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hotkoolaidpotato's review
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Death, Grief, and Suicide
Moderate: Colonisation, Alcoholism, Body horror, Toxic friendship, Addiction, Alcohol, Infidelity, Drug abuse, Drug use, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, and Toxic relationship
Minor: Sexual content and Homophobia
breadwitchery's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Moderate: Sexual content, Addiction, Blood, Body horror, and Death
Minor: Cursing, Racism, Alcohol, Vomit, Homophobia, Gun violence, and Drug use
wrzlprmft's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
Graphic: Abandonment, Addiction, Death, Gore, Body horror, Grief, Sexual content, and Murder
Moderate: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Child death, Gun violence, and Death of parent
Minor: Homophobia and Pregnancy
rchristine11's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Graphic: Body horror, Sexual content, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Homophobia and Suicide
Minor: Addiction
mireanthony's review
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Speaking strictly about setting, Radiance is an alternate history of our solar system beginning with the launch of the ship Tree Of Knowledge in 1858. In the decades after that first ship leaves Earth, the planets of our solar system are quickly divvied up among the powerful nations of the time and colonies begin to form. But the most important colony for the purposes of our story is that on the moon. Luna becomes an offworld Hollywood, the place to be if you're young and beautiful and looking to become an actress.
Radiance follows, in a wavering, looping way, the careers of renowned directors Percival Unck and his daughter, Severin. The former makes silent pictures, gothics; the latter rebels against the conventions of her father's day to make not only talkies but documentaries. Severin's childhood, heavily documented by her filmmaker father, sets them at odds, and her untimely disappearance sets him on a crusade to finish her last work and give their public closure on what happened to her. The prologue, a part of this final work by the senior Unck, sets the tone and establishes the format of the novel:
Humans do not proceed in an orderly fashion from one scene to the next. Memory lies underneath happenstance; hope and dread sprawl on top. Our days and nights are their endless orgies...
Real life is all beginnings. Days, weeks, children, journeys, marriages, inventions.... Everything is prologue. Every story has a stutter. It just keeps starting and starting and starting until you decide to shut the camera off.
The story itself is, in the novel's own words, something like a mystery, something like a fairy tale, and something a little too meta for either to really fit comfortably against it's skin. The conclusion, from a plot device angle, is a little bit tired, but it makes up for it, as Cat Valente's work so often does, in language:
I dream of the sea. Always the sea. Perhaps we are all only pieces. But we are stitching ourselves together into something resembling a prologue.
Moderate: Animal cruelty and Animal death
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, and Homophobia
This book has an instance of the Bury Your Gays trope against a background/minor character.