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A review by gj377
Satellite by Nick Lake
2.0
I received an advance copy of this book through Net Galley as I was excited by the premise - I wanted to like this book, but it was such a let down. The idea held a lot of promise and I was hoping for a plot that explored the life of these kids back on earth - perhaps interspersed with newspaper article or press releases - something that gave us a window onto a wider plot without requiring a voice apart from Leo's (the main character).
However, I really lost interest in the plot in the second half, I thought it was weak and unbelievable. And the very worst thing was the language - I just couldn't get into it. Instead of 'see' it's 'c', & instead of 'and', u, ur and u're - but apparently these kids have been having remote school lessons all their life, including literature. If this kid can spell susurrus, he can spell 'you' properly. But we need to know it's the future, so he has to talk slightly weird. The 'text-speak' language made it impossible to sink into the story - you don't buy into someone's emotional plight or take their career expertise seriously when it's a struggle to read it. Equally the gimmicky 'fashions', where women can have genetically modified beards and everyone wears mascara and nail polish. I'm pretty sure cattle ranch-hands wouldn't be wearing nail polish, even in the future. And most of the scientist and the ranch hands are men, but the astronauts who acted as 'babysitters' were women of course! Instead of men wearing nail polish, why don't you just have a future free of gender-stereotyped roles. And these things were just shoe-horned in and basically forgotten about later in the book.
Other readers have commented on the positivity of a POC main character group (agreed!), and that Leo is gay without it being a big deal (also great) - but on the latter point there was a part that really grated with me. When asked if he wants kids, Leo replies that he can't have that, not in the 'conventional manner' so it doesn't matter if he spends his whole life in space. Why oh why do you have a normalised LGBTQ character and then ruin it with stupid comments like this!!
I could say a lot more because I was really disappointed by this book. It's like The Martian crossed with The Hunger Games - with less science and more bad grammar. Give this one a miss.
However, I really lost interest in the plot in the second half, I thought it was weak and unbelievable. And the very worst thing was the language - I just couldn't get into it. Instead of 'see' it's 'c', & instead of 'and', u, ur and u're - but apparently these kids have been having remote school lessons all their life, including literature. If this kid can spell susurrus, he can spell 'you' properly. But we need to know it's the future, so he has to talk slightly weird. The 'text-speak' language made it impossible to sink into the story - you don't buy into someone's emotional plight or take their career expertise seriously when it's a struggle to read it. Equally the gimmicky 'fashions', where women can have genetically modified beards and everyone wears mascara and nail polish. I'm pretty sure cattle ranch-hands wouldn't be wearing nail polish, even in the future. And most of the scientist and the ranch hands are men, but the astronauts who acted as 'babysitters' were women of course! Instead of men wearing nail polish, why don't you just have a future free of gender-stereotyped roles. And these things were just shoe-horned in and basically forgotten about later in the book.
Other readers have commented on the positivity of a POC main character group (agreed!), and that Leo is gay without it being a big deal (also great) - but on the latter point there was a part that really grated with me. When asked if he wants kids, Leo replies that he can't have that, not in the 'conventional manner' so it doesn't matter if he spends his whole life in space. Why oh why do you have a normalised LGBTQ character and then ruin it with stupid comments like this!!
I could say a lot more because I was really disappointed by this book. It's like The Martian crossed with The Hunger Games - with less science and more bad grammar. Give this one a miss.