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hedgehogbookreviews's review
5.0
“Pain is just the world wanting us to pay attention to it because we’re so damned beautiful it can’t stand being ignored.”
You can also find this review on Hedgehog Book Reviews!!
Alana Quick is stuck; she repairs spaceship engines for a living and doesn’t make enough to pay for the advanced medication she needs for her chronic pain. Her and her aunt Lai both suffer from a disease, Mel’s, that puts their bodies under enormous stress and pain when they don’t take medication. Alana dreams of being able to afford treatments for her and Lai someday, and the only thing she needs is a steady job. The opportunity finally arises when Alana gets a visit from a spaceship captain in search of her sister. Alana makes the gut decision to stow away on the ship in hopes that, once they are far enough away, the crew will be forced to keep her on board for the remainder of their current mission. This is Alana’s only chance at making a better life for her and her aunt, maybe the crew of this ship can understand that and take her onboard as an engineer.
WOW. This book has a mix of everything I’ve ever wanted. It has a space ship, a crew of multi-alien-cultures, a main character of color with a disability, and many queer characters whose plot lines don’t revolve around being queer. If this sounds like something you’d love, like it does for me, read on!
Sidenote: This book is VERY comparable to A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. I loved both books and would recommend them to basically anyone who likes science fiction.
Ascension is full of diversity. One of my favorite parts about science fiction is getting to read about new, unique alien cultures and species, and Jacqueline Koyanagi really incorporated that into this book. Really, all of the characters ware anthropomorphic (mostly,,,), but all of them are from different cultures and go through life with unique things in mind. The author really does an amazing job portraying that they all have their own sets of values and beliefs about how the world works. Often, it’s hard to give each character their own personhood, especially when there are many individuals in a regular length novel, but Jacqueline does it very well.
This is the first adult book I’ve read that really puts chronic illness and pain in the spotlight. It’s a very easy thing to get wrong, by trivializing it or romanticizing it, but when it’s done right, it is done RIGHT. Alana is an independent woman with a strong work ethic and heart full of determination. In addition, she also suffers from a chronic illness. This disease, Mel’s, acts up unexpectedly. Alana has some good days and some not so good days, just like a real person with chronic pain. When Alana has flare-ups, she takes her medication as prescribed and works through it. Seeing her push through the horrible pain and tremors is heartbreaking because real people suffering with real invisible illnesses experience this all the time. I think it’s very important to normalize books that have main characters with disabilities because actual people like that are EVERYWHERE.
I also want to mention the representation of people of color in Ascension. Many books introduce characters by giving a physical description—hair color, skin tone, and clothing style. Ascension does this by mentioning that Alana pulls her “locs” back out of her face and the dark complexion of her skin. The thing that this book does that most others don’t is that it doesn’t let the reader forget that Alana is a person of color. Her locs, the texture of her hair, and the color of her skin are all mentioned multiple times. Jacqueline did not write Alana and just add on the fact that she’s a person of color, she wrote Alana AS a person of color. This is so important for representation.
Everything about this book was an A+ for me– The characters, the storylines, the writing, and the takeaways. It’s everything you could ever want from a sci fi book. This book made me happy in so many ways but there are two I want to highlight: Ascension does an amazing job portraying what it’s like to live with a chronic illness and it successfully uses minorities (sexuality and race wise) as more than just plot devices. Thank you, Jacqueline Koyanagi, for this brilliant book.
You can also find this review on Hedgehog Book Reviews!!
Alana Quick is stuck; she repairs spaceship engines for a living and doesn’t make enough to pay for the advanced medication she needs for her chronic pain. Her and her aunt Lai both suffer from a disease, Mel’s, that puts their bodies under enormous stress and pain when they don’t take medication. Alana dreams of being able to afford treatments for her and Lai someday, and the only thing she needs is a steady job. The opportunity finally arises when Alana gets a visit from a spaceship captain in search of her sister. Alana makes the gut decision to stow away on the ship in hopes that, once they are far enough away, the crew will be forced to keep her on board for the remainder of their current mission. This is Alana’s only chance at making a better life for her and her aunt, maybe the crew of this ship can understand that and take her onboard as an engineer.
WOW. This book has a mix of everything I’ve ever wanted. It has a space ship, a crew of multi-alien-cultures, a main character of color with a disability, and many queer characters whose plot lines don’t revolve around being queer. If this sounds like something you’d love, like it does for me, read on!
Sidenote: This book is VERY comparable to A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. I loved both books and would recommend them to basically anyone who likes science fiction.
Ascension is full of diversity. One of my favorite parts about science fiction is getting to read about new, unique alien cultures and species, and Jacqueline Koyanagi really incorporated that into this book. Really, all of the characters ware anthropomorphic (mostly,,,), but all of them are from different cultures and go through life with unique things in mind. The author really does an amazing job portraying that they all have their own sets of values and beliefs about how the world works. Often, it’s hard to give each character their own personhood, especially when there are many individuals in a regular length novel, but Jacqueline does it very well.
This is the first adult book I’ve read that really puts chronic illness and pain in the spotlight. It’s a very easy thing to get wrong, by trivializing it or romanticizing it, but when it’s done right, it is done RIGHT. Alana is an independent woman with a strong work ethic and heart full of determination. In addition, she also suffers from a chronic illness. This disease, Mel’s, acts up unexpectedly. Alana has some good days and some not so good days, just like a real person with chronic pain. When Alana has flare-ups, she takes her medication as prescribed and works through it. Seeing her push through the horrible pain and tremors is heartbreaking because real people suffering with real invisible illnesses experience this all the time. I think it’s very important to normalize books that have main characters with disabilities because actual people like that are EVERYWHERE.
I also want to mention the representation of people of color in Ascension. Many books introduce characters by giving a physical description—hair color, skin tone, and clothing style. Ascension does this by mentioning that Alana pulls her “locs” back out of her face and the dark complexion of her skin. The thing that this book does that most others don’t is that it doesn’t let the reader forget that Alana is a person of color. Her locs, the texture of her hair, and the color of her skin are all mentioned multiple times. Jacqueline did not write Alana and just add on the fact that she’s a person of color, she wrote Alana AS a person of color. This is so important for representation.
Everything about this book was an A+ for me– The characters, the storylines, the writing, and the takeaways. It’s everything you could ever want from a sci fi book. This book made me happy in so many ways but there are two I want to highlight: Ascension does an amazing job portraying what it’s like to live with a chronic illness and it successfully uses minorities (sexuality and race wise) as more than just plot devices. Thank you, Jacqueline Koyanagi, for this brilliant book.
balletbookworm's review against another edition
4.0
Somewhere between a three and a four, but I like the concept. The plot is a little poky and convoluted in places but I really enjoyed what the author was getting at with found families, faith, chronic illness, and metaphysics.
evelikesbooks's review
3.0
I liked the first half much better than the second. It got rather preachy.
corpsesoldier's review
4.0
I wanted space gays and not only did I get space gays, but I also got sentient spaceships and parallel worlds and found families and wolf-men. It was a real fun time. Good twists and good interpersonal relationships and just like...queer disabled characters of color like it's no big deal. How good.
qalminator's review
4.0
Very enjoyable, despite a few gaping plot-holes. I enjoyed the characters enough to mentally handwave those and keep going. My favorite detail is that nearly the entire cast is female. There is one major male character (Ovie), and one minor (father of the girl Alana spoke to while scavenging for parts), and I do not recall any others. Such a refreshing change from the usual testosterone-laden characters typical of space operas.
But, about those plot holes... Major plot spoilers follow.
(1) However I try, I cannot make sense of the destruction of Adul. So, supposedly Birke did this to make sure the crew of the Tangled Axon didn't harm Nova. Um. Really? So... now Nova is on a ship with a crew wanted for genocide, and might be blown to bits by the people searching for said ship. The best easy fix for this would have been a snippet in the alternate-versions-of-people sequence, showing Birke suddenly panicking, acting, and too late realizing what a foolish thing it was to do. A better fix might have been a more minor incident, but this would have lost a lot of the emotional impact. Note: early on, I wondered if the creatures of Adul had some weird interaction with Transliminal's "tech", as it seemed utterly absurd to destroy a planet over one person; perhaps something could have been made from that.
(2) The device on the ship supposedly couldn't be taken out while in space because it would detonate in zero-G. Fine. So shouldn't they have tried to get it out once they were planet-side again? No? No one thought of this? * sigh * Now, it would have been easy enough to tie the detonation simply to removal from the ship, rather than to zero-G, without disturbing the plot-flow.
Those are the two that annoyed me the most.
But, about those plot holes... Major plot spoilers follow.
Spoiler
(1) However I try, I cannot make sense of the destruction of Adul. So, supposedly Birke did this to make sure the crew of the Tangled Axon didn't harm Nova. Um. Really? So... now Nova is on a ship with a crew wanted for genocide, and might be blown to bits by the people searching for said ship. The best easy fix for this would have been a snippet in the alternate-versions-of-people sequence, showing Birke suddenly panicking, acting, and too late realizing what a foolish thing it was to do. A better fix might have been a more minor incident, but this would have lost a lot of the emotional impact. Note: early on, I wondered if the creatures of Adul had some weird interaction with Transliminal's "tech", as it seemed utterly absurd to destroy a planet over one person; perhaps something could have been made from that.
(2) The device on the ship supposedly couldn't be taken out while in space because it would detonate in zero-G. Fine. So shouldn't they have tried to get it out once they were planet-side again? No? No one thought of this? * sigh * Now, it would have been easy enough to tie the detonation simply to removal from the ship, rather than to zero-G, without disturbing the plot-flow.
Those are the two that annoyed me the most.
megatsunami's review
4.0
Good book, hot characters, interesting ethical dilemmas, surprising plot twists, characters who are people of color, polyamory.
readerpants's review
3.0
Gosh, this set off all my catnip alerts, but I'm afraid it just didn't have the solid writing/worldbuilding/emotional craft I needed to be able to enter the story.
I just skimmed through some of the other reviews and found many of the same disappointed complaints I had about the worldbuilding and character development. I think it's interesting, though, how many are like, well, this isn't really SF, it's a romance, maybe that's the problem. But in a romance novel, I have even *higher* expectations for the crafting of the relationships, the tensions and resolutions, and intensive, interesting character development. Because good romance novels do that, even if the "plot" is virtually nonexistent. I would have been thrilled if Ascension had worked through actual family/romantic/etc relationships (not just Heather-has-two-mommies-style didacticism around poly life) and challenges.
I'm a children's librarian, so I see value in presenting issues of visibility in tidy terms when working with kids and families... developmentally, some didacticism is useful for my kids, especially in an educational setting. But this book is for grownups, ostensibly for ME, so I expect more sophistication, depth, realistic messiness. Who is this written for, those of us inside looking out or those outside looking in? I guess representation is less satisfying to me if it's primarily intended to make me palatable to others. /grouch
I just skimmed through some of the other reviews and found many of the same disappointed complaints I had about the worldbuilding and character development. I think it's interesting, though, how many are like, well, this isn't really SF, it's a romance, maybe that's the problem. But in a romance novel, I have even *higher* expectations for the crafting of the relationships, the tensions and resolutions, and intensive, interesting character development. Because good romance novels do that, even if the "plot" is virtually nonexistent. I would have been thrilled if Ascension had worked through actual family/romantic/etc relationships (not just Heather-has-two-mommies-style didacticism around poly life) and challenges.
I'm a children's librarian, so I see value in presenting issues of visibility in tidy terms when working with kids and families... developmentally, some didacticism is useful for my kids, especially in an educational setting. But this book is for grownups, ostensibly for ME, so I expect more sophistication, depth, realistic messiness. Who is this written for, those of us inside looking out or those outside looking in? I guess representation is less satisfying to me if it's primarily intended to make me palatable to others. /grouch
justiceofkalr's review
3.0
I really want to give this book four stars, but it needs some more world building and a little bit more character building before it's quite there for me. That being said, it was a solidly good book that's worth reading and that three stars is definitely more like three and a half.
ryndleto's review
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.5
God this is gonna feel so mean author pls don’t read this review.
This is the worst book I’ve read in a long time. It tries to do so many things at once but doesn’t really accomplish any of them in a meaningful way. There’s kinda romance, kinda sci fi, kinda family drama, kinda suspense, but none of them are done well. This book felt like it was trying too hard to have a diverse cast of characters, which I think is neat, but no character was well fleshed out, so the topics touched on (chronic disease, polyamory, queer issues, etc.) all came off as super preachy to me. The pacing of the book is weird, there are major plots holes, and the world isn’t well fleshed out. Also, I understand why the physics presented isn’t possible after my physics 101 class in undergrad so that was another huge turn off for me. I honestly can’t think of anything this book did well. Finished it because I needed one for my reading challenge, but I would not recommend this book to anyone.
This is the worst book I’ve read in a long time. It tries to do so many things at once but doesn’t really accomplish any of them in a meaningful way. There’s kinda romance, kinda sci fi, kinda family drama, kinda suspense, but none of them are done well. This book felt like it was trying too hard to have a diverse cast of characters, which I think is neat, but no character was well fleshed out, so the topics touched on (chronic disease, polyamory, queer issues, etc.) all came off as super preachy to me. The pacing of the book is weird, there are major plots holes, and the world isn’t well fleshed out. Also, I understand why the physics presented isn’t possible after my physics 101 class in undergrad so that was another huge turn off for me. I honestly can’t think of anything this book did well. Finished it because I needed one for my reading challenge, but I would not recommend this book to anyone.