The Black Tides of Heaven
Fantasy, High Fantasy
Neon Yang
Tensorate, Book # 1
Tor
September 26th 2017
Paperback
236
English
February 26, 2022 March 2, 2022
Mount TBR, The Backlist Reader
Mokoya and Akeha, the twin children of the Protector, were sold to the Grand Monastery as children. While Mokoya developed her strange prophetic gift, Akeha was always the one who could see the strings that moved adults to action. While his sister received visions of what would be, Akeha realized what could be. What's more, he saw the sickness at the heart of his mother's Protectorate.
A rebellion is growing. The Machinists discover new levers to move the world every day, while the Tensors fight to put them down and preserve the power of the state. Unwilling to continue to play a pawn in his mother's twisted schemes, Akeha leaves the Tensorate behind and falls in with the rebels. But every step Akeha takes towards the Machinists is a step away from his sister Mokoya. Can Akeha find peace without shattering the bond he shares with his twin sister?
About the book
We come to a sore point of my journey through books. I honestly do not know what is narrated in this book so I refer you to the official plot above. By the way, the Italian synopsis is misleading since it gives gender to the twins (or at least on Goodreads).
What I think
I don’t know how to comment this book. The world is not well defined, perhaps due to the short length of the book, but there are terms that are not explained. The magic behind it all isn’t well developed either. Even the two twins aren’t well defined! And for those who have not read the book and think I’m crazy to use exclamation points (actually this happens in Italian, I think in English it’s easier since there’s no male and female terms), but in a nutshell in this world one is not born a man or a woman but asexual. You choose what sex to take when you reach a certain age. By the way, I don’t understand why it isn’t explained how they go to the bathroom (yes, I think about that).
Congratulations to the translator though! Making terms that have gender in Italian (the whole Italian language has gender, even “what” is feminine) in that way must have been an immense job! I don’t know how it is in the original, I don’t know if it’s easier to have genderless terms in English, but I think so, so I think the translator did a good job (better than the author at explaining the world).
I will continue with the series because I already have it, but honestly I am not so inclined to do so.
But the beginning was so difficult to read! All those signs in place of “e”, “a”, “o” and “i” confused me, or rather I know why they are there, but it made reading difficult for me. Poor dyslexics, they already have a hard time reading!! Indeed I would like to know if a dyslexic has read this book and what s/he think of it (of course in Italian since I don’t think it was a challenge in English).
