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celiapowell's review against another edition
4.0
This book is so much fun - it's amusing, very enjoyably weird, and I loved the world-building. I'm sad it's the only book Kimberling seems to have written in this setting, but I'm going to check out her other work.
sherwoodreads's review against another edition
This science fiction novel features the most interesting and different yet appealing aliens I've read about since Michael Jasper's Wannoshay*. Gaia Jones is a loner after a failed marriage; her family relations aren't very good either, so she transfers to the A-Ki Station, which has a human section built by the mysterious amphibious, hermaphroditic Kishocha. Only one of the Kishocha has wanted to interact with the humans, the charismatic Kenjan, who swiftly becomes a popular celebrity.
Gaia is interested in the aliens, but she mostly wants to get her tiny snack bar going. Unfortunately, she couldn't afford space on the main concourse. She's stuck in a crummy area, directly across from an aggressive competitor; she doesn't like the natty Fitzpatrick, special assistant to the ultra efficient ambassador Burns. Fitzpatrick may be natty and have a perfect haircut, but he called Gaia's stand "crappy shack" which she will not forgive.
Then one day an alien appears, obviously in deep distress. It's the famous Kenjan! It begs for her protection, and she agrees. She tries to help it, even when the alien's body secretions begin burning and even melting her skin. They both collapse, but not before it releases a mysterious object.
A few weeks later she wakens, still not up to par, and missing her hands. Kenjan's consort, the powerful Oziru, wants to interview her. Since no human has ever even seen Oziru, the ambassador and Fitzpatrick are on hand, worried. Gaia discovers that the protection she offered means no less than tending the shrine to the departed Kenjan for ever. As Oziru is all-powerful, and the entire station runs at its command, this is non-negotiable. However Gaia does her best to negotiate, and gains a better setup for Happy Snak, which she can still run. Downside? Her new bedroom opens directly into the shrine, which smells weird and has threatening Kishochu guards on duty. Also, since the servant Wave Walker is rejected by Kenjan's "ghost" she ends up taking it on. She is utterly bewildered by the aliens' actions and customs--nothing makes any sense.
Gaia also gains a couple of bored middle-aged people who had volunteered to be friendly interfaces between aliens and humans, but the aliens totally avoided them. So they end up working at Happy Snak, along with Wave.
When Wave gets on the scene, the book takes off. Kemberling manages that difficult task of swooping between funny and genuinely tense, pragmatic and poignant, and even awe-inspiring. The friendship between Gaia (who has issues getting close to anyone) and Wave, as they try to find a way to fit one another's lives, makes the book.
*I'm not fond of human-eating monster aliens, or aphorism-spouting "wise" ones.
Gaia is interested in the aliens, but she mostly wants to get her tiny snack bar going. Unfortunately, she couldn't afford space on the main concourse. She's stuck in a crummy area, directly across from an aggressive competitor; she doesn't like the natty Fitzpatrick, special assistant to the ultra efficient ambassador Burns. Fitzpatrick may be natty and have a perfect haircut, but he called Gaia's stand "crappy shack" which she will not forgive.
Then one day an alien appears, obviously in deep distress. It's the famous Kenjan! It begs for her protection, and she agrees. She tries to help it, even when the alien's body secretions begin burning and even melting her skin. They both collapse, but not before it releases a mysterious object.
A few weeks later she wakens, still not up to par, and missing her hands. Kenjan's consort, the powerful Oziru, wants to interview her. Since no human has ever even seen Oziru, the ambassador and Fitzpatrick are on hand, worried. Gaia discovers that the protection she offered means no less than tending the shrine to the departed Kenjan for ever. As Oziru is all-powerful, and the entire station runs at its command, this is non-negotiable. However Gaia does her best to negotiate, and gains a better setup for Happy Snak, which she can still run. Downside? Her new bedroom opens directly into the shrine, which smells weird and has threatening Kishochu guards on duty. Also, since the servant Wave Walker is rejected by Kenjan's "ghost" she ends up taking it on. She is utterly bewildered by the aliens' actions and customs--nothing makes any sense.
Gaia also gains a couple of bored middle-aged people who had volunteered to be friendly interfaces between aliens and humans, but the aliens totally avoided them. So they end up working at Happy Snak, along with Wave.
When Wave gets on the scene, the book takes off. Kemberling manages that difficult task of swooping between funny and genuinely tense, pragmatic and poignant, and even awe-inspiring. The friendship between Gaia (who has issues getting close to anyone) and Wave, as they try to find a way to fit one another's lives, makes the book.
*I'm not fond of human-eating monster aliens, or aphorism-spouting "wise" ones.
tregina's review against another edition
4.0
I shall say more about this later, but for the moment: delightful! I can't believe I sat on this for as long as I did before finally reading.
hellsfire's review against another edition
2.0
Happy Snak is one weird book. It's about aliens and takes place on their space station of sorts. It stars Gaia, which is ironic because they never leave the ship, and she owns a snack place called Happy Snak. Her life turns upside down when an important alien "dies" and she must guard over his body.
One of the reasons I bought it was because of its weirdness. The aliens are unusual and there's even alien sex in here. However, it doesn't flow as well as I would like.
While I think Gaia is a perfectly developed character for who she is, no one else seems to be. The aliens just don't understand humans even though they let them live and work on their ship. The other humans don't get enough screen time to get developed.
Since the characters didn't grab me I expect the uniqueness of the aliens to. The problem is that they were too alien and acted rather naively.
If Happy Snak were a TV show or a movie, I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more than I did.
One of the reasons I bought it was because of its weirdness. The aliens are unusual and there's even alien sex in here. However, it doesn't flow as well as I would like.
While I think Gaia is a perfectly developed character for who she is, no one else seems to be. The aliens just don't understand humans even though they let them live and work on their ship. The other humans don't get enough screen time to get developed.
Since the characters didn't grab me I expect the uniqueness of the aliens to. The problem is that they were too alien and acted rather naively.
If Happy Snak were a TV show or a movie, I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more than I did.
sashahc's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
It’s a fun sci-fi cozy called “Happy Snak” by Nicole Kimberling. The basic premise is Becky Chambers x Legends and Lattes. A cranky fast food joint owner on a space station gets unwillingly caught up in alien politics that she doesn’t understand when all she wants to do is repair her deep fryer and sell tasty things. Bonus points for the repeated idea that “Snacks are freedom!” Quirky, great world building, and overall fun.
wunder's review against another edition
5.0
This is just delightful and exactly what I needed right now. Gaia's voice is true and the aliens are fascinating. The snacks are good, too.
nickyp's review against another edition
5.0
Fun, funny, thought-full read. I loved how hard Gaia works, and how seriously she takes her calling — making people happy and more free through snacks! The aliens felt truly alien yet true, and it was fun watching her thoughts change to match their syntax and vocabulary. I read this cold, not knowing anything about it or the author, and it was a surprise and a delight. When I needed something to just take me away from the news of the day this week, I picked it up again—and it worked again.
familiar_diversions's review against another edition
5.0
[This is an old review I'm just now adding to GR.]
I bought this book on a whim almost a year ago. There was some kind of Samhain sale, I wanted to beef up my sci-fi e-book collection, and this sounded like quirky fun.
Ever since her divorce, Gaia has been focused on one thing and one thing only: making her space station snack bar a success. Gaia, her hamster, and Happy Snak are managing to get by, until the alien Kenjan dies on the floor of Happy Snak one morning. The human portion of the A-Ki space station exists only as long as the Kishocha want it there, and Kenjan was the only Kishocha at all interested in interacting with humans. Kenjan's death puts the space station's human population at serious risk. Luckily, Kenjan chose Gaia as its guardian before it died, meaning that Gaia is now the single most important human on the A-Ki space station. Unfortunately for Gaia, this means that she has to live in a snack bar/shrine for the rest of her life, feeding and protecting Kenjan's ghost so that the rest of the humans on the space station can continue to live.
I wasn't sure, going in, what sort of story this was. A sci-fi murder mystery? Sci-fi romance? What it mostly turned out to be was a “first contact” story. Despite their best efforts, very few humans had managed to get the Kishocha to say much about themselves prior to Kenjan dying on Happy Snak's floor. When she was made the protector of Kenjan's ghost, Gaia became humanity's single best source of information on the Kishocha.
Some of Gaia's interactions with the Kishocha were ridiculous and hilarious. Gaia, very much a capitalist, considered the Kishocha a vast untapped market for her snack bar, but what do you do with an alien race that has no concept of money? In Gaia's case, you figure out what could be used as money instead, and then auction that stuff off to scientists for as much as possible. While Coke and Pepsi tasted like poison to the Kishocha, Orange dye number 17 quickly became their most favorite drink. Wave Walker, Kenjan's former slave and therefore Gaia's newest employee, worked hard at coming up with a menu that would satisfy Kishocha tastes. Which mostly meant live, stunned seafood.
I loved Wave. It (all the aliens were hermaphrodites) was so earnest and adorable. I loved how it gradually became more accustomed to and comfortable with the freedoms Gaia introduced it to. I don't think Gaia always realized what she was doing, but the end result was a stronger, braver Wave, who was more willing to stand up for itself and its loved ones.
Wave was also a bit of a trap, one that both Gaia and I fell into. Wave was so adorable that it was easy to forget that it was actually an adult member of a not always very friendly alien race. One minute I'd be laughing as Wave and Gaia got drunk or talked about Kishocha vs. human reproduction, and the next I'd be gasping as someone got beheaded.
Although I was a little horrified at how unconcerned Gaia seemed to be about the possibility that she might accidentally poison one of the Kishocha (I mean, how was she to know that Orange number 17 wasn't a deadly, slow-acting poison to them?), I absolutely loved the alien culture aspects of this book. The Kishocha had different castes, living technology (which was part of the caste system), and very different ideas about such concepts as death and free will. Their anatomy and physiology was different - for example, their genital area ("pit") was located in the base of their throats. There was some on-page alien sex, and it reminded me a bit of a mauling.
Every time Gaia and I thought we finally knew everything we needed to know about the Kishocha, we learned we were wrong. It was great. Well, for me anyway. For Gaia, learning new things about the Kishocha often meant pain, terror, crying, and phone calls to Fitzpatrick, the A-Ki space station ambassador's special assistant.
There were a couple things I didn't like about this book. One, I couldn't understand why hardly anyone was interested in how and why Kenjan died. I suppose Fitzpatrick didn't really care, as long as humans got to stay on the space station, but I'd have expected Gaia to wonder about Kenjan's death more than she did. Two, the human characters were pretty flat. There were four of them – five, if you count Emily Blum, the ambassador, but she was barely in the book after Gaia became Kenjan's guardian.
Here is just about everything I know about the book's human characters: Cheryl and Roy were a married couple, were Peace Corps volunteers who worked at Happy Snak for lack of anything better to do, and liked to bicker a lot. Fitzpatrick was handsome and divorced. Gaia was divorced, had diving experience, owned a hamster, and had no friends. Oh, and her mother lived back on Earth.
Considering that Gaia was the book's main character, I felt like I should have gotten to know her better. I don't think she ever once mentioned the name of her ex-husband, she frequently forgot about her hamster (the only reason it survived to the end of the book was because Wave remembered to feed it for her), and she had no life outside of running Happy Snak. Becoming Kenjan's guardian should have restricted her social circle. Instead, because she'd previously had no one, it expanded it. There were hints that maybe Gaia was growing as a person throughout the book, but I don't think Kimberling was as successful with that as she was with the alien culture stuff. Although I could see it coming, I cringed a little when Gaia and Fitzpatrick ended up sleeping together (off-page). Gaia didn't seem quite ready for a social life yet (she wasn't), and I couldn't help but wonder if Fitzpatrick was sleeping with her to keep her happy and complacent in her role as the space station's single most important human.
Overall, despite my issues with the book's human characters, I really enjoyed this and am a little sad Kimberling doesn't appear to have written anything else about the Kishocha.
(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
I bought this book on a whim almost a year ago. There was some kind of Samhain sale, I wanted to beef up my sci-fi e-book collection, and this sounded like quirky fun.
Ever since her divorce, Gaia has been focused on one thing and one thing only: making her space station snack bar a success. Gaia, her hamster, and Happy Snak are managing to get by, until the alien Kenjan dies on the floor of Happy Snak one morning. The human portion of the A-Ki space station exists only as long as the Kishocha want it there, and Kenjan was the only Kishocha at all interested in interacting with humans. Kenjan's death puts the space station's human population at serious risk. Luckily, Kenjan chose Gaia as its guardian before it died, meaning that Gaia is now the single most important human on the A-Ki space station. Unfortunately for Gaia, this means that she has to live in a snack bar/shrine for the rest of her life, feeding and protecting Kenjan's ghost so that the rest of the humans on the space station can continue to live.
I wasn't sure, going in, what sort of story this was. A sci-fi murder mystery? Sci-fi romance? What it mostly turned out to be was a “first contact” story. Despite their best efforts, very few humans had managed to get the Kishocha to say much about themselves prior to Kenjan dying on Happy Snak's floor. When she was made the protector of Kenjan's ghost, Gaia became humanity's single best source of information on the Kishocha.
Some of Gaia's interactions with the Kishocha were ridiculous and hilarious. Gaia, very much a capitalist, considered the Kishocha a vast untapped market for her snack bar, but what do you do with an alien race that has no concept of money? In Gaia's case, you figure out what could be used as money instead, and then auction that stuff off to scientists for as much as possible. While Coke and Pepsi tasted like poison to the Kishocha, Orange dye number 17 quickly became their most favorite drink. Wave Walker, Kenjan's former slave and therefore Gaia's newest employee, worked hard at coming up with a menu that would satisfy Kishocha tastes. Which mostly meant live, stunned seafood.
I loved Wave. It (all the aliens were hermaphrodites) was so earnest and adorable. I loved how it gradually became more accustomed to and comfortable with the freedoms Gaia introduced it to. I don't think Gaia always realized what she was doing, but the end result was a stronger, braver Wave, who was more willing to stand up for itself and its loved ones.
Wave was also a bit of a trap, one that both Gaia and I fell into. Wave was so adorable that it was easy to forget that it was actually an adult member of a not always very friendly alien race. One minute I'd be laughing as Wave and Gaia got drunk or talked about Kishocha vs. human reproduction, and the next I'd be gasping as someone got beheaded.
Although I was a little horrified at how unconcerned Gaia seemed to be about the possibility that she might accidentally poison one of the Kishocha (I mean, how was she to know that Orange number 17 wasn't a deadly, slow-acting poison to them?), I absolutely loved the alien culture aspects of this book. The Kishocha had different castes, living technology (which was part of the caste system), and very different ideas about such concepts as death and free will. Their anatomy and physiology was different - for example, their genital area ("pit") was located in the base of their throats. There was some on-page alien sex, and it reminded me a bit of a mauling.
Every time Gaia and I thought we finally knew everything we needed to know about the Kishocha, we learned we were wrong. It was great. Well, for me anyway. For Gaia, learning new things about the Kishocha often meant pain, terror, crying, and phone calls to Fitzpatrick, the A-Ki space station ambassador's special assistant.
There were a couple things I didn't like about this book. One, I couldn't understand why hardly anyone was interested in how and why Kenjan died. I suppose Fitzpatrick didn't really care, as long as humans got to stay on the space station, but I'd have expected Gaia to wonder about Kenjan's death more than she did. Two, the human characters were pretty flat. There were four of them – five, if you count Emily Blum, the ambassador, but she was barely in the book after Gaia became Kenjan's guardian.
Here is just about everything I know about the book's human characters: Cheryl and Roy were a married couple, were Peace Corps volunteers who worked at Happy Snak for lack of anything better to do, and liked to bicker a lot. Fitzpatrick was handsome and divorced. Gaia was divorced, had diving experience, owned a hamster, and had no friends. Oh, and her mother lived back on Earth.
Considering that Gaia was the book's main character, I felt like I should have gotten to know her better. I don't think she ever once mentioned the name of her ex-husband, she frequently forgot about her hamster (the only reason it survived to the end of the book was because Wave remembered to feed it for her), and she had no life outside of running Happy Snak. Becoming Kenjan's guardian should have restricted her social circle. Instead, because she'd previously had no one, it expanded it. There were hints that maybe Gaia was growing as a person throughout the book, but I don't think Kimberling was as successful with that as she was with the alien culture stuff. Although I could see it coming, I cringed a little when Gaia and Fitzpatrick ended up sleeping together (off-page). Gaia didn't seem quite ready for a social life yet (she wasn't), and I couldn't help but wonder if Fitzpatrick was sleeping with her to keep her happy and complacent in her role as the space station's single most important human.
Overall, despite my issues with the book's human characters, I really enjoyed this and am a little sad Kimberling doesn't appear to have written anything else about the Kishocha.
(Original review, with read-alikes, posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)
tiggum's review against another edition
4.0
I wouldn't say that this book has a lot of substance but it's a fun read with good characters and a decent story. The ending is perhaps a little too convenient, but it fits the type of book this is.