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A review by mx_manda
Planet Zero by Lydia Hope
2.0
Here we are once again for another Mixed Bag Review, where I treat GR as my LiveJournal...and I will figure out the rating as I go. Hell if I know what it's going to be, other than not an extreme on either end. Not a 4 either.
There will be some mild spoilers ahead, you have been warned.
Like so many SciFi/SFR lovers, I fell hard in love with a little book that debuted last January and became an unexpected favorite of many: I've read it several times myself. Mx. Hope can really tell a story when she wants to.
However.
That success has not translated into her later works. Her second book had many issues and those same issues plague this story as well.
Let's start the +/- list.
Mx. Hope's work in a lot of ways reminds me of some of my other scifi/paranormal romance-adjacent authors who get misclassed as Romance like R Lee Smith and Pixie Unger: she seems to enjoy writing stories that have a budding romantic relationship in them and to leave them open-ended instead of giving 2 epilogues with extra sex scenes and 8 babies. She still has a way to go before her story telling is consistently equal with either. I'm fine with that, but if you're someone expecting this to be a Romance, then you're going to be disappointed. This is a science fiction story with romantic and sexual components to it.
+ This story starts strong, and like Hope's second work, it has an interesting premise to it—not the most original and the influences on it are a bit too obvious. The first 25% of this story is genuinely enjoyable to read.
But.
- The execution and follow-through just isn't there. And it's really clear to see where in the story Hope struggled to get this written and decided to just release it. Sometimes it's better to trunk a story and let it marinate than just push it out to be done with it. I suspect this story isn't as polished as the author would have liked, and I have my suspicions as to what could help. (Seriously: strong beta readers who are not worried they'll hurt your feelings and will find your typos, push back and question your ideas and characters to help you develop them, and then... more revisions.)
- Multiple characters including our main, Addie, have non-sensical personality shifts throughout the story. Addie in the first 25% of the book is not the Addie we get the rest of the story, and that's a bummer, because who likes seeing a character devolve and get more prejudiced as the plot progresses? The attitudes should have been flip-flopped to illustrate growth, but alas, none was to be had. Unless you count her changed attitude about f*cking one alien. Then, I...guess she had some development?
Yeah. Not really.
And why wasn't a nurse the least bit intellectually curious about the people whose planet she's now living on? She was there for 2 years. More than long enough to get over her THEY ARE BEASTS! attitude, realize that yeah, they are people, and notice some of their biological peculiarities and inquire about them to learn more.
+ But!! We get a rare female protagonist who was married and without all of the justifications that he was terrible so readers can feel more comfortable that she will love again. What happened to Addie is awful, made worse by the fact she still loved and missed her husband who she'd never see again. So this excited me, because how many white women do we need to read about who Never Had Any Friends, Has No Non-Abusive Family, Is An Orphan, Everyone Hates Her...and how they all magically ended up in space to find their HEA? Of course there are going to be people who had families, spouses, friends they'll never see again.
No one's magically hand-picking "orphaned" 23 year olds to keep as breeders.
But with the current trends of later marriage ages that it's safe to assume will continue, what are the odds that a college educated woman of 27 was married all that long to her spouse? I would have loved to see Addie a bit older and more seasoned. 30 is still young. So is 35. 40 isn't terribly old either.
- For all the length, there's a serious lack of background for our narrator, Addie, nor her 2 years so far on Planet Zero. Details were brought up later without the seeds sown in the first part of the book. Particularly the tent city that was allegedly a Den of Iniquity!!!! It took me way too long to figure out that the leader of the tent city was actually a human woman. Like. The last 15% of the story.
- Description is sorely lacking. I still could not tell you exactly what the For look like except tall and maybe wolf or saber tooth tiger or bat faced?? Hairy but not their chests, I guess? So many words in this book but they were spent in odd places. If you're going to write a 400+ page story, you can spare half a page here and there to sprinkle in some details. No need to be stingy. I'm always quick to snark that apparently the author has no idea what their aliens look like either when this happens.
- For female antagonists, Hope falls back on Sneaky Bitches™ and Jealous Bitches™, which I'm never down for. It's gross. Hints at a lack of ideas. And similar plot points could have come around with more nuance and frankly, interest. Is there anything more tired than a woman who is jealous and plotting against every other woman...including her daughter? All while fluttering her lashes at The Men and playing victim?
But it takes skill and a lot of revision to get there. It's easier to paste in a flat caricature and call it a day. (The male antagonists were equally as bad. Arrogant Religious Leader On A Power Trip and Spineless Leader are tired and busted too.)
Another review described this as a story of hard to like characters, and I'm going to have to agree with that. But they're not enjoyable to read either. Pity.
And on and on. I'm going to have a novella myself if I keep dissecting. These are the biggest points that jumped out at me to talk about.
TW/CW: constant traumatic events—including attacks by creatures and other people that are described in detail, gore, a shit ton of ableist thought and language choices, kidnapping, implied sexual slavery, attempted perceived child marriage, child abuse
Taking all of this into consideration....
Real Rating: 2.5 stars
---------------------
And now for the problematic ding. Someday I hope to never have to do another one of these, seriously.
Appropriation of indigenous terms when other choices were available.
"Teepee" is a bastardized term to refer to a specific group of indigenous peoples' portable tents. Tents in all forms exist in many cultures and the ones in this story could have been called...a tent. Or given a For name for Addie to use. If the image of a conical tent with the supports sticking out of the top was needed, she could have used that in the exposition without using the term. This paired with other uncomfortably close stereotypes of indigenous plains' people made me feel the ding was necessary.
(Un-Fun fact: the alleged origin of alien romance was to prolong use of indigenous American stereotypes without being called out for writing racist romances. Just take those Othering stereotypes and make them aliens. Problem fixed! [Any child of the 70s and 80s with a parent who read romance surely saw more than a few of that particular flavor romance.])
And.
Persistent use of offensive and objectifying language toward disabled people. It's one thing for a fictional society that does not value disabled and impaired members of their community to use offensive and demeaning terms towards them, but there was no need for an allegedly empathetic and "enlightened" protagonist to also. The word "cripple" to describe Zoark is used by Addie in here a lot.
When you know better, you do better.
There will be some mild spoilers ahead, you have been warned.
Like so many SciFi/SFR lovers, I fell hard in love with a little book that debuted last January and became an unexpected favorite of many: I've read it several times myself. Mx. Hope can really tell a story when she wants to.
However.
That success has not translated into her later works. Her second book had many issues and those same issues plague this story as well.
Let's start the +/- list.
Mx. Hope's work in a lot of ways reminds me of some of my other scifi/paranormal romance-adjacent authors who get misclassed as Romance like R Lee Smith and Pixie Unger: she seems to enjoy writing stories that have a budding romantic relationship in them and to leave them open-ended instead of giving 2 epilogues with extra sex scenes and 8 babies. She still has a way to go before her story telling is consistently equal with either. I'm fine with that, but if you're someone expecting this to be a Romance, then you're going to be disappointed. This is a science fiction story with romantic and sexual components to it.
+ This story starts strong, and like Hope's second work, it has an interesting premise to it—not the most original and the influences on it are a bit too obvious. The first 25% of this story is genuinely enjoyable to read.
But.
- The execution and follow-through just isn't there. And it's really clear to see where in the story Hope struggled to get this written and decided to just release it. Sometimes it's better to trunk a story and let it marinate than just push it out to be done with it. I suspect this story isn't as polished as the author would have liked, and I have my suspicions as to what could help. (Seriously: strong beta readers who are not worried they'll hurt your feelings and will find your typos, push back and question your ideas and characters to help you develop them, and then... more revisions.)
- Multiple characters including our main, Addie, have non-sensical personality shifts throughout the story. Addie in the first 25% of the book is not the Addie we get the rest of the story, and that's a bummer, because who likes seeing a character devolve and get more prejudiced as the plot progresses? The attitudes should have been flip-flopped to illustrate growth, but alas, none was to be had. Unless you count her changed attitude about f*cking one alien. Then, I...guess she had some development?
Yeah. Not really.
And why wasn't a nurse the least bit intellectually curious about the people whose planet she's now living on? She was there for 2 years. More than long enough to get over her THEY ARE BEASTS! attitude, realize that yeah, they are people, and notice some of their biological peculiarities and inquire about them to learn more.
+ But!! We get a rare female protagonist who was married and without all of the justifications that he was terrible so readers can feel more comfortable that she will love again. What happened to Addie is awful, made worse by the fact she still loved and missed her husband who she'd never see again. So this excited me, because how many white women do we need to read about who Never Had Any Friends, Has No Non-Abusive Family, Is An Orphan, Everyone Hates Her...and how they all magically ended up in space to find their HEA? Of course there are going to be people who had families, spouses, friends they'll never see again.
No one's magically hand-picking "orphaned" 23 year olds to keep as breeders.
But with the current trends of later marriage ages that it's safe to assume will continue, what are the odds that a college educated woman of 27 was married all that long to her spouse? I would have loved to see Addie a bit older and more seasoned. 30 is still young. So is 35. 40 isn't terribly old either.
- For all the length, there's a serious lack of background for our narrator, Addie, nor her 2 years so far on Planet Zero. Details were brought up later without the seeds sown in the first part of the book. Particularly the tent city that was allegedly a Den of Iniquity!!!! It took me way too long to figure out that the leader of the tent city was actually a human woman. Like. The last 15% of the story.
- Description is sorely lacking. I still could not tell you exactly what the For look like except tall and maybe wolf or saber tooth tiger or bat faced?? Hairy but not their chests, I guess? So many words in this book but they were spent in odd places. If you're going to write a 400+ page story, you can spare half a page here and there to sprinkle in some details. No need to be stingy. I'm always quick to snark that apparently the author has no idea what their aliens look like either when this happens.
- For female antagonists, Hope falls back on Sneaky Bitches™ and Jealous Bitches™, which I'm never down for. It's gross. Hints at a lack of ideas. And similar plot points could have come around with more nuance and frankly, interest. Is there anything more tired than a woman who is jealous and plotting against every other woman...including her daughter? All while fluttering her lashes at The Men and playing victim?
But it takes skill and a lot of revision to get there. It's easier to paste in a flat caricature and call it a day. (The male antagonists were equally as bad. Arrogant Religious Leader On A Power Trip and Spineless Leader are tired and busted too.)
Another review described this as a story of hard to like characters, and I'm going to have to agree with that. But they're not enjoyable to read either. Pity.
And on and on. I'm going to have a novella myself if I keep dissecting. These are the biggest points that jumped out at me to talk about.
TW/CW: constant traumatic events—including attacks by creatures and other people that are described in detail, gore, a shit ton of ableist thought and language choices, kidnapping, implied sexual slavery, attempted perceived child marriage, child abuse
Taking all of this into consideration....
Real Rating: 2.5 stars
---------------------
And now for the problematic ding. Someday I hope to never have to do another one of these, seriously.
Appropriation of indigenous terms when other choices were available.
"Teepee" is a bastardized term to refer to a specific group of indigenous peoples' portable tents. Tents in all forms exist in many cultures and the ones in this story could have been called...a tent. Or given a For name for Addie to use. If the image of a conical tent with the supports sticking out of the top was needed, she could have used that in the exposition without using the term. This paired with other uncomfortably close stereotypes of indigenous plains' people made me feel the ding was necessary.
(Un-Fun fact: the alleged origin of alien romance was to prolong use of indigenous American stereotypes without being called out for writing racist romances. Just take those Othering stereotypes and make them aliens. Problem fixed! [Any child of the 70s and 80s with a parent who read romance surely saw more than a few of that particular flavor romance.])
And.
Persistent use of offensive and objectifying language toward disabled people. It's one thing for a fictional society that does not value disabled and impaired members of their community to use offensive and demeaning terms towards them, but there was no need for an allegedly empathetic and "enlightened" protagonist to also. The word "cripple" to describe Zoark is used by Addie in here a lot.
When you know better, you do better.