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A review by dandelionsteph
Phoenix by SF Said
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
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? It's complicated
5.0
A good book must make sense, in some way, so it cannot be entirely unpredictable. There were some aspects of plot beats, characterization, and setting I could not have predicted ahead of time, and in that sense, it was creative. However, there were a few other parts which felt too well-trod, leaving me disappointed. Of course the tough, hot-blooded teenage* (age unspecified) girl who's good at fighting and thinks it's necessary is criticized by adult authority figures for her attitude or beliefs; of course people bemoan the fact she must commit to violence; of course she must soften up towards and come to fall in love with the (apparently cis straight hetero) male protagonist; of course she becomes less violent over time and gives up her weapons and violent, aggressive ways in the big 'kumbaya' ending. She even holds hands with and kisses him near the end! From the start, I was worried the teen girl in the adventuring party roster who was apparently close to the male protagonist's age was going to fall into the role of 'love interest' to the protagonist. Thankfully, she has a lot more personality than just that, and importance to the plot beyond just by being his love interest, but, still, it's a sort of age-and-gender pigeonholing.
If the author wanted to be just a bit more original, it would have been better not having them kiss at the end, or not confirming they were in a romantic relationship with the whole "friends and more" conversation. In fact, making Lucky fall in love with Frollix instead would have been more original, even if it was still amatonormative. In fact, that Lucky's romantic relationship with Bixa is the leading example of the concept of "connections" in Lucky's mind (which proves vital to the plot), makes the amatonormativity especially heavy-handed.
Bixa didn't want to be the Startalker of the Present. She didn't want to run her life and her values like Mystica's: she wanted to be different, to be herself. For Bixa to discard the hair-needle weapons so distinctive to her, which she used to save the crew multiple times, during the big 'kumbaya' ending on the basis she thinks she 'doesn't need them anymore' is a dismissal of Bixa as someone with a unique and valuable perspective. She falls into line with the big wise adults.
What's worse about this is that Bixa's way of dealing with life-endangering conflict is criticized for its violence and death, but she doesn't exclusively deal with life-endangering conflict through using violence. Some of her needles are 'sensory dazzler' needles, which cause very distracting, nauseating sensory hallucinations in an area-of-effect for a few minutes, allowing her and the crew to get by without needing violence.
It would have been better for Bixa to consider removing her needles, because now the Human-Axxa war is over, but decide against it: even when there isn't an all-out war anymore, there might still be deadly conflict, and no one could blame her for defending herself. Or she keeps the needles because she thinks they're beautiful, or as a reminder of her past, both painful and valuable. Or she keeps them because their utilities could be useful beyond directly hurting people. Or she starts to remove all her needles, only keeping the low-lethality/nonlethal ones, like the sensory dazzlers, and so comes to grips with the fact the needles themselves were a useful tool, not a attitude she must (or can now) discard.
I also dislike how Lucky believes he must die, refuses, and dies anyway, even if he ends up back in his 'original' body as a powerful star being (Astraeus). Even if he did end up as an Astraeus, it would have been better for him to choose to return to his clumsy mortal body for the sake of his relationships with others, or even split himself off into an Astraeus and non-Astraeus being, like in the ending to the Keys to the Kingdom series by Garth Nix.
Too many things fall into place basically as foretold, no matter how resisted they are. It feels fatalistic, despite the cheerful ending (and how overly cheerful it is). In a book with prophecies or foretold futures, these should come to pass with more of a real choice from the protagonists, if not defiance. I like how, sometimes, the prophecies aren't even real, as in the first Wings of Fire series.
I was also disappointed that the Axxa are basically just a variant of human, with virtually zero biological differences between them and humans. It is, a sense, more realistic, as we have yet to discover alien lifeforms, and finding alien lifeforms of human intelligence is massively less probable. (After all, our planet spent billions of years, or most of its life-covered history, having only microbial life.) Nonetheless, I found it disappointing as it under-used the potential of its science-fiction setting to show wholly new alien peoples. What's worse is that it doesn't <i>need</i> to be realistic: this isn't a hard science fiction, nor even a standard alien-filled 'soft' sci-fi, but a <i>science fantasy</i> with living, talking stars, a fantasy phoenix, and dark matter bombs basically causing depression for mystical reasons. This isn't like Andy Weir's The Martian, which is painstakingly realistic except when necessary to the plot; this is more like <i>Star Wars</i> or a <i>Wrinkle in Time</I..
While the Humans and Axxa in fact being basically the same species neatly links into the 'we are all connected' kumbaya theme, I feel it would have had more of an impact if the Axxa were more biologically different from humans, or if the Axxa weren't human-descended at all.
Bixa didn't want to be the Startalker of the Present. She didn't want to run her life and her values like Mystica's: she wanted to be different, to be herself. For Bixa to discard the hair-needle weapons so distinctive to her, which she used to save the crew multiple times, during the big 'kumbaya' ending on the basis she thinks she 'doesn't need them anymore' is a dismissal of Bixa as someone with a unique and valuable perspective. She falls into line with the big wise adults.
What's worse about this is that Bixa's way of dealing with life-endangering conflict is criticized for its violence and death, but she doesn't exclusively deal with life-endangering conflict through using violence. Some of her needles are 'sensory dazzler' needles, which cause very distracting, nauseating sensory hallucinations in an area-of-effect for a few minutes, allowing her and the crew to get by without needing violence.
It would have been better for Bixa to consider removing her needles, because now the Human-Axxa war is over, but decide against it: even when there isn't an all-out war anymore, there might still be deadly conflict, and no one could blame her for defending herself. Or she keeps the needles because she thinks they're beautiful, or as a reminder of her past, both painful and valuable. Or she keeps them because their utilities could be useful beyond directly hurting people. Or she starts to remove all her needles, only keeping the low-lethality/nonlethal ones, like the sensory dazzlers, and so comes to grips with the fact the needles themselves were a useful tool, not a attitude she must (or can now) discard.
I also dislike how Lucky believes he must die, refuses, and dies anyway, even if he ends up back in his 'original' body as a powerful star being (Astraeus). Even if he did end up as an Astraeus, it would have been better for him to choose to return to his clumsy mortal body for the sake of his relationships with others, or even split himself off into an Astraeus and non-Astraeus being, like in the ending to the Keys to the Kingdom series by Garth Nix.
Too many things fall into place basically as foretold, no matter how resisted they are. It feels fatalistic, despite the cheerful ending (and how overly cheerful it is). In a book with prophecies or foretold futures, these should come to pass with more of a real choice from the protagonists, if not defiance. I like how, sometimes, the prophecies aren't even real, as in the first Wings of Fire series.
I was also disappointed that the Axxa are basically just a variant of human, with virtually zero biological differences between them and humans. It is, a sense, more realistic, as we have yet to discover alien lifeforms, and finding alien lifeforms of human intelligence is massively less probable. (After all, our planet spent billions of years, or most of its life-covered history, having only microbial life.) Nonetheless, I found it disappointing as it under-used the potential of its science-fiction setting to show wholly new alien peoples. What's worse is that it doesn't <i>need</i> to be realistic: this isn't a hard science fiction, nor even a standard alien-filled 'soft' sci-fi, but a <i>science fantasy</i> with living, talking stars, a fantasy phoenix, and dark matter bombs basically causing depression for mystical reasons. This isn't like Andy Weir's The Martian, which is painstakingly realistic except when necessary to the plot; this is more like <i>Star Wars</i> or a <i>Wrinkle in Time</I..
While the Humans and Axxa in fact being basically the same species neatly links into the 'we are all connected' kumbaya theme, I feel it would have had more of an impact if the Axxa were more biologically different from humans, or if the Axxa weren't human-descended at all.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Racial slurs, Racism, Violence, Xenophobia, Grief, Fire/Fire injury, and War
Minor: Animal death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Police brutality, Death of parent, and Alcohol
Keep in mind that the "Racism" and "Racial slurs" warnings are applied in a "fantasy racism" sense, although it's closer to real-life racism than one might think because the Axxa are variants of humans and have very little biological difference from them . Some of the fantasy-slurs are close enough to real-life slurs (or dehumanizing terms in general), that I'm listing them anyway, in addition to the more general 'xenophobia'.
Technically, Mystica's chronic illness isn't an illness; she is dying because the star she's connected to is dying. But one only learns that pretty late into the book.