This one had me completely lost.
Without any explanation of where we are or how we got here, we suddenly find this squabble between the Rong, the Vermilion Seal, and the Galactics — whoever they all are — all played out with Halls of the Dead and V-Space and some old battle between continents and a memorial being thrown into the mix. I have no idea how this fits into the Universe of Xuya. It’s all a bit of a confusing ramble me thinks.
But, anyway, i worked my way through this story taking it at face value but not really understanding any of it because there’s no real context to understand it in; then i moved onto Memorials, which is the next book in the Xuya series, which is also in the same context as this one and slowly things began to make a bit more sense.
After i finished Memorials i came back to The Weight of a Blessing and re-read it and it finally made a lot more sense.
So a part of me says that this should be after Memorials, but i don’t think the story’s timeline would fit that way around and i also think it would then leave Memorials without a context and then you’d have to come back to Memorials and re-read that after this — i know, confusing, right?
And having read both and re-read The Weight of a Blessing and finally made sense of it all, i still don’t understand where it actually fits into Xuya.
But you can read it for free over at Clarkesworld.
Ho hum. As i say, next up is Memorials.
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