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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
funny
lighthearted
medium-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
its nonsensical, it's over-the-top, it's glam, and its sci-fi sensory overload. It's also got queer alienfucker mpreg so if that's your thing, you're probably gonna like how this ends. This was fun! Is it perfect? Nah, nothing is, but it scratched the queer rockstar sci-fi itch I didn't know I had.
I had sky high expectations of this book, how can you not when it advertises itself as a mix of Hitchiker's Guide and Eurovision. But more than either of these it reminded me of a rather obscure old anime called Legend of Black Heaven, wherein a retired rock musician is approached by an alien to save the world with music....and by it reminds me I mean it's literally the same premise.
The Hitchikers Guide comparison is fair, though I found it nowhere as funny (the book couldn't even get a chuckle out of me sadly). The actual space eurovision part could have worked if the book was actually about that, it's actually more about some ex-musicians moping about about how great they used to be and how they're all going to die mixed in with some Hitchikers-guide style outtakes about other alien species and history. The different parts never connected in a meaningful way. I kept reading along for surely once the competition started for real it would be amazing....It was, well, not BAD, it was just kind of there, and didn't even last that long.
Which is also how I feel about the whole book. Not BAD just..doesn't do justice to it's premise.
The Hitchikers Guide comparison is fair, though I found it nowhere as funny (the book couldn't even get a chuckle out of me sadly). The actual space eurovision part could have worked if the book was actually about that, it's actually more about some ex-musicians moping about about how great they used to be and how they're all going to die mixed in with some Hitchikers-guide style outtakes about other alien species and history. The different parts never connected in a meaningful way. I kept reading along for surely once the competition started for real it would be amazing....It was, well, not BAD, it was just kind of there, and didn't even last that long.
Which is also how I feel about the whole book. Not BAD just..doesn't do justice to it's premise.
It's nothing more than lazy clickbait for geeks, in book-form. But, hey, there is something really remarkable here: Valente can ape Douglas Adam's style almost perfectly, and yet make something completely soulless. All that's left is "haha I'm random :3" humor that treats its audience like morons.
* Cats are funny and temperamental right?
* C'mon! People hate Microsoft's Clippy right?!
* "If that reporter hadn't been employed by a rag with enough bored lawyers on retainer to choke a humpback whale," HahahAhaHa...
Copying Douglas Adam's style is fine, but Valente missed out on a key ingredient of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: it's a helluva lot shorter than this. I was repeatedly shocked how long Valente dragged out scenes that had NOTHING to do with anything, and long after the joke or novelty was funny.
Consequently, I barely know --or care-- who Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros are. It spends way too much time pretending to be a philosophical or socially-aware book. Valente shadowboxes prejudice and rigid gender roles, but then leans hard on cliches and the flimsiest of characterizations. So when we get to the mess of an ending, it was thunderously not earned.
Valente, by some peculiar talent, managed to cram into 300+ pages about 30 pages of a good book. Will some people like this bloated, pandering fizzle? Sure. This was recommended to me by a (presumably well-meaning) friend. But this is the sort of catastrophic misfire, whizzing a fun premise down its leg, that makes me question my friend's future recommendations.
* Cats are funny and temperamental right?
* C'mon! People hate Microsoft's Clippy right?!
* "If that reporter hadn't been employed by a rag with enough bored lawyers on retainer to choke a humpback whale," HahahAhaHa...
Copying Douglas Adam's style is fine, but Valente missed out on a key ingredient of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: it's a helluva lot shorter than this. I was repeatedly shocked how long Valente dragged out scenes that had NOTHING to do with anything, and long after the joke or novelty was funny.
Consequently, I barely know --or care-- who Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros are. It spends way too much time pretending to be a philosophical or socially-aware book. Valente shadowboxes prejudice and rigid gender roles, but then leans hard on cliches and the flimsiest of characterizations. So when we get to the mess of an ending, it was thunderously not earned.
Valente, by some peculiar talent, managed to cram into 300+ pages about 30 pages of a good book. Will some people like this bloated, pandering fizzle? Sure. This was recommended to me by a (presumably well-meaning) friend. But this is the sort of catastrophic misfire, whizzing a fun premise down its leg, that makes me question my friend's future recommendations.
Life is beautiful. And life is stupid.
This audiobook was so much fun!
This audiobook was so much fun!
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
it's boring. The plot parts were interesting but there's too many asides where the thing tries too hard to be funny and the plot gets lost. I slogged as far as I could slog.
I enjoyed this, but it didn't grab me the way it grabbed some of my friends. I think I'm not enough of a glam-fan for it to work for me.
The language is GORGEOUS, though, and well worth a read just for that.
The language is GORGEOUS, though, and well worth a read just for that.
adventurous
funny
fast-paced
adventurous
slow-paced
