This book was okay, but it’s being marketed as space opera, and it’s really an odyssey through a “sufficiently advanced technology” fantasy land, combined with the angst of self-discovery and betrayal, so I had a fair amount of whiplash compared to what I’d expected. The space opera bits are peripheral and not really developed. The tech is largely biological which gives it an unusual - sometimes disgusting - feel.
As a story it’s decent, although the sort of “building oneself up from abject nothingness” tales seem to of necessity involve a bunch of flailing around plotwise. That main characters’s arc has a couple of surprises, yet the ultimate destination seems pretty clear early on. There’s a strong Wizard of Oz feel to it which might be deliberate.
The elements of the story I most enjoyed - the conflict among the different worlds - reminded me strongly of Karl Schroeder’s Virga …
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Bay Area programmer guy. Lifelong comic book reader, also a big fan of comic strips and webcomics. In prose I mostly read science fiction with a smattering of fantasy, horror, mystery and the occasional nonfiction book. My cats help.
This is my Bookwyrm account. For Mastodon, try @mrawdon@sfba.social
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Michael Rawdon rated Head on: 3 stars
Head on by John Scalzi
Head On is a science fiction police procedural novel by American writer John Scalzi. The book was published by Tor …
Michael Rawdon reviewed The Stars Are Legion by Kameron Hurley
Review of 'The Stars Are Legion' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
This book was okay, but it’s being marketed as space opera, and it’s really an odyssey through a “sufficiently advanced technology” fantasy land, combined with the angst of self-discovery and betrayal, so I had a fair amount of whiplash compared to what I’d expected. The space opera bits are peripheral and not really developed. The tech is largely biological which gives it an unusual - sometimes disgusting - feel.
As a story it’s decent, although the sort of “building oneself up from abject nothingness” tales seem to of necessity involve a bunch of flailing around plotwise. That main characters’s arc has a couple of surprises, yet the ultimate destination seems pretty clear early on. There’s a strong Wizard of Oz feel to it which might be deliberate.
The elements of the story I most enjoyed - the conflict among the different worlds - reminded me strongly of Karl Schroeder’s Virga series, so if that’s what you enjoyed most about Stars, then I recommend that series to you.
Michael Rawdon rated Untitled Reynolds 5 of 10: 4 stars
Michael Rawdon rated The Clockwork Dynasty: A Novel: 3 stars
Michael Rawdon rated The Dispatcher: 3 stars
The Dispatcher by John Scalzi (The Dispatcher, #1)
One day, not long from now, it becomes almost impossible to murder anyone 999 times out of a thousand, anyone …
Michael Rawdon rated The Delirium Brief: 3 stars
The Delirium Brief by Charles Stross (Laundry Files, #8)
Someone is dead set to air the spy agency's dirty laundry in The Delirium Brief , the next installment to …
Michael Rawdon rated The 400-Million-Year-Itch: 2 stars
Michael Rawdon rated Thunderbird: 3 stars
Michael Rawdon rated The Collapsing Empire: 4 stars
The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi (Interdependency, #1)
The first novel of a new space-opera sequence set in an all-new universe by the Hugo Award-winning, New York Times-bestselling …
Michael Rawdon rated Stories of Your Life & Others: 3 stars
Michael Rawdon rated The Magicians: 4 stars
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
A thrilling and original coming-of- age novel about a young man practicing magic in the real worldQuentin Coldwater is brilliant …
