SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Best of All Possible Worlds by Karen Lord: https://t.co/ePMCmjtPfi
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) April 21, 2021
Short Review: 9 out of 10
1/3
Short Review (cont): In a novel that's parts anthropological SF, part space opera, part romance, an empathic woman attempts to help a race of telepaths resettle after their world is destroyed. Really great story along with slow-burn romance.
— Josh (garik16) (@garik16) April 21, 2021
2/3
The Best of All Possible Worlds is the second novel by author Karen Lord, author of Redemption in Indigo (Review Here) and Unraveling (Review Here). I read Redemption in Indigo earlier this year and really loved it, and after seeing a few people mention The Best of All Possible Worlds online, I had to reserve it from my library. Lord's work with her characters in the prior two books I read was always fascinating and really well done - with Redemption in Indigo in particular being positively delightful and charming - and with this book moving from fantasy to scifi, I was really interested in seeing how it would turn out.
And well, The Best of All Possible Worlds is a really delightful and charming hybrid of multiple genres - most notably of anthropological scifi and romance. The story features an telepathic offshoot of humanity, their home destroyed, coming to a planet where some of their ancestors/cousins settled to try to find a way to rebuild their race, forcing them to discover all the ways those ancestors' cultures have changed over the ages. It also features a scientist native of the planet trying to help the main diplomat of the telepaths around, and the two slowly falling for each other, despite their very different cultural ways. The characters and peoples shown within are really well done, which makes this one yet another winner from Karen Lord.
Trigger Warning: One small part features a character using telepathy to control his family, in a parallel essentially to using emotional abuse/manipulation in our real world. I doubt it'll cause any concerns for most people, but it's there.