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kirstym25's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Xenophobia
serendipitysbooks's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- 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
3.0
I admire The Women’s Prize for Fiction judges for including this science fiction title on their longlist - we all know not all good fiction is literary fiction - and was excited to give it a go. It turns out The Blue Beautiful World was not the book for me, and I was not the right reader for it. I rarely read science fiction so I’ll be interested to see what fans of the genre make of this title. For me I felt totally unmoored, dumped into a strange world with geopolitical alliances and technology I didn’t understand. This is the third book in a trilogy or at least set in the same world. Perhaps if I had read the others I would have gotten along better with this one. But I’m firmly of the opinion that books on prize longlists need to be judged on their own merit so, as with The Mirror and the Light a few years ago, I did not read the earlier books before picking up the longlisted title. Compounding my feeling of being unmoored was the large cast of characters, some of whom had more than one identity. I felt there was little chance to get to know the characters or for them to really develop. It was a bit like being the newcomer to a group of friends or colleagues - you know they’ve got history but you don’t know what it is. Plot wise the stakes felt low - an alien culture had been observing earth and was now ready to officially make contact, but there was no hint of aggression, no immediate threat ; more surprise from those on earth working on a simulated exercise about alien contact when they discover it is no mere simulation. Added to that there was plenty of telling, and not enough showing for my taste. I struggled to get invested in the story - my eyes scanned over the words but neither my head nor my heart managed to get involved in the reading experience. And I need at least one and ideally both in order to have a satisfying reading experience.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Xenophobia
starrysteph's review
adventurous
informative
medium-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? It's complicated
1.5
The Blue, Beautiful World was inventive, with whispers of intriguing themes and a few characters who pulled me in, but it ultimately felt quite shallow.
The first segment of the book follows pop superstar Owen (one name only), who has taken Earth by storm, but has a secret gravitational pull that allows him to be an joyous influencer or a controlling dictator. There’s a sudden time jump after the first 80 pages to then follow a group of young representatives preparing for (what they believe is) the first contact with alien societies.
But this is not an unnerving tale of first contact as the marketing suggests – it is a smattering of events amidst a space opera series.
There was no indication that this was part of a series until I opened Goodreads and saw the parentheses. Nothing in the blurb, nothing on the book itself, nothing in the email that offered me an early copy. So that was very challenging. I’m sure that I was missing information that would have made this a fuller read, but I generally wasn’t confused.
You are, however, shoved right in without first giving you a reason to care about these other worlds, characters, and conflicts. And each transition was more jarring than the last.
With the second segment of the book, there’s a strange amount of dramatic irony (the council members believe they are working on hypothetical situations; we know from the first part that aliens have been in contact for many years already) that wipes away all the tension. We’re waiting for them to catch up, and when they finally do the book ends almost immediately.
There were interesting concepts, but I didn’t feel as though they were given enough gravity. Far too much content is covered in only 250 or so pages. I’m into the complexity, into the giant cast of characters, and into the themes that the space opera touched on, but I ended the book feeling unsure why this story was told and if there was a bigger picture.
CW: parent death, colonization, grief, suicidal thoughts, war, xenophobia, vomit
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(I received an advance reader copy of this book; this is my honest review.)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Vomit, Suicidal thoughts, Colonisation, Death of parent, Death, Grief, War, and Xenophobia
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