The Language of Liars, by S. L. Huang

[rachelmanija]

A science fiction novella about aliens, communication, and certain dark topics which are spoilery to mention. Though if you read the blurb for this book, it very strongly implies those topics and the specific shocking twist that involves them. It reminded me of China Mieville's Embassytown, though the latter benefited from its longer length.

Ro's species, along with some others, can jump into the minds of Star Eaters, the mysterious species that alone can mine the mineral that enables space travel. Ro is told that doing so is the only way to study them, and while jumping into their bodies extinguishes their minds, they are extremely long-lived beings and their minds definitely come back, so Ro is only doing the equivalent of causing a day-long blackout. The Star Eaters were apparently once enslaved, but now work voluntarily; communication with them is difficult and puzzling. Once you jump in, you're stuck for the rest of your life, but Ro is such a curious and skilled linguist that he's willing to give up everything to understand this oddly mysterious race. (I guess the possessing being's mind is supposed to only live for its species's normal lifespan? This is not explained.)

If you've read much science fiction, or many books in general, you have probably already figured out what's really going on. In fact it's so obvious that it seems strange that it takes the characters so long to do so, but of course no one knows exactly what story they're in.

Everything involving alien communication is great. But the plot is so predictable and grim that I didn't enjoy the book much.



In fact, completely unsurprisingly, jumping into the bodies of the Star Eaters permanently destroys their previous personalities. The entire race has been killed in a genocide, and their bodies are kept enslaved by the linguists and anthropologists possessing them. Each individual possessor does not know this and believes that there's only a couple of other, unknown possessors at any given time. Ro is the first possessor to figure out what's going on, as everyone is trained to impersonate them and not let on that they're not real Star Eaters. But it's all for nothing, as cultural knowledge is needed for the Star Eaters to reproduce, and billions will die as the entire galactic society depends on the mineral which will soon become unavailable once the possessed Star Eaters go extinct.

It's a pretty dead-on colonialism metaphor, especially the parts at the end when the possessing aliens desperately try to revive the Star Eater culture and only end up with made-up remnants.

Comments

[sovay]

In fact, completely unsurprisingly, jumping into the bodies of the Star Eaters permanently destroys their previous personalities. The entire race has been killed in a genocide, and their bodies are kept enslaved by the linguists and anthropologists possessing them.

The mind-extinguishing body-hopping is how they were all but corporeally killed off in the first place?

[rachelmanija]

Yes.

[spacebaozi]

Is it just me or do so many novels circa now have that cover style though. (I don't dislike it, it just feels extremely Trendy.)

I'm kinda curious and I have a couple of hypotheses already ... I will probably look up a copy just to see how close/far I am. I really liked Huang's Water Outlaws but it seems to be a bit of an outlier in their bibliography.

[rachelmanija]

No, it's eeeeeeeverywhere.

[starlady]

Hmm, I was planning on knocking this one out this weekend to inflate the Books Read count, but maybe I will wait until and if it gets nominated for a Hugo. Which I say because the recent-ish streak of "all or almost all the novella nominations being Tordotcom jawns" is still so far unbroken.