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A review by beltsquid
Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente
adventurous
funny
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.0
Perhaps one of the most tedious reads I've ever had the displeasure of experiencing. This book is a pack of run-on sentences in a marathon that leads nowhere. There is nothing that is not overburdened with a mountain of increasingly tangential descriptions that are desperately trying to squeeze a joke out of absurdity, yet none of them land. An entire chapter is dedicated to a Microsoft Clippy joke--you know, something that would have been tired and overdone twenty years ago. That's what you're dealing with here.
The author claims "oblique" thanks to Douglas Adams in the afterward, which is frankly disingenuous. This book is essentially "what if Zaphod Beeblebrox was human, and the protagonist of Hitchhiker's Guide instead of Arthur Dent?" Honestly that in itself is perfectly fine, but the sheer intensity of the author trying to outdo Adams' dry absurdist style with a maximalist one is unbearably annoying and I cannot emphasize this enough: it is not funny.
Furthermore the "Eurovision, but in space" concept isn't utilized all that much--the competition takes up precious little of the book, just a few pages at the very end, and it doesn't capitalize on the things that make the Eurovision Song Contest fascinating. We don't get a sense of regional politics broiling under the veneer of a lighthearted singing competition where the contestants are forbidden from utilizing political topics in their songs. In its stead is a cocktail party with a series of attempted assassinations, and I promise you that's not as interesting as it sounds in summary.
The real travesty of this is that the drama behind Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes is compelling. There's an idea for a story there, one that could have possibly had air to breathe if the author wasn't busy choking her book with unfunny, uncompelling attempts at doing Douglas Adams But Only The Silliest Parts But Even Sillier.
If you're eying this and thinking "oh I like Hitchhiker's Guide, oh I like Eurovision, oh this is just shy of 300 pages, I could knock it out in an afternoon" stop. To steal from Monty Python, this is not a book for reading: it is a book for laying down and avoiding.
The author claims "oblique" thanks to Douglas Adams in the afterward, which is frankly disingenuous. This book is essentially "what if Zaphod Beeblebrox was human, and the protagonist of Hitchhiker's Guide instead of Arthur Dent?" Honestly that in itself is perfectly fine, but the sheer intensity of the author trying to outdo Adams' dry absurdist style with a maximalist one is unbearably annoying and I cannot emphasize this enough: it is not funny.
Furthermore the "Eurovision, but in space" concept isn't utilized all that much--the competition takes up precious little of the book, just a few pages at the very end, and it doesn't capitalize on the things that make the Eurovision Song Contest fascinating. We don't get a sense of regional politics broiling under the veneer of a lighthearted singing competition where the contestants are forbidden from utilizing political topics in their songs. In its stead is a cocktail party with a series of attempted assassinations, and I promise you that's not as interesting as it sounds in summary.
The real travesty of this is that the drama behind Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes is compelling. There's an idea for a story there, one that could have possibly had air to breathe if the author wasn't busy choking her book with unfunny, uncompelling attempts at doing Douglas Adams But Only The Silliest Parts But Even Sillier.
If you're eying this and thinking "oh I like Hitchhiker's Guide, oh I like Eurovision, oh this is just shy of 300 pages, I could knock it out in an afternoon" stop. To steal from Monty Python, this is not a book for reading: it is a book for laying down and avoiding.