★★★★☆ Distantly Falling Stars, by Berengaria Di Rossi
It is good to be underestimated... Or is it?
Distantly Falling Stars
Berengaria Di Rossi
It is good to be underestimated... Or is it?
Berengaria Di Rossi's Distantly Falling Stars is a free story on Wattpad, that won the grand prize in a contest. It's described as a novella, but at 21,000 words, I'm inclined to call it, oxymoronically, a long short story. I don't really know what Wattpad is, and this is, as far as I know, the only Wattpad story I have ever read. It's a Bronzepunk story. If, like me, you have never heard of Bronzepunk, you will appreciate Di Rossi's explanation
Bronze Punk is technology-based sci-fi set in Ancient Egypt. The plot and characters of this story are historically accurate to the time period (12th dynasty, Middle Kingdom), but the story features magic and a more advanced technology than they actually had at the time.
(Apparently one cannot copy and paste from a Wattpad page -- very annoying.) So Bronzepunk is to Bronze Age Egypt as steampunk is to Industrial Revolution England.
The story, broadly speaking, is a familiar one. Our hero is Seti, an ordinary scribe whose job is to transcribe reports coming into a sort of information ministry, collect all the information, and make sense of it. He is a common man. He is drafted by powerful people related to Pharaoh to play a part in their schemes. They intend him to be the typical mushroom: keep him in the dark and feed him what mushrooms are fed.
But Seti is smarter than the plotters expect.
This is an old story: the fool whom powerful people try to take advantage of, but who turns out not to be such a fool as he appears. It's one I usually enjoy, and did in this case. If I have a complaint, it is that I didn't really understand the plots and counterplots that form the background for Seti's story.