Tag: space opera

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (9/8/26) – The Folded Sky (White Space, #3)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I got hooked on Elizabeth Bear’s White Space series back in January. I figured I’d order The Folded Sky (on Bookshop.org of course…if you’re still ordering books on Amazon, go here instead!! Your money goes to indie bookstores and not Bezos!) with some leftover birthday money. Like all the other installations in this series, The Folded Sky did not disappoint.

NOTE: The Folded Sky is the third book in the White Space series, and while it doesn’t contain spoilers for books 1 and 2, it’s difficult to understand without the context that they give. For my reviews of the first two books, click below!

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Folded Sky (White Space, #3) – Elizabeth Bear

Dr. Sunyata Song was supposed to live a quiet life as a historian. Her studies of the Baomind—an ancient, moon-sized artificial intelligence created by a long-dead alien race—have so far not disturbed this. But a once-in-a-lifetime research opportunity to study the Baomind drags Sunya, her wife, and her two teenage kids out to the farthest edges of the galaxy. Sunya is elated, but she soon realizes that she’s in over her head, between the presence of her longtime academic rival, a potential murder plot, and the dying red giant that the Baomind orbits. In the midst of all this conflict, Sunya must make a choice as to what matters most to her—and all of the people around her.

TW/CW: kidnapping, child endangerment, gun violence, murder

Whoever was in charge of writing a succinct blurb for the back of this book needs a raise. Seriously. There is so much going on in The Folded Sky, and the blurb is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s the giant alien AI, of course. But that’s not even the biggest plot point. You’ve got pirates. Incredibly heated historian beef. A murder mystery on a janky space station. Red giants with horrifying implications. Did I mention pirates?

Elizabeth Bear’s characters are the reason that the White Space series as a whole works so well. Book by book, she’s not only created an increasingly multilayered and complex world, but shown it to us through the eyes of people (and systers) who are refreshingly flawed and lovable. I was already sold on the concept of a sleep-deprived, slightly-too-committed historian and her long-suffering but patient alien wife as the protagonists already, but Bear developed them so far beyond that concept; Sunya was one of the series’s most well-realized characters. She’s somebody who tries so hard to be civil and unbiased, but is not-so-secretly very impulsive and prone to being hotheaded—it’s a funny combination, but more importantly, it felt so real. Anybody with a strong sense of justice who’s also incredibly emotional can relate—all of her righteous seething about Vickee was so relatable. Her family dynamic was so heartwarming; Bear could’ve easily gone down the “teenagers are so annoying, hahaha look at them being stupid” route, but I loved how Salvie points out that Luna’s outbursts are just versions of Sunya herself (much to her dismay). Salvie and Sunya were such a lovely couple, and their devotion to their children—and justice as a whole—was the novel’s beating heart. Aside from Salvie being an alien, they felt like a family you could meet any old day, and that’s what sets the White Space series apart as a whole—nobody makes aliens (and people) as real as Bear.

Just when you think the worldbuilding of the White Space series can’t possibly get better…IT’S ELIZABETH BEAR WITH THE STEEL CHAIR!! INCOMPREHENSIBLE MOON-SIZED AI, COMIN’ RIGHT ATCHA! I love her no-holds-barred approach to making the Synarche unabashedly weird, and she followed through on that mission in The Folded Sky. This novel takes us to the more backwater, less technologically-advanced parts of the universe, and the experience of seeing what’s considered backwater in the first place is. All of the new Systers that get introduced were delightful. (Dr. Nonsense was a favorite of mine…you know I love a cephalopod, but Bear did an excellent job of making it more than just a cephalopod in space!) The Baomind itself was so meticulously thought-out, and even after Machine, Bear really pushes the limits on how strange robots and AI can get; I loved the song communication, and the twists that Sunya discovers in her studies are too fascinating to spoil. Either way, it’s proof that Bear is a worldbuilder in her prime, and this series is all th better for it.

The main reason that The Folded Sky didn’t get the full 5 stars from me was the pacing; for a series whose books that I’ve routinely gobbled up hundreds of pages of in one sitting, The Folded Sky had a slower start. But once that hurdle was jumped over, this novel was excellently executed from start to finish. I mentioned the dozens of disparate plot elements earlier, and juggling all of them would be a Herculean task for any author (much less whoever had to condense all that into a blurb). What struck me about The Folded Sky is that out of all of those facets of the plot, none of them were treated as afterthoughts. They were all a critical part of the tangled web of the novel. The murder mystery was just as compelling as Sunya’s historical work, as was the rivalry she had with Vickee and the pirates and everything else. Bear made it look easy, connecting threads that I couldn’t imagine connecting. Of course, it wasn’t perfect—in addition to the beginning, the climax was more drawn out than felt reasonable—but for a plot this jam-packed with different elements, Bear pulled it off surprisingly well.

But I feel like the chaos that the characters are mired in was so crucial to the central themes of The Folded Sky. For one thing, there was the whole Folded Sky concept in a series, and its connections to integrative complexity (new concept that I learned! And they say that only nonfiction is educational…thanks, Elizabeth Bear!) and being able to see issues and their consequences from multiple perspectives, and not, as Dr. Nonsense said, a human binary of only two sides. That was already a very powerful theme, but the chaos also related back to Sunya and her family. Though I don’t have any firsthand experience with parenthood, I loved how this theme was written; you bring children into the world, and you want to protect them from a world that is often cruel and unpredictable, and while you can’t protect them from everything, you desperately want to try. And either way, Sunya and her family are able to keep somewhat levelheaded because of the love they have for each other, and the love that they foster in their community. Overall, The Folded Sky is an ode to the power of multiplicity and many perspectives, whether that’s community-building, family, or studying history.

One more bonus point—look, I know “Life On Mars?” is one of Bowie’s most well-known songs, but the fact that it was referenced in passing still made me giddy.

All in all, a poignant and deeply moving addition to one of the best space opera series out there today. 4.5 stars!

The Folded Sky is the third book in the White Space series, preceded by Ancestral Night (1) and Machine (2). Elizabeth Bear is also the author of several other series, including the New Amsterdam series (New Amsterdam, Seven for a Secret, The White City, Ad Eternum, and Garrett Investigates), the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy (Dust, Sanction, and Grail) and many others.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (9/1/26) – Unconquerable Sun

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’ve had my eye on Unconquerable Sun for several years; it’s appeared on several lists of queer sci-fi books that have caught my attention, and a loose retelling of the story of Alexander the Great seemed interesting enough. Unfortunately, Unconquerable Sun was overblown, overwritten, and kind of a waste of 500+ pages.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Unconquerable Sun (The Sun Chronicles, #1) – Kate Elliott

The Republic of Chaonia is in chaos. Princess Sun has come of age, and the throne that she’s inheriting is one of immense responsibility. Her mother, the Queen-Marshal Eirene, commanded armies and seemed to pull off miracles in order to keep their empire afloat. With a ruthless court and bloodthirsty enemies on all sides, Princess Sun must fight to earn her name—and keep her planet alive.

TW/CW: war themes, human experimentation, xenophobia (fictional), violence, murder

Unconquerable Sun wasn’t bad enough for a full-on DNF. I didn’t hate it, but I certainly didn’t enjoy reading it. Ultimately, the reason I slogged through it was because it felt like the book equivalent of the sunk-cost fallacy: I’d already gotten halfway through and I was at least vaguely curious as to what would happen, so I saw it through to the end. Sadly, things really didn’t pick up from there—this novel is 528 pages of mediocre worldbuilding and even worse characters.

Unconquerable Sun pairs two writing issues that are a fatal combination. The way that Elliott wrote the dialogue was downright obnoxious. It had that pompousness of somebody trying too hard to make the royalty come across appropriately Royal, which circled back around to just being corny. Suffering through that was already a lot, but then comes the second issue: with one notable exception, almost all of the characters had this exact same voice. Most of their voices were indistinguishable from the other, and to make matters worse, they all had the most annoyingly overwritten dialogue possible. Even the non-royal characters had voices like this, when they reasonably shouldn’t be talking like elitist politicians—it was annoying to read, but more often than not, it didn’t even make sense. It reminded me of Maria Z. Medina’s Mistress of Bones, which, to this novel’s credit, was way worse, but it had a similar issue: it made no sense for most every character to sound the same. It was a headache-inducing combination, one that doomed me to lose interest in this novel early on.

Those issues with the dialogue translated to the characters as well. Most of the characters weren’t terribly distinguishable from one another, and there were countless side characters who didn’t have any business having such a large role in the story. Elliott attempted to do some in-depth development of Princess Sun, but I feel like a lot of the discussions of her living in her mother’s shadow were heavy on the telling and lacking on the showing, making her a somewhat hollow protagonist. (That being said, I liked how Elliott wrote about her being mixed-race, and the depictions of the discrimination she faces and her inner conflict was at least decently done.) Now, remember how I said that all of the characters were/sounded the same, save for one? That’s where we get to the issue with Persephone, who was utterly obnoxious in a secret third way. Elliott was so clearly trying to make her the witty, rebellious one, from the eye roll-inducing chapter names (Rick Riordan and his consequences) to her quippy, Joss Whedon dialogue. Similarly, her seeming issues with family were so glossed over just so she could be the quirky, messy foil to the more stuck-up Princess Sun, a dynamic that couldn’t have been more overdone. It’s a real feat for me to hate most of the cast of a single novel, but somehow, Unconquerable Sun pulled it off.

Unconquerable Sun was a mixed bag in terms of the plotting and pacing. Even though I wasn’t the biggest fan of this novel, I will say that the scenes were nicely plotted and placed. The disastrous royal wedding scene was compelling, and many of the similar scenes were action-packed and kept me hooked enough to see this novel through to the end. I’m not too keen on military sci-fi as a subgenre, but the fight scenes were well-paced and the action solidly written. Other than that, I really don’t think Unconquerable Sun needed to be this long; there was a significant lull in the middle that mostly consisted of the main cast running in circles that definitely needed to be trimmed down by at least 50 pages minimum. (I peeked at the sequel, Furious Heaven, and that one is over 700 pages…UH OH.) This novel was just too overwritten for its own good—it mostly affected the characters, but the plot wasn’t spared either.

To Elliott’s credit, the worldbuilding was solid. The bones of Unconquerable Sun’s world were well-thought out, and she did a good job of building up the history of all of the factions and all of their issues. The court intrigue was decently written, and it was the only place where the insufferably highfalutin dialogue worked. That was one of the only aspects of the novel that I wanted more of, but it was often left in the dust in favor of pew pew pew military sci-fi time. I’d mostly seen Unconquerable Sun advertised for said court intrigue, but it’s solidly military sci-fi (the Guardian review quite literally called it a “shoot ’em up,” so that’s on me for not seeing that. My fault, not the book’s fault). I wish this had been developed more, but it did a good job of humanizing the people caught in the crossfire of war, from the Phene victims of experimentation and the soldiers who had been drafted against their will; of course, I’m that one friend who’s too woke, but I feel like that could’ve been increased more, and there was some good potential for some commentary on the imperialism rife in this novel. Of course, this is military sci-fi, so this might be an ordering a milkshake from Home Depot situation, but I think my point still stands; military sci-fi, at its best, can be an excellent way to dissect of the horrors of war, imperialism, and unfair exploitation of all kinds.

All in all, a space opera that had too much and too many of everything: overwritten dialogue, forgettable characters, and, overall, just pages. 2 stars.

Unconquerable Sun is the first book in the Sun Chronicles, followed by Furious Heaven and Lady Chaos. Kate Elliott is also the author of several other books for teens and adults, including the Black Wolves series (Black Wolves and Dead Empire), the Jaran series (Jaran, An Earthly Crown, His Conquering Sword, and The Law of Becoming), the Court of Fives trilogy (Court of Fives, Poisoned Blade, and Buried Heart), and many more.

Today’s song:

I keep coming back to this track—it’s not my favorite from lost weekend, but it has some of the album’s best lyrics, hands down

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (8/11/26) – The Celestial Seas

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Have I read Moby Dick? Nope. Do I intend to? It’s not a high priority. But will I read any sci-fi retelling of it? Absolutely.

There’s such a dearth of YA sci-fi, so much so that the tagline for The Celestial Seas compares it to two very different books (Aurora Rising and Iron Widow). It’s so sad that there’s not even enough popular books to make a valid comparison to this novel, even if it is just a marketing technique. And though it wasn’t without its issues, The Celestial Seas is a wonderfully weird addition to the pantheon of YA space opera.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Celestial Seas – T.A. Chan

Years ago, a giant Ballena—a sentient biological spacecraft in the shape of a whale—destroyed an entire spacefaring whaler, leaving Ishara Ming as the sole survivor. Now, with a scrappy crew and rapidly dwindling supplies, she’s on the hunt to avenge her former shipmates. They all dismiss her thirst for revenge as delusion, but Ishara knows what she saw. But when Augustus, a mysterious mechanic who wants to kill this Ballena as much as her, appears on their ship, Ishara begins to question the truth of her bloody memories—and whether this thankless whaling quest is worth it at all.

TW/CW: descriptions of injury, loss of loved ones, substance abuse, murder, violence

First off, I’m in love with this book cover! I’m obsessed with Carolina R. Fuenmayor’s style, and it suits Chan’s book wonderfully. AND SHE’S COLOMBIAN!! LET’S GOOOOOOO

I’ve never read Moby Dick, but if there’s one thing that promises some good old-fashioned sci-fi weirdness, it’s a sci-fi retelling of Moby Dick. (The other one that comes to mind is China Miéville’s gloriously bonkers Railsea, which I liked much better than this, but it’s a hard act to follow.) I’ve absorbed enough from pop culture to know the gist of the story, so it’s not all that hard to understand without the context of the book. Either way you look at it, The Celestial Seas is a spirited YA debut with undeniable charm.

Half of the fun of The Celestial Seas was diving into the worldbuilding. It’s a refreshingly original setting. You’ve got your sentient space whale-ships, for starters, but it only gets better from there. We’ve got a win for the Latines in space, because some sort of Pan-Latin-American coalition ends up settling a large portion of space before the events of the novel, and a lot of the slang was informed by Spanish; for Ishara, there’s also remnants of Mandarin Chinese that remained in her original language, which was also super cool. There’s got all sorts of cultural and technological quirks to pick apart. T.A. Chan covered all of her bases when it came to the worldbuilding, and it showed. The one caveat was that Chan plunges you headfirst into said worldbuilding—a lot of the information I just talked about isn’t explained in-scene; personally, I don’t think it’s much of a problem, since it’s easily decipherable thanks to context clues. But there sure is a lot of sci-fi technobabble, so buckle up. Personally, I think it was all part of the charm.

Saying that I loved Ishara as a protagonist is complicated. She was developed fantastically, but I really wasn’t a fan of her personality. Is she likable? Not really, no—not until the last third of the novel, to be honest. But does it work for the novel? Absolutely. Especially given Moby Dick, Ishara’s bloodlust (is it bloodlust if it’s a sentient spaceship? Ishara certainly doesn’t think so) and grief were exactly the kind of protagonist that The Celestial Seas needed. Chan was unafraid of making Ishara flawed and reckless. She had an excellent arc by the end of the novel, and I loved how her quest for the Ballena tied into questions about her identity, and whether or not it was worth it to base her entire life’s purpose on the past and a singular, dangerous goal—and whether it was worth it to brazenly risk the lives of her crew along the way. Quinn and Augustus were both solid foils to Ishara, and I’m glad that they haven’t turned into a love triangle…yet.

Unfortunately, that same care wasn’t afforded to the rest of the cast of The Celestial Seas. To a point, it’s understandable; you’ve got a whole crew of a spaceship, and there’s not that much time to develop every single one of them. That would be excusable, if not for two things. First off, most of the supporting cast (aside from Quinn and Augustus) had a single, shared personality—they were each assigned a job, and then they all got a turn pushing the sarcastic one-liner button when the time called for it. Second, by the end of The Celestial Seas, we’re all supposed to care so deeply for all of them, as evidenced by the impassioned inner and outer monologues given by Ishara; of course, they had almost no importance to the plot, so all of said monologues felt hollow. I get that every novel with a largish cast doesn’t have time to make everybody the star, but Chan left everybody but three people in the dust.

Chan’s writing style was solid, but it had some pitfalls that dragged The Celestial Seas down. Her renderings of the celestial sea in question were nothing short of immersive, and she nailed that sci-fi charm of new slang and technobabble without drowning the interactions between the characters. However, there are places where Chan holds your hand in a way that felt too much, even for YA. (Probably not even suited for YA—yes, the audience are younger, but you don’t insult the intelligence of teenagers, of all demographics!) Like Ishara’s Big Emotional Speech during the climax, there were moments where Chan unceremoniously shoved the Big Message in our faces, which got old quickly. I know, YA, but there’s only so much repetition of “the girl with the wildfire eyes” one can take. What’s worse is that most of these moments didn’t have the textual evidence to back them up—I know that Quinn is the girl with the wildfire eyes, but Chan doesn’t even care to explain what that means. It wasn’t the best combination, but Chan’s writing is at a solid starting point.

All in all, an ambitious YA debut full of determination, spirit, and massive space whales. 3.75 stars!

The Celestial Seas appears to be a series, but no sequels have been announced. T.A. Chan is also the author of the adult novella One Last Game.

Today’s song:

goddamn, this might be my favorite led zeppelin song…

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (7/28/26) – The Language of Liars

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I discovered S.L. Huang through The Vela and The Water Outlaws, and I was intrigued enough by their writing to put The Language of Liars on my TBR. It was the most compelling premise I’d seen in any of their novels—and it quickly proved to be their best.

Enjoy this week’s review!

The Language of Liars – S.L. Huang

The Star Eaters are the key to making sure that galactic civilization runs—they are the only species who can mine the element required for space travel. But so little is known about them—scientists haven’t been able to figure them out and linguists have not been able to decipher their language. The only way—or so Ro has been told—is to jump into their minds, inhabiting their bodies in order to pick apart their enigmatic existence. Ro has been assigned to jump into the mind of a Star Eater, and he carries a monumental amount of responsibility on his shoulders. But the more Ro figures out about the Star Eaters, the more he realizes that this mission was never about understanding, and that the sinister ulterior motives may spell a horrible fate for him and his team.

TW/CW: genocide, torture, imperialism/colonialism, slavery, police brutality, violence

TREAD LIGHTLY! This review contains spoilers, so if you haven’t read this novella and plan to, read at your own risk.

I’ve only read one full novel by S.L. Huang, but after reading The Language of Liars, I’m convinced that this is their best work yet. Few other novellas are able to pack so much top-notch worldbuilding, twists, and emotions into so few pages, but this one did. I’ve been thinking about it for days.

I enjoyed The Water Outlaws, but I wasn’t quite as invested in the story as I was with The Language of Liars. What carried over from that novel was Huang’s distinct writing style. They excel in extruding the raw emotion from the most minute, overlooked moments. Every little thing is important to Huang, and that made The Language of Liars into a truly unique novella. The care they put into each metaphor carried over to the care they put into each minor character. The inhospitable, alien world and all of its contradictory rules were written tensely—and intensely. I find myself thinking of Octavia Butler’s famous note to herself, where she vows to “make people FEEL, FEEL, FEEL!”; Huang certainly carries on Butler’s legacy in that regard—as well as their commitment to making anti-colonial sci-fi that truly makes you think.

The world of The Language of Liars is a truly intricate one, but Huang pulled off the exceedingly tricky feat of establishing it a) in less than 200 pages, and b) doing it without unwieldy chunks of exposition. Part of why I think Huang was so successful was because of the tidbits at the beginning of each chapter: passages from books, news segments, and quotes from fictional politicians all buttressed this world, making it feel real in the spaces between the narrative. Beyond that, Huang did an excellent job of not only pulling off this marvel of worldbuilding, but making it compelling. There’s a whole host of fascinating species, all with their own cultures and wars that the narrative is able to dip its toes into without derailing the plot. I especially loved all of the cultural quirks of Ro’s species, and the creature design in me loved how Huang went beyond “these aliens look like rabbits” to integrating rabbit-like behaviors into their language and culture.

I debated whether or not to reveal the big twist of The Language of Liars in this review because it knocked me off my feet and I don’t want to ruin that for other people. And yet, it’s so hard to discuss this novella without talking about it, and I desperately want to talk about it. As it turns out, this cutthroat social system of the Star Eaters is entirely a fabrication, and the reason that the Star Eaters’s culture is so enigmatic and unknowable is that it cannot be known—all of the remaining Star Eaters’s consciousnesses have been hijacked by other alien spies like Ro. It gutted me. The other civilizations were so desperate to “understand” (read: figure out so they could adequately exploit) the Star Eaters that they committed a mental genocide on the entire species, and everything about their culture that could’ve been discovered has been lost forever. It’s a seismic blast of a twist. And it makes such a potent point about the nature of imperialism and the history of anthropology and linguistics—sometimes, something as innocuous as attempting to understand another culture or language can quickly be turned into tools of exploitation and slavery. Though there was the faintest (faintest) glimmer of hope at the end, that haunting conclusion has stayed with me for weeks. Not only did I not see it coming, but the way that Huang executed it made everything fall into place horribly—it takes a hard left turn into psychological horror, in my opinion, but it’s the horror of imperialism.

The Language of Liars isn’t necessarily about disability, but Ro is hinted to be neurodivergent. I hesitate to put an exact name to it, as he’s an alien with entirely different physiology and brain chemistry. (That being said, some of the traits that Huang names are similar to autism, namely a difficulty grasping social cues and aversions to certain food textures.) However, I think a part of the twist that stood out to me is that the entire premise felt innately neurodivergent. Here you have Ro, who goes undercover into the mind of an alien creature to get to the bottom of their language and culture, and is shoved headfirst into a world of intricate, often contradictory social cues. Say the wrong thing, and you’ll be punished, and yet everybody else is unwilling to share what it is that makes words or phrases “wrong.” And as the twist tells us, this intricate, contradictory system of words is a house of cards that’s easily toppled: nobody knows what to do or what to say in the end, only that one wrong word could mean death. Everybody’s just performing normalcy, but it all falls apart at the drop of a hat. The Language of Liars felt so neurodivergent to me, and Ro’s journey of struggling to figure out this thankless construction of language hit home for me in more ways than one.

All in all, an inventive and haunting novella that packs a startling amount of power into less than 200 pages. 4.25 stars!

The Language of Liars is a standalone, but S.L. Huang is also the author of The Water Outlaws, the Cas Russell series (Zero Sum Game, Null Set, and Critical Point), and several other novels for adults.

Today’s song:

such a classic album—this is my favorite track, without a doubt

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (7/14/26) – Machine (White Space, #2)

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

Thankfully, after last week’s disappointment, we’ve got something to save the track record for Disability Pride Month. I started Elizabeth Bear’s White Space trilogy earlier this year, and I knew I wanted a physical copy of book 2. It’s one of the great joys in life when a sequel is better than the first book—and Ancestral Night was already a 4.5-star read for me, so this was huge! Machine was a fantastic step up for a series that’s already a cut above the rest.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Machine (White Space, #2) – Elizabeth Bear

Dr. Brookllyn Jens is a special kind of doctor. Her patients are usually aliens, and her status as an emergency specialist means that her job description tends to involve having to jump out of spaceships. It’s already a job that keeps her on the edge. But when Dr. Jens and her crew discover two ships that have been abandoned for thousands of years, they uncover a mystery with layers upon layers of disastrous implications. With a strange, antiquated AI, an entire human crew in cryosleep, and a potential conspiracy on their hands, Dr. Jens and her crew must race against the clock to make sure that everybody makes it out alive.

TW/CW: ableism, misogyny, medical content, xenophobia, violence, murder

Genuinely, my sole problem with this novel is the title. Elizabeth Bear thought out this intricate and complex space opera world full of thousands of aliens and unique space travel, and couldn’t think of a more memorable title than Machine? I mean, yeah. There sure are Machines. Lots of ’em. But come on, really.

As much as I enjoyed Haimey’s story in Ancestral Night, I really think that making the White Space series several collected companion novels was the right move. It expands the intricate world that Elizabeth Bear has crafted in so many exciting ways that were only possible through the eyes of a different cast of characters. I loved the ways that the Synarche and all of the different species within it were fleshed out. Bear’s writing is as sharp as ever—her voice is so witty and hilarious, but she also knows just how to stick the landing when it comes to the more climactic or serious moments. The pacing was top-notch, especially considering that Machine is nearly 500 pages long—I blew through hundreds of pages at a time, and Bear never lost me.

I absolutely adored Dr. Jens as a protagonist, and Bear’s willingness to let her protagonists be messy yet lovable people made her shine. Dr. Jens has such a dry sense of humor, and her wry observations about the world around her made Machine such an entertaining read. But beyond that, I loved her continuous self-reflection—about the ideas she’s constructed about herself, but also about her work and the world around her. The supporting cast was so vibrant and lovable—it was a treat to see Cheerilaq again, first off, but all of the characters were so delightful and added a real human (and syster) authenticity to Core General’s staff. Sometimes your coworker gets on your nerves for no discernible reason, and they’re also a massive cetacean-like being getting wheeled around in a massive tank. On that subject, I loved all of the new Systers that Bear introduces. My creature design brain predictably became that meme of the dog with the propeller beanie and the giant lollipop seeing all of the truly alien aliens that populated the Synarche. But Bear went beyond good creature design and into crafting memorable, multilayered characters, which is what makes her space opera stand out in the end.

In particular, the expansion of the AI and robots in the Synarche was one of the most intriguing aspects of the world that Bear discusses in Machine. The whole plotline with Helen Alloy was one of the most well-executed. I love how Bear interrogates the objectification of women and how sci-fi has historically translated this into female-presenting robots. The visceral discomfort that Dr. Jens has that Helen was specifically created to have a hypersexualized, feminine form felt was like seeing the sun peer through the clouds after decades of weird men writing all kinds of messed-up sex-bots. It’s treated with the appropriate level of disgust—both on Helen and Dr. Jens’s part. Helen’s manipulation also ends up being vital to the later twist, and her entire arc of deconstructing the lies that she was programmed with was handled with such tenderness. Beyond the robots, I think that thread of treating people who have been brought up with hateful ideologies and not immediately dismissing those with different opinions was one of the best aspects of Machine; Bear’s insistence that people—human, alien, or AI—are not inherently bad, only victims of harmful ideas, was so necessary.

Bear’s take on disability in a sci-fi context was also such a respectful and well-researched one! She listed off several sensitivity readers in the acknowledgements, and their work paid off—for someone who seems to be non-disabled, by all accounts, this might be one of the most caring representations of a disabled person and their struggles in sci-fi I’ve seen by a non-disabled author. Dr. Jens has a chronic pain disorder, and she has a special exo-suit that manages some of her pain, but not all of it—sci-fi tech still has limitations in the far, far future. She still aches and gets physically taxed from her daring missions. Granted, I’m not chronically ill, but it felt like Bear paid so much attention to how Dr. Jens’s symptoms would present and how her high-stakes profession would affect it. Additionally, there’s a lot of talk about how disability is handled in the future; there was lots of discussion of “rightminding,” a process that, among other things, mitigates the effects of some mental illnesses. It would’ve been so easy to just slap it on as a cure-all technology, but Bear’s approach was one that I rarely see in sci-fi. It’s not necessarily “disability isn’t cured,” but it’s handled on a case-by-case basis, there’s an understanding that different kinds of disabled people have different needs and opinions about how they want to live with their disabilities with the technology available. This rejection of the one-size-fits-all approach to disability was a breath of fresh air, and wasn’t afraid to get into the nuance of how disabled people live their lives.

Disability wasn’t the only issue that gets dealt with in a refreshing amount of nuance. Bear was not afraid to get into the weeds with this novel, and it made my reading experience so much better. Machine, more so than its predecessor, gets into how a utopia and utopian ideas can be twisted into something sinister. It all feels very Ursula K. LeGuin—the Synarche is without a doubt an ambiguous utopia like The Dispossessed. (First off, I liked that Bear interrogates the ethics of “rightminding” targeting potentially “dangerous ideologies,” and how that ends up being decidedly non-utopian.) I appreciated that Bear discusses how well-intentioned utopias can be co-opted into vehicles for hatred, but also how that revelation wracks the people who genuinely believed in this utopia—people like Dr. Jens. Her arc in having faith in her hospital and the Synarche was so human—her entire reality and faith in the organization she devoted her life to is messily upended. But the realization that she comes to—that you can take the good work you wanted to do and the faith in your fellow people outside of corrupt organizations and do your own work—was one that feels so vital. I also loved the thematic potential of the infectious meme—not unlike the spread of a hateful ideology—that is treated as an infection that has to be weaned out with attention and care. Bear’s depictions of that crushing realization and how Dr. Jens and her coworkers pick up the pieces was so heartfelt, and a very potent message in this day and age.

All in all, a spectacular companion to Ancestral Night that expanded Elizabeth Bear’s masterfully crafted space opera universe with pulse-pounding action and heart. 5 stars!

Machine is the second book in the White Space trilogy, a series of companion novels set in the same universe; it is also includes Ancestral Night (book 1) and Folded Sky (book 3). Elizabeth Bear is also the author of several other series, including the New Amsterdam series (New Amsterdam, Seven for a Secret, The White City, Ad Eternum, and Garrett Investigates), the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy (Dust, Sanction, and Grail) and many others

Today’s song:

still going through my mom’s records from the ’80s. this remains peak.

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (5/12/26) – Interstellar Megachef

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

It’s funny that I should be reading/reviewing Interstellar Megachef when I am, because just a week ago, I was talking to my older brother about how you sometimes have to wade through the most cornball book covers and titles known to man to find good cozy fiction sometimes. Different strokes, I guess, but oh my God, this book cover is painfully corny. (And mismarketed, but I’ll talk more about that). But ultimately, it was mostly worth the gambit: although it had some structural issues, it was a solid novel about food, love, and immigration…in space, of course.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Interstellar Megachef – Lavanya Lakshminarayan

Saraswati Kaveri is determined to prove herself. After running away from her family on Earth, she upends her life to immigrate to the famed planet Primus—and earn a spot on its most popular cooking show, Interstellar Megachef. It’s not an easy feat, especially when the humans of Primus are deeply prejudiced against Earthlings, who they see as backwards and violent. But when Saras’s plans go awry, she has a chance encounter with Serenity Ko, a disgraced tech developer who might have just the solution for her to redeem herself—and her cooking.

TW/CW: xenophobia/racism, racial slurs (fictional), substance abuse

First off: Interstellar Megachef is mismarketed. Cornball cover art aside, the Interstellar Megachef aspect of the book is fairly understated. This isn’t a spoiler, but Saras gets disqualified in the first episode of the show—and this happens about a quarter into the novel. (However, Interstellar Megachef comes back as a plot point, so it’s not entirely absent from the plot afterwards.) So I’m assuming that it was marketing reasons that gave this novel its title and tagline. So fair warning, if you’re expecting the entire novel to be food-centric, I’d suggest that you dial back your expectations.

Where Interstellar Megachef succeeds is its powerful commentary on the experience of being an immigrant. To me, good cozy sci-fi succeeds when it retains the low stakes, but doesn’t hold back on discussing whatever issues it seeks to tackle; Lakshminarayan does this to great success. Saras’s experiences as an Earthling immigrant to Primus were a biting indictment of how we treat immigrants, from the outright racism and xenophobia to the more subtle micro-aggressions that they’re taught to simply put up with. The labor that Saras has to do just to be marginally accepted by her Primian peers was poignant, and it spoke to the limits of “acceptance” that mainstream society often has for immigrants: she’s only valuable to them if she’s able to serve a purpose to them. But Saras’s commitment to going against the grain and staying true to her culture gave this novel a poignant, beating heart that propelled its narrative skyward.

Interstellar Megachef also boasts a particularly vibrant sci-fi world. Of course, there are elements that didn’t quite make me suspend my disbelief; I couldn’t quite believe that Earthling humans were more discriminated against than the nigh-incomprehensible mecha tentacle aliens, but that was necessary to the plot, so I get why that was a thing. (Also, the Primian naming convention of every adult being named after the Nine Virtues was okay in concept, but confusing logistically, when you have at least four characters with the same first name per virtue.) Lakshminarayan’s descriptions of this futuristic world were so bright and lived-in, and I truly felt immersed into this neon, intergalactic future for humanity. The aliens were fun, but I feel like their role in society was underutilized, especially when the themes of prejudice and marginalization are concerned. That being said, Lakshminarayan often delivered this worldbuilding in portions that went on for three paragraphs in some cases, which unceremoniously took away from the main narrative. All of the detail and hard work was there, but integrating smoothly into the narrative was a different story, unfortunately.

However, my biggest issue with Interstellar Megachef was the pacing. I’m used to some slowness when it’s cozy sci-fi that we’re talking about, but there were some parts of the novel that seriously dragged. We take so many detours into characters that aren’t central to the main plot, and they don’t serve much of a purpose—they did almost nothing to enrich the plot or the characters. They just seemed like vehicles for Lakshminarayan to do some even more unwieldy exposition for the world (like the three-paragraph-long dumps weren’t enough…). And it’s not as though the book was too short to cut some parts—my paperback edition is around 450 pages. Did we need a whole chapter about politicians negotiating with an alien species that we don’t even see afterwards? There was definitely some trimming needed. The issues with the pacing don’t end here; with all of these detours, it took away so much from the focal plot, making the development of the main characters feel rushed by comparison.

We took so much time on said detours that the romance between Saras and Serenity was rendered rushed and unbelievable. However, part of that was due to Lakshminarayan not giving them much chemistry at all from the start. I just wasn’t convinced of them being a couple, even towards the end of the book. They just didn’t seem compatible at all—and that’s not even counting some of the terrible things that Serenity does to “prank” Saraswati that realistically should’ve been dealbreakers. (Saras!! Get out of there, girl! You deserve better!) By the time they got together at the end of the novel, I was entirely unconvinced of them as a happy couple. It was just so forced from the start, like a bungled attempt at enemies-to-lovers banter.

All in all, a solid stab at a cozy space-opera, full of potent commentary and a vibrant world, but lacking in plot and some believability. 3.5 stars!

Interstellar Megachef is the first book in the Flavour Hacker series, followed by Intergalactic Feast. Lakshminarayan is also the author of The Ten Percent Thief.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (1/20/26) – Ancestral Night

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’d like to think that I’m a competent, capable adult, but a few months back, I picked up book three of this series without realizing that it was book three. Oops. All the same, I was motivated to read it, so I ended up getting a copy with some gift card money for Bookshop.org. Long haul as it was, I’m so glad I took the leap—Ancestral Night knocked me off my feet from the first few pages, and that momentum almost never stopped.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Ancestral Night (White Space, #1) – Elizabeth Bear

Haimey Dz and her small crew fly under the radar, making a living salvaging spaceships at the edge of the galaxy. But after a run-in with a gang of pirates and the discovery of a galaxy-changing revelation hidden inside a derelict spaceship, Haimey knows that she can’t let just anyone get ahold of this secret. Inside of the spaceship is illegal, ancient technology that could turn the tides for the worse if in the wrong hands—and judging from the spaceship, it was already in the wrong hands. Infected with a strange, ancient parasite and with pirates and the government hot on her heels, Haimey and her crew must get to the bottom of this mystery before this tech falls into the wrong hands.

TW/CW: descriptions of injury, violence, blood, emotional abuse, grief, suicide, mental health themes

I really need to put together some kind of list of sci-fi with cats on spaceships. There’s enough out there that it’s a Thing, and though it’s not enough to be a full-on trope, it never fails to make me smile, both as a sci-fi fan and a cat lover. Jonesy from Alien set the precedent, but I think it’s just that through line of historically having cats on boats for good luck that makes it so wonderful. Bushyasta and Mephistopheles deserve a spot in the sci-fi cats pantheon.

The world of Ancestral Night is truly something to behold. From the get-go, I got lost in it so easily—Bear’s prose kept me hooked for all 500+ pages. Part of that was just how intriguing the world was. Everything you could want in a space opera is here—mysterious, derelict spaceships with dark secrets, all manner of very alien aliens, two naughty cats on a spaceship, and perhaps best of all, eldritch, centuries-old seahorse creatures that live in the vacuum of space. Who could ask for more, really? There’s a dormant part of my high school brain that was obsessed with Aurora Rising that got beyond amped about salvaging spaceships, so that was an automatic win. I loved the Atavikha an unreasonable amount, as well as the aliens, but that’s not news at all. But I love the care that Bear took to make this world feel familiar in the right places, but appropriately alien where it was necessary. It’s a world where you can read George Eliot in your free time, but also come face to face with a creature so alien you barely have any appropriate human analogues for it. Balance is key, and Bear balanced it well.

With sci-fi like this, there’s a tendency to forget that no matter how much time you spend on worldbuilding, your universe still may feel like it isn’t lived in; everything’s too sterile and sleek, and you never get the sense that these strange planets and moons and whatnot are places where people spend their lives. Bear circumvented that issue from the get-go—everything about Ancestral Night felt lived-in, from the humble spaceships to the crowded space stations that Haimey and her friends navigated. Her spaceship wasn’t just a way to get around: it was a place where Haimey lounged around and read old books and petted her cats. Every corner that the crew explored was full of not just lore, but memories—everything in Ancestral Night had a story, and that did almost as much work as the worldbuilding in making sure that Bear’s world felt real.

Another aspect that made Ancestral Night feel real was Haimey herself. I’m all for representing marginalized people beyond stereotypes, but there’s something to be said for queer characters who are unapologetically messy and make decidedly terrible decisions—and Haimey makes terrible decisions aplenty. (I finished Pluribus not long ago, and I thought the same about Carol. I guess they’re both lesbians who fall for highly questionable pirate ladies, in the end.) If Ancestral Night was a TV show, I fully would’ve thrown something at the TV when she kissed Zanya. HAVE YOU LEARNED NOTHING? That being said, she felt so staggeringly real in the amalgamation of all her hopes and flaws. Even in this far-flung sci-fi world, this woman who reads ancient classics onboard her spaceship and dotes after her cats and falls for the messiest, scariest pirate women was so refreshingly real, and in spite of those flaws, ultimately lovable.

Ancestral Night is a space opera without question, but the worldbuilding will certainly appeal to the more hard science fiction-leaning readers for sure. Care for the worldbuilding obviously isn’t exclusive to hard sci-fi, especially as a cozy sci-fi/space opera/soft sci-fi defender and enjoyer, but not every space opera you come across goes into this much detail about accretion disks. Bear doesn’t shy away from getting esoteric with the worldbuilding, whether it’s in terms of astrophysics or politics. The politics form the core of the novel for me. My one major problem with the novel was that it had a tendency to go into Haimey’s philosophical musings about the nature of governments and freedom to a point where it was difficult to suspend my disbelief that nothing bad had happened to her while this was all going on, given everything else that happens throughout. (How did she not get conked on the head by pirates mid-digression during half of those scenes?) However, the nature of these digressions fed into the thematic elements of Ancestral Night really well, and I loved how they formed the backbone of Haimey’s character.

Even though not all of the philosophical musing landed, the setup of it, as well as the worldbuilding of Ancestral Night, set such a wonderful stage for Haimey’s character development. She’s caught between two very opposite poles: the Clade where she grew up, where her existence was placid but assimilated, and the pirates, whose messy anarchy is hyperindividualistic to a fault. Set against the backdrop of a flawed yet somewhat well-intentioned government, Haimey’s realization that her true self comes not from sacrificing her individuality or her obligation to do good for others in her community was so poignant. All her life, the notion of who she really is has been forced upon her from both sides, and yet what’s in her heart is where the two ideologies meet: retaining her uniqueness, but not kicking everybody else aside in the process. Haimey’s true spirit comes from how she decides her life should be, but also from the positive relationships around her. It was such a heartfelt message, and Haimey’s arc gave Ancestral Night a powerful emotional core.

All in all, a captivating space opera with real, lovable protagonists, a lived-in universe, and mystery that had me on the edge of my seat. 4.5 stars!

Ancestral Night is the first novel in the White Space series, followed by Machine and The Folded Sky. Bear is also the author of several other award-winning novels, including the New Amsterdam series (New Amsterdam, Seven for a Secret, The White City, Ad Eternum, and Garrett Investigates), the Jacob’s Ladder trilogy (Dust, Sanction, and Grail) and many others.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (10/21/25) – Failure to Communicate

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I found out about this book earlier this year while looking for more sci-fi with queer and/or disabled rep (as I always am). This book seemed to have nearly the perfect premise—I just can’t get over how genius it is to have an autistic protagonist who’s had to study human behavior her whole life study alien behavior as well in order to initiate First Contact. I ended up buying it for Bookshop.org’s recent Anti-Prime Sale, and I ate it up in a handful of days. Though not without its flaws, Failure to Communicate delivers almost completely on its remarkable premise, full of political intrigue, aliens, and heart.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Failure to Communicate (Xandri Corelel, #1) – Kaia Sønderby

Xandri Corelel has spent her life studying everyone around her, be they people or aliens. She’s been forced to, after centuries of eugenics has made her one of the few autistic humans left in the universe. She uses these skills as a Xeno-Liaison, negotiating with all sorts of aliens on behalf of the Starsystems Alliance. But when presented with a potentially hostile species possessing one of the most powerful weapons in the universe, Xandri faces the most difficult negotiation of her career—one that may chance the face of interspecies relations forever.

TW/CW: ableism, xenophobia (fictional), violence, blood, genocide themes, slavery, animal death

“Autistic person spends entire life trying to understand human behavior, doesn’t fully understand it, then spends her entire career understanding alien behavior instead” has to win the gold medal for the best sci-fi premise I’ve heard in years. (Also, felt.) And though not all of it delivered on said premise, Failure to Communicate is a hidden gem for sure.

Now, I’m reviewing a space opera book which features a whole host of alien species, which means it’s time for my obligatory creature design rant. The aliens in Failure to Communicate are…a complicated case, for sure. The majority of them are basically larger, intelligent versions of real-world animals (with some brief exceptions), but Sønderby is self-aware of the fact; for instance, the Psittacans (a name that Xandri gave the species and didn’t develop on its own, thankfully) basically look like giant parrots, but Xandri explains that in-universe, all of their parrot-like features aren’t anything like what we would call, say, feathers, but evolved in such a way that they looked exactly like Earth parrots independently of Earth. This same explanation is given to pretty much all of the other species in the book, which is a bit too convenient to apply to 90% of the aliens in the novel. As for the Anmerilli, though I’m not disparaging the cover artist in any way, I feel like the cover didn’t do justice to their more alien features—and man, was I relieved that these aliens weren’t just humans with extra steps. Well…if you boiled it down, they kind of were, but there were enough traits that they at least got to the level of a decently compelling Star Wars humanoid. (Also, Sønderby’s descriptions of the Zechak also made me picture them as genocidal Piglins, which was…uh, interesting, for sure.)

But what almost made up with that for me was the in-depth explanations of their respective cultures. In the end, Failure to Communicate wasn’t necessarily a book about biology—it was a book about politics, anthropology, culture, and communication. That, at least, was incredibly fleshed out and much more thoroughly thought-out—as it should’ve been. Dissecting some of the alien cultures was one of the best parts of the novel. These cultures and the conflicts between them formed the backbone of the novel. Though until the end, Failure to Communicate is somewhat light on action, Xandri’s experiences with navigating the intricacies of dozens of alien cultures was nothing short of compelling—Sønderby has the mind of an anthropologist, and there was truly no stone left unturned. I loved that she didn’t shy away from depicting the discomfort that comes with interacting with other cultures for the first time and having one’s own values brush up against theirs—it’s bound to happen with First Contact, and it’s bound to happen in a lot of novel, multicultural interactions. There were some places where I felt there needed to be more nuance (ex. the whole situation with the Zechak; yes, they’re genocidal, but it verged too close to “this entire species consists of genocidal, cold-blooded killers,” which Xandri tries to self-correct, but isn’t emphasized enough. I’d find that hard to believe), but overall, I loved Sønderby’s cultural explorations.

Sønderby’s commitment to not shying away from discomfort was one of the best parts of the novel, and that was made manifest in her main character, Xandri. There was a ton about her that I loved—her keen eye for cultural quirks, her inner monologues about the idiosyncrasies of the neurodivergent world, and her unflappable sense of justice. However, she was far from a perfect character—even being in a world populated with aliens, she harbored her own unconscious biases and prejudices, which she frequently had to come to terms with throughout her mission. She lashed out, she made rash decisions—she was imperfect. And though she was easy to root for, she had plenty of flaws, a balance that is difficult for any author to strike.

Failure to Communicate isn’t an action-heavy book, which I’m all for—waiter! More cozy sci-fi, please! However, I hesitate to call this novel “cozy,” especially considering the moment when shit hits the fan during the last third of it. Everything that happens then swiftly merits the “cozy” title being unceremoniously ripped off. Nonetheless, Sønderby takes some cues from cozy sci-fi’s best; I loved how she let the plot meander in the more interpersonal conflicts as opposed to the big and showy ones, and let the often messy character dynamics take the lead. The ending was also messy and bittersweet, but not in a way that lacks resolution—it is a resolution, just a very complicated one with quite a lot of uncomfortable implications for Xandri. Another example of Sønderby not shying away from making things complex. I do like that it ended on a very hopeful note, as much of a wreck as some things ended up being.

Being neurodivergent, the subject of disability was part of what drew me into Failure to Communicate. I’ve mentioned on here that I have SPD, which shares some similarities with autism, and I related to Xandri’s lifelong mission to study and understand the neurotypical people around her in order to try and piece together how their world worked. She deals with a hefty dose of ableism (both from well-intentioned and malicious people) throughout the book, which was quite rough, but I loved that she never compromised her pride in being autistic. Sønderby takes the trope of futuristic societies erasing disability as a sign of progress to task, which amplifies Xandri’s struggles as an autistic woman into the struggles of possibly being the only autistic person in the entire galaxy. Which…yeah. The ableism is inevitable at that point. The only disability aspect that I’m not so sure about was having the twist that Marco was also disabled (specifically, he has bipolar disorder); I do appreciate that Sønderby uses it as an opportunity to show that almost identical conditions can produce a hero as well as a villain and that the pressures of ableism drove him to betray the team, but I really don’t think the latter had enough nuance to it. Not that disabled characters can’t be evil, obviously, but it felt too much like making a mentally ill character automatically a villain simply because they’re mentally ill. I’m willing to give Sønderby the benefit of the doubt because she handled all of the other disability-related topics so wonderfully, but it still didn’t sit completely right with me.

Also, I just have to mention that this book is so, so queer. BLESS. First off, I loved that Xandri was bisexual, but I appreciated that she was polyamorous too—there’s hardly any depictions of polyamory out there that don’t make their characters the butt of a joke or a fetish, so this was a breath of fresh air, for sure.

All in all, a wholly unique space opera about communication, culture, and collision. 4 stars!

Failure to Communicate is the first novel in the Xandri Corelel series, followed by Tone of Voice and preceded by Testing Pandora, a prequel novella. Kaia Sønderby is also the author of the YA fantasy novel Damsel to the Rescue.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (7/29/25) – Redsight

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

As Disability Pride Month comes to a close, here’s one last book to finish off the month. This one has been on my TBR for at least a year, and it’s evaded me in the library thus far—thankfully, Barnes & Noble finally brought my chase to an end. Even though I’m growing a little weary of every new sci-fi that hinges on the promise of “incomprehensible space religion, woooooo,” Redsight provided a fascinating twist in the subgenre.

Enjoy this week’s review!

Redsight – Meredith Mooring

Korinna knows that she is doomed to a life of obscurity. Even though her being a Redseer gives her the power to manipulate space-time itself, she is the weakest of her order, and little mercy is shown to the weak. Resigning herself to a position navigating a warship for the treacherous Imperium, Korinna is at war with herself. But when the warship is boarded by strange pirates, Korinna learns that she has power beyond comprehension—all deliberately hidden. With her newfound abilities and a desire to uncover the secrets of the Goddesses that once ruled the galaxy, Korinna searches for answers, but what she finds may be more dangerous than she could have ever bargained for.

TW/CW: violence, gore, blood, death of children (off-page)

In the last six or seven years, I’ve seen a major trend in science fiction where the plot centers around an ancient, ominous Space Religion™️ (see: Gideon the Ninth, The First Sister, The Genesis of Misery). It’s a Thing. The usual suspects include an AI/vague cosmic entity deity, some form of cult, vague to overt references to Catholicism, and repression. I’m honestly fine with all of these things—in fact, having a cultish religion on an intergalactic scale is often a fascinating way to set up a story, and can be used to many ends, whether it’s deepening worldbuilding or critiquing organized religion in the real world, as it often does. My problem was that it’s everywhere. I feel like every other space opera I find is some kind of retelling of Joan of Arc or “what if God was real and it was a robot and the robot wanted to kill you?” Again, interesting once or twice, but after a point, they all start to blend together. On a personal level, I guess it’s partly because I don’t often connect as deeply to stories about religion/religious trauma, but I swear every other adult sci-fi book out there is like this.

Redsight is one of those books. However, it had enough different aspects that it was separated from the rest for me. It honestly veers into space fantasy at times, toeing the line between that and space opera expertly. Even though the redseers and all of the other witches in the universe had a slightly similar structure to some other books I’d read (spooky magic, incomprehensible goddesses trapped in tombs for thousands of years, etc.), it was Mooring’s exploration of how this insular cult of witches affected the outside world that stood out to me. The space-time manipulation is awesome, first off, but there’s also a host of space pirates, sprawling libraries, and transformative magic that goes…wrong. Snakes are involved. Also, Korinna and the others don’t exist in a vacuum—they’re a small part of a massive galaxy and are entangled in all manner of messy, manipulative politics throughout the universe. (There’s a strong Bene Gesserit vibe going on…I guess Dune might be to blame for the big spooky space religion trend?) They are outwardly very strange to others, and they don’t feel self-contained, as some other similar books are—they felt like a small part of a much more expansive world, which is what set it apart. Plus, I loved how it served as a critique of both that can come from organized religion AND the corruption that spreads into imperial politics—it’s all a great examination of systemic corruption, which I enjoyed thoroughly.

One of the more unique aspects of Redsight was how disability was handled. Up until we leave the Navitas, where all of the redseers are trained, pretty much all of the characters you meet are blind. All of the priests and priestesses of Vermicula are blind, and the way that Mooring shows us how it’s accommodated in the universe is fascinating. Through the power of redsight, they can sense most everything they need to sense through…well, manipulating the fabric of time and space, which is pretty badass in and of itself. But beyond that, I love how many intricacies to Korinna’s life are detailed. We see how she senses space around her with her blindness, how the Order of Vermicula produces special tactile books so that everyone can read the holy texts, and how she navigates the universe without being accommodated like she was within the Order. Knowing that Mooring herself is blind, I’m sure that she thought of everything when it came to how Korinna would navigate the universe, accommodations or not, and it showed through in her writing.

If you’re looking for a twisty book, then Redsight is the book for you! Even though I feel like I’m iffy when it comes to predicting twists, the ones in this novel had me constantly guessing. Mooring nails a critical combination of a very slow-burn first third of the novel, gradually building tension, while also throwing out a red herring where you think you know what the big mid-book reveal is, but…oh boy, I did not. (Red herrings, Redsight, red witches…lots of red in this book! Say, what’s that pooling on the floor?) In all seriousness, Mooring did an excellent job of creating tension and putting up all manner of red flags and misleading clues, and they came up organically: they were both the result of Korinna not knowing any better and the propaganda and narrative control that both the Order of Vermicula and the Imperium had over the knowledge that was passed onto her. It deepened the worldbuilding and the pacing of Redsight…for the most part.

All that being said, the ending was quite rushed. With as much buildup as this novel had, it was kind of bound to happen. All things considered, Redsight is Mooring’s debut novel, so I can let some of it go, because I enjoyed the majority of it. But there was just far too much crammed into the last 100 or so pages of the novel. Even with the theme of undoing systemic corruption, the speed at which it happened was truly just bonkers. For the truly mind-boggling, cosmic scale that everything in Redsight happened in, it seemed illogical that everything that happened in the novel would’ve been able to happen so quickly. After all of that, it was wrapped up strangely tightly—the loose ends were tied up basically because…the Goddesses can just do whatever, and it’s fine. I guess if you’re dealing with universe-creating Goddesses, by that logic, they can also clean up messy endings? It felt cheap. For the amount of time spent just on the buildup in the first third of the novel, everything was resolved far too quickly than seemed plausible, even with my suspension of disbelief.

All in all, a gripping and captivating—if a little messy—story of corruption and history, all set within the bounds of a boundless, magic-filled universe. 4 stars!

Redsight is a standalone, and Meredith Mooring’s debut novel.

Today’s song:

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!

Posted in Book Review Tuesday

Book Review Tuesday (4/8/25) – You Sexy Thing

Posted on by madeline @ The Bookish Mutant

Happy Tuesday, bibliophiles!

I’ll skip the prologue about how predictable it is that I picked up another queer space opera, and one with a ’70s music reference in the title at that. (SING IT WITH ME!! 🎶I BE-LIEVE IN MIRACLES—🎶) Nonetheless, I kept my expectations low, and I’m glad I did. Hilarious, heartbreaking, and heartwarming all at once, You Sexy Thing is the start of a true joy of a space opera trilogy!

Enjoy this week’s review!

You Sexy Thing – Cat Rambo

It’s been decades since Niko Larson and her fellow soldiers were able to break free of the Grand Military of the Hive Mind, where they were voiceless pawns in a never-ending war. Now, they run the Last Chance, a humble restaurant at the edge of TwiceFar Station, serving customers from all over the galaxy and from all walks of life. But when a mysterious, sentient ship destroys their livelihood before giving them a mysterious mission that they can’t refuse, Niko and her fellow chefs and restaurateurs must return to the fray they tried so desperately to escape—all with the heir to the Paxian Empire in tow.

TW/CW: sexual content, violence, blood, torture, kidnapping/imprisonment, war themes, abuse, genocide themes, death

The entire time I was reading this book, I’d click on the Kindle cover and I’d immediately start hearing “You Sexy Thing.” It just kept coming back, like I was trapped in a sitcom gag with a signature musical cue. Probably the intended effect. Not complaining, though. Absolute banger.

What an excellent space opera this was! You Sexy Thing scratched so many of my favorite sci-fi itches, and one of the biggest ones was the aliens and creatures! CREATURES! CREATURES! I’d place You Sexy Thing as bordering on space fantasy, though I won’t go into a whole digression on what counts/doesn’t count as sci-fi or SF; that was mainly because of the ghosts, some magic use, and were-creatures. However, Rambo did an excellent job with all of the alien denizens of this galaxy! There was a fantastic balance of humanoid and more unfamiliar creatures, all of whom were delightful. Skidoo was a personal favorite, as I’m particularly fond of any kind of cephalopod-inspired aliens, but Petalia, even if their name was rather on-the-nose (in line with a lot of the humor of the book), had some fascinating details about their culture and plant-based physiology. Also, there’s a chimp. Gotta have a chimp to round out the crew, amirite? Thankfully, this one doesn’t go the way of Nope, and Gio is a perfectly reasonable individual. There’s also lots of casual queerness abound, which is always a plus.

Another thing I love in space opera is a good motley crew, and You Sexy Thing had a stellar one! Rambo’s choice (apparently a challenge from fellow sci-fi author Ann Leckie, if the epigraph is anything to go by) to have You Sexy Thing in an omniscient, third-person POV was a great solution for covering the thoughts of all of the characters, discarding the need for separate chapters for everyone. All of them had distinct and lovable (mostly) personalities that made them butt heads with some characters and mesh with others, while still retaining a sense of familial bonding. Even outside of the restaurant setting, they retained a hilarious rapport that was a joy to read. Dabry’s musings on cooking were a delight, Atlanta’s trouble fitting in with the crew made for some lovely interactions, and Niko’s continuous struggles to face her past made for some of the novel’s most emotional points. You Sexy Thing balanced levity with emotional weight to great effect, and had a fantastic cast of characters to split the difference.

Amidst all of the humor, You Sexy Thing explores some quite complex, nuanced emotion, which I appreciated. I don’t think Rambo fully explored the implications of everything that had been done to Petalia, and how returning to Niko’s company affected them, but what we got was appropriately complicated, messy, and painful to read—exactly how it should have been, given the circumstances. This story never strays away from the cross-cultural complications of relationships, grief, and more, which added to how fleshed-out and unique all of the characters felt. By the end, all of the betrayals were appropriately punches to the gut, but ones that were cushioned by the found family dynamic that had been built up by the end.

Like the characters, the worldbuilding was an absolute treat! I will say, some of it was rather scattershot—we frequently get references to alien species and places that don’t even show up after they’re mentioned, but since this is a trilogy, I might be able to get past that, assuming that they come up later. I’m mostly accepting it, knowing that a) this is a huge galaxy, and b) that the world will presumably be expanded upon. It only really peeved me when they failed to explain much about what said alien races looked like. Other than that, Rambo’s worldbuilding was fascinating to pick apart! Sometimes, individual concepts are more interesting than the whole, and that aspect was made manifest by many of Rambo’s concepts, from married couples (or friends) being able to meld into a single being to the biotechnology that made You Sexy Thing (the sentient ship) possible. Through it all, I got the sense that Rambo’s galaxy was a distinctly lived-in one, which made my reading experience all the better.

My only real complaint, if any, was Tubal Last. You Sexy Thing had moments of being purposely cheesy, from the in-your-face ’70s music references to the on-the-nose character names; the latter felt like a nice, tongue-in-cheek reference to some of the characteristics of older sci-fi. That quality extended to the villain, who was cartoonishly evil. I don’t necessarily mind a comically evil villain every now and then, but in contrast to the complexity and nuance of many of the characters, Tubal Last felt out of place, just another obstacle (a formidable one, but a very one-note one) for the crew to overcome. He was over-the-top, but not in a way that necessarily served the story, other than some slightly unique motivations.

Overall, You Sexy Thing was a blast from start to finish, with a lively, energetic galaxy and a cast of lovable characters and daring hijinks to fill it with. 4.5 stars!

You Sexy Thing is the first book in Cat Rambo’s Disco Space Opera series, followed by Devil’s Gun and Rumor Has It. They are also the author of Neither Here Nor There, the Tabat Quartet (Beasts of Tabat, Hearts of Tabat, and Exiles of Tabat), And the Last Trump Shall Sound (with Harry Turtledove and James Morrow), and many other full-length works and short stories. Rambo is also the former president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).

Today’s song:

it’s taken me this long to finally listen to Jimmy’s Show all the way through…preparing for Jimmy’s Show 2? either way, it’s an absolute delight.

That’s it for this week’s Book Review Tuesday! Have a wonderful rest of your day, and take care of yourselves!