current read-out-loud-before-bed books/series that my partner and I jumped into. So they are slower going than they might normally be, since we can only move forwards when we are home together at night to do so, but we are still enjoying this new-to-us-both experience (really the first of its kind, on that front, so far).

The Red Threads of Fortune picks up what seems to be a few years after the finish of the previous book. Mokoya has gone a bit off on her own, having not at all emotionally dealt with the loss of her daughter. Akeha is working alongside his now-husband with the Machinists rebels (against his and Mokoyea's mother, The Protector). I am not entirely sure what Thennjay has been up to, but he comes back into Mokoya's life in this story and plays a leading role again. And while we left them all having made big moves/choices against the Protectorate at the end of the last story, here the focus turns a bit, and we meet some new characters from other areas of the world, outside the Protectorate, and the primary story turns to...naga hunting, essentially? Mokoya meets a new lover, Rider, who is intriguing and gives her a new chance to reckon with her past/grief, as well as access to some new magical/tensing powers that make her question the uncontrollability of the "visions" she has always had.

This was a real thematic change from book one to two. From insurrection to more introspective forward movement, plus, of course, the naga hunting. It was brought back around a little bit by the end, when Mokoya makes some realizations about what she's learned about her power/visions. She really has a lot of adjusting to do, emotionally - she's really kind of a loose cannon of wild speculation and accusation and needy grasping - but, it is an interesting conversation introduced about the weight of knowing the future/visions (the curse of having that knowledge versus whether or not you have the power to change it). So, I'm interested to see how the third and fourth installations combine it all. Other than that, there was a cool concept introduced about the imprinting/projecting of a conscious/being onto another, with some narrative paralleling about loss and grief and mothers/daughters, which all provides some insightful reflection on the complex combination of PTSD and grief.

As we met people from outside the Protectorate, the holding of other genders outside a binary is more natural, which was a consideration I had while reading the first novella, and I got some vibes about it being a bit of a (subtle) commentary on colonial/imperial imposition. Along the same lines, I was a really big fan of the open acceptance and positivity around polygamy and multiple partners, with a person's needs being met by their partner(s) being more important than societal rules about who fills said needs. And we get some new insight into tensing and the magic system, which is always one of my favorite aspects of any fantasy world-building, so I was happy with that.

Finally, the language remains an absolute gem. Yang's lyrical precision with words is something really special. It's the kind of writing that makes you have to read slower, and want to reread sentences, to experience the full impact. A few examples that I wanted to call out in full are below (as per usual) but also, take this one right now: “pomegranate-ripe and slow as salt.” I mean, how gorgeous is that?

So yea, still not really blown away by this series, but invested enough to keep going for sure, to see how everything plays out and is brought together. And, of course, to experience more of Yang's writing!

“Straight lines were the precinct of creatures that knew their destination.

“Peace sat languid and unfamiliar in her chest: not the peace of familiar comforts, of old beddings and well-worn grooves in stone, but a clear kind of peace, like an ocean with stones at the bottom, its surface jade-blue and throwing off sunlight.”

“If truth had a shape, her words fit its boundaries."

“In another version of the world, where the threads of fortune had woven a different braid, they could have sat down together and fileted out a sensible truth, exposing the spine of reality that had to be buried within the slippery flesh of lies and narratives.”

“Violence is the fault of the one enacting it. Always.”

Content Warnings