Amateur detective Mallory Viridian’s talent for solving murders ruined her life on Earth and drove her to live on an alien space station, but her problems still follow her in this witty, self-aware novel that puts a speculative spin on murder mysteries, from the Hugo-nominated author of Six Wakes.
From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide.
But when the station agrees to …
Amateur detective Mallory Viridian’s talent for solving murders ruined her life on Earth and drove her to live on an alien space station, but her problems still follow her in this witty, self-aware novel that puts a speculative spin on murder mysteries, from the Hugo-nominated author of Six Wakes.
From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide.
But when the station agrees to allow additional human guests, Mallory knows the break from her peculiar reality is over. After the first Earth shuttle arrives, and aliens and humans alike begin to die, the station is thrown into peril. Stuck smack-dab in the middle of an extraterrestrial whodunit, and wondering how in the world this keeps happening to her anyway, Mallory has to solve the crime—and fast—or the list of victims could grow to include everyone on board….
well... it starts as a fun scifi read, then goes on to mix in drama and take itself a little too serious for where it was heading in the beginning, then finishes in a nice if not very elegant twist. overall, not a bad young adult scifi read.
I'm going to start from this premise: If they had properly marketed this book as a sci-fi thriller or an action sci-fi or something, I probably would have fewer problems with it. I probably wouldn't have spent 300+ pages trying to keep track of clues (that didn't exist) so that I could solve a mystery (that wasn't really there); I would've just gone with the flow, as I did for the remainder of the book. It got better (not good) once I did that, but the marketing was literally the worst part because it established incorrect assumptions and expectations. They told me it was a sci-fi mystery/detective novel... I literally got zero of one of those genres, despite all claims to the contrary (by people who I'm guessing didn't even read the book or have no concept of what makes a mystery).
Beyond that, while it would've been a more …
I'm going to start from this premise: If they had properly marketed this book as a sci-fi thriller or an action sci-fi or something, I probably would have fewer problems with it. I probably wouldn't have spent 300+ pages trying to keep track of clues (that didn't exist) so that I could solve a mystery (that wasn't really there); I would've just gone with the flow, as I did for the remainder of the book. It got better (not good) once I did that, but the marketing was literally the worst part because it established incorrect assumptions and expectations. They told me it was a sci-fi mystery/detective novel... I literally got zero of one of those genres, despite all claims to the contrary (by people who I'm guessing didn't even read the book or have no concept of what makes a mystery).
Beyond that, while it would've been a more tolerable read had they actually tried to set expectations in a better way, it still wasn't good. So much of it is peak white liberal woman writing diversity, not knowing shit about anyone or anything. The aliens are treated very similarly to how we (predominantly but not limited to English-speakers) treat East Asians with regards to their names; I seriously couldn't get that out of my head, especially as the explanation for why there are aliens named Tina, Ferdinand, Stephanie, Algernon and the like... is because it's the "closest approximation in our language" (or some similar rubbish). And all the random social justice throws? A psychiatrist telling a patient off for using the word crazy because it's ableist, the weird handling of race and poking at racist characters (with the single Korean character needing a non-Korean man to tell her what is part of Korean culture because she's "so disconnected")... It kept happening in so many ways that I had to roll my eyes at how White Liberal Lady this book genuinely is.
Along with that, there is very little creativity in the handling of non-human species, even when they are vaguely interesting. The Sundry are a hivemind (but they still act like humans despite being a bunch of insect-like sentients); the Gneiss are rock people (who are still more culturally like humans despite... being fucking rock people). The qualities that make aliens... alien? Aren't really there and are... quite superficial. There's very little deviation based on perspective.
The other thing that ruins this book is the timeline. The timeline is atrocious and difficult to follow, which I'm guessing is how so many people wrongly categorised this as "mystery." A book being obtuse for no real reason and difficult to follow does not... make it a mystery. It makes it annoying. So many chapters could've been pulled from where they were and re-slotted somewhere else to make things coherent, especially when it was never clear what time or place you were in until you were at least half a page into a chapter. Or section, actually! Sometimes the middle of chapters just would suddenly jump without any indication anywhere of what was going on.
My final gripe is with the number of references to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I have no problem with references, but these were at one point so excessive and frequent that it really just felt like "Did you get it? Did you? Did you see it? Get that one? What about that one?!" I wanted to scream because it honestly just made me angry at how many there were. I'm fine with references when they're utilised well, but this was just the equivalent of smashing me in the face with a brick for at least the first half of the book. Annoying as hell.
I wouldn't recommend this, and I have zero desire to read anything else in this series... especially because it's not a mystery like it keeps trying to claim.
This starts off fairly well, but along the way gets messier and messier with more characters and confusing plots and motivation and in the end there's a big poorly described fight scene.
This book was kind of a mess. I love sci-fi, and the premise of a murder mystery aboard a literal space station had me all sorts of curious and cautiously excited. I guess I was picturing a Holmes-ian mystery in a Deep Space Nine or Babylon 5 episode when I picked this up. This was....definitely not that.Mallory has lived her life constantly on the run from murders that happen around her. From a young age, she's borne witness to murder after murder from people around her, and she's had enough. First contact with aliens has come and gone, and Mallory makes her destination the one place humans can't go--Station Eternity. But even after being there doesn't save her when the sentient station starts accepting more humans, and all her past trauma comes back with a vengeance.This was an incredibly convoluted story, made …
"Your princess is here, and she's fucking metal!"
This book was kind of a mess. I love sci-fi, and the premise of a murder mystery aboard a literal space station had me all sorts of curious and cautiously excited. I guess I was picturing a Holmes-ian mystery in a Deep Space Nine or Babylon 5 episode when I picked this up. This was....definitely not that.Mallory has lived her life constantly on the run from murders that happen around her. From a young age, she's borne witness to murder after murder from people around her, and she's had enough. First contact with aliens has come and gone, and Mallory makes her destination the one place humans can't go--Station Eternity. But even after being there doesn't save her when the sentient station starts accepting more humans, and all her past trauma comes back with a vengeance.This was an incredibly convoluted story, made worse with the inclusion of the backstories of nearly everybody around her. Full chapters are dedicated to how a character got to the station, and not all of it was relevant. There was also lots of infodumps disguised as dialogue which really dragged things out in places.I also felt like the later scenes weren't exactly coherent in what they were supposed to get across. (subplot/backup character spoilers)Particularly where it involved the Gneiss's...Gneissi? Gneissus? Stephanie, Tina, and Ferdinand. Late in the book we get a plot dump about these rock-like aliens turning into...space ships and things? And there's this sideplot involving Stephanie and her grandfather/ship being at odds with one another that comes to a head in the middle of the murder investigation plot that felt unnecessary. Things just felt incredibly chaotic near the end.Finally, (end spoilers here) there just wasn't a lot of murder investigation. Mallory clearly has been through this before and a lot is made of her investigatory skills early on, but the only real investigation she does is get stung by a hornet and realize her aunt is the murderer. Everything else is just a lot of chaotic flailing and dialogue.So, I guess, in short, this wasn't exactly what I was looking for. I thought the premise was interesting and potentially rewarding, but we didn't get any of that delicious payoff. Kind of a letdown, honestly.
After Playing for Keeps and Six Wakes, this is my third book by Mur, and I loved it just as much. The symbiotic aliens, the human characters, the setting and the murder mystery all hit a variety of my buttons. Did I read that this is going to be a series? Then I will definitely read the next books, as well as any others she's written that I can get my hands on over here.
This was first contact meets reluctant girl detective and was highly entertaining. Only 4 stars because I do feel the ending got away from the author a little but that would be my only quibble with this book. I don't really have much more to say about it apart from that I do recommend and I did enjoy.
I really enjoyed this! of course, I am also a JMS fan, so "Babylon 5 meets Murder She Wrote" is a great hook for me.
I admit to a moment of dismay when the narration shifted from Mallory to others, but in light of [spoiler] it makes a certain amount of sense. I guessed 1/2 of the big reveal, but the other half... wow! :D