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A review by leili_vee
On Earth as It Is on Television by Emily Jane
5.0
This book is such a wholesome, cute sci-fi novel. It’s original but in a way that incorporates all my favorite things, like cats, nature, and outer space aliens that don’t come to Earth to mine our resources. The kids in this book are written in a way that is at the same time incredibly obnoxious and amusing, and very realistic. I really enjoyed trying to figure out if the book was an example of surrealism or if it was sci-fi and the narrators were unreliable (it was neither).
It is such a realistic tale told in a creative way. At times, I felt the snowflakes myself, could see the strobe lights and feel the thrum of a cat’s purr (when none of my real, non-English speaking cats were near me). I commiserated with “The Husband’s” confusion/annoyance/awe at his children’s antics. I could vividly imagine the stars in “The Wife’s” eyes when she marveled at everything that humanity has to offer. The kids even taught me some new cat words, like “chimbus” and “slonky.”
Normally it annoys me when I can’t tell what is going on and when the story passes to other people’s viewpoints frequently, but the writing was seamless and the personalities kept me reading. The story starts out rocky: strange speech and dark events occur straight away. It was hard to get into it at first for these reasons. But once I got further along, I loved it. It was almost magical how the author coincidentally included places and events that were close to my heart in here.
It’s rare that I rate a book the full five stars but this one is definitely 5 out of 5. The only criticism I have is that I found one of the characters story line to be not as engaging or necessary for the story, and at times the main point of the story was a little hard to follow, or things happened that weren’t really additive to the story at all. It’s still an entertaining story and a great example of the kind of sci-fi I deserve and do not often find. I really hope this author writes more.
It is such a realistic tale told in a creative way. At times, I felt the snowflakes myself, could see the strobe lights and feel the thrum of a cat’s purr (when none of my real, non-English speaking cats were near me). I commiserated with “The Husband’s” confusion/annoyance/awe at his children’s antics. I could vividly imagine the stars in “The Wife’s” eyes when she marveled at everything that humanity has to offer. The kids even taught me some new cat words, like “chimbus” and “slonky.”
Normally it annoys me when I can’t tell what is going on and when the story passes to other people’s viewpoints frequently, but the writing was seamless and the personalities kept me reading. The story starts out rocky: strange speech and dark events occur straight away. It was hard to get into it at first for these reasons. But once I got further along, I loved it. It was almost magical how the author coincidentally included places and events that were close to my heart in here.
It’s rare that I rate a book the full five stars but this one is definitely 5 out of 5. The only criticism I have is that I found one of the characters story line to be not as engaging or necessary for the story, and at times the main point of the story was a little hard to follow, or things happened that weren’t really additive to the story at all. It’s still an entertaining story and a great example of the kind of sci-fi I deserve and do not often find. I really hope this author writes more.