2007 SF, first of a trilogy. Rien is a castle servant, told off to
look after the prisoner Perceval. Only it's all much more real than
that.
Because this is a far future of rampant nanotech, which has been
made by humans to recreate (at least approximately) their own legends.
Perceval is a knight on a quest; she's also a (literally) blue-blooded
noble; and her symbiotic wings have been cut off using an "unblade"
adapted from medical equipment. Oh, and we're on a starship.
The primary thrust of the book, for me at least, was this sense of
wonder: there are "angels" who are parts of the ship's AI, but someone
decided that they should be called angels. The Exalt who rule over the
Mean have split the ship into "domaines" that they pass down by
primogeniture, and there's a lot of Arthuriana wedged into what
clearly used to be a technological culture.
There's no infodumping, but the first half to two-thirds of the book
are basically picaresque, introducing the reader to this world and its
various perils. In turn this means that there's less time than I'd
like spent on the characters, to whom some details of the world may be
surprising but who basically grew up here and take most things for
granted.
Towards the end, things start to happen, and nobody gets what they
want but at least the ship is saved. Yay, I guess.
There's some of the gothic weird ship stuff of Revelation Space and
some of the nobles feuding of Amber but this does take on its own
flavour too. It's a lovely tour of an interesting world; but it didn't
grab me the way I'm clearly meant to be grabbed.
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