Primary Inversion by Catherine Asaro

[lightreads]

Primary Inversion by Catherine Asaro

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


Space empire ruled by royal telepaths something opposing empire of evil sexual sadists something soulbond something something boring space battles.



I don’t object to getting some romance in my scifi (or even some scifi in my romance, sometimes). It just helps if one or the other is, uh . . . good. This is terrible, amateurish scifi full of narcolepsy-inducing descriptions of how every stupid little piece of technology works. And it’s also a cardboard romance where all the actual authorial work and interesting character development is bypassed in favor of an instantaneous soulbond. So much easier, you know, when you can skip all the getting to know you, all the building attraction, the growing reader investment, all the self-discovery and important choices to be made, and instead stick in a few paragraphs about how their minds melded, amiright?



Vague gesture at bonus points for attempting to deal with post rape trauma, but just . . . no. This isn't even funny bad.





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Comments

[neotoma]

Oh god, I tried to read a couple of her books a few years ago, on the premise that "hey, female SF writer that I've never tried."

They were all so bad. The interesting cultural bits she had devised were all playing a distant second to plots that were all about who was having dreadfully boring sex with who. I never got the impression that any of the characters actually had any emotional reaction to their partners, or even enjoyed the sex really. It was like porn written by computer algorithms -- dull and plodding.

Frankly, if I was PWP, fanfic is the place I go for that, and I can usually find better character development to boot.

[lightreads]

"hey, female SF writer that I've never tried."

Right, that was exactly my motivation. And then . . . no.