A 2017 Nebula Award finalist in the novella category. Written by Kai Ashante Wilson, it weaves the story of Aqib, a young man fated to take his father's place as 'Master of Beasts' in a royal court, who finds himself pulled in two sharply different directions. He is sought after as husband by a royal princess, which will boost his family's fortunes, yet he has also fallen in love with a foreign soldier. The tale of his torrid and forbidden whirlwind romance is intercut with the future life, and the daughter, he will have if he chooses the princess.

The book is by turns a romance and a SF/fantasy mashup: it seems mostly fantasy at first, but it evolves that the princess is a mathematical savant and her help is sought by 'gods' with a complex physics problem to solve and a desire to ascend beyond the flesh in a version of the Singularity, and the genre lines become blurred.

The book easily carried me along, and unlike some reviewers I did not find the book's alternating between two timelines to be distracting. It all comes together at the end for a resolution that I found both satisfying and sad, as Aqib makes a choice that seems equally wonderful and tragic, between the two great loves of his life.

The book's cover (by SF+F illustrator Tommy Arnold) shows the young Aqib, a cheetah from his menagerie, and his lover Lucrio, the soldier. This let me know that the characters, like the author, have dark skin tone, but race is not a strong theme in the book. The romance is, and while the love between the men is forbidden in Aqib's society, their romance is tender and well portrayed, and their seemingly-inevitable parting is moving.

Recommendation

A Taste of Honey is a good, interesting read. I enjoyed it, and rank it equally with fellow novella nominee The Ballad of Black Tom. A Taste of Honey is published by Tor, as a slender 153 page book that may be lost amidst 1000+ page fantasy tomes, but deserves to be seen as their equal, if not more.


References

Borrowed from the library and just finished it.

Nebula 2017 novella nominees reviewed on e2:

I haven't read the other 2017 Nebula novella nominees yet.

For SciFiQuest 3017: The Frontier that Wouldn't End
...And they'll continue noding it forever just because....

Shelagh Delaney wrote the play at nineteen, in 1958. It quickly found a producer and an audience, skipping from little theater to London's West End to Broadway-- a production that featured Angela Lansbury as the protagonist's mother. Delaney disliked the classification of the work as "Kitchen Sink Drama," but it inevitably gets described as an example of the genre. A Taste of Honey features run down settings, places still showing the destruction of the Blitz. It checks off several boxes that would have seemed realistically edgy at the time: a teen pregnancy, an inter-racial relationship, a neglectful, alcoholic parent, and a gay artist. Delaney wrote other plays, but this appears to be the one people recall. The lasting fame owes something, no doubt, to the film adaptation.

It's 1961, the same year Victim became the first British film to use the word "homosexual," and, like Victim, the big-screen Touch of Honey feels progressive for its time. Teenage Jo (Rita Tushingham) strikes out on her own, finds a job selling shoes, and cheap accommodations to call home. Her fling with a sailor (Paul Danquah) has left her pregnant. Jimmy the sailor promises he'll be back. We're not especially sure whether to take him at his word. His face slowly fades from Jo's memory. He's a Black man from Liverpool. This film likely represents the last time in British history that a Liverpudlian accent didn't immediately evoke The Beatles.

Jo meets and takes in Geoffrey Ingham (Murray Melvin-- who originated the role on stage), a sympathetic young gay man. He has no place to go; he's been kicked out of home and his subsequent rental. As I said, A Taste of Honey feels progressive for its time. The film passes no judgment on Geof, but we also see no signs of romantic or sexual relationships. Our protagonist throws any number of stereotype-based jokes his way, before affectionately declaring him her big sister.

The original, stripped-down script gets expanded by Delaney and the director, Tony Richardson, with fascinating location shooting. We see the less swinging side of England, black and white, run-down rental spaces. Singing children play around a cluttered, clogged canal. The children behave like a strange chorus, and seem to know the location and doings of everyone in the neighbourhood. We go to Blackpool, and it appears, at least, that the film simply used real attractions and the people running them.

The film's ending remains ambiguous and rather bleak, though it holds out slightly more hope than the play.

The play has been revived a number of times into the present century. The Smiths reference both the playwright and this work specifically in their lyrics and album art.

Evocative and haunting, occasionally funny and often grim, A Taste of Honey stands as a portrait of one run-down corner of mid-twentieth century Britain.

Director: Tony Richardson
Adapted by Shelagh Delaney and Tony Richardson from the play by Shelagh Delaney

Rita Tushingham as Jo
Murray Melvin as Geoffrey Ingham
Dora Bryan as Helen
Robert Stephens as Peter Smith
Paul Danquah as Jimmy
Michael Bilton s Landlord
Eunice Black as Schoolteacher
David Boliver as Bert
Margo Cunningham as Landlady
A. Goodman as Rag and Bone Man
Veronica Howard as Gladys
Moira Kaye as Doris
Herbert Smith as Shoe Store Proprietor
Rosalie Williams as Nurse

"A Taste of Honey" is a song recorded by The Beatles, released as an album track on both Please Please Me and The Early Beatles. The song has a long history, and was an atypical recording choice for the Beatles.

The song was originally written as a musical theme for the stage play "A Taste of Honey", which was popular in the late 1950s. The vocal version was first recorded by Billy Dee Williams (yes, that Billy Dee Williams) in 1960, and by Lenny Welch two years later. It is these two versions that inspired the Beatles' version. "Please Please Me" is an album full of raw talent and youthful energy, (exemplified by Lennon's raw vocals on "Twist and Shout") and the staid, slow Broadway style ballad of "A Taste of Honey" doesn't fit with how we think of the early Beatles. The Beatles would return to "Broadway" style songs in later years, with songs such as "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" and "Honey Pie", but those songs were done with some element of parody. Here, it seems the Beatles were trying to do a straight-ahead cover of a pop standard at the time.

Often the Beatles seem obvious in retrospect: group of kids playing high-energy love songs take a more artistic direction and change what pop music could be. But listening to "A Taste of Honey", it is possible to imagine a course where after their youthful energy had burnt out, they could have ended up playing middlebrow pop standards instead. Luckily, we were saved from that timeline, and only a few songs like this (as well as, uncharitably, some of Paul McCartney's solo career) are reminders of that element of The Beatles.

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