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The Stardust Grail by Yume Kitasei
Oct. 11th, 2024 02:42 pmThe Stardust Grail
3/5. Scifi about an art thief who goes back to grad school but then comes out of retirement for the sake of scoring the alien artifact that eluded her before, but it’s more complicated than that.
Started out interesting, went steadily downhill. Her work gets called “literary,” which as usual seems to be purely about vibes. As in, the worldbuilding here is all vibes (I’m pretty sure that’s what literary means when it’s scifi). There’s just a lot of a lot going on here, some of it quite surreal like the virus our protagonist got as a child which makes her dream about the future. Sure, okay, but the whole book is a dozen threads like that which don’t come together.
Maybe sophomore slumpy? Her debut got a lot of buzz last year, but this felt over-complicated and underbaked.
3/5. Scifi about an art thief who goes back to grad school but then comes out of retirement for the sake of scoring the alien artifact that eluded her before, but it’s more complicated than that.
Started out interesting, went steadily downhill. Her work gets called “literary,” which as usual seems to be purely about vibes. As in, the worldbuilding here is all vibes (I’m pretty sure that’s what literary means when it’s scifi). There’s just a lot of a lot going on here, some of it quite surreal like the virus our protagonist got as a child which makes her dream about the future. Sure, okay, but the whole book is a dozen threads like that which don’t come together.
Maybe sophomore slumpy? Her debut got a lot of buzz last year, but this felt over-complicated and underbaked.