aardwyrm 's review for:

The Vela: The Complete Season 1 by Becky Chambers, Rivers Solomon, Yoon Ha Lee, S.L. Huang

3.0

adventurous slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

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A silly space adventure. If it had stayed a silly space adventure, no harm done. Unfortunately, it aspired to big themes and fell flat. I like all the authors on the project. Don't know if it was a case of too many cooks or they just all had a bit more maturing to do or, probably, a bit of both, but the characters are frustratingly dull,. They make unfathomable decisions and have the same developments over and over again because to do otherwise would disrupt the incredibly fragile, contrived plot. There's an attempt made at the marvel movie morality of "oh, these people are completely reasonable critics of the system, better make them KICK PUPPIES so nobody sympathizes" and "this raging fascist maniac is complicated, actually" but then they forget to make the supposed extremists actually do anything bad? Even the clusterfuck at the end seems to be mostly a matter of poor communication that's entirely the main characters' fault. I don't know, maybe the whole ethos that it's morally equivalent to work with slightly questionable rebels or let evil dictators have everything they want just aged... badly. And then it all ends on what's clearly supposed to be And What Will Our Heroes Do Next? But instead it's just, oh, these useless twerps accomplished nothing in this much too long quest and there's not even closure. If you can turn your brain off for the pewpew battles and don't mind that people monologue in cutscenes all the time without anybody acting to prevent them from doing the terrible and asinine things they're doing, you could have a good time.