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The Blighted Stars by Megan E. O'keefe
May. 22nd, 2024 03:03 pmThe Blighted Stars
3/5. Start of a scifi trilogy set in a world where you can print yourself a new body, but there’s all sorts of fucky quantum entanglement stuff that happens with your memories/experiences across interstellar distances. Also, the somewhat estranged son of one of the powerful merchant families keeping humanity afloat ends up stranded on a planet infested with alien fungus with a terrorist posing as his body guard.
A lot of pieces here that I’m into, but it didn’t gel. There’s lots of chewy emotional implications of the worldbuilding here, but the whole story – corporate sabotage stuff and alien intelligence stuff and family drama stuff and all of it – stands or falls on how hard you buy into the central romance. I wanted to be into it – he’s a nerdy transboy who thinks he’s unpacked his privilege but he’s wrong, she’s a traumatized revolutionary driven to violence. But I missed some vital step and, also, the writing is pretty clumsy when it comes to their attraction. They end up mentally gushing over each other, and it’s one of those situations where I kind of suck my breath between my teeth, because infatuation is like that, yes, but come on, at a certain point, you’re just failing to see each other clearly at all for the complex, flawed people you are.
Anyway, read if you like creepy alien fungus stuff and family politics stuff and fucky multiple bodies stuff, but this just didn’t quite get over the hump for me.
Content notes: Violence, imprisonment, references to torture, lots of fungus and alien mind control stuff.
3/5. Start of a scifi trilogy set in a world where you can print yourself a new body, but there’s all sorts of fucky quantum entanglement stuff that happens with your memories/experiences across interstellar distances. Also, the somewhat estranged son of one of the powerful merchant families keeping humanity afloat ends up stranded on a planet infested with alien fungus with a terrorist posing as his body guard.
A lot of pieces here that I’m into, but it didn’t gel. There’s lots of chewy emotional implications of the worldbuilding here, but the whole story – corporate sabotage stuff and alien intelligence stuff and family drama stuff and all of it – stands or falls on how hard you buy into the central romance. I wanted to be into it – he’s a nerdy transboy who thinks he’s unpacked his privilege but he’s wrong, she’s a traumatized revolutionary driven to violence. But I missed some vital step and, also, the writing is pretty clumsy when it comes to their attraction. They end up mentally gushing over each other, and it’s one of those situations where I kind of suck my breath between my teeth, because infatuation is like that, yes, but come on, at a certain point, you’re just failing to see each other clearly at all for the complex, flawed people you are.
Anyway, read if you like creepy alien fungus stuff and family politics stuff and fucky multiple bodies stuff, but this just didn’t quite get over the hump for me.
Content notes: Violence, imprisonment, references to torture, lots of fungus and alien mind control stuff.
