Space Opera by Catherynne Valente
Jun. 16th, 2019 06:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightreadsSpace Opera
3/5. The one where two-thirds of an aging has-been glam rock band are sent to represent Earth in space Eurovision where the stakes are the survival of humanity.
Wow this was divisive among my friends. Personally, I found it a pleasant palate cleanser, but . . . I'm not sure it actually wanted to be a novel as opposed to a novella. Yeah, yeah, publishing pressures. But if you take out 2/3 of the explanations of alien cultures (which all blend together into a soup of 'isn't life weird') and 1/3 of the Douglas Adamsy / Terry Pratchettish asides (not all of which are really in Valente's control), this would be a good novella. Tighter, funnier, with its heart – the shrieky bit of the song, as the book itself explains – easier to find amongst all the glitter.
It's a good heart, is the thing. Tired and sad and lost, but still able to laugh at despair. But it needed more room to breathe, which paradoxically I think it would get in a shorter book.
3/5. The one where two-thirds of an aging has-been glam rock band are sent to represent Earth in space Eurovision where the stakes are the survival of humanity.
Wow this was divisive among my friends. Personally, I found it a pleasant palate cleanser, but . . . I'm not sure it actually wanted to be a novel as opposed to a novella. Yeah, yeah, publishing pressures. But if you take out 2/3 of the explanations of alien cultures (which all blend together into a soup of 'isn't life weird') and 1/3 of the Douglas Adamsy / Terry Pratchettish asides (not all of which are really in Valente's control), this would be a good novella. Tighter, funnier, with its heart – the shrieky bit of the song, as the book itself explains – easier to find amongst all the glitter.
It's a good heart, is the thing. Tired and sad and lost, but still able to laugh at despair. But it needed more room to breathe, which paradoxically I think it would get in a shorter book.