Reviews with content warning for Self harm - Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel

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Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel by Julian K. Jarboe

9 reviews

directorpurry's review against another edition

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adventurous dark hopeful reflective sad 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? Yes

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sarah984's review against another edition

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dark reflective slow-paced

2.5

I enjoyed a few stories in this collection (particularly Self Care, Estranged Children of Storybook Houses, and I Am A Beautiful Bug!) but the more poem-like pieces didn't really interest me and there were a lot of distracting usage errors in the kindle version.

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nic_nacs's review

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dark reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

2.25

The concepts were fun but poorly elaborated and followed up on. The author clearly didn't think the reader to be capable of understanding what stories were about without painstakingly pointing everything out.

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olive_lol's review

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emotional reflective 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

4.25

One of the things I like most about this collection is that each story is unique, but they come together to create a full image. The collection tackles many topics, and each feels like it gets the attention it needs to be properly addressed. A few of the stories didn't click with me, but those that did really stuck.

In general, the collection has a vibe of contemplative melancholy, but it still keeps good humor at points. Most stories' perspectives and writing styles are noticably different from the last, which kept the same style from getting stale.

My two favorites have to be Everyone On The Moon is Essential Personnel (as in, the story that shares a name with the collection) and The Android that Designed Itself.

If beautiful prose with some experemental storytelling is your thing, give this a try!

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leguinstan's review

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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

3.5

Why does God create grapes and wheat, but not wine and bread? God does this because God wants us to share in the act of creation. To be how you made me, to become how God made me, through you, I can remake myself. You and I: we are already only whole, and shifting towards the divine.

Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel is a collection of consisting of short stories, poetry, and one novella. Although I consider myself a huge fan of SFF short stories and novellas, I actually found Jarboe's flash fiction a lot more compelling than their longer works--which is surprising since the shortest stories in the collections I have previously read tend to be my least favorites.

I'm not sure how to explain this but I feel that a lot of Jarboe's short stories lack that sense of resolution--regardless of emotional mood and tone-- I usually associate with my favorite short stories. Stories such as the titular novella, "The Nothing Spots Where Nobody Wants to Stay", and "As Tender Feet of Cretan Girls Danced Once Around an Altar of Love" did not have distinct character or plot arcs. And while I recognize the character development in other works such as "The Seed and the Stone" and
We Did Not Know We Were Giants", these works felt so bogged down in metaphor that I struggled to derive a sense of satisfaction from their respective endings.

I don't particularly appreciate these aforementioned works as stories. What I do appreciate, however, is the strong imagery, lyrical prose, and imagination that is on display in all of the works in this collection--even in the ones that I dislike. I suspect that Jarboe's flash fiction and poetry generally worked better for me because I can focus on these aspects of their writing while setting aside my expectations of what makes a good work of fiction.

"The Marks of Aegis" and "The Heavy Things" really resonated with me despite the fact that they are less than five pages long and that they fully lean into the surrealism that can be found in a lot of Jarboe's works. "Estranged Children of Storybook Houses", "Self Care", and "I Am a Beautiful Bug!" were the other stories that also stood out to me. While I am unenthused with the collection as a whole, I genuinely think that Jarboe has a lot of talent and I look forward to reading more of their works.

Minor sidenote: the edition I read (ISBN 9781590216927) is riddled with typos which on occasion detracted from my reading experience. Hopefully this issue gets solved in reprintings!

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ezrasbookmountain's review

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challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad

5.0

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e_flah's review

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful 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

4.25

Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel was a thoroughly enjoyable collection of speculative short stories, which is really saying something as I'm a very hesitant short story reader. I absolutely loved the queerness in this collection -- sometimes it's a main feature of a story, sometimes it's just present. Jarboe's prose had a knack for worming under my skin and placing me inside of the stories. Some of my favorite stories were "The Marks of Aegis," "The Android that Designed Itself," and "I Am a Beautiful Bug!"

“Choosing is extremely powerful magic. Its power derived from the death of what is not chosen.”

Ironically the only story I didn't enjoy was the titular one, which also happened to be the longest story by quite a significant amount. That said, the range of subject matter and style of these stories made for a gripping read. I look forward to recommending Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel to everyone I know who loves delightfully bizarre stories.

“To take shape is to sever the infinite possibilities of wanting into a fragile burden of being.”

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gay's review

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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? Yes

3.75

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bluejayreads's review

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challenging dark emotional reflective medium-paced

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

4.75

I had never heard of Julian K. Jarboe before picking up this book, likely because they are mainly a short fiction writer and the only time I read short stories is when they're collected into books like this. But I think I'm going to have to keep an eye out for new work from them, because these stories are so wise and insightful.

The main theme across all of these stories is queerness, especially transness, and what it's like to be trans in a world that's not friendly to transness. Only-slightly-less-main themes are neurodivergance and poverty and the experience of being neurodiverse and poor in a world that's not friendly to either. It's very raw and very powerful and very real, capturing much of the nuance of those situations. All of these stories are 100% written by someone who knows what it's like to be trans, neurodiverse, and poor.

All of these stories are great (although I did think the title story, "Everyone on the Moon is Essential Personnel," was a little longer than it needed to be), but I want to touch on a few of my favorites.

"Self Care." Raw and full of anger - at capitalism, religion, transphobia, and being poor. Relatable and validating.
"The Heavy Things." The sad truth that sometimes even people who should (and said they did) love you unconditionally care more about what they can get from you than you yourself.
"Estranged Children of Storybook Houses." The changeling myth made real. For all the children whose parents feel like they are owed someone different than the child they have.
"We Did Not Know We Were Giants." I'm still not completely sure of the philosophical or emotional meaning behind this one but I love it. It may be my favorite in the book.

Saying that these stories are "deep" sounds weird and cheap, but they're full of layers of emotion, philosophy, and wisdom. I highlighted so many quotes from so many of the stories. The stories don't always make a lot of sense to my head - full of tangents and strange turns of phrase, feeling no need to include any "traditional" elements like plot or character arcs - but they felt real and they hit hard. These stories are fantastic.

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