Her mother told her that she, Mom, had been visited by an angel when pregnant with Misery. Misery was born to a struggling and generally impoverished single mother on the mining colony of Rootsdown. But once in custody again, Misery learns that her future is not what she anticipated.īut before looking ahead, let’s see her backstory, which reaches the reader in calculated data-bursts. But her valiant and creative and exciting efforts at evading her pursuers come to naught-thanks in part to the martial prowess of the Emperor’s sister, Lady Lee Alodia Lightning. She breaks out of her cell and begins a frantic run towards the spaceship bays, looking to escape her Imperial captors. It’s a smart and efficient tactic.ĭiving into Misery’s own POV, we find her captive on a giant station named the Capital (an excellent Big Dumb Object venue). This framing device will re-erupt at a few useful points during the otherwise-objectively-recounted tale, and also allow for a resonant coda to be delivered, in which we learn who these two folks are. One of the conversationalists, knowing more of the facts than the others, agrees to relate the full story.

They are discussing the career of a certain Misery Nomaki, a woman who has just finished playing a consequential part in big galactic affairs. We start with a framing sequence that involves two mysterious posthuman or nonhuman interlocutors on a barren world. But it goes back at least to Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy (1957), and has been employed recently by Rich Larson in Ymir (review here) and by Olivia Chadha in Rise of the Red Hand (review here). But I would also overlay a less specific template, and that trope would be “child of the gutters makes good in a larger, more consequential sphere.” I used that template myself, in one of my first stories, “Stone Lives” (my Mirrorshades contribution). That’s a strong narrative engine, for sure.

As the book’s early promoters have observed, the core template of the tale is the legend of Joan of Arc: simple country girl is tagged as a messiah to lead her people into battle. I have been lamentably unhip to Neon Yang’s previous books and short fiction, but was delighted to make their acquaintance with their latest, a rousing postmodern space opera that has flavors of Frank Herbert, Cordwainer Smith, and Orson Scott Card, all blended into a uniquely tasty dish.

The Genesis of Misery by Neon Yang