Saturday, July 13, 2019

Space Opera, by Catherynne M. Valente

Space OperaSpace Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This book reads like you took an armload of glam rock albums, put them in a blender, covered them with chocolate sauce and set them on fire. It has all the nuance of a trash compactor, all the character development of an overripe mango, and all the wonder of a six year old..cat. Reading this, I felt like I had run several miles in a three piece suit, sat in a hot tub, gone break dancing, and then sat in the sun for several hours.

Just about no effort to turn out the above, and that's the whole book. I have no doubt that the author crafted these sentences herself, but it reads like it could have been written by a neural network from the 90's. There's a wafer-thin plot, and a touch of character development, in a sea of overdone metaphors and similes pretending to be clever. Not sure how this gets all the award nominations, since there's just not that much there. I saw it through to the end, but was glad it got there. Exhausting to read, and not much in the way of payoff.



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