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A review by lezreadalot
Ascension by Jacqueline Koyanagi
4.0
“Love is like sunlight. You can give all of yourself to someone and still have all of yourself left to give to others, and to yourself. To your work. To anything or anyone you choose. Love isn’t like food; you won’t starve anyone by giving it freely. It’s not a finite resource.”
3.5 stars. Relationships, characters and writing are doing a lot of heavy lifting for this one. There are several shaky things about the plot and worldbuilding, things that I'd count as flaws, but also I don't... really... care about plot when you give me characters I grow to freaking adore!! Like these!!
It's a queer, found-family, family-centric space opera with a good heaping of romance. Alana, a ship mechanic who adores her craft, has always dreamed of travelling into the vastness of space, the Big Quiet. When a ship passes through, looking for her sister, she takes the opportunity to stow away, and in so doing begins a wild ride of an adventure. I picked this up primarily because it was f/f sci-fi with a black lead, but I also got a few other things that I ADORE: nuanced and realistic polyamory, a main character dealing with chronic illness and the disability that attends it, sisterhood, and just a lot of really wonderful, thoughtful writing. I love space operas like this, ones that really make you feel the enormity of space, what a wonder space travel is. I loved having a main character like Alana, who is constantly in awe of it, and the ships that allow for space travel. Also, there's a scene that takes place on a view-deck-esque place that made me lose it a little, lol. I loved the entire crew, but especially Tev because, I mean... Tev. The romance here was so so good; intense and swoony and entirely relatable. All of the relationships were great; I love the loyalty between captain and crew, the slow-growing trust between shipmates. There are so many remarkable gems in the writing; a lot of things that made me pause and think, or just pause to appreciate how pretty it was.
The world-building is really interesting, but again, shaky. A lot of things go unexplained; a lot of concepts and points just weren't mentioned until the moment they were relevant, whereupon the book is just like, "oh yeah, this is a thing in this world." The plot was sometimes similarly flimsy. Some Big Events happen, and while the characters reacted to it, it never felt like it was given the weight it deserved, somehow? I love sister relationships, but I feel like a lot more groundwork needed to go into this one for me to be as invested as the book wanted me to be. I loved them, not a doubt about it! But Nova needs to grow on me a bit more, especially given the things we learn early in the book.
I have other little nit-picks (the biggest of which is a decision/mistake Alana makes that I can't really reconcile with her character, and how the fallout was dealt with) but again... I don't care that much. "Found family but make it queer and in space" is just one of my favourite things, and I loved all these characters so much. I'm going to be thinking about them for a long time. <3
Content warnings: