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lanid's review
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Moderate: Slavery, Genocide, Murder, Violence, Body horror, Death, Gore, and Death of parent
Minor: Animal death, Injury/Injury detail, Torture, and Medical content
mariebrunelm's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Caiden is a mechanic, living a simple life on a planet that is always the same. His community is supposed to take care of cattle and not ask questions. One day the unthinkable happens and Caiden is left barely alive on a planet he had no idea even existed, pushed to the edge by multiple traumas. To escape, and to live, he'll have to go and grow further than he ever imagined, and unveil secrets strong enough to topple a galaxy.
What a ride. Let me tell you this book is *intense*. I bought it lured by its queer and neurodivergent rep, but was a bit daunted by what seemed like complex world-building, from what the reviews suggested.
Actually, I found that the world wasn’t especially complex at its core, but it took some effort to grasp it and make my way through the story at first, because of the very lush prose. I hadn't expected such detailed descriptions and exhaustive vocabulary. It was amazing, don’t get me wrong, but also took me longer to read. My aphantasic mind (I can’t picture mental images when I read) had a really hard time with the very visual narrative the author has created. I thought it was objectively fabulous, just not something I could relax into.
But then, I was introduced to the characters and especially to the crew of misfits that take Caiden in. From then on, I was hooked. That is what found family is. Those mismatched personalities and wildly different species of being made me feel just like a Becky Chambers book can. With a liberal dose of trauma added on top. Because that book is NOT gentle. The opening chapter is very violent, and it’s only the beginning. However I didn’t find violence was gratuitous because it served a whole reflection on trauma and identity that spans the whole novel. So definitely not for the faint-hearted, but also, I think, well-handled and rewarding.
Rep : neurodivergent character, genderfluid character.
Additional trauma for eugenism.
Additional trauma for eugenism.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Violence, Gore, and Death of parent
minanonim's review against another edition
Too long, got slightly repetitive at some point. I also didn't connect with the main character after a while. It feels like he never learns, never moves past the beginning point. (Maybe mild spoilers ahead) Yes, I get it, he is traumatized, but you'd think he'd learn to control his temper after the first few times he gets himself and others in big trouble because of it. Revenge is great, but use your head for a second please...
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Death of parent, and Grief
Moderate: Torture, Slavery, Body horror, Excrement, Violence, Injury/Injury detail, Confinement, Deportation, and Blood
Minor: Ableism
whammajamma's review against another edition
no spoilers, but was not expecting ultraviolence and was not up for it
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Death of parent, and Gore
alexalily's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
sad
tense
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
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal cruelty, Slavery, Child death, Gore, Violence, Animal death, Blood, and Child abuse
Moderate: Murder, Physical abuse, Death, Suicide, Torture, Trafficking, Body horror, Confinement, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, and Medical content
Minor: Alcohol
bkwrm1317's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Themes of found family, and more hopeful/uplifting by the end, but some heavy content, so be sure to check CWs on this one.
Debut novel, and really solidly written! SF and multiple settings from space ports to planets to transport to ships, some wild ship technology, rinds between universes, etc.
Looking forward to #2
Debut novel, and really solidly written! SF and multiple settings from space ports to planets to transport to ships, some wild ship technology, rinds between universes, etc.
Looking forward to #2
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore and Violence
Moderate: Colonisation and Gaslighting
pvbobrien's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Gore, Violence, Death of parent, Body horror, and Death
Moderate: Slavery, Animal cruelty, Blood, Medical content, Genocide, and Injury/Injury detail
booksthatburn's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
NOPHEK GLOSS is about a boy growing up too fast and being shouldered with trauma and responsibility greater than can reasonably be comprehended, finding a new family along the way but not quite being able to trust that connections forged so rapidly can in fact be genuine and enduring… in space.
I'm about to discuss how much I didn't like the main character so I'd like to stress that the book is so good that it held me despite not liking the main character until close to the end. The world is great, it deals with trauma in a way that is understandable even if it's not always the best decision (since an instinctual reaction to trauma is rarely the best one in the long run, but it is often relatable in the short term).
The third person narration just follows Caiden (except in the epilogue), so every scene is necessarily filled with his voice. I don't like Caiden as a person for the most of the book. He's stubborn, hasty, and doesn't think things through. He thinks far enough to figure out whether the one outcome he desires might maybe happen and then he rushes towards it, only pausing later to figure out whether he might have tried something else. Even once he's talked through what to do with someone, he'll get stressed, scared, or just talk to another person and then change his mind, taking drastic action without talking to anyone about the change. All of this completely makes sense with his background and current circumstances in that way that means if he acted less hastily or more reasonably he would make less sense overall and be poorly-suited for his world. He's a teenager who makes a series of decisions early in the book that make his body and mind more capable without catching up his emotional processing to match. It's a neat narrative trick, as it allows for literally childish decisions to be made in his quest for revenge, driven by guilt and sorrow.
At the end of NOPHEK GLOSS everything I just described and complained about with Caiden changes. He matures in a harrowing and tortuous few weeks which force him to reckon with his past in an awfully visceral way and then to use his relatively new adult cunning to actually try and think more than one move ahead in order to save everyone he loves who can still be saved. It’s an exhilarating sequence which forms the climax of the narrative and a large part of its catharsis. I like this version of Caiden a bit better as a person, but more importantly it’s a better version of him that fits with the emotional arc of the book and shows a kind of maturity, one that’s consistent with his past self. He’s still daring and reckless, but he shows the ability to channel that disregard for his own safety by waiting to be reckless until he can do the most good with his death-defying antics.
character relationships - Caiden bonds into a found family with the crew very quickly, I would say too quickly except that there’s a narrative reason that it might have been sped up while still being a genuine connection. I like his rapport with En the best, they’re supportive of him while pushing him when they think he needs it, and they’re usually right. The crew are various kinds of sapient beings, and unless I missed something I think no more than two of them are human (possibly none of them are). They have interpersonal tangles which predate Caiden’s arrival, pulling him into a tangled but mostly friendly space even though he doesn’t initially get along with everyone. I appreciate how long it takes for him to get close to some of the crew, it helps them feel like their own beings and not just convenient plot devices.
This is definitely soft sci-fi, there are only a few specific concepts and technologies to keep track of with very few technical explanations. There’s a distinct sensibility as to how characters navigate the world, but the actual worldbuilding is shown instead of told. What is explained is how those technologies matter to the beings who use them, and what the stakes are if they are used in destructive ways. Caiden is an engineer, but there are almost no descriptions of what it’s like to fix the ship or do any engineering things. It fits well with the setup of travelling through multiverses, since Passagers really wouldn’t be intimately familiar with histories behind the breadth of technologies and tools potentially available to them.
Almost half of the book is spent trying to navigate healing from major trauma in the first couple of chapters, and then the last quarter is spent using everything that happened to take on a lot more trauma with the goal of stopping even more. Caiden is traumatized, rescued, accelerated, then he escapes to try and fix it all but runs into the power of his enemy and the limitations of his uneasy ally before he gains the opportunity and necessity of enacting a dramatic rescue and last stand against a nearly invincible enemy. Emotionally and interpersonally, the focus is on how what Caiden most needed to heal was time and support, and he was so desperate to shortcut the first that he ended up running away from the second.
I'm about to discuss how much I didn't like the main character so I'd like to stress that the book is so good that it held me despite not liking the main character until close to the end. The world is great, it deals with trauma in a way that is understandable even if it's not always the best decision (since an instinctual reaction to trauma is rarely the best one in the long run, but it is often relatable in the short term).
The third person narration just follows Caiden (except in the epilogue), so every scene is necessarily filled with his voice. I don't like Caiden as a person for the most of the book. He's stubborn, hasty, and doesn't think things through. He thinks far enough to figure out whether the one outcome he desires might maybe happen and then he rushes towards it, only pausing later to figure out whether he might have tried something else. Even once he's talked through what to do with someone, he'll get stressed, scared, or just talk to another person and then change his mind, taking drastic action without talking to anyone about the change. All of this completely makes sense with his background and current circumstances in that way that means if he acted less hastily or more reasonably he would make less sense overall and be poorly-suited for his world. He's a teenager who makes a series of decisions early in the book that make his body and mind more capable without catching up his emotional processing to match. It's a neat narrative trick, as it allows for literally childish decisions to be made in his quest for revenge, driven by guilt and sorrow.
At the end of NOPHEK GLOSS everything I just described and complained about with Caiden changes. He matures in a harrowing and tortuous few weeks which force him to reckon with his past in an awfully visceral way and then to use his relatively new adult cunning to actually try and think more than one move ahead in order to save everyone he loves who can still be saved. It’s an exhilarating sequence which forms the climax of the narrative and a large part of its catharsis. I like this version of Caiden a bit better as a person, but more importantly it’s a better version of him that fits with the emotional arc of the book and shows a kind of maturity, one that’s consistent with his past self. He’s still daring and reckless, but he shows the ability to channel that disregard for his own safety by waiting to be reckless until he can do the most good with his death-defying antics.
character relationships - Caiden bonds into a found family with the crew very quickly, I would say too quickly except that there’s a narrative reason that it might have been sped up while still being a genuine connection. I like his rapport with En the best, they’re supportive of him while pushing him when they think he needs it, and they’re usually right. The crew are various kinds of sapient beings, and unless I missed something I think no more than two of them are human (possibly none of them are). They have interpersonal tangles which predate Caiden’s arrival, pulling him into a tangled but mostly friendly space even though he doesn’t initially get along with everyone. I appreciate how long it takes for him to get close to some of the crew, it helps them feel like their own beings and not just convenient plot devices.
This is definitely soft sci-fi, there are only a few specific concepts and technologies to keep track of with very few technical explanations. There’s a distinct sensibility as to how characters navigate the world, but the actual worldbuilding is shown instead of told. What is explained is how those technologies matter to the beings who use them, and what the stakes are if they are used in destructive ways. Caiden is an engineer, but there are almost no descriptions of what it’s like to fix the ship or do any engineering things. It fits well with the setup of travelling through multiverses, since Passagers really wouldn’t be intimately familiar with histories behind the breadth of technologies and tools potentially available to them.
Almost half of the book is spent trying to navigate healing from major trauma in the first couple of chapters, and then the last quarter is spent using everything that happened to take on a lot more trauma with the goal of stopping even more. Caiden is traumatized, rescued, accelerated, then he escapes to try and fix it all but runs into the power of his enemy and the limitations of his uneasy ally before he gains the opportunity and necessity of enacting a dramatic rescue and last stand against a nearly invincible enemy. Emotionally and interpersonally, the focus is on how what Caiden most needed to heal was time and support, and he was so desperate to shortcut the first that he ended up running away from the second.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Grief, Medical content, Medical trauma, Blood, Gore, Violence, Animal death, Animal cruelty, Genocide, Torture, Death of parent, Death, and Child death
Moderate: Panic attacks/disorders, Bullying, Ableism, Emotional abuse, Physical abuse, Child abuse, Vomit, and Excrement
alina_leonova's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
This is not just a book, it's a sensory and emotional experience, a roller coaster, an adventure that doesn't hesitate to throw the reader into the darkest depths of cruelty and trauma only to lift us to the vulnerability of caring and the naive search for justice in an unfair world. Death and grief, torture and violence, animal cruelty and toxic relationships are juxtaposed against love, friendship, acceptance and deep emotional connection not only between humans but also between species. The protagonist's hunger for revenge is matched only by the burning fire of his passion for justice. Alastair Reynolds's quote featured on the cover perfectly represents my feelings about the book: "A sucker punch to the senses. A killer story with real heart and soul." I understand it's not a book for everyone, but it's exactly the right book for me.
Characters
Our protagonist is Caiden, a fourteen-year-old boy whose world gets shattered in the very beginning of the book, but that's just the first of the multiple painful experiences he'll have to endure. I found him sympathetic and compelling. He has a strong sense of justice and loyalty as well as a craving for revenge, and a mix of these motivations guides his decisions as the story progresses.
He's not perfect and his thinking is faulty at times. There is cruelty in him that results from his trauma, from the great injustice he had to suffer as a young boy. He doesn't doubt his right to decide who should be killed and doesn't give much thought to the possible consequences of interfering with the way the world works. He wants to fix it. He doesn't want anyone to go through the horror that he had to endure.
There is also insecurity in him, a doubt that he deserves love and friendship. And then there is kindness and naivety, softness and humbleness, an instinct for equality, a sense of wonder, love for others and everything that's alive including animals, a nonviolence that he extends to almost everyone with some exceptions.
This is a coming of age story, but not a typical one, and I'll let you discover why on your own. Most of the time, we follow Caiden when he's twenty years old. Despite that, it's not a YA or NA book, it's adult sci-fi.
There is also a diverse crew of misfits including aliens, all of whom felt fleshed out, even though we don't get to know much of their backstories. Their characters, behaviors, motivations, thinking and even the ways they talk are distinct.
There is one character who is quite literally gender-fluid: technology allows them to change the properties of their body and appearance, and they use this super-power all the time.
World-building
The originality and creativity of the author's imagination finds an expression in the world-building. It's not even the universe that the crew navigates, it's the multiverse. There are fascinating beings, and I was extremely pleased that aliens are unlike humans in more than just the way they look. They have unique abilities and the properties of their bodies are often captivating and bizarre. There is also an abundance of weird advanced technology including genetic engineering, material design, ship-building and many other things. It all comes with specific jargon, but it was introduced little by little in context that, most of the time, helped with understanding. I got a bit confused sometimes, but the world in general made sense to me.
There are also political forces and entities with their unique abilities and agendas, as well as an extinct advanced civilization that has left some artifacts behind. All of it makes for a compelling, immersive and strange world in the best traditions of sci-fi.
That said, in most cases the technology isn't restricted by the currently known laws of physics and sometimes ventures into the metaphysical, which can be off-putting for some hard sci-fi fans. It wasn't a problem for me, and I was greatly impressed by the author's imagination.
Plot
The plot is straightforward. It's packed with action and filled with tension. We know early on what Caiden wants to do, but it's not easy. He has to fight hard to survive, endure torture, abuse, manipulation, loss and many failures as he tries to achieve his goals.
There are a few classical tropes, such as being accepted into a crew of misfits or docking at space stations that are teeming with aliens, but it felt fresh and exciting because of the originality of the setting, the compelling characters, the high stakes and the constant tension.
Impressions
I was completely immersed in the world of 'Nophek Gloss' and enjoyed the book from the very beginning to the very end. It's easily one of my favorite reads of the year, and even one of my favorite books of all time. It just had all the right ingredients for me: captivating plot, deep characters that felt real, complex and strange world that excited my imagination, high stakes and raw emotion. It's a long book, the kind of long that made me happy every time I realized I still had many pages to read because I didn't want it to end. I'm already looking forward to the next book in the series and will keep an eye on Essa Hansen's releases.
You might enjoy 'Nophek Gloss' if you are into space operas with some classic tropes, imaginative world-building and don't mind violence, gore, trauma, animal abuse or technology that isn't based on real science.
Check out my blog about sci-fi by women and non-binary authors for book reviews, interviews, lists, short stories and more.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, and Gore
Moderate: Torture
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