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Space Opera #2
Space Oddity
These are the voyages of the Starship Glam. The further adventures of Dess and Mira and Oort, and introducing Marvin the half-human, half-Esca ingenue on drums. Earth is safe, for the moment, and taking its first steps into the greater galactic community—you know that won’t go well. Another Grand Prix is always right around the corner. And of course, other possibly-sentient species can emerge at any time…
543 pages, Library Binding
First published September 24, 2024
182 people are currently reading
2307 people want to read
About the author
Catherynne M. Valente
254 books7,772 followersCatherynne M. Valente was born on Cinco de Mayo, 1979 in Seattle, WA, but grew up in in the wheatgrass paradise of Northern California. She graduated from high school at age 15, going on to UC San Diego and Edinburgh University, receiving her B.A. in Classics with an emphasis in Ancient Greek Linguistics. She then drifted away from her M.A. program and into a long residence in the concrete and camphor wilds of Japan.
She currently lives in Maine with her partner, two dogs, and three cats, having drifted back to America and the mythic frontier of the Midwest.
She currently lives in Maine with her partner, two dogs, and three cats, having drifted back to America and the mythic frontier of the Midwest.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 152 reviews
November 15, 2024
If I could condense Catherynne M. Valente's screaming light-speed brain squirrels into a liquid hallucinogenic and sell them on street corners, I would be the richest disabled hobo on Earth. (Taking the crown from Alan Moore) Or possibly end civilisation as we know it.
Either way. Win-win.
Welcome to Space Oddity, the follow up to Space Opera, a science fiction comedy I rightfully described in my review as high on space cocaine.
And here we are again.
Once more we must venture into the wild thickets of the space cocaine universe to join Decibel Jones, a previous performer in the Metagalactic Grand Prix. Which is a cosmic tournament of artistry and music and mayhem and manipulation and mass destruction to determine who is sentient and who is food.
Luckily for us Decibel Jones managed to prove the human race is indeed thinking and not food. And now Decibel Jones is stuck on a tour for coming in 10th place and is trying to prepare another species to sing so they won't become supper.
What could possibly go wrong?
And why is that adorable, cuddly thing planning to plunge us into eternal war? And is English a language or is it a horrible Lovecraftian insult that staples other languages to its face and pretends to be a language? And is the universe really, deeply insecure about its size and should we all just stop bringing it up in our thoughtless nihilistic rants? And why is one of the deadliest weapons in creation the trope of "the chosen one"?
Oh my Flying Spaghetti Monsters.
I was so happy when I finished the original Space Opera and learned it was the first of a series of novels. My exact response is "There's going to be a sequel? I will need to purchase more underwear."
And oh my dear goddess, that was a prophetic statement. The stains are never coming out. I mean, it's a twin quasar. You can't get rid of that with tide pods.
The Space Opera novels are a hyper-inventive mixture of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the work of Robert Rankin, John Carpenter's Dark Star, the giant floating alien consciousness of an elder machine god that lives at the end of history, Azathoth's forbidden Spotify music list that you should never share with anybody and an anime hero that screams so loud reality just gets exasperated and makes them the main character to shut them the hell up.
That run on sentence was a hero's journey all its own.
I was 100 pages into this novel and I was taking bets against myself whether this book would actually have a plot and if I really cared. The answer was "CHARMIN" and "YES I WILL SQUEEZE IT"
So does this book retain the zany nuttiness of the original? Does it have the same cosmic chocolate crunch? Will you bite into it and know the deep sky of Orion? Has the space cocaine returned?
Oh my sweet children. Prepare to have your virgin noses throttled.
Catherynne M. Valente has heard your prayers and she has chewed up great swaths of reality and is preparing to vomit it into your happy open mouths.
This book was so high my toes were getting nauseous.
But I was wrong about the space cocaine.
You can't get this high with drugs, kids.
You need a ladder. A lot of ladders. And kung fu. And fairies. Who know kung fu.
I'm just kidding. You can only get this high by training in the Olympian Riemannian Manifold Imagination Artist Chamber. A celestial palace that exists before you see it and that you can only reach by leaving it. Where you spend 10 years doing research in 8 times Earth's normal idea density, before you go inside. By the time you exit the chamber you're on casual speaking terms with ancient deities like Bluboothlu (who talks in rainbow bubbles of concentrated horror) and you're constantly coughing up 7th dimensional sentient math puzzles that call you 'The Meat Bifrost".
Catherynne M. Valente's idea gluons are so heavy that if you stare at them long enough from the right angle you'll start to the see the curvature of reality. From that point you can look back to the beginning of time and watch primordial chaos birth our universe in an explosion so fast and so hot it crashed through an infinite number of realities blending them into a cosmic tomato soup until light froze at the speed we currently understand.
Also you will crave so many pickles.
8/10 Looking forward to the next book. I'm very excited for another opportunity to turn my brain into an ooze of time-melting strange quark matter. Even though a little of it dripped out of my ears and melted through the ground in my backyard and is currently plummeting to the Earth's core.
Whoops-a-daisy.
Also: I will try to not be in awe of the universe for its size anymore. I didn't realise it was insecure about that. Sorry universe. I love and accept you.
Also Also Also Also: Yes, I do want to eat the Cotton Candy exoplanet. No, that isn't a declaration of war against the Cotton Candy solar system. Or actually, maybe it is? Oops.
Oh well. Humanity had a good run.
OR DID WE?
Either way. Win-win.
Welcome to Space Oddity, the follow up to Space Opera, a science fiction comedy I rightfully described in my review as high on space cocaine.
And here we are again.
Once more we must venture into the wild thickets of the space cocaine universe to join Decibel Jones, a previous performer in the Metagalactic Grand Prix. Which is a cosmic tournament of artistry and music and mayhem and manipulation and mass destruction to determine who is sentient and who is food.
Luckily for us Decibel Jones managed to prove the human race is indeed thinking and not food. And now Decibel Jones is stuck on a tour for coming in 10th place and is trying to prepare another species to sing so they won't become supper.
What could possibly go wrong?
And why is that adorable, cuddly thing planning to plunge us into eternal war? And is English a language or is it a horrible Lovecraftian insult that staples other languages to its face and pretends to be a language? And is the universe really, deeply insecure about its size and should we all just stop bringing it up in our thoughtless nihilistic rants? And why is one of the deadliest weapons in creation the trope of "the chosen one"?
Oh my Flying Spaghetti Monsters.
I was so happy when I finished the original Space Opera and learned it was the first of a series of novels. My exact response is "There's going to be a sequel? I will need to purchase more underwear."
And oh my dear goddess, that was a prophetic statement. The stains are never coming out. I mean, it's a twin quasar. You can't get rid of that with tide pods.
The Space Opera novels are a hyper-inventive mixture of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the work of Robert Rankin, John Carpenter's Dark Star, the giant floating alien consciousness of an elder machine god that lives at the end of history, Azathoth's forbidden Spotify music list that you should never share with anybody and an anime hero that screams so loud reality just gets exasperated and makes them the main character to shut them the hell up.
That run on sentence was a hero's journey all its own.
I was 100 pages into this novel and I was taking bets against myself whether this book would actually have a plot and if I really cared. The answer was "CHARMIN" and "YES I WILL SQUEEZE IT"
So does this book retain the zany nuttiness of the original? Does it have the same cosmic chocolate crunch? Will you bite into it and know the deep sky of Orion? Has the space cocaine returned?
Oh my sweet children. Prepare to have your virgin noses throttled.
Catherynne M. Valente has heard your prayers and she has chewed up great swaths of reality and is preparing to vomit it into your happy open mouths.
This book was so high my toes were getting nauseous.
But I was wrong about the space cocaine.
You can't get this high with drugs, kids.
You need a ladder. A lot of ladders. And kung fu. And fairies. Who know kung fu.
I'm just kidding. You can only get this high by training in the Olympian Riemannian Manifold Imagination Artist Chamber. A celestial palace that exists before you see it and that you can only reach by leaving it. Where you spend 10 years doing research in 8 times Earth's normal idea density, before you go inside. By the time you exit the chamber you're on casual speaking terms with ancient deities like Bluboothlu (who talks in rainbow bubbles of concentrated horror) and you're constantly coughing up 7th dimensional sentient math puzzles that call you 'The Meat Bifrost".
Catherynne M. Valente's idea gluons are so heavy that if you stare at them long enough from the right angle you'll start to the see the curvature of reality. From that point you can look back to the beginning of time and watch primordial chaos birth our universe in an explosion so fast and so hot it crashed through an infinite number of realities blending them into a cosmic tomato soup until light froze at the speed we currently understand.
Also you will crave so many pickles.
8/10 Looking forward to the next book. I'm very excited for another opportunity to turn my brain into an ooze of time-melting strange quark matter. Even though a little of it dripped out of my ears and melted through the ground in my backyard and is currently plummeting to the Earth's core.
Whoops-a-daisy.
Also: I will try to not be in awe of the universe for its size anymore. I didn't realise it was insecure about that. Sorry universe. I love and accept you.
Also Also Also Also: Yes, I do want to eat the Cotton Candy exoplanet. No, that isn't a declaration of war against the Cotton Candy solar system. Or actually, maybe it is? Oops.
Oh well. Humanity had a good run.
OR DID WE?
January 11, 2025
As expected, this was a wild ride. 🤪
"There is a beat to everything in the universe. Pulsars and pulses, all the way down. A body's heart. A star's orbit. A starship's engine. A song. A life. A world."
TL;DR Space Oddity is to Space Opera what The Silmarillion is to The Lord of the Rings.
It's no secret that I couldn't wait to read this book (and yet struggled to get to it for months because LIFE, amiright?). I was a few chapters in when I realized this leggy psychedelic ambidextrous omnisexual gender-curious glitterpunk financially prudent ethnically ambivalent glamrock messiah of a book isn't quiet like its predecessor.
It offers the same wildly imaginative worldbuilding and comically verbose prose as Space Opera, but there's not much in the way of plot.
Don't get me wrong, there is a story here: our main man in hyperspace, Decibel Jones, stumbles upon a new sentient life in space, so the interspecies music contest known at the Metagalactic Grand Prix has to be held again. Only this time there’s a power hungry butterbear-icorn named Mr. Snuggles hellbent on seeing it all come crashing down.
But the vast majority of the book is dedicated to exploring the sprawling galaxy in which the story takes place. What species inhabit what planets. Key moments in their history. What types of books or believes shape their daily lives, etc.
Space Oddity is a fun, rollicking, rambling read. The ending could have been stronger, but overall, I loved it.
Would hasten to recommend this to fans of Douglas Adams and anyone who wants to delve further into the galactic lore of the world Valente created in Space Opera.
P.S. This is one of my favorite quotes in the book:
"There is a beat to everything in the universe. Pulsars and pulses, all the way down. A body's heart. A star's orbit. A starship's engine. A song. A life. A world."
TL;DR Space Oddity is to Space Opera what The Silmarillion is to The Lord of the Rings.
It's no secret that I couldn't wait to read this book (and yet struggled to get to it for months because LIFE, amiright?). I was a few chapters in when I realized this leggy psychedelic ambidextrous omnisexual gender-curious glitterpunk financially prudent ethnically ambivalent glamrock messiah of a book isn't quiet like its predecessor.
It offers the same wildly imaginative worldbuilding and comically verbose prose as Space Opera, but there's not much in the way of plot.
Don't get me wrong, there is a story here: our main man in hyperspace, Decibel Jones, stumbles upon a new sentient life in space, so the interspecies music contest known at the Metagalactic Grand Prix has to be held again. Only this time there’s a power hungry butterbear-icorn named Mr. Snuggles hellbent on seeing it all come crashing down.
But the vast majority of the book is dedicated to exploring the sprawling galaxy in which the story takes place. What species inhabit what planets. Key moments in their history. What types of books or believes shape their daily lives, etc.
Space Oddity is a fun, rollicking, rambling read. The ending could have been stronger, but overall, I loved it.
Would hasten to recommend this to fans of Douglas Adams and anyone who wants to delve further into the galactic lore of the world Valente created in Space Opera.
P.S. This is one of my favorite quotes in the book:
"Whole hemispheres insisted that white things were categorically good, and good for you, despite the obvious existence of arsenic, rum raisin ice cream, and European expansion."
September 27, 2024
This was the sequel I didn't know I needed.
Not long ago, on a small island in Maine, author Catherynne Valente bet ... something ... while watching the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC for short). She bet that if she lost, she'd write a novel about the ESC.
Now, anyone knowing this absolutely bonkers "music contest" that was started after WW2 knows that it is nuts and stupid and silly and occasionally touching but mostly nonsensical, pretentious and far too expensive for most participating nations. Which might or might not be exactly why it has such a following, even outside Europe (considering that countries such as Australia and Azerbaidschan are also contestants says a lot about the "Euro" part anyway).
Nobody, least Valente herself, could have anticipated just HOW MUCH people would love the resulting book which she named Space Opera. I, myself, only read it because the idea sounded so ridiculous as to HAVE to be awesome and I trust the author almost unconditionally.
The rest, as they say, is literary history.
When we were informed of there soon being a sequel, I was ... wary. There are just too many sequels and prequels, reboots and whatnot that destroy even the originally most original of ideas with sheer unimaginativeness. Oh, was I woefully unprepared for the gem this book is!
The Metagalactic Grand Prix—part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past enters its next iteration. Humanity barely avoided annihilation last time, but there are galactic races that aren't happy with us not having lost so they have been plotting ever since. As a chance encounter or possibly timey-wimey stuff would have it, the great humanhero singer Decibel Jones has been travelling on the space ship with his resurrected girlfriend Mira and a few others as part of their mandatory tour since they came in 10th when they come across a sentient species. Well, a POSSIBLY sentient species. In addition, humanity is expected to join the other races at the metaphorical table (while still not knowing twit from twat) AND we have to prepare for the next Grand Prix!
On the first page, there were at least three memorable lines that I wanted to quote already and it just didn't let up. I honestly don't know how Valente does what she does but I was in love with this book right from the start and still am. As soon as I have my hardcover edition, I shall find all those memorable lines (which might take me a full month) and then add them all to GR and mark them so they show up under this review just so you can see what I mean because it's hard to put into my own, inadequate, words how masterful the writing is.
The adventure itself was heartbreaking, riveting, enchanting, hilarious, loony, and infuriating while the characters were as quirky and lethal as ever (I was so here for all the plots and counter-plots). There was the big picture and, rightfully, an emphasis on the importants of the small things (aka us).
Absolutely wonderful. So deep despite or exactly because of all the silliness.
Not long ago, on a small island in Maine, author Catherynne Valente bet ... something ... while watching the Eurovision Song Contest (ESC for short). She bet that if she lost, she'd write a novel about the ESC.
Now, anyone knowing this absolutely bonkers "music contest" that was started after WW2 knows that it is nuts and stupid and silly and occasionally touching but mostly nonsensical, pretentious and far too expensive for most participating nations. Which might or might not be exactly why it has such a following, even outside Europe (considering that countries such as Australia and Azerbaidschan are also contestants says a lot about the "Euro" part anyway).
Nobody, least Valente herself, could have anticipated just HOW MUCH people would love the resulting book which she named Space Opera. I, myself, only read it because the idea sounded so ridiculous as to HAVE to be awesome and I trust the author almost unconditionally.
The rest, as they say, is literary history.
When we were informed of there soon being a sequel, I was ... wary. There are just too many sequels and prequels, reboots and whatnot that destroy even the originally most original of ideas with sheer unimaginativeness. Oh, was I woefully unprepared for the gem this book is!
The Metagalactic Grand Prix—part gladiatorial contest, part beauty pageant, part concert extravaganza, and part continuation of the wars of the past enters its next iteration. Humanity barely avoided annihilation last time, but there are galactic races that aren't happy with us not having lost so they have been plotting ever since. As a chance encounter or possibly timey-wimey stuff would have it, the great human
On the first page, there were at least three memorable lines that I wanted to quote already and it just didn't let up. I honestly don't know how Valente does what she does but I was in love with this book right from the start and still am. As soon as I have my hardcover edition, I shall find all those memorable lines (which might take me a full month) and then add them all to GR and mark them so they show up under this review just so you can see what I mean because it's hard to put into my own, inadequate, words how masterful the writing is.
The adventure itself was heartbreaking, riveting, enchanting, hilarious, loony, and infuriating while the characters were as quirky and lethal as ever (I was so here for all the plots and counter-plots). There was the big picture and, rightfully, an emphasis on the importants of the small things (aka us).
Absolutely wonderful. So deep despite or exactly because of all the silliness.
October 18, 2024
If you loved the first book "Space Opera" I am confident you will love "Space Oddity". It has all the glitter and feels of that book and more. Dare I say I might love this one more?
Conversely, if you hated the first book, you are not going to like this one better.
You really need to read "Space Opera" before this one.
I also highly recommend the audiobook narrated by Heath Miller. He does and amazing job.
Conversely, if you hated the first book, you are not going to like this one better.
You really need to read "Space Opera" before this one.
I also highly recommend the audiobook narrated by Heath Miller. He does and amazing job.
March 7, 2025
Rec. by: Previous work, and a brilliant review by Martin Cahill.
Rec. for: All you beautiful people out there in the audience tonight!
Catherynne M. Valente sold her novel Space Opera to me herself (metaphorically, anyway) back in 2018, and I loved it. So when I discovered, rather belatedly, that Valente had already written a sequel, I couldn't not rush out to buy Space Oddity as well. And while I initially feared that Valente would run into the dreaded sophomore slump with this one, I was wrong (and Martin Cahill was absolutely right)—as Cahill says in the pitch-perfect review I linked above,
But it did take awhile for that beautiful symbiosis to happen, for me (and I think for a fair number of other readers, as well). After all...
At times it almost seemed as if Catherynne M. Valente might have been commenting on our own present:
Space Oddity does seem to lack focus, at least to start with—it's all over the place, and Valente seems to want to show us all of those places at once, all together in a rush. After all, it's a big, beautiful, bizarre Galaxy out there, and we humans from Earth are just a small and, frankly, mediocre part of that variety:
Valente catalogs, often literally, the Galaxy's glorious diversity (this book displays its infodumps proudly)—for example, her list of humanity's winnings from Earth's appearance in the Metagalactic Grand Prix includes this gem:
Or, for another example, see Valente's page-long rhapsody on the English language—both its formal orthography and its rapacious habit of absorbing words from other languages. I will quote just one bit from that page:
*
There were also parts of Space Oddity that resonated with me personally. For example, my own daughter's first complete sentence turns out to be, well, a Galactic commonplace:
And I've traveled through this airport rather a lot in recent years, so Decibel Jones' opinion of it made me chuckle, probably more than it really deserved:
*
Now, Space Oddity isn't entirely perfect. Valente (or her copy-editor) doesn't seem to know the difference between "stationary" (the adjective—still, unmoving, like Uluru) and "stationery" (the noun—office supplies, like notepaper, pens and pencils, or your favorite stapler). I noticed that error at least twice, the second time on p.241. But I doubt many other people would.
*
Heh... this is one of those "if you know, you know" paragraphs, perhaps, but I liked it, and even though it's from pretty late in Space Oddity, I don't think it's at all a spoiler otherwise:
*
Space Opera made me weep, about halfway through, with one particularly sharp moment of beauty, of perfect alignment between what Valente wrote and what I wanted her to have written. Space Oddity did not—she held off, and held off, and held off, until I thought maybe I'd get through the whole book without experiencing another such payoff.
But then... Valente managed the same damned thing in Chapter 36, hitting me "right in the feels" again, as the saying goes:
Mushy, mushy...
*
Catherynne M. Valente calls her afterword "Liner Notes." While recounting in those Notes a conversation she had with fellow author Christopher Priest, I think Valente provides the perfect synopsis for Space Oddity itself. What we have here is
Space Oddity came along for me at a time when I was also looking for an excuse to try out hope—a commodity that's in rather short supply right here and right now—and for that as well I loved it immensely.
Rec. for: All you beautiful people out there in the audience tonight!
Catherynne M. Valente sold her novel Space Opera to me herself (metaphorically, anyway) back in 2018, and I loved it. So when I discovered, rather belatedly, that Valente had already written a sequel, I couldn't not rush out to buy Space Oddity as well. And while I initially feared that Valente would run into the dreaded sophomore slump with this one, I was wrong (and Martin Cahill was absolutely right)—as Cahill says in the pitch-perfect review I linked above,
Like a beautiful symbiote, the language, verve, glitter-bomb swagger and shoot-from-the-hip-with-one-of-those-prop-guns-that-unfurls-and-says-BANG-on-it of Space Oddity has just become a part of me.
But it did take awhile for that beautiful symbiosis to happen, for me (and I think for a fair number of other readers, as well). After all...
Yes, yes, of course Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes saved the world.
But what have they done for us lately?
—p.7
At times it almost seemed as if Catherynne M. Valente might have been commenting on our own present:
And the forces of stupid are bound and determined to unbalance that immortal equation forever, if they can possibly manage it. That is their highest goal. No more beauty. All stupid all the time, as far as the eye can see.
—p.37
Space Oddity does seem to lack focus, at least to start with—it's all over the place, and Valente seems to want to show us all of those places at once, all together in a rush. After all, it's a big, beautiful, bizarre Galaxy out there, and we humans from Earth are just a small and, frankly, mediocre part of that variety:
Humanity was, as it turned out, painfully, embarrassingly, harrowingly average.
—p.12
Valente catalogs, often literally, the Galaxy's glorious diversity (this book displays its infodumps proudly)—for example, her list of humanity's winnings from Earth's appearance in the Metagalactic Grand Prix includes this gem:
Depending on preparation, ghemui truly is both an effective floor cleaner and an exquisite dessert topping, as well as forming the base matrix for the Utorax Formations primary weapons technology, and overall just looks quite nice in an engagement ring.
—p.42, which I cannot but think is significant. Note also, if you will, the clever callback to Saturday Night Live's classic commercial parody (for which I was, sadly, unable to find a working link).
Or, for another example, see Valente's page-long rhapsody on the English language—both its formal orthography and its rapacious habit of absorbing words from other languages. I will quote just one bit from that page:
Formal charges against modern English filed by the Publishing Hiveknot of the Pisces Epsilon Voidspace include: theft, larceny, grand theft comma, identity theft, public indecency, still more theft, slang assault, semicolon abuse, fugitive sentences running on forever to escape the law, vandalism, drunk and disorderly conduct, general nuisance, and driving under the influence of French.See what I mean?
—p.93
*
There were also parts of Space Oddity that resonated with me personally. For example, my own daughter's first complete sentence turns out to be, well, a Galactic commonplace:
It's not that humanity invented becoming so overwhelmed by the powerful cuteness of a particularly fluffy being that one is compelled by a drive stronger than survival, sex, loyalty, or the accumulation of resources to stroke its head and ask who is a good girl in a totally altered speaking voice over and over until both the petter and the pettee crumble to dust, leaving only a fossilized leash and wallet resting on a pile of dusty cold bones.
That dubious behavior is so universal that can I pet your dog? is statistically the most commonly uttered phrase in all languages, in the history of the galaxy (allowing for variations on the exact meaning of the word "dog"){...}
—p.192
And I've traveled through this airport rather a lot in recent years, so Decibel Jones' opinion of it made me chuckle, probably more than it really deserved:
But he'd never wanted to visit Minneapolis, or St. Paul, or their collective international airport, either. In fact, he didn't believe he'd given the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport one lonely friendless thought in all his days.
So why was it here?
—pp.199-200
*
Now, Space Oddity isn't entirely perfect. Valente (or her copy-editor) doesn't seem to know the difference between "stationary" (the adjective—still, unmoving, like Uluru) and "stationery" (the noun—office supplies, like notepaper, pens and pencils, or your favorite stapler). I noticed that error at least twice, the second time on p.241. But I doubt many other people would.
*
Heh... this is one of those "if you know, you know" paragraphs, perhaps, but I liked it, and even though it's from pretty late in Space Oddity, I don't think it's at all a spoiler otherwise:
And while the famous combination astrological system/ethical framework detailing personality types as Good, Evil and Neutral as well as Lawful, Neutral, and Chaotic makes a nice little Punnet (sic) square, if that's what gets your motor running, it leaves out the Lazy axis. It's all well and good to be bright-eyed, serpentine-tailed Lawful Good, but Lawful has rarely survived Lazy in the history of jurisprudence, and Good never has.
—p.291
*
Space Opera made me weep, about halfway through, with one particularly sharp moment of beauty, of perfect alignment between what Valente wrote and what I wanted her to have written. Space Oddity did not—she held off, and held off, and held off, until I thought maybe I'd get through the whole book without experiencing another such payoff.
But then... Valente managed the same damned thing in Chapter 36, hitting me "right in the feels" again, as the saying goes:
—pp.350-351
Mushy, mushy...
*
"How'm I gonna be an optimist about this?"
—from "Pompeii," by the band Bastille
Catherynne M. Valente calls her afterword "Liner Notes." While recounting in those Notes a conversation she had with fellow author Christopher Priest, I think Valente provides the perfect synopsis for Space Oddity itself. What we have here is
{...}loving advice wrapped in f-bombs wrapped in deep cynicism that is always a mask for a soul that longs to be an optimist, and is always looking for an excuse to try out hope.
—p.377
Space Oddity came along for me at a time when I was also looking for an excuse to try out hope—a commodity that's in rather short supply right here and right now—and for that as well I loved it immensely.
October 21, 2024
I want to preface this review by saying Space Opera is one of my favorite books of all time. I am dnf this book at 60%, possibly just putting it aside to come back to later, but I'm exhausted and frustrated and reading through some of the other reviews I think is helping me put into words why.
I love a good set of world building. But in my soul I am a character-driven reader. I can forgive bad world building for great characters, but I can't really see the point of great world building without characters to care about. I fall in love with characters and I want to know what's happening to them, to root for them, to follow them through their Journeys and celebrate with them at the end. For example, I've devoured the Lord of the Rings multiple times but I don't think I've ever gotten through the silmarillion even once. This is like a humorous textbook, in fact if someone asked me who's the main character of this story, I would have to say the universe itself is the main character. And some people are really going to love that, but that's not what I signed up for.
The problem I have with this book is it leans so heavily into the World building that the characters I loved from before are an afterthought. This book is a series of essays on the universe and the many peoples of Space Opera stitched together with a few threads of plot that are struggling to hold the whole thing together like an overstuffed taco. Some reviewers are tearing the author a new one because she included a Harry Potter reference in the story. But honestly, there's so much more to be frustrated about in this book, that slid right on past me and I didn't even notice.
I became quickly overwhelmed and quite frankly exhausted by the amount of info dumping about the universe, past contestants, the other planets and species. There's a lot of words for made up things and made up species and after a while they all start to blur together and not make sense. I kept wondering what each of these paragraphs and chapters about everything else in the universe except Decibel and Mira, had to do with the characters and what was it all for. By the time decibel said, take us somewhere interesting, I was like, God no please. Take me somewhere less interesting. I can't take anymore.
I adore this author's creativity and sense of humor. I think she is one of the greatest authors of our time and her books will have a following long after she stops writing, which I hope will not be for many many years. I've read everything she's written and will continue to read everything she's written. I'm just going to have to get back to this one later. I'm so tired of trying to parse all of these details and it's not a good feeling to be waiting and waiting and waiting for the characters to show up because the reader misses the characters, but the characters are buried under the weight of the world building, and I don't have the strength in me anymore to keep digging them out right now.
EDIT: I am still trying to finish this book. Before picking this up, I did not know if there was in fact a sentence in existence that was so long, that I literally would not be able to follow it to completion even after listening to it or reading it multiple times and with my best efforts at concentration and comprehension. But I've discovered several of those sentences do exist, and they are all in this book. I literally cannot reach the end of the sentence and still remember how it began.
I love a good set of world building. But in my soul I am a character-driven reader. I can forgive bad world building for great characters, but I can't really see the point of great world building without characters to care about. I fall in love with characters and I want to know what's happening to them, to root for them, to follow them through their Journeys and celebrate with them at the end. For example, I've devoured the Lord of the Rings multiple times but I don't think I've ever gotten through the silmarillion even once. This is like a humorous textbook, in fact if someone asked me who's the main character of this story, I would have to say the universe itself is the main character. And some people are really going to love that, but that's not what I signed up for.
The problem I have with this book is it leans so heavily into the World building that the characters I loved from before are an afterthought. This book is a series of essays on the universe and the many peoples of Space Opera stitched together with a few threads of plot that are struggling to hold the whole thing together like an overstuffed taco. Some reviewers are tearing the author a new one because she included a Harry Potter reference in the story. But honestly, there's so much more to be frustrated about in this book, that slid right on past me and I didn't even notice.
I became quickly overwhelmed and quite frankly exhausted by the amount of info dumping about the universe, past contestants, the other planets and species. There's a lot of words for made up things and made up species and after a while they all start to blur together and not make sense. I kept wondering what each of these paragraphs and chapters about everything else in the universe except Decibel and Mira, had to do with the characters and what was it all for. By the time decibel said, take us somewhere interesting, I was like, God no please. Take me somewhere less interesting. I can't take anymore.
I adore this author's creativity and sense of humor. I think she is one of the greatest authors of our time and her books will have a following long after she stops writing, which I hope will not be for many many years. I've read everything she's written and will continue to read everything she's written. I'm just going to have to get back to this one later. I'm so tired of trying to parse all of these details and it's not a good feeling to be waiting and waiting and waiting for the characters to show up because the reader misses the characters, but the characters are buried under the weight of the world building, and I don't have the strength in me anymore to keep digging them out right now.
EDIT: I am still trying to finish this book. Before picking this up, I did not know if there was in fact a sentence in existence that was so long, that I literally would not be able to follow it to completion even after listening to it or reading it multiple times and with my best efforts at concentration and comprehension. But I've discovered several of those sentences do exist, and they are all in this book. I literally cannot reach the end of the sentence and still remember how it began.
to-read-so-bad-it-hurts
March 5, 2023AAAHHHH
SO JUST FYI, I ALREADY LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS SO CAN THIS SERIES MAYBE GO ON FOREVER, PLEASE AND THANK YOU
SO JUST FYI, I ALREADY LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS SO CAN THIS SERIES MAYBE GO ON FOREVER, PLEASE AND THANK YOU
September 12, 2024
Whew. So.
This might be the toughest review I’ve had to write. How does one review a book that you love and yet found incredibly frustrating? How do you write a review when the sequel both is and isn’t as good as the original? How do you write a review when everything about this book should have hit you square between the eyes and into the soul and yet…you aren’t sure if this is a good book or not?
To start, I’ll state up-front that Space Opera, the first novel set in this universe (I hesitate to talk about series because…well…reasons…), was one of my favorite books the year I read it. Nominated for the Hugo (fascinatingly…was eliminated in 4th for best novel, but in the votes for the other positions, ended up dead last of the 6 nominees…so weird). One of my pretty rare five star ratings. A mashup of two incredibly over-the-top things: Eurovision and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, featuring a washed up glam rock band, a sentient cat and some of the most bizarre aliens you’ll ever meet…mixed up in a blender with a splash of pure Kurt Vonnegut. I loved it.
Six years later, we have a sequel. Apparently, portions of this were read at conventions and author events over the past years. To say that I was excited to see both the sequel and to get an opportunity to read an ARC would be an understatement. I positively squealed when it downloaded on my Kindle. And from the opening pages you get more of what you had in the first novel.
And yet…
You also get less. We need to talk about plot and character here. In the first novel there is a clear plot around the portions of the novel that are mashups of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and (again) a splash of Kurt Vonnegut. Those portions are AWESOME – I want to make that clear (even if Valente has never met a run-on sentence with 14 commas that she didn’t love in this novel – which I’m pretty sure is intentional since I’ve read other novels of her’s and it isn’t a “feature”). I laughed audibly multiple times. I highlighted multiple sections. Valente definitely has an ear for the human condition and the absurdities therein. And if that’s what you’re here for…this is going to be a five star read. The prose is hilarious and the style is wonderful.
It also is the vast majority of this novel. There IS a plot (and a pretty interesting one!) but for most of the book, it is an afterthought. I found myself wondering if there was a plot at all until I was about a quarter of the way through the novel and it really only got serious about the plot in the last quarter of the book. Mostchapters are structured with 90% hilarious side information and 10% plot (often only at the very end of the chapter). It thus comes across as almost a travel narrative where a plot has been stapled on to the end.
It felt to me that what Valente wanted to write was a series of essays about both humanity and about the universe in which Space Opera is set…but someone said, “That won’t sell – it has to have a plot.” And I won’t speak up as to whether or not that was necessary. I might have enjoyed it more without the plot. I might have enjoyed it less. I think she wanted to simply write the “Unbreakable Rules” children’s book that is referenced in both novels…but someone told her she couldn’t JUST do that.
And now I’m in the difficult position where I cannot figure out whether or not I can recommend a book that is not only one of the funniest things I’ve read in years, but also contains a humanist core of such warmth and purity that it will bring you to tears at times. When Valente goes full Vonnegut in this book…it will knock your socks off. But at times it comes across as a slog. There isn’t really any character development to speak of. But it is so effortlessly funny, warm and diverse. It revels in the diversity of the universe in such a wonderful way. It makes me want more.
3.75 stars is the best I can do. Rounding up for Goodreads/Amazon. Is it as good as Space Opera? No. Is it a bad book? Absolutely not. Is it something I’d read again and again? Portions? Yes. Am I glad I read it? I just don’t know.
Thank you to Netgalley and S&S/Saga Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. You can preorder your own copy (and figure out for yourself if I’m wrong on this) here.
This might be the toughest review I’ve had to write. How does one review a book that you love and yet found incredibly frustrating? How do you write a review when the sequel both is and isn’t as good as the original? How do you write a review when everything about this book should have hit you square between the eyes and into the soul and yet…you aren’t sure if this is a good book or not?
To start, I’ll state up-front that Space Opera, the first novel set in this universe (I hesitate to talk about series because…well…reasons…), was one of my favorite books the year I read it. Nominated for the Hugo (fascinatingly…was eliminated in 4th for best novel, but in the votes for the other positions, ended up dead last of the 6 nominees…so weird). One of my pretty rare five star ratings. A mashup of two incredibly over-the-top things: Eurovision and Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, featuring a washed up glam rock band, a sentient cat and some of the most bizarre aliens you’ll ever meet…mixed up in a blender with a splash of pure Kurt Vonnegut. I loved it.
Six years later, we have a sequel. Apparently, portions of this were read at conventions and author events over the past years. To say that I was excited to see both the sequel and to get an opportunity to read an ARC would be an understatement. I positively squealed when it downloaded on my Kindle. And from the opening pages you get more of what you had in the first novel.
And yet…
You also get less. We need to talk about plot and character here. In the first novel there is a clear plot around the portions of the novel that are mashups of Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett and (again) a splash of Kurt Vonnegut. Those portions are AWESOME – I want to make that clear (even if Valente has never met a run-on sentence with 14 commas that she didn’t love in this novel – which I’m pretty sure is intentional since I’ve read other novels of her’s and it isn’t a “feature”). I laughed audibly multiple times. I highlighted multiple sections. Valente definitely has an ear for the human condition and the absurdities therein. And if that’s what you’re here for…this is going to be a five star read. The prose is hilarious and the style is wonderful.
It also is the vast majority of this novel. There IS a plot (and a pretty interesting one!) but for most of the book, it is an afterthought. I found myself wondering if there was a plot at all until I was about a quarter of the way through the novel and it really only got serious about the plot in the last quarter of the book. Mostchapters are structured with 90% hilarious side information and 10% plot (often only at the very end of the chapter). It thus comes across as almost a travel narrative where a plot has been stapled on to the end.
It felt to me that what Valente wanted to write was a series of essays about both humanity and about the universe in which Space Opera is set…but someone said, “That won’t sell – it has to have a plot.” And I won’t speak up as to whether or not that was necessary. I might have enjoyed it more without the plot. I might have enjoyed it less. I think she wanted to simply write the “Unbreakable Rules” children’s book that is referenced in both novels…but someone told her she couldn’t JUST do that.
And now I’m in the difficult position where I cannot figure out whether or not I can recommend a book that is not only one of the funniest things I’ve read in years, but also contains a humanist core of such warmth and purity that it will bring you to tears at times. When Valente goes full Vonnegut in this book…it will knock your socks off. But at times it comes across as a slog. There isn’t really any character development to speak of. But it is so effortlessly funny, warm and diverse. It revels in the diversity of the universe in such a wonderful way. It makes me want more.
3.75 stars is the best I can do. Rounding up for Goodreads/Amazon. Is it as good as Space Opera? No. Is it a bad book? Absolutely not. Is it something I’d read again and again? Portions? Yes. Am I glad I read it? I just don’t know.
Thank you to Netgalley and S&S/Saga Press for the ARC in exchange for an honest review. You can preorder your own copy (and figure out for yourself if I’m wrong on this) here.
Read
May 28, 2024I can not possibly recommend a book that on the one hand celebrates being queer and beyond the gender binary / heavily explorers the idea of gender, yet on the other hand references Harry Potter. Rowling would hate Decibel and what he represents. It's 2024, are we really still doing this?
December 24, 2024
I really hate to say that this was disappointing :/
Where Space Opera embellishes its heart and characters with the wacky setting, Space Oddity puts the wacky setting front and center, seeming to follow the characters more out of obligation. I can’t speak for any other readers of the first book, but the wacky setting was no more than the cherry on top. I was here for Mira, Dess, and Oort — the latter of whom this book is sorely lacking. And Space Oddity just doesn’t feel like it’s here for them.
And it’s not just that the wacky setting is front and center; it’s far more tangential and far less focused than in Space Opera. I couldn’t find it in me to care too much when I’d rather be reading about the characters I love instead.
So strange to feel this way after just loving Opera and Radiance from Valente.
Where Space Opera embellishes its heart and characters with the wacky setting, Space Oddity puts the wacky setting front and center, seeming to follow the characters more out of obligation. I can’t speak for any other readers of the first book, but the wacky setting was no more than the cherry on top. I was here for Mira, Dess, and Oort — the latter of whom this book is sorely lacking. And Space Oddity just doesn’t feel like it’s here for them.
And it’s not just that the wacky setting is front and center; it’s far more tangential and far less focused than in Space Opera. I couldn’t find it in me to care too much when I’d rather be reading about the characters I love instead.
So strange to feel this way after just loving Opera and Radiance from Valente.
July 22, 2024
This is one of the books I've been looking forward since I heard Valente read excerpts from this at World Con in 2022 and ended up laughing my ass off repeatedly during the reading. Valente gets to take her wonderfully dry sense of humor even further, and deal with the whole thing that happened at the end of last book. Fantastic follow up, especially if you liked the last book.
September 21, 2024
3.5 -truly weird. If you're into Prachett or "hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" then you'll love this!!
November 11, 2024
A funny thing happened on the way to writing this review of SPACE ODDITY, the follow-up to Catherynne M. Valente's Hugo-nominated novel, 2018's SPACE OPERA. Before I go any further, I
need to say that it's fitting that a funny thing happened on the way to this review, given the subject material at hand. But I digress. Actually, depending on how you look at it,
two or three funny things happened on the way to the review. Look, I can't even count, because I've just realized that it's probably only two. One them is that I ended up spending way
more time than I wanted to looking at the list of books I've reviewed since February 17th, 1999. That's as far back as I go on my current laptop. Not that I've had this laptop for more
than 25 years, it's that I've managed to keep them around from computer to computer just in case I needed to refer to one of them one day. Which is what I was actually trying to do when
I was preparing for this review. You see, somewhere in one of my reviews in the deep dark past, I wrote one that contained a statement something along the lines of "I'm not sure
whether this book is a masterpiece, one of the worst books I've ever read, or something in between". I never did find that review - I have been writing these things going back to at least
the mid-1990s (and to be honest, much further back than that, since I was writing for The Log of the SS Voyager back in the late 1970s/early 1980s, but stopped for several years after
that) - but I think that if I saw the book on my shelf (which I can't because it's buried behind a bunch of books laying on their sides because I haven't read them yet) I'd recognize it
immediately. Anyway, I wanted to pull that quote directly and use it here because, well, I think it's relevant.
Right about now, gentle reader, you're probably yelling at me in your head, "WILL YOU GET ON WITH IT ALREADY?"
Now go back and read that first paragraph. Rambling, sprawling, seeming silliness. Looking like it's going nowhere. That's SPACE ODDITY. Now look at it another way (which, by the way,
you really shouldn't do because I'm going to compare that to what Valente has done in SPACE ODDITY and that comparison is downright criminal and ridiculous), in which that paragraphs contains
some of the most wonderfully written comedic prose in the history of science fiction (see, like I said, mine is not that - I told you so). That is also SPACE ODDITY.
Let's summarize for the class. In SPACE OPERA, humanity's first contact with aliens involved taking part in a contest called The Metagalactic Grand Prix, an event styled after Eurovision
(yes, THAT Eurovision) which pits alien races against each other in a contest meant to take the place of the nasty wars that previously threatened to ravage the galaxy. Our planet's heroic
representatives, Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros, participate in the 100th iteration of the MGP. If they had finished dead last, all humanity on Earth would have been obliterated,
the planet cleansed, and the next inhabitants of Earth would be allowed to evolve and participate again at a later date, if they were found worthy.
I know. "WILL YOU GET ON WITH IT ALREADY?"
In SPACE OPERA, someone had to shepherd Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros through the process of getting ready for and actually participating in the MGP. In SPACE ODDITY, Decibel (Dess) and
crew are making a galactic victory tour when they discover a species in a hostile (to life) planetary system that heretofore was unknown to the rest of the galaxy. According to the rules,
they must shepherd the new aliens through that same process. The issue is that the MGP has literally just been held, and there were no plans to hold the 101st so soon. But through the
various machinations of the aliens ostensibly in charge, a new version of the MGP must be held, even though the new species has no desire to participate.
Hilarity ensues. I think.
So, for a large portion of the at least the first half of the book, nothing happens. Valente spends most of that time writing what is mostly, but not always, hilarious prose in an attempt
to be funny. And some of it is very very funny, and some of it falls flat. She sprinkles in all sorts of pop culture references, from Monty Python to Pink Floyd to Douglas Adams (there's
actually a badger named Douglas in the book, and the book itself has 41 chapters, because as Valente herself says in the Liner Notes, "Because you simply can never equal the greatest, you
can only hope to come close. Occasionally.", to, well, whatever reference fit at the time. Or, it may not have fit, but it was funny, so it's there, and after all, isn't that the point (I
wish I'd made notes of all the pop cultural references so I could share them here, but I'd be there forever, and this review is 6 weeks late anyway) of the whole thing? But we don't actually
meet the new aliens until halfway through the book, long after I yelled "WILL YOU GET ON WITH IT ALREADY?".
But oh my goodness, does the last part of the book make up for all the rest of the meandering, sometimes funny, sometimes not, prose. The strength of the ending is that the language and
storytelling (maybe what came before wasn't meant to be storytelling, which is why it fell flat for me) became much more linear and straightforward. Maybe Valente was trying too hard to
be funny, and when she stopped trying so hard it got better. And the ending did stick the landing.
I wanted very much to like, even love this book, and at times I did. Laughing out loud at the gym on the elliptica machine caused many heads to turn my way, but after a while those
occurrences were few and far between. I don't know. Maybe this is one of these books that I'm just not meant to understand. But I did *like* it. And that's what counts, right?
need to say that it's fitting that a funny thing happened on the way to this review, given the subject material at hand. But I digress. Actually, depending on how you look at it,
two or three funny things happened on the way to the review. Look, I can't even count, because I've just realized that it's probably only two. One them is that I ended up spending way
more time than I wanted to looking at the list of books I've reviewed since February 17th, 1999. That's as far back as I go on my current laptop. Not that I've had this laptop for more
than 25 years, it's that I've managed to keep them around from computer to computer just in case I needed to refer to one of them one day. Which is what I was actually trying to do when
I was preparing for this review. You see, somewhere in one of my reviews in the deep dark past, I wrote one that contained a statement something along the lines of "I'm not sure
whether this book is a masterpiece, one of the worst books I've ever read, or something in between". I never did find that review - I have been writing these things going back to at least
the mid-1990s (and to be honest, much further back than that, since I was writing for The Log of the SS Voyager back in the late 1970s/early 1980s, but stopped for several years after
that) - but I think that if I saw the book on my shelf (which I can't because it's buried behind a bunch of books laying on their sides because I haven't read them yet) I'd recognize it
immediately. Anyway, I wanted to pull that quote directly and use it here because, well, I think it's relevant.
Right about now, gentle reader, you're probably yelling at me in your head, "WILL YOU GET ON WITH IT ALREADY?"
Now go back and read that first paragraph. Rambling, sprawling, seeming silliness. Looking like it's going nowhere. That's SPACE ODDITY. Now look at it another way (which, by the way,
you really shouldn't do because I'm going to compare that to what Valente has done in SPACE ODDITY and that comparison is downright criminal and ridiculous), in which that paragraphs contains
some of the most wonderfully written comedic prose in the history of science fiction (see, like I said, mine is not that - I told you so). That is also SPACE ODDITY.
Let's summarize for the class. In SPACE OPERA, humanity's first contact with aliens involved taking part in a contest called The Metagalactic Grand Prix, an event styled after Eurovision
(yes, THAT Eurovision) which pits alien races against each other in a contest meant to take the place of the nasty wars that previously threatened to ravage the galaxy. Our planet's heroic
representatives, Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros, participate in the 100th iteration of the MGP. If they had finished dead last, all humanity on Earth would have been obliterated,
the planet cleansed, and the next inhabitants of Earth would be allowed to evolve and participate again at a later date, if they were found worthy.
I know. "WILL YOU GET ON WITH IT ALREADY?"
In SPACE OPERA, someone had to shepherd Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros through the process of getting ready for and actually participating in the MGP. In SPACE ODDITY, Decibel (Dess) and
crew are making a galactic victory tour when they discover a species in a hostile (to life) planetary system that heretofore was unknown to the rest of the galaxy. According to the rules,
they must shepherd the new aliens through that same process. The issue is that the MGP has literally just been held, and there were no plans to hold the 101st so soon. But through the
various machinations of the aliens ostensibly in charge, a new version of the MGP must be held, even though the new species has no desire to participate.
Hilarity ensues. I think.
So, for a large portion of the at least the first half of the book, nothing happens. Valente spends most of that time writing what is mostly, but not always, hilarious prose in an attempt
to be funny. And some of it is very very funny, and some of it falls flat. She sprinkles in all sorts of pop culture references, from Monty Python to Pink Floyd to Douglas Adams (there's
actually a badger named Douglas in the book, and the book itself has 41 chapters, because as Valente herself says in the Liner Notes, "Because you simply can never equal the greatest, you
can only hope to come close. Occasionally.", to, well, whatever reference fit at the time. Or, it may not have fit, but it was funny, so it's there, and after all, isn't that the point (I
wish I'd made notes of all the pop cultural references so I could share them here, but I'd be there forever, and this review is 6 weeks late anyway) of the whole thing? But we don't actually
meet the new aliens until halfway through the book, long after I yelled "WILL YOU GET ON WITH IT ALREADY?".
But oh my goodness, does the last part of the book make up for all the rest of the meandering, sometimes funny, sometimes not, prose. The strength of the ending is that the language and
storytelling (maybe what came before wasn't meant to be storytelling, which is why it fell flat for me) became much more linear and straightforward. Maybe Valente was trying too hard to
be funny, and when she stopped trying so hard it got better. And the ending did stick the landing.
I wanted very much to like, even love this book, and at times I did. Laughing out loud at the gym on the elliptica machine caused many heads to turn my way, but after a while those
occurrences were few and far between. I don't know. Maybe this is one of these books that I'm just not meant to understand. But I did *like* it. And that's what counts, right?
November 10, 2024
I received this as an ARC via NetGalley.
This sequel answers the question “what happens *after* you save the Earth?” How do you then go on?
A welcome return to Valente’s Space Opera universe, where the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy meets EuroVision as a way to avoid interplanetary war. Space Oddity continues the prose style from the first book, with numerous comedic and outlandish descriptions, approaches, and reassurances from sentence to sentence that some things in the universe really do hold true, no matter how ridiculous. Decibel Jones is back, older, and not much wiser, but he’s doing his best, okay? It turns out that winners and survivors of the Intergalactic Grand Prix have … obligations, as well as charitable societies devoted to their ostensible care. This novel packs a punch, because under the flash, glamour, and comedic turns of phrase is a fierce adherence to the experience of being more experienced and a bit cynical when the universe needs you to not pay quite so much attention to what it’s up to.
Goguenar Gorecannon’s First Unkillable Fact is still true: Life is beautiful, and life is stupid.
To fight the darkness, humans have an adage about lighting a candle. This novel is what happens when you use a spotlight and a disco ball instead, in the best possible way.
Highly recommended.
This sequel answers the question “what happens *after* you save the Earth?” How do you then go on?
A welcome return to Valente’s Space Opera universe, where the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy meets EuroVision as a way to avoid interplanetary war. Space Oddity continues the prose style from the first book, with numerous comedic and outlandish descriptions, approaches, and reassurances from sentence to sentence that some things in the universe really do hold true, no matter how ridiculous. Decibel Jones is back, older, and not much wiser, but he’s doing his best, okay? It turns out that winners and survivors of the Intergalactic Grand Prix have … obligations, as well as charitable societies devoted to their ostensible care. This novel packs a punch, because under the flash, glamour, and comedic turns of phrase is a fierce adherence to the experience of being more experienced and a bit cynical when the universe needs you to not pay quite so much attention to what it’s up to.
Goguenar Gorecannon’s First Unkillable Fact is still true: Life is beautiful, and life is stupid.
To fight the darkness, humans have an adage about lighting a candle. This novel is what happens when you use a spotlight and a disco ball instead, in the best possible way.
Highly recommended.
December 8, 2024
Thank you to Saga Press and NetGalley for an early copy of this book.
Every bit as beautiful and snappy as the first, but you knew you could count on Valente. This sequel resumes on the heels of the first and follows Dess, your favorite gendersplat galaxy savior; Mira, the impossible girl; and Öö, who is in quite a pickle.
Everyone is frustrated at their current predicaments, Dess is having to explore the galaxy, Mira is stuck having to hard reset every hour, and Öö is imprisoned for his time crime. In their quest to find the next entrant into the MGP (Metagalactic Grand Prix), Dess, of course, says he wants to see something interesting, and so the hand of the galaxy shows him this, and he takes under his musical, and probably actual sequined, wings, a resident of this place who has no use for emotions, except for when it rains.
Through all this, Valente takes us on a tour of the galaxy, the other, previous entrants into the MGP, and shows us how earth is adapting to becoming a tourist stop to the rest of the universe.
I'm extremely biased so I loved EVERY second of this novel: Valente's creativity is on full display here and her humor is second to none. There are so many things I wish I could quote, one particular page had me laughing so hard I was crying at work.
The book is as fabulous and flawless as its author and protagonists.
Every bit as beautiful and snappy as the first, but you knew you could count on Valente. This sequel resumes on the heels of the first and follows Dess, your favorite gendersplat galaxy savior; Mira, the impossible girl; and Öö, who is in quite a pickle.
Everyone is frustrated at their current predicaments, Dess is having to explore the galaxy, Mira is stuck having to hard reset every hour, and Öö is imprisoned for his time crime. In their quest to find the next entrant into the MGP (Metagalactic Grand Prix), Dess, of course, says he wants to see something interesting, and so the hand of the galaxy shows him this, and he takes under his musical, and probably actual sequined, wings, a resident of this place who has no use for emotions, except for when it rains.
Through all this, Valente takes us on a tour of the galaxy, the other, previous entrants into the MGP, and shows us how earth is adapting to becoming a tourist stop to the rest of the universe.
I'm extremely biased so I loved EVERY second of this novel: Valente's creativity is on full display here and her humor is second to none. There are so many things I wish I could quote, one particular page had me laughing so hard I was crying at work.
The book is as fabulous and flawless as its author and protagonists.
December 26, 2024
Almost as much fun as the first in the series. Now humans have been (reluctantly) accepted as sentient by other races in the galaxy. On their ambassadorial tour, they must convince another newly discovered species that they are, indeed, sentient and to participate in the galaxy-wide song contest to prove it. Funny observations about similar yet oppositional species that hit too close to home (ie Earth). The writing is to be savored for all its layers of satire and goofy humor. A solid 4⭐️
October 15, 2024
Catherynne Valente is drunk with language. She plays with it, rolls it up in a ball, unwinds it, decorates her boudoir with it, and generally leaves it exhausted at the end of a very long evening.
Her writing is sort of like that paragraph. But better.
Anyhow, the first third of this book is exposition with little direct plot, but a recapping of How We Got Here from the first book, 'Space Opera'. For the first hundred pages or so she absolutely rolls in it, with extended metaphors and adjectives she hooks together like boxcars on a freight train, except this is a circus train so all the cars are shaped differently and colorful as hell. And filled with dependent clauses.
There's no way to convey this except with an excerpt. Here is how we meet one of our protagonists in chapter 2:
“Once upon a time (a phrase that's going to be doing quite a bit more work in this sentence than it's used to) in a very large, very elegant, shockingly normal human hotel room, there snoozed a hardheaded, glamdrunk, exquisitely eyebrowed, emotionally available (for a limited time only), tinsel-hearted, assigned fabulous at birth, technically impossible and existentially toxic biped about whose precise medical status, legal identity, and, most importantly, temporal coordinates, no one could quite agree, except to exasperatedly admit, at the conclusion of a number of private think-tank brainstorming sessions, that her name was Mira Wonderful Star, née Myra Strauss, and she was supposed to be dead.
...ish. “
“Within a few meters of the face-down, passed-out, body-glitter-barnacled co-savior of planet Earth, the following happened to be thrown about willy-nilly without one poor orphaned thought for who might have to tidy it all up: an uncharged phone; a very beautiful befrazzled coat called Robert, lying in a crumpled heap with quite a bit of cocktail spilled on it; a pair of thick hazmat gloves in a heap of limp deflated partially-burnt finger-sacks; an unplugged but still glowing standard hotel-issue wood-paneled AM/FM digital alarm clock; the remains of a cheeky midnight kebab and a petrol station bottle of prosecco; a novelty oversize frosted-glass microphone full of jelly beans, whose engraved windscreen read: 100th MEGAGLACTIC GRAND PRIX! 10TH PLACE – Almost Adequate!; what appeared to be an off-market, unconscious Care Bear slumped face down over the balcony; and the peacefully sleeping silver form of Microsoft's iconic 1997-2004 Office Assistant, winner of the 100th Megagalactic Grand Prix, who, despite being nearly eight feet tall and also a paper clip, was very much the little spoon in a certain lead singer's almost adequate embrace.”
Whew.
There's a lot of this kind of thing, which is fun to marvel over but doesn't move things along very fast. In fact, the real plot doesn't gin up until over a hundred pages into the book. Decibel Jones discovers a new planet and sentient species and has to convince them to participate in the singing contest or there will be Dire Consequences (as in, total obliteration). The species seems indifferent but finally drafts someone to participate. The remainder of the book roams around a bit before it gets to the contest with the new species.
The plot isn't very catchy, but that's not the point. The point is to celebrate the wonder of the Eurovision Song Contest set in a galactic scale, and to celebrate the gonzo and delightful writing style of Douglas Adams (c'mon, you knew it all along from that excerpt, didn't you?), which Valente admits in the acknowledgments (which she calls Liner Notes). In fact, that may be the best acknowledgments section I've ever read.
Perhaps Valente strains a bit too much to emulate Adams. Perhaps a little over the top. But it's really Eurovision, and when did over-the-top ever fail there?
Anyhow, DON'T PANIC! Read 'Space Opera' first, and if it grabs you then turn to this.
And don't forget to bring your towel.
Her writing is sort of like that paragraph. But better.
Anyhow, the first third of this book is exposition with little direct plot, but a recapping of How We Got Here from the first book, 'Space Opera'. For the first hundred pages or so she absolutely rolls in it, with extended metaphors and adjectives she hooks together like boxcars on a freight train, except this is a circus train so all the cars are shaped differently and colorful as hell. And filled with dependent clauses.
There's no way to convey this except with an excerpt. Here is how we meet one of our protagonists in chapter 2:
“Once upon a time (a phrase that's going to be doing quite a bit more work in this sentence than it's used to) in a very large, very elegant, shockingly normal human hotel room, there snoozed a hardheaded, glamdrunk, exquisitely eyebrowed, emotionally available (for a limited time only), tinsel-hearted, assigned fabulous at birth, technically impossible and existentially toxic biped about whose precise medical status, legal identity, and, most importantly, temporal coordinates, no one could quite agree, except to exasperatedly admit, at the conclusion of a number of private think-tank brainstorming sessions, that her name was Mira Wonderful Star, née Myra Strauss, and she was supposed to be dead.
...ish. “
“Within a few meters of the face-down, passed-out, body-glitter-barnacled co-savior of planet Earth, the following happened to be thrown about willy-nilly without one poor orphaned thought for who might have to tidy it all up: an uncharged phone; a very beautiful befrazzled coat called Robert, lying in a crumpled heap with quite a bit of cocktail spilled on it; a pair of thick hazmat gloves in a heap of limp deflated partially-burnt finger-sacks; an unplugged but still glowing standard hotel-issue wood-paneled AM/FM digital alarm clock; the remains of a cheeky midnight kebab and a petrol station bottle of prosecco; a novelty oversize frosted-glass microphone full of jelly beans, whose engraved windscreen read: 100th MEGAGLACTIC GRAND PRIX! 10TH PLACE – Almost Adequate!; what appeared to be an off-market, unconscious Care Bear slumped face down over the balcony; and the peacefully sleeping silver form of Microsoft's iconic 1997-2004 Office Assistant, winner of the 100th Megagalactic Grand Prix, who, despite being nearly eight feet tall and also a paper clip, was very much the little spoon in a certain lead singer's almost adequate embrace.”
Whew.
There's a lot of this kind of thing, which is fun to marvel over but doesn't move things along very fast. In fact, the real plot doesn't gin up until over a hundred pages into the book. Decibel Jones discovers a new planet and sentient species and has to convince them to participate in the singing contest or there will be Dire Consequences (as in, total obliteration). The species seems indifferent but finally drafts someone to participate. The remainder of the book roams around a bit before it gets to the contest with the new species.
The plot isn't very catchy, but that's not the point. The point is to celebrate the wonder of the Eurovision Song Contest set in a galactic scale, and to celebrate the gonzo and delightful writing style of Douglas Adams (c'mon, you knew it all along from that excerpt, didn't you?), which Valente admits in the acknowledgments (which she calls Liner Notes). In fact, that may be the best acknowledgments section I've ever read.
Perhaps Valente strains a bit too much to emulate Adams. Perhaps a little over the top. But it's really Eurovision, and when did over-the-top ever fail there?
Anyhow, DON'T PANIC! Read 'Space Opera' first, and if it grabs you then turn to this.
And don't forget to bring your towel.
October 9, 2024
After saving the human race with their acceptable tenth-place finish in the Megagalactic Grand Prix, Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes are left to cope with the inevitable comedown following such an epic not-quite-win. There's the soul-sucking universe-wide publicity tour to deal with--plus the fact that Decibel is a creaky forty-something, while bandmate Mira is a paradox, plucked out of her timeline at a fresh-faced, perpetual twenty-two. Also, she can't be touched without producing a catastrophic tear in the fabric of space-time. So, there's that on top of everything else.
In my review of Space Opera, which I enjoyed, I noted that, even though it's lol-funny, the book often feels on the edge of collapsing under the weight of its own writing. I'm afraid Space Oddity topples right over that edge for me. The writing goes in circles, straining for every possible wink, and bending over backwards to poke fun at humanity, or else at ridiculous/confusing sci-fi concepts. It's all very clever, but it takes more than a hundred pages for anything at all to happen, and even then, it's not much. I realize that plot was never going to be the main thing in a novel like this, but I would've appreciated a tad less conversation, a little more action.
But even though Space Oddity was a miss with me, Catherynne M. Valente remains a hit in my book. I look forward to reading her again.
In my review of Space Opera, which I enjoyed, I noted that, even though it's lol-funny, the book often feels on the edge of collapsing under the weight of its own writing. I'm afraid Space Oddity topples right over that edge for me. The writing goes in circles, straining for every possible wink, and bending over backwards to poke fun at humanity, or else at ridiculous/confusing sci-fi concepts. It's all very clever, but it takes more than a hundred pages for anything at all to happen, and even then, it's not much. I realize that plot was never going to be the main thing in a novel like this, but I would've appreciated a tad less conversation, a little more action.
But even though Space Oddity was a miss with me, Catherynne M. Valente remains a hit in my book. I look forward to reading her again.
January 23, 2025
2.5/5
I wanted to like this. I wanted to like this so much. I thought Space Opera did something new and fresh and exciting, and I was so eager to see what could be done with the sequel. The problem, though, is that the narrative voice that made Space Opera so fresh and new was the same voice here, given such free rein that it overpowered all the other things we need in a novel. Every character had a tendency to monologue in the identical matching narrative voice; and the side-quests into, say, overly stalled board meetings, or the incompetent team activities of the Metagalactic Grand Prix Semi-finals, felt self-indulgent and slow. The last 10-15% or so were constructed to build off certain events and clues that were dropped earlier, but the wildly wide-ranging narrative approach from the first 85% of the book felt so slow and incoherent that the eventual emotional pay-off just didn't land. The building blocks were in place for something really terrific; but unlike the first block, the coherence of the rest of the book was too tenuous to actually tie together the key things effectively.
I wanted to like this. I wanted to like this so much. I thought Space Opera did something new and fresh and exciting, and I was so eager to see what could be done with the sequel. The problem, though, is that the narrative voice that made Space Opera so fresh and new was the same voice here, given such free rein that it overpowered all the other things we need in a novel. Every character had a tendency to monologue in the identical matching narrative voice; and the side-quests into, say, overly stalled board meetings, or the incompetent team activities of the Metagalactic Grand Prix Semi-finals, felt self-indulgent and slow. The last 10-15% or so were constructed to build off certain events and clues that were dropped earlier, but the wildly wide-ranging narrative approach from the first 85% of the book felt so slow and incoherent that the eventual emotional pay-off just didn't land. The building blocks were in place for something really terrific; but unlike the first block, the coherence of the rest of the book was too tenuous to actually tie together the key things effectively.
July 17, 2024
I haven't read the book, and thus have no basis for an opinion, but if the people Amazon have mismanaging this site insist on letting people rate and review books they can't possibly have read then I might as well use this undeserved power for good.
Besides, the previous novel -- Space Opera -- was an absolute romp.
Besides, the previous novel -- Space Opera -- was an absolute romp.
September 28, 2024
It's rare that I like a sequel more than the first book, but this one was funnier, more poetic, weirder and so much more fun. Less plot, more character work. The cosmos counts as a character, in case you're wondering.
October 11, 2024
I’m all about this brand of absurdist humor, but I was about 80% through the book before the plot (a direct continuation of Space Opera) really took hold.
January 13, 2025
I probably shouldn't have read Space Oddity back to back with its predecessor Space Opera. Dealing with this much dense metatextual humour buried deep into multiple claused, run-on sentence full paragraphs, requires a bit of break to enjoy. Space Oddity is also 100 pages longer than the first one. This kind of (author admitted) Douglas Adams style humour needs space (pun intended), which is ironically the one thing Valente rarely gives it. It's interesting to consider that Adams' procrastination and hatred of actual writing may have been one of his greatest assets; the books are short and not over-burdened with that comedic "Guide" density in the narrative sections.
Valente follows on from Space Opera where the band Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros have saved Earth by not losing the Metagalactic Song Contest, and now they are thrust into a contractually obligated tour. This is a minor problem in particular for Mira Wonderful Star, their drummer, who was previously dead and is now only alive due to being pulled out of her time-stream on a loop (creating a paradox that powers their starship). Actually the existential problem is largely ignored for more intergalactic gazetteering of more deadly aliens, and a hastily cobbled together actual plot which sort of re-runs the previous book for an alien civilization the band discover. As ever the imagination here is top-notch, if often centred upon how bizarre and dangerous she can make these alien civilizations. However, the band and song name parodies get ever more specific and tenuous in a way that I fear will date terribly.
Space Oddity has most of the flaws of its predecessor, amplified by length and the realisation that the first book didn't really need a sequel, not least because its characters were barely fleshed out there to care enough about them. Its main excuse is that Mira Wonderful Star only actually turns up in Space Opera at the end fails because very little is done with her psychological state. There is a lovely bit where the book examines how Earth copes with finally being part of an intergalactic community and is surprised (but doesn't delve into) Earth then just shrugging and getting on with it. The complex, gag heavy paragraphs are a little more restrained here, but only a little. Space Opera had (secondhand) novelty, but my feeling is she burns through too many ideas here without ever working out what the story for the band is. If you are going to pastiche Douglas Adams, you need to take it all, and I think that should include what comes with being short and a little bit lazy.
Valente follows on from Space Opera where the band Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros have saved Earth by not losing the Metagalactic Song Contest, and now they are thrust into a contractually obligated tour. This is a minor problem in particular for Mira Wonderful Star, their drummer, who was previously dead and is now only alive due to being pulled out of her time-stream on a loop (creating a paradox that powers their starship). Actually the existential problem is largely ignored for more intergalactic gazetteering of more deadly aliens, and a hastily cobbled together actual plot which sort of re-runs the previous book for an alien civilization the band discover. As ever the imagination here is top-notch, if often centred upon how bizarre and dangerous she can make these alien civilizations. However, the band and song name parodies get ever more specific and tenuous in a way that I fear will date terribly.
Space Oddity has most of the flaws of its predecessor, amplified by length and the realisation that the first book didn't really need a sequel, not least because its characters were barely fleshed out there to care enough about them. Its main excuse is that Mira Wonderful Star only actually turns up in Space Opera at the end fails because very little is done with her psychological state. There is a lovely bit where the book examines how Earth copes with finally being part of an intergalactic community and is surprised (but doesn't delve into) Earth then just shrugging and getting on with it. The complex, gag heavy paragraphs are a little more restrained here, but only a little. Space Opera had (secondhand) novelty, but my feeling is she burns through too many ideas here without ever working out what the story for the band is. If you are going to pastiche Douglas Adams, you need to take it all, and I think that should include what comes with being short and a little bit lazy.
October 21, 2024
Valente's Space Opera series is hard to pin down as a genre. Yes, it's sci-fi, it's comedic and satirical, but more correctly it's Douglas Adams. As a genre it simple is Douglas Adams, and that sums it up best. I'm sure more literary minded folk would take issue with this analysis, but I don't care, it just is.
So, about Space Oddity...
What worked: Space Opera was a hell of a ride and a fun experience, and Space Oddity picks up right where Opera left off and relentlessly continues to pummel the reader with inane and bizarre explanations and apparent tangential discursions. It's fun, overly explicable, and full of heart.
What didn't work: Douglas Adams' brief narrative excursions felt like jokes: there was a setup and a punch line, and they may or may not mean anything in the larger scope of the story. Valente takes a similar approach, but Oddity's narrative excursions feel more like humorous stories your drunk friend tells you - they are overly long, at times meandering, and often fail to have a punch line. All of these excursions eventually pay off in Oddity, it's just a bit hard on the reader to juggle so many bizarre and seemingly tangential excursions until the end of the book.
Overall, I eagerly await the next book in the serious and can't wait for more of Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes.
So, about Space Oddity...
What worked: Space Opera was a hell of a ride and a fun experience, and Space Oddity picks up right where Opera left off and relentlessly continues to pummel the reader with inane and bizarre explanations and apparent tangential discursions. It's fun, overly explicable, and full of heart.
What didn't work: Douglas Adams' brief narrative excursions felt like jokes: there was a setup and a punch line, and they may or may not mean anything in the larger scope of the story. Valente takes a similar approach, but Oddity's narrative excursions feel more like humorous stories your drunk friend tells you - they are overly long, at times meandering, and often fail to have a punch line. All of these excursions eventually pay off in Oddity, it's just a bit hard on the reader to juggle so many bizarre and seemingly tangential excursions until the end of the book.
Overall, I eagerly await the next book in the serious and can't wait for more of Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes.
Read
July 28, 2025I'm not going to give this book a star rating because I am confident that my failure to enjoy the book is a matter of taste, not an actual flaw in the book itself. It was recommended to me by a family member who absolutely loved it, who found it hilarious, and who said that it was like Douglas Adams, whose Hitchhiker series we both have enjoyed.
That said, I'm still struggling to put my finger on why it simply didn't click for me. Part of it is the lack of any "anchor" like Arthur Dent, the Everyman who down deep just wants to get back to normal again. But there was the problem that I found it just too off-the-wall zany in how it just kept throwing one after another wild and crazy thing at me, and the lists that were supposed to be funny read as tedious to me, so I was skimming more than I was actually reading.
In the end, I just have to conclude that I'm not the reader for this book, and I'm not really motivated to read the first book to see if it would've been a better entry point into this 'verse.
That said, I'm still struggling to put my finger on why it simply didn't click for me. Part of it is the lack of any "anchor" like Arthur Dent, the Everyman who down deep just wants to get back to normal again. But there was the problem that I found it just too off-the-wall zany in how it just kept throwing one after another wild and crazy thing at me, and the lists that were supposed to be funny read as tedious to me, so I was skimming more than I was actually reading.
In the end, I just have to conclude that I'm not the reader for this book, and I'm not really motivated to read the first book to see if it would've been a better entry point into this 'verse.
September 28, 2024
Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy meets Eurovision meets The Fifth Element in this wild sequel to one of my most recent favorite novels.
Space Opera was a wild Eurovision acid trip and Space Oddity keeps the party rolling with it's unhinged banter, epic sci-fi adventures, and enough musical pop culture references to stump any trivia night aficionado.
The first book wrapped itself up quite nicely with a few unanswered questions involving some side characters so I didn't expect a sequel but I'm not mad we got one!
Continuing where book one left off, Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros saved the Earth from absolute annihilation. Did they break a few intergalactic laws to survive? Maybe, but so did every other alien who tried to stop them from winning in the first place!
Will everyone read this book and absolutely adore it as much as I do? Probably, not, but it's still a wild good time. Space Oddity is an eccentric, eclectic, and an all around epic romp!
Space Opera was a wild Eurovision acid trip and Space Oddity keeps the party rolling with it's unhinged banter, epic sci-fi adventures, and enough musical pop culture references to stump any trivia night aficionado.
The first book wrapped itself up quite nicely with a few unanswered questions involving some side characters so I didn't expect a sequel but I'm not mad we got one!
Continuing where book one left off, Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros saved the Earth from absolute annihilation. Did they break a few intergalactic laws to survive? Maybe, but so did every other alien who tried to stop them from winning in the first place!
Will everyone read this book and absolutely adore it as much as I do? Probably, not, but it's still a wild good time. Space Oddity is an eccentric, eclectic, and an all around epic romp!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 29, 2025
I absolutely adored the first book so this felt like a massive let down. I'm usually a fan of her writing but there were just too many asides here and too many over-wrought metaphors that bogged the whole thing down. I didn't care for most of the things happening, I didn't connect with Decibel the way I did in the first book either.
HOWEVER! It did have its moments. Decibel hugging Mira and realising that he's in the best possible timeline because there's no greater joy in his life than hugging his best friend? Genuinely made me tear up. Also Oort being the new host for the contest was a brilliant move. And of course it was great to have Mira finally in the spotlight, I just wish it was a more cohesive light.
HOWEVER! It did have its moments. Decibel hugging Mira and realising that he's in the best possible timeline because there's no greater joy in his life than hugging his best friend? Genuinely made me tear up. Also Oort being the new host for the contest was a brilliant move. And of course it was great to have Mira finally in the spotlight, I just wish it was a more cohesive light.
February 6, 2025
A brillaint ode to Douglas Adams and Eurovision. I want Catherynne in my corner next time someone tries to tell me Eurovision isn't political (and not just because "the French hate us"), and the almost aggressive number of delightfully over-described tangents that eventually get to the point in the end (and add a lot of flavour along the way) is far too close to how my brain works for me not to love these books.
July 12, 2025
Shorter, less engaging and more cobbled-together-seeming than the first installment. Still a lot of fun fanciful characters/settings and far-out scenarios, and it might have helped to read this one soon after SO #1: so many alien races and so many wild vivid descriptions in the first one, but they don't come as easily to mind while reading this one. Just not quite as much wild, lightning-in-a-bottle energy as the first.
April 5, 2025
Described in a review as gonzo sci fi, so of course I had to give it a go. Quite funny and imaginative, but hard to follow. Not sure I got the plot entirely. But it has me laughing in places. Lets just say, these are the adventures of Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros, a rock band of the space dominated future. Fun!
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