Ties that Bind, Ties that Break, Lensey Namioka. Found in a Little Free Library; I'd previously read the autiobiography of Namioka's mother Buwei Yang Chao, recommended by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer, so I was curious to see how Namioka wrote historical fiction about her mother's generation. Our protagonist Ailin is very much not based on Buwei -- Buwei is the sort of person, where if you wrote her life as fiction, readers would not find it believable. (There is a minor character in the book who appears to be based on Buwei, and Namioka later wrote a sequel about her, but based on descriptions it sounds like it goes in a different direction.) Instead this is the sort of middle-grade historical novel that I ate up as a kid, and it is a well-written example of this, but as an adult I don't want the story to stop when the protagonist turns 19.
Chroniques du Pays des Mères, Élisabeth Vonarburg. Yep, you'll be getting updates on this every week, though I'll try to avoid spoilers (we are now almost halfway through). In this week's installment the protagonist starts college in the Big City, population 15,000, and so we get a bit of a fun school story, and also some comparative linguistics.
osprey_archer, so I was curious to see how Namioka wrote historical fiction about her mother's generation. Our protagonist Ailin is very much not based on Buwei -- Buwei is the sort of person, where if you wrote her life as fiction, readers would not find it believable. (There is a minor character in the book who appears to be based on Buwei, and Namioka later wrote a sequel about her, but based on descriptions it sounds like it goes in a different direction.) Instead this is the sort of middle-grade historical novel that I ate up as a kid, and it is a well-written example of this, but as an adult I don't want the story to stop when the protagonist turns 19.Chroniques du Pays des Mères, Élisabeth Vonarburg. Yep, you'll be getting updates on this every week, though I'll try to avoid spoilers (we are now almost halfway through). In this week's installment the protagonist starts college in the Big City, population 15,000, and so we get a bit of a fun school story, and also some comparative linguistics.