Reviews and Comments

Constellation Games is an alien first contact story told via the medium of video game reviews.

Before I get all caught up on narrative structures and literary merit, let me just say this was a completely enjoyable book. It's full of in-jokes about video games, game design, and the early internet, and if you're the kind of person who is in on those things, you'll get the jokes and feel gratified. It's also a really funny book, though it gets darker as it goes on. It's so funny and so enjoyable that I was ready to give it four (4) stars, based on enjoyment alone (to get five you also have to have literary merit), except then I got to the ending and was a bit let down by the lack of resolution.

Like, don't get me wrong, I've read a lot of postmodern novels and I'm pretty cool with books leaving you hanging a bit. But the way this book was, its frankly lightweight nature, made me expect a traditional ending. Which it didn't give me.

Here's what isn't wrong with this book.

The structure is fascinating, and towards the end of the book, I think the structure tells us quite a bit about the plot. The story is delivered entirely via artifacts/surveillance: blog posts, emails, and chat messages, all contributed by or collected from our main character, Ariel.

Ariel is a guy who runs a game review blog. Like a lot of blogs ostensibly focused on a particular topic, it meanders to his personal life sometimes. When an alien coalition of multiple species of peaceful anarchist aliens lands on the moon and starts a contact mission with earth, Ariel wants to play and review their video games. So, an alien anthropologist gets in touch with him, and sends him an emulator, and he starts playing and reviewing. As Ariel learns about the games, he also starts to understand the people who created and played them. Meanwhile, he has interpersonal problems with his friends and legal problems with shady federal agents.

I don't want to give away too much of the plot because one of the delightful things about this book is the constant re-framing. As Ariel starts to understand the aliens better, his problems get a lot more interesting. But they also become the kind of problems that you have to have built up to in order to understand them.

One of my gripes with the book is that the aliens, despite their weird bodies and sexual habits, are remarkably relatable to the human characters. Only toward the very end of the book do you get a little bit of re-framing when one of the alien characters explains how they experienced what Ariel had thought was a thoroughly positive interaction. That was good. I would have liked to see more of that!

Despite its flaws, Constellation Games is a well-realized world, with fully developed characters (bonus: all the female (human) characters are individuals), an intriguing plot, and lots of humor. I had a shitty week and reading Constellation Games was a wonderful solace against that.

I hope Leonard Richardson writes more fiction because I could use more feel-good space opera.

Nope. Nope. Nope.

Big fat pile of nope.

DANGER SUPER WARNING VERY BAD DEATH CAUSING TYPE BDSM PRACTICES PRESENTED AS NORMAL IN THIS BOOK

This book presents itself as a realistic depiction of a D/s couple's life. Maybe it is. People seem to think it is.

This book presents choking and breath control like something you can do safely as long as you know the choked person's limits. Nope. Nope. Nope. You can't.

Here, read Jay Wiseman's writing about breath control and why it's dangerous and you shouldn't do it. www.jaywiseman.com/SEX_BDSM_Breath_Closing_Argument.php

So look. I can happily read problematic as shit fantasy erotica where people do horrible things, ignore consent, get killed by tentacles, I don't care. And it doesn't bother me when the book telegraphs clearly that what it's presenting is an unrealistic fantasy. This book telegraphs that it's presenting a realistic depiction of a healthy relationship, and for the most part I suppose it is, even if it's not the kind of thing I find hot to read about. And then it depicts and presents as normal the dangerous practice of choking. And that's a bit pile of NOPE. That goes beyond Not My Kink, beyond squick, and all the way into This Book Is Bad and I have to tell you it's bad.

Now about the rest of the book.

The writing was OK. I mean, at least as good as 50 Shades of Grey. But that's not saying much and I know I am damning it with faint praise. Also it was not sexy.

The one good thing I can say about this book is I learned what the thing I really hate is called "Hight Protocol". "High protocol" is a fetish for having stupid rules, doing housework, not being allowed to talk, capitalizing the pronoun of the sexually dominant partner, and addressing each other by stupid made up names like "Sir" and "slut" and not just in bed for kicks but all the goddamn time. High Protocol is not my kink and I think it's a stupid kink and I never want to read another piece of erotica with it again.

Meh. Problematic, but not in a hot way. Pretty much the entire book is sex scenes, btw. I'm sure it's somebody's cup of tea. For me it was all the parts of D/s that annoy me, while skipping almost all the parts I think are nice.

What annoys me: the assumption that all subs will defer to all doms, the idea that all women secretly want to submit because in our modern day and age we are stressed out by responsibility (such sneaky antifeminsm that), acting like your book is all consent-savvy and then having shitty consent practices. (I am totally cool with shitty consent in fantasy fiction, cause you know, fiction! but don't paint it as being all enlightened and then fuck up on consent. Either you're doing realistic consent or you can go all crazy Story of O and De Sade mode, but this in between shit is actually pretty gross)

I read this because it was on a list of books better than 50SG that explore similar themes. The prose was better. It was technically a decent book.

But what is sexy is like what is funny. And this was not funny.