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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
adventurous
challenging
emotional
hopeful
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
A provocative, brutal, beautiful book. It flips the script of many societal issues. The author makes expert use of body horror the invoke visceral reactions from readers to personalize issues of environmentalism and class disparity. The world building is delicious, but leaves you wanting more. (Hopefully the next book capitalizes on the fantastic framework developed here.) The narrative is interesting and compelling, and the characters are multi layered and transform throughout the book. This book allows for surface level enjoyment of the narrative, or deeper interaction when you examine the intricacies and implications of the world and how they reflect our own.
The ending of the book feels a bit rushed, but everything is wrapped up well before the second book.
The ending of the book feels a bit rushed, but everything is wrapped up well before the second book.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Body horror
Minor: Racial slurs
Pregnancy Horror: Character carries an alien fetus
Tentacles
I'm at 12% (1 hour 13 minutes) through the audiobook, I like it so far but I didn't realize it was a series. I will likely pick it back up soon.
DNF. I like this a author, but this one is way too fantasy for me.
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Brutal but still a great ride. There are enough warm, cozy moments & fun, adventuresome moments to make up the agonizing moments. Although, if you have issues with tentacles, this book is definitely not for you. Haha.
It's an interesting concept, the whole living-in-a-space-squid, or whatever these "beasts" resemble. I just found the author didn't do enough world-building to give a sense of how it's all possible. Hard sci-fi this is not, and that's fine, of course. Plenty of other strengths in this genre-bending tale whose themes reflect on our current world - and as this is about humanity far in our future, we get a sense of the eternal recurrence we're doomed to (likely) repeat. Finite resources; environmental degredation; class divisions; coming of age - there actually is a good amount of world-building on the sociocultural side of things, though it can feel like it's glossed over quickly and there's not enough depth to it, which might be chalked up to the quick pacing of events and the first-person present tense narrative of the two main characters. Overall, it has its moments, and I'm glad I took a chance with a "weird fiction" book by a young female black author (I'm a middle-aged white male). But I don't feel invested enough to read the next book.
This was so fascinating to get into, and I ended up reading it in two sittings. I loved the concept of moving an entire civilization from the literal bellies of beasts in order to survive in space. The use of a matriarchal society was also fascinating. Drayden providing a society that treats men as second-class citizens does a brilliant job at showing how utterly ridiculous gender-based discrimination and limitations truly are. The world-building was spectacular, from the familial structures to the dialects to the description of the beast. I’m looking forward to continuing with Nicky Drayden’s work.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
There are too many plot lines and not nearly enough development of any given one. It gives the whole book the feeling that the characters are lurching from one thing to the next without any reason for doing so. There’s some really interesting stuff and cool world-building here, but the story just isn’t hanging together