Reviews with content warning for Gore - Persephone Station

This kept infodumping, telling me how I should feel about something in a kind of irksome way. I don’t mind infodumps of information, but the barrage of info and how I should process felt like I wasn’t being trusted to figure anything out. There was a particular scene right before I stopped reading where a character narrates this whole initial meeting, change of heart, and now strong ties between herself and a person she’s telling us about who’s asleep in the next room. It’s the kind of backstory that either needs its own novella or just two sentences to say where they are now, because the choice to do this in-between thing felt like I was being told about some other story I could have been reading instead. I constantly felt like I had both too much and not enough information about what was happening, and I decided to stop.

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story_goblin's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

This book is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. It's a space opera/mystery thing packed with action, queer characters, and female leads. To me, though, it suffered a bit from trying to be too much- part mystery novel but also space opera, part treatise on human nature but also condemnation of corporate greed, part exploration of grief in its many forms plus the many different reactions to it but also action-packed. There just wasn't really room to do ALL of those things well. Also, honestly, the literature references were more just distracting than anything else (and I'm an English teacher). But it was vivid and intense and generally pretty neat.

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azrah786's review against another edition

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3.5

[This full review can also be found on my BLOG]

**I was provided with an ARC through netgalley in exchange for an honest review**

CW: violence, gore, gun violence, murder, war, death, medical procedures

A fun and fresh take on the genre with much to love but not without its flaws.

Set on a backwater planet, Persephone Station primarily follows a band of mercenaries under contract with a criminal boss. A particular job that they undergo puts them head to head with a corrupt Earther corporation who are hell-bent on exploiting the planets resources and eradicating its native species - The Emissaries, who want nothing more than to remain discrete from the rest of the universe.

There is also a secondary storyline following a character who finds themselves on the planet after following a distress call that only they can hear.

Action packed, this is a Space Opera-Western mashup that has a cinematic feel to it. In fact what caught my attention about this book to begin with was how it was described to have an air of Cowboy Bebop, Firefly and The Mandalorian and I’d say the vibes are definitely there.

It is very much a plot-driven story with intriguing political commentary and a cast of characters that you can’t help but get attached to. However, I do feel like the story could have maybe benefitted from being split into more than one book.

A slow and slightly info-dumpy beginning sets the story off, giving you a feel for the boisterous weather of another world and immersing you right into the noir city scene of West Brynner, but you have to push through a good 40% of the book before things really start to get interesting. Not only that, the world-building doesn’t really expand further than Persephone. Other than giving an insight on the political side of things and the United Republic of Worlds being name dropped a handful of times, we learn hardly anything about the rest of this universe. This wasn’t exactly a bad thing, it’s just that you’re left wanting more!

Furthermore though the two storylines weave and intersect one another perfectly, it did feel like there was a little too much going on so at times the story felt a little rushed and it was a case of more telling rather than showing with the action. A particularly gripping section towards the end where some big reveals occurred was wrapped up so quickly compared to other events in the book and I just wish it had had more page time.

However, there were so much to love about this book too! The sci-fi elements were exciting and well researched particularly when it came to The Emissariesand the discussions and ethics around artificial intelligence. I absolutely loved the main cast of characters who were all either female or non-binary. Each of them, despite having again a sort of info-dumpy introduction, was beautifully nuanced and their relationships and interactions with one another added both great humour and so much emotion to the narrative. I was personally a big fan of Angel de la Reza who sort of reminded me of Bobby Draper from The Expanse.

So my feelings are slightly conflicted but all in all I'd say this book is a solid Sci-Fi debut and I’d probably be interested if the author ever decided to return to this universe.
Final Rating – 3.5/5 Stars

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melaniereadsbooks's review against another edition

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challenging dark tense medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Thank you so much to the publisher and the author for an ARC of this amazing book debuting on January 5th!

Angel and her team have a very important mission--to save the Indigenous life forms on Persephone from the corporation that rules the planet. This book is an action packed space opera with a great cast of female and nonbinary characters and very interesting alien lifeforms!

There is so much amazing technology happening in this book and I love the bits about AGI and anything relating to The Emissaries.

The girl squad is top notch and I loved to read about their quirks and the way they worked together. Beautiful and heart wrenching!

Leicht is a great writer and I definitely want to read more by them in the future!

My only complaint is that I felt this could have been a little shorter, as a few sections in the middle kind of dragged. But overall this book was great!

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