The Axiom Series by Tim Pratt (reading notes)

[elainegrey]

I stopped work early on Friday, knowing i had pretty much fried my brain. To recover, i binged The Axiom Series by Tim Pratt (The Wrong Stars, The Dreaming Stars, The Forbidden Stars). Nice space opera, fun. I liked the how the AI's are "born" (my word, not the author's), I liked the way religious community was incorporated. The world building of the alien context in which Earth finds itself is engaging. It is unapologetic Space Opera, and i enjoyed that. And creating a reader's way into the universe by explaining things to someone from the past entertaining.

Two things had my brain twitching:

One had to do with the characters' language and the narrative's claims of referential confusion where the current people missed the person from the past's references, but otherwise communication was completely clear (except with the bartender on the past person's first experience of the "future").  Telling me there were slight miscommunications around humorous references poked at my suspension of disbelief of an otherwise undrifted style of communication over 500 years.

There were some other odd bits around gender and sexuality: i think it may have been a telling but not showing sort of error. While the main couple was described as a same sex couple, it very much read like a heterosexual couple. Of course that's my stereo typing of gendered behavior coming forward, too. I think if some of the "telling" parts in the narrative hadn't happened, i wouldn't have noticed. Maybe.