Great science fiction has a way of introducing big ideals and new ways of living while still presenting itself as small and familiar. Fighting an intergalactic empire with the ability to blow up planets is a big, almost alien thing but a farm boy going to rescue a princess is a story we’re all familiar with and helps us to understand the rest more easily.

So it is with On a Red Station, Drifting by Aliette de Bodard. Big picture, an empire is crumbling, rebel armies are swarming through space and their war-kites are burning planets. Magistrate Lê Thi Linh flees to a space station controlled by a Mind that was once human and hopes that the faint threads of family will be enough to save her. And on the other hand, well, you’ve got a family.

Not a family that is whole, the effect of the war can be seen in the missing members, but a family none the less, dealing with a distant cousin coming to visit. There’s the aforementioned cousin, an elderly relative with health problems and a brother in law broken from the possible loss of his partner. And trying to hold it all together, and deal with the demands of looking after a space station, is Lê Thi Quyen.

The story is told between these two points of view, Linh and Quyen, and I think it depends on your own family dynamic who you will sympathise more with. Personally for me it was Quyen, dealing with Linh coming out of no-where, making assumptions of what life is normally like and judging when it doesn’t meet her standard. Others might feel more stronger for Linh, cast adrift from all that she knows and having to deal with what the war has taken from her. And it speaks a lot to the strong writing that both of these characters are valid and sympathetic in their own ways.

The world itself is beautiful. It’s a sci-fi world of high art and wonder, with reality and machines bent towards beauty. But it’s not just a pretty aesthetic, it takes care to note how much effort goes into maintaining such an artifice.

At 141 pages long, according to my Kindle, this isn’t a long read. But it is a wonderful one, as well as being a great introduction of Bodard’s Xuya Universe. Lovers of sci-fi and more cosy fiction will both find a lot to love here.