imagining a thriving subculture on mospheira centered around fansubs of machimi plays, which are technically turbo-illegal and frequently just wrong on most counts. every episode has to pause at the first mention of man'chi so the fansubber can (incorrectly) explain what that is through several unbroken minutes of scrolling text
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE: AIJI MEANS KING
I’m ashamed to say this is only the second book of hers I’ve ever read (the other was Sunfall), but what a book it was! It's a riveting exploration of an alien psychology and its consequences for humans attempting to build diplomatic and personal relationships.
The story centers around an alien society called the atevi, which plays host to a population of humans descended from the staff of a colony ship which went drastically off-course 200 or so years prior to the events of the story. Following a brutal war, the two sides have reached an uneasy arrangement where the humans are disarmed and confined to an island, and a human delegate, the paidhi, is kept on the staff of the aiji, the ruler of the supreme atevi clan, and gradually dispenses human technology while acting as an advisor. Though they did not even have steam technology when the humans arrived, the atevi are now making use of airplanes and even computers. There is strong suspicion from both sides, with the humans suspecting the atevi will slaughter them as soon as they have no more technology to provide, and the atevi suspecting the humans of building up high-tech weapons of war to subjugate the planet and avoid precisely this possibility.
Our protagonist is the current paidhi Bren, who has, so he believes, an exceptionally friendly relationship with the aiji, Tabini. This perception is quickly shattered after an abortive assassination attempt by an unknown assailant followed by a sort of polite kidnapping by Tabini's staff, who cut off his communications with the human government and send him inland to the manor of the aiji-dowager as a kind of hostage.
The core of the story is the unbridgeable gap between the human and atevi mind. Though they can communicate with humans easily, atevi are quite literally incapable of love, friendship, trust, or even "liking" somebody as we understand it. All atevi relationships are built on overlapping, strictly hierarchical associations driven by man'chi, a sort of deep-rooted desire to serve the leader of the primary association at the expense of everything else, up to and including one's own life. This leads to a variety of frightening atevi social constructs such as legally-sanctioned blood feuds and assassinations.
Much of the book consists of Bren's failed attempts to befriend atevi, and his confusion and mental anguish as they fail to reciprocate in any way that makes sense to him. I truly empathized with his distress-- There is a kind of horror in meeting something that talks like a human and acts like a human, a thing who you may really like and even trust, and which engages with you but cannot like or trust you back, and is in fact frustrated and offended in its own turn by your feelings of affection. It’s a nightmarish thing, and you cannot help but to share Bren's feelings of panic, anger and helplessness.
When Bren finally comes to understand man'chi to some extent, it is as much a triumph for the reader as for him. It was deeply cathartic when that barrier was cracked, if not broken, and he finally understood how to relate at least somewhat to the atevi on their own terms. I would heartily recommend this to anyone interested in speculative psychology and convoluted political machinations.
