(no subject)

[skygiants]

Okay, so Space Opera is a bit like Cat Valente wrote a book, and then ran it through a Douglas Adams filter, and then looked at the output and ran it through the Douglas Adams filter again but this time set to word-density=(2x), and then ran it back through a very light Cat Valente filter and dunked it in three layers of glitter and presented it to the world.

It's ... I don't think I disliked it? I probably liked it more than most Cat Valente I've read since The Orphan's Tales, on account of the fact that it doesn't feel like a less-interesting-to-me version of The Orphan's Tales and instead feels like Douglas Adams writing a sequel to Pratchett's Soul Music, but in space. It is A LOT, though. I don't think I'd ever quite realized that plain text on a page could approximate the sensation of complete sensory overload, but this book definitely does it. And it absolutely means to do it! There's a disco ball on the front cover, that's all part of the point, but like ... I'm pretty boring actually? I've never sampled mind-altering substances beyond alcohol? I don't actually go to discos very often? I haven't built up the stamina for this much glitterpunk.

The plot? The plot. Technically, there is a plot! Space Eurovision happens! Two Washed-Up Former Rock Star Humans Must Represent Humanity At Space Eurovision And Not Completely Lose ... OR WE ALL DIE! This plot advances precisely every other chapter; in the interim chapters, some more Space Eurovision happens, generally consisting of a lengthy satirical description of a weird alien culture and concluding with something like 'and the Googledyplexes won that year by vomiting up a horde of tiny singing butterflies who hovered in front of the eyes of every spectator and disgorged hallucinogenic spores that made them feel something magical.'

It's all very impressively inventive! Cat Valente's Imagination could probably power a nuclear plant on its own. Not infrequently I felt a bit like I was starting to drown under the sheer weight of intense space fabulism being thrown at me and had to flail around desperately for a single spar of a simple simile-free sentence to keep myself afloat, but, you know, that's not an unfamiliar part of the Valente Experience nor yet the Douglas Adams experience ... but I do feel a bit like I need to go detox with some extremely terse prose and a cup of black tea.

Comments

[raven]

While it seems very relevant to my interests otherwise I haven't tried this simply because it's by Valente; I always feel like she's a little too pleased with her style and it distracts from what she's trying to say. I'm thinking I probably wouldn't like this one?

[kore]

I always feel like she's a little too pleased with her style and it distracts from what she's trying to say

YEAH, that's really it -- I hadn't been able to put it into words for myself.

[skygiants]

Yeah, I'd say probably not -- it's a consciously different style than her usual, but it's still very STYLE!!!

And, I mean, to be fair, the entire thesis of the book is 'we're judging sentience by ability to have STYLE!!!' so it's not exactly like it distracts from what she's trying to say so much as it's ... uh ... making the form the function? Which is certainly a way to play to one's strengths!

[larryhammer]

This. So very this.

[maplemood]

This was exactly the vibe I was getting off the book just from the title and the summary; I haven't even tried to read it yet! Valente is so tricky for me--I always feel like in theory I should love her stuff, but the execution doesn't always work for me.

[skygiants]

I have loved exactly one (well, two) Valente books and they were the first ones I encountered -- but, in fairness, I haven't tried the ones that likely would be most targeted towards my interests out of a vague fear of finding that I dislike them ...

[scribe]

This had been recommended to me and I read the first few pages on amazon preview (or google books? something) and had...pretty much this exact experience, yup.

[skygiants]

IT'S JUST SO EXTREMELY MUCH ALL THE TIME. I'm not sure Cat Valente could write a sentence without a clause in it if you held a gun to her head.

[cofax7]

HAH. I love it.

I listened to this on audiobook just a few weeks ago, and yes, it was just kind of overwhelming. laurashapiro loved it, but she's way more into glam and glitter than I am...

I did think it was very witty, though. And I would like a complete copy of the Unkillable Rules.

[skygiants]

There are a lot of extremely good lines! It's super technically impressive -- I can absolutely see why somebody would love it, especially if they do have experience with and stamina for that level of glam and glitter.

[kore]

I like some of her stuff (Orphan's Tales, short pieces) but she always reminds me of the advice that "Half the effort would have twice the effect." Or Yeats's advice about building in hills and valleys so your reader kind of has time to catch their breath in between dazzling effects.

[skygiants]

Yeah, it's a bit like watching an Olympic gymnast do their best routine for an hour, isn't it? By like ten minutes in you're just like "wow, you're not tired? I -- I would be so tired ...."

[sovay]

... but I do feel a bit like I need to go detox with some extremely terse prose and a cup of black tea.

I like your choice of icon for this review.

[skygiants]

It was really the only option! (Unsurprisingly, Bowie is namechecked SO MANY times.)

[monanotlisa]

that intro description tho...

;)

[skygiants]

If there's such a thing as MORE DOUGLAS ADAMS THAN DOUGLAS ADAMS, Cat Valente is striving for it with great commitment!

[sophia_sol]

that sounds like exactly what I was expecting it to be, thank you for confirming my decision that it's probably not for me! But also I really enjoyed reading your description of it.

[skygiants]

I probably wouldn't have read it if someone hadn't given it to me as a present, but I think I am glad to have done so -- at the very least to have confirmed that Cat Valente can do other styles than the one I'm already familiar with, so long as she's doing them at ELEVEN!!!

[chomiji]

Yes, I have this problem with Valente also. I feel like I am too ordinary to appreciate her. Which is funny, because most people make me feel like I am very weird.

It's like ... I'm glad I read Palimpsest. But I don't feel the need to re-read it. And re-reading is normally a favorite thing.

[skygiants]

Yeah, Valente's books are just all so determinedly ... un-grounded? I don't mean that in a negative way, it's just that her books are always this intensely fierce rejection of the mundane, and I'm just like 'I get it but ... this is where I live ......'

[ceitfianna]

Another to say this sounds like a great description of a book I probably won't read. I think Deathless was the book of hers that made me go, okay, done that. I can admire her style and imagination but its overwhelming and for me the characters get lost in the style.

[skygiants]

Yeah, the style is always so foregrounded in her books, and it definitely very impressive! but it's hard for me to deeply attach to pure style in the same way one does to, say, characters. Or a plot.

[landingtree]

Space Opera was sort of on my books-to-read list, and this review... leaves it in exactly the same vague place on that list! I didn't find either Deathless or Palimpsest quite satisfying, plotwise, and I think it's something to do with the way Valente characters all think and experience the world at the same level of fabulousness. Like the four characters in Palimpsest: so different from each other in terms of zinging-off-the-walls details, but at the same time they seemed to occupy a weirdly narrow imaginative range. But Valente writes some of my absolute favourite sentences, there are definitely moods where I'd read a whole book just for five perfect Valente sentences...

And these comments do leave me thinking that the actual next book of hers I read should be The Orphan's Tales

[skygiants]

Yeah, exactly -- on a technical prose level, she's often undeniably brilliant, but I find her characters very difficult to relate to on a human level because they so rarely do come down to an ordinary human level. Like, I cannot imagine having a conversation with any of them about a topic like "did you do the homework?" or "has the milk gone bad?"

I loved The Orphan's Tales enormously when I read the duology 10+ years ago, and most of her other books have left me with such a sense of "basically The Orphan's Tales, but not as good!" that I'm absolutely terrified to reread The Orphan's Tales in case they ALSO leave me with a sense of "basically The Orphan's Tales, but not as good!"

[conuly]

I always want to like her books, and I always don't.

[skygiants]

The one I keep fighting with myself about reading is Radiance, because space opera epistolary-collage mystery about silent film is something that as described is so far down my alley that it's knocking on my back door, and yet the more I want to love it ....

[tempestsarekind]

Cat Valente is funny for me: I always feel like I've read a lot of her work, and then I realize it's only two books (the first Fairyland book and Deathless). I really liked the first Fairyland book...and then only made it a handful of sentences into the second one, because I realized I didn't really feel the need to read another one. And I absolutely adored the first few chapters of Deathless, and the Siege of Leningrad section (mainly for the rusalka!), but the entire rest of the book is a total blur. *shrug*

But I bought a paperback copy of Radiance, a while ago; maybe one day I will actually read it!

[skygiants]

I never ended up reading Deathless, because I'd just read the first Fairyland book and the first Prester John book and was feeling so burned out at that point that I skipped the one that by all accounts I would have liked best.

I want to read Radiance, because I have a lot of thoughts and a fair bit of background knowledge about silent film and film preservation, but also I'm afraid to read Radiance, because I have a lot of thoughts and a fair bit of background knowledge about silent film and film preservation ...

[umadoshi]

This is one of the books I DNFed in the last month or two as part of my conscious effort to STOP READING BOOKS if they're not grabbing me. (It is really hard for me.) I've read other books of hers and have mostly...liked them...somewhat? But it may be time to admit to myself that her stylized-to-hell-and-back way of writing is just not for me.

[skygiants]

DNF-ing books is really hard for me too! It is only in the past couple years that I've learned to do it at all and it's still SUPER RARE. (And admittedly part of that is because of booklogging -- I don't write up stuff I don't finish, so if I think I'm going to have fun writing up and talking about it on DW, I'll generally push through even if I might otherwise not. But also part of it is bloody-mindedness. >.>)

[whimsyful]

I DNF'ed this book 2 chapters in for the exact same reason...it's enormously imaginative and Douglas Adam-y and my kind of weird, but it was just...*too much*.

[skygiants]

I can only take like thirty minutes of a a loud party with lots of lights and music! SAME THING.

[brownbetty]

I read maaaaaybe the first chapter, and I think I found that I liked it in principle but not in practice?

I feel Valente is often performing some sort of technical feat, where someone has said to her "you can't write a book ______ the whole way through!" and she's like "Watch me!" and does it very competently, but the story gets a bit subsumed in the technical proficiency.

[skygiants]

Yeah, it often has a bit the feel of a writing exercise or technical challenge, doesn't it? And you can't help but be impressed by it, it is very well done, but also!

[castiron]

What I read of it was well-written, and I love the idea (Eurovision! in space!), but it wasn't quite grabbing me enough to keep me reading. Sometime when I'm in the right brainspace to enjoy the style I'll try it again. (And then I want to read it back-to-back with Iain Banks's Espedair Street and see how that works, given the common element of "musician is still kinda processing the death of a band member".)

[skygiants]

Eurovision! in space! is SUCH a good idea and I'm very glad she recognized that it was indeed a brilliant idea and followed her dream, even if her dream often felt a bit overwhelming for me, a mere mortal. (I've not read Espedair Street, is that also Musicians In Space?)

[marginaliana]

It's so fascinating to read your take on this (and that of the other commenters) because this was heavily recced to me (as a passionate Eurovision fan) and I read it and I felt, yeah. I didn't dislike it! Parts were extremely funny! But every other sentence brought me to the edge of exhaustion.

I did like Clippy, though. Clippy was my favorite.

[skygiants]

Clippy was a very relatable experience, though I also felt bad for the alien that was so confused! and had tried so hard!

I'm also curious how you felt coming to it as a Eurovision fan -- I've actually never seen any of Eurovision except "Love Love Peace Peace", although of course I am familiar with the concept!

[obopolsk]

Not infrequently I felt a bit like I was starting to drown under the sheer weight of intense space fabulism being thrown at me and had to flail around desperately for a single spar of a simple simile-free sentence to keep myself afloat, but, you know, that's not an unfamiliar part of the Valente Experience nor yet the Douglas Adams experience

OMG, yes. I read this last week, as it happens, and I felt exactly this way about it! For the first 10 pages or so I felt enthralled by the writing and amazed by what she can do with a sentence...and then I tipped over into please just tell me what this sentence is ACTUALLY SAYING so I can move on now. I've been reading only essays since I finished it.

[skygiants]

GOOD CALL. I haven't had time to read any nonfiction since finishing, but I've been desperately longing to sink myself into some crisp factual prose and I will be doing so as soon as I get home from this trip I'm on.