Posts Tagged ‘multi-sensory’
The Tea Master and The Detective, by Aliette de Bodard
available March 31, 2018
where I got it: received ARC from the publisher (thanks Sub Press!)
Aliette deBodard’s newest novella, The Tea Master and the Detective (available March 31 from Subterranean Press) wears the disguise of a space opera Sherlock Holmes type story, complete with an insensitive detective who is a master of deduction and the annoyed lackey who follows behind until finally seeing the light. I say wears that disguise because while this is a highly enjoyable and tightly focused mystery, it functions better as a showcase for deBodard’s characterization and worldbuilding prowess. If you’ve not yet experienced the beauty of one of deBodard’s Xuya stories, The Tea Master and The Detective is an excellent entry point. (click here for an in depth chronology and list of Xuya stories, many of which are available to read online) If you enjoy character driven narratives, beautiful prose, and multi-sensory worldbuilding, this is the story for you.
Us reviewers, we’re always talking about worldbuilding – which among other things is literally how an author builds a world and how successfully they transport us, the reader, to that world. How big is the city? How wide is the river? How many ships are in the harbor? How small is the escape pod? What color are the androids? How dark is the forest? What color is her dress?
Did you notice something about all those worldbuilding questions?
They are all visual.
Don’t get me wrong, visual worldbuilding is important! I want to know that the city is so large you can’t walk across it in a day, that the river is narrow here but wider further south closer to home but I walk a ways to cross here because I refuse to pay the bridge toll, that there aren’t many ships in the harbor because of those idiotic tariffs, that this damn escape pod is so claustrophobically small that i can barely turn around and i’m about to lose my damn mind, that the android is a dull gun-metal grey, that the forest is as dark as midnight, and that her dress was blood red.
But there is more to the world than seeing. Smell, taste, texture, memory, if presented right, those sensory experiences will tell you more about how a character has moved through a world than anything else. deBodard does that kind of worldbuilding exactly right.
There is this gorgeous short scene (the best always are) where two shipminds are having tea together. They have tea and snacks, and they just chat. There is tea, of course, but also a medley of sumptuous dishes. Both shipminds know that none of this is real. There is no food on the table, the two of them are physically incapable of actually eating or drinking anything. But the concept of the food reminds them of their families. The pork is the same dish from childhood festivals, the scent of the tea is the same of family discussions and decisions generations old. All of that and more, in a few short paragraphs about a meal that neither of the participants are actually eating. A meal that doesn’t actually exist, but symbolizes everything of import, connects these two people to family members and conversations that have been dead for decades. More worldbuilding and characterization in that small handful of paragraphs than I sometimes find in an entire novel. I’ve read this short scene like three times now. It gets better every time, like shining light through a prism and having it come out a rainbow of the rest of the story on the other side.
the Little Red Reviewer 
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