A Discord for Fans of A.A. Freeman's/Aughtpunk's works! | 22 members
Are you a fan of the works of A. A. Freeman (me), including Echo of the Larkspur and The Midwife Fables?
Are you a fan of AughtPunk's (me) fanfiction including the Forgiveness of the Lamb series?
Are you over 18?
Do you, in fact, wish you had your own Huggabot?
Then come join the Modern Art Marzipan Owl Club on discord! A place for fans of my work to talk about my writings and for me to actually talk to other humans!
Remember! Assholes, creeps, and dramamongers will be nuked from orbit! I'm middle aged and very tired!
IMPORTANT UPDATE: NOW WITH A LINK THAT WORKS! If you tried joining before and couldn't, try it now! We'd love to have you!
Today we have the pleasure of interviewing friend of the site, author @aughtpunk about her upcoming LGBTQIA+ science fiction novel, Echo of the Larkspur! 🐉
A Discord for Fans of A.A. Freeman's/Aughtpunk's works! | 47 members
HEY YOU! YES YOU!
Are you a fan of the novel Echo of the Larkspur or the Midwife Fables series by A. A. Freeman?
Do you enjoy the fanfic works of Ao3 user AughtPunk such as the Cult of the Lamb Forgiveness of the Lamb series or their latest Project Hail Mary fanfic To Observe Soft Flesh?
Well surprise! THAT'S ME! And I have a discord server for fans of my written works to hang out, discuss my writings, get updates about my life and writing and generally talk about video games and crafts and various other things!
Anyone 18+ is welcomed to join! We're a small but friendly bunch, so don't be shy to hop on in!
Also! For the month of June in honor of Pride month I'm doing a giveaway of my Echo of the Larkspur merch bundle! There's going to be three winners, so please enter once you join!
The sole survivor of a massacre, Dr. Ciro Kwakkenbos, has spent the last six years in intensive therapy. He’s finally capable of working with Artificial Intelligence again—and comes to the Ceres colony determined to prevent robots from committing any future atrocities.
When he arrives, Ciro realizes the robot in charge of the colony’s security, S.A.G.E. (Sentient Automated Geo-sentinel Engineer), is dangerously close to complete sentience. S.A.G.E. is more interested in observing the colonists’ everyday lives (and matching them with appropriate musical soundtracks) than following its intended programming. Robots aren’t supposed to be charming, kind, or compassionate, either.
But as Ciro investigates, he discovers S.A.G.E. has learned how to lie and—possibly—harm and kill humans. Worse, S.A.G.E.’s memories have been hacked, deleting a deadly secret.
Despite the danger S.A.G.E. poses, Ciro can’t deny the feelings growing between them. Now Ciro must unravel the truth behind the missing memories—before S.A.G.E. and the colony are doomed.
Echo of the Larkspur is a fun, light-hearted, sci-fi based workplace romance. Ciro, recently transferred to Ceres to do some work on their somewhat atypical security AI, is very determined not to like or trust this bizarre robot he needs to work with – but listen, the robot is really charming okay? He’s very funny. And he talks a lot, so if he was going to go on a murder spree, he would probably accidentally tell you all about it first. So befriending it is probably fine, right?
This is a very character-centric book. If you like your character development to be periodically broken up by characters being shot at, running for their lives, or the nuclear reactor threatening to explode, this may not be the book for you. If, on the other hand, you like most of your conflict to center around things like ‘how much banjo is acceptable in music,’ this may be just the thing you’re looking for. There’s plenty of heavy stuff around the edges – Ciro’s pre-book trauma is pretty intense, Sage is unknowingly sitting on a box of things he doesn’t want to talk about or he’ll go hide under his bed for a month, and the climax of the book really got my heart pounding, but Echo of the Larkspur is a pretty pleasant read. People butt heads, but most of the cast means well and look out for each other, as the best small communities will.
The characters are fun. Despite there being a lot of secondary/background characters, and me having a shoddy memory, I only had to go back and remind myself who was who a couple of times. Generally speaking, everyone was memorable, and didn’t take up too little time to justify their presence, nor did they take up too much time, making me wonder why they were so front-and-center when they weren’t main characters. Freeman, in my opinion, did a great job of capturing the feeling of a small community – everyone knows everyone else, half of them are related in convoluted ways, and there is hyper-specific drama to be aware of. (Ezzine, why did you marry him twice? I try not to judge, but I’m judging.) The writing style is also fun – the story is light-hearted, and the prose is too, having fun with its material without becoming purple or bogging itself down in making up too many sci-fi terms to try to establish its setting. Echo of the Larkspur is happy to stand on its own, without the narration feeling like its trying to justify its own existence.
There were a few things that would have made me like this book better, but not much. A few of those things are personal preferences/biases I won’t hold against the author (I kept expecting things to take a nasty turn because the last several books I’ve read have been murder mysteries and several spots in Echo of the Larkspur would be a perfect place to find a body). There was some stuff at the beginning with Sage having essentially impulsive thoughts that I would have liked to see come into the story more – they basically just stop and aren’t really addressed. I think they might have been meant as a representation of Sage’s worry that he is capable of becoming violent, but it wasn’t really tied to that part of the plot in a way that made it feel like a good setup/payoff.
Additionally, I do wish we’d gotten to know Ilex, Sage’s brother, better. He ended up being pretty central to the plot, and his role wasn’t unsatisfactory, but I think an extra scene or two getting to know him (particularly getting to know him while he wasn’t giving the world’s scariest big-brother talk) would have really added to the climax. But maybe that’s my love of somewhat-messed-up sibling dynamics talking.
Overall, there was only one thing I truly disliked. It’s at the very end of the book, is a tiny detail in the grand scheme of things, and is easy to overlook, but it really left a bad taste in my mouth. I won’t go into details, since it’s a spoiler, but I will say that it is an easy issue to headcanon away as something that was discussed off-screen or after the end of the book, it just stuck out to me as being a failing of the book’s overall themes of identity and autonomy.
Overall, this was a fun read! A bit different than what I usually read, as its primary genre, in my opinion, is Romance, not Science Fiction, and I’m not a very romantic person, but the characters were all fun to read about (always the most important thing to me), and the romance coming about through the lens of growing as a person and learning to let other people in – both for the robot and the human involved – made it a pleasure to read and to think about. If you like lighthearted, low stakes romances with lots of friendships scattered about, and you like it with some sci-fi elements thrown in, I would recommend Echo of the Larkspur.
