/lit/ - Literature

>>18745335
Machine's Last Testament, Machine Mandate - Benjanun Sriduangkaew (2020)
This is the 4th work published in the Machine Mandate universe and the first chronologically. It's entirely fine to read it in whatever order. I believe this may be only her novel-length work, considering what she's said about the difficulty involved, which is fine by me. Above all else this was a character drama that focused on relationships. Where some books are a power fantasy, this was a relationship fantasy. By which I mean several characters wanted to start a relationship and have sex with the protagonist, mostly because she was the protagonist. That didn't preclude anyone from being sexually or romantically involved with others, as they were all polyamorous and intended to be polygamists.
The sex was relatively not explicit, one instance was BDSM, and was probably more there to have spiced things up rather than anything else. Unlike her prior works that I've read or looked at, this one wasn't exclusively cisgender lesbians, as there was also a nonbinary love interest with breasts and a penis. If you know anything about the author's work, it won't come as a surprise that that the few male characters are terrible people, though anyone cishet would be depicted as such.
The protagonist was an immigration official, refugees and the immigration process were a major theme, who sponsored a woman to help her become a citizen. Most of the first half of the book was about the protagonist teaching her potentiate how to be a become citizen, so it was very slice-of-life. The second half is a thriller where they wanted to bring about what they believed to be justice.
The author has been very open about her influences, which are primarily anime and videogames, and noted this this was "pitched as Iain M. Bank’s Culture novels meet Psycho-Pass". The Psycho-Pass influence was especially noticeable, as it was in the previous work set in this location. She noted elsewhere that she hadn't read any of Bank's books, but thought it would do well for her pitch.
The primary reason I've read her work, or looked at her social media a few times, is because she's quite outspoken, to say the least, and has an interesting and disagreeable worldview. She's a semi-reformed notorious troll/griefer with quite the online, and allegedly offline, history.
For most people what I've written would disqualify her from any consideration, though given her nominations for awards, some thought otherwise. However, it's also the case that a woman won a Hugo for writing about what a terrible person she was. I'll have to re-evaluate after each work and determine whether it's worthwhile to continue, for now it is, for many others, it's probably not worthwhile to begin.
Rating: 2.5/5