/lit/ - Literature

>>22435180
Now Will Machines Hollow The Beast, Machine Mandate #2 - Benjanun Sriduangkaew (2020)

Admiral Anoushka, known as the Alabaster Admiral, is a mercenary captain feared and respected throughout the galaxy. Even so, she has a favor to repay to a haruspex, a human-AI hybrid from the Shenzhen dyson sphere. That's where The Mandate resides, a collection of AI that could control everything, but chooses not to at this time. To that end she attends a bidding war at Vishnu's Leviathan, a massive biomechanical warship with extreme warfare capability. Larvae have been made available that in a few decades could develop into warships of similar power. The warring factions all want to be the highest bidder. What ought to be a relatively simple affair becomes complicated by enemies from the past long thought dead or irrelevant appearing once more. There are also simmering conflicts between members of the royal family.

This novella is in the same setting as first one, as are a few others that aren't numbered, but aside from that there's minimal overlap. Probably each one could be read standalone though I haven't confirmed that. The plot is straightforward, simple, and doesn't really matter all that much. How the characters interact with each other is what matters. Mostly it's their drama and the power dynamics thereof. As per the author's usual, all the characters are women. Men have little to no place in her writings. I don't mind that for her works.

Anoushka has two wives who vie for her affection and she has sex with both of them, though not at once, as they aren't friendly with each other. There are four sex scenes, and if there were much more than than that I'd start to think that was the primary purpose of the novella. Maybe it is even, or of at least equal importance to everything else. They're relatively brief, explicit, and at least one is definitely kinky. As in the author's previous works, the sex has a tendency towards BDSM, which isn't what I'd prefer, though it's intriguing in its own way. Some of the relationship drama is questionable, but that may be only because the ping-ponging of back and forth to enemies to lovers back to enemies, perhaps lovers again, isn't that familiar to me. However, it isn't really about romance, or at least I didn't see it that way. Worship, adulation, or devotion would seem to be more accurate.

I didn't know if I'd read anything else from Sriduangkaew again because for a while because I was disappointed and disillusioned, but in time much returns to the mean. I now have the proper expectations and her writing has changed a bit. As far as I've been able to tell I'm decidedly not the target demographic and almost surely not appreciating it in the intended manner. That's fine though and has its own appeal when it works out. I'll probably eventually read the rest of the series because it fills a specific niche of enjoyment and sometimes that suffices by itself.

Rating: 3.5/5 (3)