poultrymunitions's review
1.0
Insert obliquely vicious title here.
*wearily removes spectacles and pinches bridge of nose*
This book.
The good:
✅ Fun premise.
✅ Cute MC.
✅ Compelling love interest.
The bad:
❎ A villain who spends 99 percent of the story off-screen, who is summarily defeated when
❎ Typical American schizophrenia about sexuality (he's a teen, fucking a man, but we can't see him lose his virginity because actual teens—with their pure and unblemished vocabularies and delicate grasp of propriety—might read about it, and be soiled).
❎ The kitchen-sink approach to speculative storytelling: hey, you know what would be TOTALLY AWESOME? Let's give him without any determinable technological explanation, BECAUSE EHRMERGHERD.
❎ A cover that is a perverse stock-photo bacchanal more akin to art made from the entrails of roadkill than anything indicative of even basic montage competence. I'm calling it Big Moon Space-Canoe Layer-Panic New Document and hanging it on the inside of my bathroom door as a kind of laxative.
❎ And the "Silent One" is silent for, like, five minutes, once, on page ten?
...But mostly I'm annoyed because there's no fucking.
So.
*wearily removes spectacles and pinches bridge of nose*
This book.
The good:
✅ Fun premise.
✅ Cute MC.
✅ Compelling love interest.
The bad:
❎ A villain who spends 99 percent of the story off-screen, who is summarily defeated when
Spoiler
someone presses a button.❎ Typical American schizophrenia about sexuality (he's a teen, fucking a man, but we can't see him lose his virginity because actual teens—with their pure and unblemished vocabularies and delicate grasp of propriety—might read about it, and be soiled).
❎ The kitchen-sink approach to speculative storytelling: hey, you know what would be TOTALLY AWESOME? Let's give him
Spoiler
the glorious destiny of presumptive dictatorship over two planets AND a magic earring that can sense imminent danger across interstellar distances❎ A cover that is a perverse stock-photo bacchanal more akin to art made from the entrails of roadkill than anything indicative of even basic montage competence. I'm calling it Big Moon Space-Canoe Layer-Panic New Document and hanging it on the inside of my bathroom door as a kind of laxative.
❎ And the "Silent One" is silent for, like, five minutes, once, on page ten?
...But mostly I'm annoyed because there's no fucking.
So.
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