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3.52 AVERAGE
3.52 AVERAGE
Extremely Anglocentric but amusing and warm-hearted.
on the outside this shoulda been a new favorite i mean queer disaster glamrock sci fi hello??? but the writing voice was not for me at all—the quirkiness got old quickly and it felt like just too much constantly and yet also not enough. probably a lot to do with the omniscient pov too. i just wouldn’t really enjoy continuing this i think.
A fun and crazy ride through a kind of ridiculous universe.
I revisited this book, after a friend highly recommended it. Reading it again, five years later, I fell into my previous perspective fairly quickly - this is an over wordy Douglas Adams clone full of sparkle but lacking substance. So I took a step back, and rethought my approach to the text, I also moved from audiobook to print, and that made all the difference. I soon found the sincerity and depth of the characters was nicely balanced with the wit and sarcasm of the text, and the paragraphs of seemingly tangential humorous explications paid off in later plot developments. For a light and flippant text, this story carries heart and emotion, and looks at the big questions of what it truly means to be sentient in our vast lonely universe.
I think this book broke my brain, but I loved it. Very silly and nonsensical, which is not normally my thing, so it was a fun departure from my usual reads.
The Brian Slade reference was
The Brian Slade reference was
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
I adore the premise and found some of the writing very funny. However overall I thought that the writing was overdone. Most jokes went on far too long and the whole impression was of someone trying to be Douglas Adams but not managing it. It was genuinely difficult to follow the plot due to the amount of jokes crammed between actual scenes. I think I would have preferred a novella with the same premise but 50% fewer aliens and most jokes cut in half.
funny
hopeful
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
funny
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
What a delight! This book is equal parts Eurovision, Hitchhiker's Guide, and David Bowie. It's wonderfully written, very creative, and- again- an absolute delight to read!
adventurous
emotional
funny
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
Once upon a time on a small, watery, excitable planet called Earth, in a small, watery, excitable country called England (which was bound and determined never to get too excited about anything), a leggy, psychadelic ambidextrous omnisexual gendersplat glitterpunk financially punch-drunk ethnically ambitious glamrock messiah by the name of Danesh Jalo was born into a family so large and benignly neglectful that they only noticed he'd stopped coming home on weekends when his grandmother was nearly run over with all her groceries in front of the Piccadilly Square tube station, stunned into slack-jawed immobility by the sight of her Danesh, twenty feet high, in a frock the color of her customary afternoon sip of Pernod, filling up every centimeter of a gargantuan billboard.
There are a few things you should know before picking up this book:
1. Catherynne M. Valente (who can't even spell her name like a sensible Catherine) has a ridonkulous imagination. I would be happy to read a book just about the galactic history she invented. As it was, I ended up going back and taking notes to keep track of all the different species ("time-traveling red pandas," "human body, head = hippo + chainsaw + spiny puffer fish"), the various locations and winners of the Metagalactic Grand Prix, and Goguenar Gorecannon's Unkillable Facts*.
2. Ms. Valente's writing style is not for the faint-of-heart or the weak-of-concentration. (See the first sentence of Chapter 2 above for an example.) The first time I attempted to read this novel, I was not in the right state-of-mind and I found my eyes glazing over. But having read Ms. Valente's middle grades Fairyland series, which begins with [b: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making|9591398|The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1)|Catherynne M. Valente|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388179691s/9591398.jpg|6749837], and enough reviews and quotes from this one, I knew it would be worth the effort. So I set it aside, read something else, and then came back to this one, and am very glad I did. (Also, there's quite a bit of profanity, sex -- both intra- and inter-species --, and some mild violence. Y'know, if you're bothered by that type of thing.)
3. While parallels have been drawn to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it's not (in my opinion, having recently reread that entire series) derivative. It's in the same genre, sure, but if HG is the story of space over a few pints, this is the story of space on 'shrooms. This is not that.
My one criticism of this highly entertaining novel is that the actual plot is a bit slow. Ms. Valente set out to write the story of a galaxy-wide version of Eurovision, but that all plays second fiddle to her vivid descriptions of galactic life and history. Of the three earthlings that get the most page time (the two surviving members of the Absolute Zeroes: lead-singer Decibel Jones -- born Danesh Jalo -- and musician-extraordinaire Oort St. Ultraviolent -- otherwise known as Omar Caliskan--, and Omar/Oort's cat, Capo), I like the cat the most. They don't even arrive on the planet where the biggest musical contest in the galaxy, which will determine whether humans qualify as a sentient species (as opposed to "meat"), until over halfway through the book. And the history of the Absolute Zeroes was pretty bland compared to the history of the Sentient Wars, wormholes described as being like giant pandas that eat regret, and a sentient species of a zombie virus that speaks in puns through its host's mouth (or the closest thing to a mouth said host possesses).
Despite the fact that the point is pretty much beside the point, this is a fabulous read, a lava lamp of prose in every color, full of wry humor, and one that I will read again (with my notes). {Reread before reading Space Oddity -- couldn't find my notes, enjoyed it anyway.}
*The first of these (at least the first sentence) is repeated throughout the book: Life is beautiful and life is stupid. You can only ever fix one of these at a time, and wouldn't it be nice if anyone could agree on which is the bigger problem? The other four of the (at least) twenty that are included in the book are profanity-laden and equally apt, summarized (in my notes) as: Spoiler 2. Everything is used by something/someone else. 5. Justice takes too long. 6. Reality doesn't make sense. 20. No one is every really satisfied with what they have.
Read for Popsugar Reading Challenge 2025
Prompt #31: A Book Where Music Plays an Integral Part of the Storyline
There are a few things you should know before picking up this book:
1. Catherynne M. Valente (who can't even spell her name like a sensible Catherine) has a ridonkulous imagination. I would be happy to read a book just about the galactic history she invented. As it was, I ended up going back and taking notes to keep track of all the different species ("time-traveling red pandas," "human body, head = hippo + chainsaw + spiny puffer fish"), the various locations and winners of the Metagalactic Grand Prix, and Goguenar Gorecannon's Unkillable Facts*.
2. Ms. Valente's writing style is not for the faint-of-heart or the weak-of-concentration. (See the first sentence of Chapter 2 above for an example.) The first time I attempted to read this novel, I was not in the right state-of-mind and I found my eyes glazing over. But having read Ms. Valente's middle grades Fairyland series, which begins with [b: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making|9591398|The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1)|Catherynne M. Valente|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388179691s/9591398.jpg|6749837], and enough reviews and quotes from this one, I knew it would be worth the effort. So I set it aside, read something else, and then came back to this one, and am very glad I did. (Also, there's quite a bit of profanity, sex -- both intra- and inter-species --, and some mild violence. Y'know, if you're bothered by that type of thing.)
3. While parallels have been drawn to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, it's not (in my opinion, having recently reread that entire series) derivative. It's in the same genre, sure, but if HG is the story of space over a few pints, this is the story of space on 'shrooms. This is not that.
My one criticism of this highly entertaining novel is that the actual plot is a bit slow. Ms. Valente set out to write the story of a galaxy-wide version of Eurovision, but that all plays second fiddle to her vivid descriptions of galactic life and history. Of the three earthlings that get the most page time (the two surviving members of the Absolute Zeroes: lead-singer Decibel Jones -- born Danesh Jalo -- and musician-extraordinaire Oort St. Ultraviolent -- otherwise known as Omar Caliskan--, and Omar/Oort's cat, Capo), I like the cat the most. They don't even arrive on the planet where the biggest musical contest in the galaxy, which will determine whether humans qualify as a sentient species (as opposed to "meat"), until over halfway through the book. And the history of the Absolute Zeroes was pretty bland compared to the history of the Sentient Wars, wormholes described as being like giant pandas that eat regret, and a sentient species of a zombie virus that speaks in puns through its host's mouth (or the closest thing to a mouth said host possesses).
Despite the fact that the point is pretty much beside the point, this is a fabulous read, a lava lamp of prose in every color, full of wry humor, and one that I will read again (with my notes). {Reread before reading Space Oddity -- couldn't find my notes, enjoyed it anyway.}
*The first of these (at least the first sentence) is repeated throughout the book: Life is beautiful and life is stupid. You can only ever fix one of these at a time, and wouldn't it be nice if anyone could agree on which is the bigger problem? The other four of the (at least) twenty that are included in the book are profanity-laden and equally apt, summarized (in my notes) as: Spoiler 2. Everything is used by something/someone else. 5. Justice takes too long. 6. Reality doesn't make sense. 20. No one is every really satisfied with what they have.
Read for Popsugar Reading Challenge 2025
Prompt #31: A Book Where Music Plays an Integral Part of the Storyline