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hotkoolaidpotato's review
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
Valente has a unique way of storytelling. Some people don't get it, but the ones who do will love this book. It took me a while to figure out what was going on, but once I did I couldn't put the book down.
Content Warnings
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
j_squaredd's review
adventurous
challenging
emotional
medium-paced
- 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? It's complicated
4.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcohol, Drug use, and Death
Moderate: Violence, Gun violence, Alcoholism, Homophobia, and Drug abuse
Minor: Child abuse, Suicide, and Death of parent
breadwitchery's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- 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
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content, Addiction, Blood, Body horror, and Death
Minor: Cursing, Racism, Alcohol, Vomit, Homophobia, Gun violence, and Drug use
wrzlprmft's review
challenging
dark
inspiring
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
- 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
Content Warnings
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
booksthatburn's review
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
RADIANCE is a feast of grief, a full spread of reactions, inactions, and mourning of a particular life and death, by those who knew Severin, loved her, or saw her movies and thought that was close enough to love and knowing. Told through various media such as scripts, interviews, journals, and editorials, RADIANCE is a lush portrait of an alternate early 1900’s cinematic solar system where the Edisons are a dynasty, supply chains stretch from Earth’s moon all the way to Pluto, with life sustained by the milk of callowhales on Venus, and imagination fed by silent films.
I love old sci-fi's imagination of the wonders of the solar system, before we knew that Mars wasn't brimming with water. RADIANCE embraces that imagination and makes it true. The rules are different here, where movie stars live on the moon, production teams travel to Venus for better lighting, and Pluto is a colony for those who want to be absolutely free to live under a pretty stringent set of customs. The worldbuilding is lovingly detailed, with reasons (implied or explicit) for each oddity until they blur together into a wonderfully strange whole.
My sense of what the story is wobbled and undulated as I was reading, as each new piece, every angle and new way of telling the story, they shifted my sense of the narrative. At the end I feel as though I understand Severin, at least a little, but also I have a deep sense of how foolish it is to think that I’d understand her through this biographical reimagining of her life and wishes, filtered through the gaze of someone who made her reenact important moments if the lighting was a bit off.
Some sections are breezy and delightful, oozing the upbeat patter of a newsreel or advertisement, scattered with references to contemporary figures and their planetary exploits, matter-of-factly describing life on various planets and moons. It’s excellent worldbuilding, as descriptions slowly drift between what genuinely seems like fun and more disturbing descriptions of what’s necessary for survival or expected as the rules of that particular location. I like this blend of narrative styles, creating the feeling of a great big book of everything one might want to say about Severin, pouring at first in a raw scream of grief at her absence, moving into a celebration of what she did with her presence, then contemplating a long future without her.
My favorite sections are the murder mystery theater portion and the last instance of The Ingenue's Handbook. The staged and surreal nature of the mystery theater felt like a perfect way to highlight the impossibility of reconciling Percival's need to know what happened to Severin, and his understanding of how impossible that would be. The Handbook, shortly thereafter, is by contrast acceptance and understanding of the writer's need to move on, but also great love for Severin that is undiminished even by her likely eternal absence.
The conclusion pulls everything together delicately and suddenly, like a magic trick, blink and you'll miss it. One instant I had a dozen questions and just a paragraphs or two later the whole story made sense in a way that I didn't expect but just feels wonderful.
I love old sci-fi's imagination of the wonders of the solar system, before we knew that Mars wasn't brimming with water. RADIANCE embraces that imagination and makes it true. The rules are different here, where movie stars live on the moon, production teams travel to Venus for better lighting, and Pluto is a colony for those who want to be absolutely free to live under a pretty stringent set of customs. The worldbuilding is lovingly detailed, with reasons (implied or explicit) for each oddity until they blur together into a wonderfully strange whole.
My sense of what the story is wobbled and undulated as I was reading, as each new piece, every angle and new way of telling the story, they shifted my sense of the narrative. At the end I feel as though I understand Severin, at least a little, but also I have a deep sense of how foolish it is to think that I’d understand her through this biographical reimagining of her life and wishes, filtered through the gaze of someone who made her reenact important moments if the lighting was a bit off.
Some sections are breezy and delightful, oozing the upbeat patter of a newsreel or advertisement, scattered with references to contemporary figures and their planetary exploits, matter-of-factly describing life on various planets and moons. It’s excellent worldbuilding, as descriptions slowly drift between what genuinely seems like fun and more disturbing descriptions of what’s necessary for survival or expected as the rules of that particular location. I like this blend of narrative styles, creating the feeling of a great big book of everything one might want to say about Severin, pouring at first in a raw scream of grief at her absence, moving into a celebration of what she did with her presence, then contemplating a long future without her.
My favorite sections are the murder mystery theater portion and the last instance of The Ingenue's Handbook. The staged and surreal nature of the mystery theater felt like a perfect way to highlight the impossibility of reconciling Percival's need to know what happened to Severin, and his understanding of how impossible that would be. The Handbook, shortly thereafter, is by contrast acceptance and understanding of the writer's need to move on, but also great love for Severin that is undiminished even by her likely eternal absence.
The conclusion pulls everything together delicately and suddenly, like a magic trick, blink and you'll miss it. One instant I had a dozen questions and just a paragraphs or two later the whole story made sense in a way that I didn't expect but just feels wonderful.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Grief, Vomit, and Gore
Moderate: Body horror, Cursing, Death, Murder, Alcohol, Drug use, Homophobia, Self harm, Sexual content, Suicide, Violence, and Domestic abuse
Minor: Racism, Abortion, Cannibalism, Gun violence, Animal cruelty, Sexual harassment, and Ableism
rchristine11's review
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body horror, Sexual content, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Homophobia and Suicide
Minor: Addiction
mireanthony's review
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
In summer of 2014 I was briefly obsessed with the movie John Carter. I loved the idea of an ancient, dying society on Mars, but even more than that, I loved that the reason John Carter as a story came to exist at all was that during the 19th century the astronomers that turned their telescopes towards the red planet saw long canals and hypothesized that there might once have been water there. The sprawling epic world of John Carter and the rest of Edgar Rice Burroughs's Barsoom series captivated me but I was very disappointed in the rest of the books themselves, which I found badly paced, overly focused on outdated ideals of masculinity, and bogged down by the prejudices of the time they were written. Radiance by Cat Valente is the book I was always looking for in the Barsoom series.
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:
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 narrative in Radiance is nonlinear, a story spliced together from various projects and sources, out of order, details here and there like scraps on the cutting room floor. The end result is this full, rich, immersive view of a solar system not our own, teeming with life, and dominated by an Old Hollywood set in the stars. This is such a beautifully detailed and descriptive idea of the planets, each with their own little culture and ecosystem. From Mercury, a desert inhabited by wildlife referred to as kangaroos and treated as an Australian outback, to Pluto, a place "too mad for metaphor... lost in the unfathomable tide of these black rivers", a land of the dead; each corner of the world determined, not by scientific reality, but by poetry, imagery. A solar system as a canal on Mars tells us it ought to be.
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:
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.
Content Warnings
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.
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