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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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