Reviews

Primary Inversion by Catherine Asaro

katieinca's review

3.0

Sci-fi? Eh. Sci-fi with star-crossed lovers and imperial succession intrigue, sure. More, please!
Now if only we could stop dropping in "holo" and "cyber" all the time, that'd be great. Also, note to SF authors everywhere, I'm not particularly interested in the finer details of faster-than-light travel in your particular universe. Can we get a skip button for those sections?

grayjay's review against another edition

3.0

This was the first book Asaro published in her Skolian Empire series, and as introductory novels often are in sci-fi, it gets a little bogged down in techno-babel, yet the characters are complex and behave in unexpectedly human ways. The novelty of sci-fi with romance featured so prominently makes it feel fresh even reading it twenty years after publication.

rpearcemoses's review against another edition

2.0

About a tenth of the way in and ready to give up.

An example of sci-fi that pays a lot of attention to future tech. I can live with that.

When it turned into something of a Barbara Cartland romance, I pretty much threw up my hands.

tessisreading2's review

2.0

Too much romance for a hard science fiction novel; too much hard science fiction for a romance novel. Essentially. I love a good sci-fi romance as much as the next person (probably more; most of the sf readers I know don't read romance) but the actual primary romance in this book takes up very few pages - it is much more Soz's story as she searches for romance, deals with family drama, and fights a space war; she has several partners throughout the book (although it's pretty clear to anyone who's ever read a romance novel who she will end up with) and the actual amount of time spent with her True Love, page-wise, is extremely limited. Additionally, finding romance/seeking a true partner is very low on Soz's priority list - which is fine, but means that the reading experience is like reading an sf novel rather than reading a romance novel... but the romance component is entirely reliant on Genetic True Love Soul-Bonding Psychic stuff (essentially: instalove) which is basically intolerable in any novel but a romance novel. The family interpersonal stuff is just weird and creepy (

Spoiler

the emperor, Soz's half-brother, is also her uncle because he was actually fathered by their grandfather, and he is also consumed with incestuous desire for their mother

) and there is a lot of rape/psychic rape and recovery from same which makes for depressing reading. Reading about other people's therapy sessions isn't a compelling narrative for me, even when it is space therapy; and using intimate personal assault as a motivator is a throwback to ye olden days (although in fairness that was kind of when this was written). Soz is already a psychic warrior space princess, does she really need to also be a recovering rape victim? Can't she just have the motivation of being a psychic warrior space princess?

One is also left with the sense that this book wants to be a more nuanced look at empire: the Traders are sadistic space psych-vampires, essentially, and yet we also see the Skolian emperor acting the same way

Spoiler

(he essentially abducts an underage girl who is terrified of him, holds her prisoner for a few months, cancels her marriage, and returns her, traumatized, to her family, where she promptly starts flunking all of her classes and acting out - and this is one of the most powerful psychics in the empire, so clearly he gets off on this, right?)

... Soz gets into arguments with angry locals about whether what she and her fellow psychic space soldiers do is worth it, or whether they are in fact repressive agents of an evil empire... etc. etc. But the underlying narrative is too black-and-white, and the characters themselves lack nuance too thoroughly, for the book to really get there.

posthumusly's review

3.0

I loved the later books of this with the Undercity plot - but I just could not get into these. I didn't like the main characters and the plot with the evil sadist empire weirded me out. I don't think it has aged well.

rebeccacider's review

3.0

A confident beach read of a SF novel. Asaro's reputation, at least as I understood it, is for compelling hard SF in a space opera package. I definitely did not expect the fluffy paranormal romance!

The characters aren't complex here, and the dialogue is pretty weak, but Asaro does get props for dealing with combat and trauma in a thoughtful way. Not at all my usual read but I would recommend it to space opera fans who enjoy intrigue and romance.

asherlock99's review

adventurous fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

megmcardle's review

4.0

Primary Inversion is about a woman soldier who is also the heir to an empire. The Skolian empire is ruled by a family of powerful empaths, and they are at war with another empire, the Eubians, that (coincidentally!) prey on empaths. She meets the heir to that rival empire, and discovers that he is also an empath, and has been bred to destroy the Skolians. This first entry did a good job of setting up the fictional universe and defining it's rules. The characters, especially of the lead, are well drawn and believable. But I could not STAND the voice that the narrator used for the rival Eubians. It pretty much put me off the book, and I had to stop listening about halfway through and ended up borrowing a print copy from the library to finish. I was glad I stuck with the book in print and finished it, though, as it seems like a pretty interesting series. I'll probably give book 2 a try.

kdf_333's review

adventurous challenging hopeful informative medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

nsfinch's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

There was a lot of rape and incest in this book! Like, a lot! I think you should probably know that ahead of time!

I dunno, man. It was okay. The telepathy part reminded me a lot of the Psy-Changling book I read (I did not like the Psy-Changling book). The space battles were interesting, as was the part about the main character teaching at the military academy and dealing with her PTSD. My book club clarified for me what we liked about the science and what we didn't: we liked the physics, but not the biology. The description of traveling faster than light was pretty cool, but all the genetics was somehow both boring and creepy.