Space Opera

, #1

Softcover, 294 pages

English language

Published Dec. 18, 2018 by Saga Press.

ISBN:
978-1-4814-9750-3
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4 stars (41 reviews)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy meets the joy and glamour of Eurovision in bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente's science fiction spectacle, where sentient races compete for glory in a galactic musical contest . . . and the stakes are as high as the fate of planet Earth.

A century ago, the Sentience Wars tore the galaxy apart and nearly ended the entire concept of intelligent space-faring life. In the aftermath, a curious tradition was invented—something to cheer up everyone who was left and bring the shattered worlds together in the spirit of peace, unity, and understanding.

Once every cycle, the great galactic civilizations gather for the Metagalactic Grand Prix—part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past. Species far and wide compete in feats of song, dance and/or whatever facsimile of these can be performed by various creatures who may …

2 editions

reviewed Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente (Space Opera, #1)

A mixed bag

3 stars

As other reviews stated, this book is in the style of Douglas Adams. The main idea was what convinced me to read this book, but the story was a bit light. The chapters switched between story and background and the background chapters felt like they were written to be as wordy as possible for the sake to be as wordy as possible, a bit like this sentence. Also, the end was a bit too much Deus Ex Machina, which as a bit meh compared to the buildup.

I did enjoy the story for all its imperfections, but would not be quick to recommend it to others.

Review of 'Space Opera' on 'Storygraph'

2 stars

An exhausting, hyperactive attempt to capture the magic of Douglas Adams, one of my favourite authors, that utterly fails for me. I was confident after a couple of pages that I wouldn't enjoy it, but persevered since it was such an easy read. I regret giving it my time. Half an extra star for being inventive and very occasionally amusing or slightly moving.

Review of 'Space Opera' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

Pretty sure this one is a DNF. It does have very funny moments that I enjoyed (and even laughed out loud at), but the whole rhythm is off for me - it reads like Douglas Adams on cocaine and verbosity cranked to 11. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, mind you - but for me, it's just too much.

Review of 'Space Opera' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

This book wasn't very good, and I would have quit about 30 minutes into it if I had had the foresight to bring more than one audio book on my Christmas vacation.As it was, I actually hate-listened all the way to the end.

It appears that the author tried to approximate the style of Douglas Adams, but forgot that there as more to the Hitchhiker's Guide than the endless footnotes of unnecessary exposition, and that the exposition needs to be there for a reason, and picked up on at a later point. And you can't have an entire book with characters modeled after Zaphod - you need an Arthur Dent as your straight man. What little story there is, is wilfully absurd, without ever reaching genuinely funny, there's not a single quotable paragraph, and in the end, everything resolves in a puff of deus ex machina.

If only I remembered …

Review of 'Space Opera' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

The story itself is quote easy to follow: a washed up, broken up band is asked to participate in the Metagalactic Grand Prix, the Universe version of the Eurovision Song Contest. The catch? If they lose, their whole species is incinerated.

Space Opera is written extremely dense. The back and forth between the plot and the past contests, the other participants, and the history of the whole arrangement makes it a rich world with a lot of different species and places to keep in mind. You definitely need to focus, or you'll miss all the little details.

Having only just started reading Valente's works, I'm once more surprised by her flexibility in style. This reads different than anything I have previously read of hers.

Review of 'Space Opera' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This book was fantastic and funny and brilliant.

Basically, it's Aliens make themselves known to humanity and in order to not die in a horrific blaze of non-sentience, humanity must place better than last in Eurovision IN SPACE. Oh, and most everyone from the list of recommended representatives is dead so it's down to Decibel Jones, or as I liked to call him while reading it "Freddie-Bowie-acci" a glam-rock singer who was the big thing for all of 15 minutes years ago. And hasn't spoken to one of his band mates in years. And the other band mate is dead. So yeah, off to a great start.

The book owes a lot of inspiration to Douglas Adams in terms of off the wall world building and absurdism in science fiction. If you like Hitchhiker's, you'll probably enjoy this.

Review of 'Space Opera' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I imagine Catherynne Valente thought to herself...

I think I'll write something sort of like Douglas Adams, but with MORE!



If you throw a lot of words at me, all trying to be super funny, a few of them will land. But when you do it in every single sentence with no guidance at all from an actual plot or characters, it becomes exhausting. So exhausting, in fact, that I stopped reading about 2/3rds of the way through.

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