Portrait of a Wide Seas Islander

I enjoyed this but it wasn't great. The good part is seeing one of the stories in The Hands of the Emperor retold from a different perspective. Particularly since it was one of that book's strongest themes, the clash of two cultures in Kip. Seeing it from his Islander uncle / mentor's point of view was a good idea for a novella.

Unfortunately the result is pretty thin. I liked the Islander culture in the novel but the author always skated a little too close to being a shallow appropriation of Polynesian culture rather than a deep meditation. Respectfully done, I think, but not very deep in this novella. That weakness really came through. Buru Tovo is just not enough of a character to hang a story on and didn't get much development here. I did appreciate the insight into his sexuality, that was fun, but it was one of the few things that made him seem like a real person and not a caricature of "wise native elder".