Sign up
Search
Advanced search settings

Search only in certain items:

Search results
All (1172)
Content
People
Apps
Books
Orbs
Movies
Music
Podcasts
Shows
Tabletop Games
Tech
TV
Video Games
YouTube Channels
Videos
    Timepage for iPad

    Timepage for iPad

    Productivity and Business

    (0 Ratings) Rate It

    App

    Organize your life with Timepage, the incredible calendar app unlike any other. Selected by Apple as...

    DM1 for iPhone

    DM1 for iPhone

    Music

    (0 Ratings) Rate It

    App

    DM1 is an advanced vintage Drum Machine. It turns your iPhone into a fun and creative beat making...

    Roadside America

    Roadside America

    Travel and Navigation

    (0 Ratings) Rate It

    App

    The team at RoadsideAmerica.com has spent decades exploring the weird wonders of America’s...

40x40

Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated The Wrong Stars in Books

Aug 26, 2018 (Updated Aug 26, 2018)  
TW
The Wrong Stars
Tim Pratt | 2017 | Fiction & Poetry
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Diversity (2 more)
World-building
Amazing alien species
I've watched my fair share of Space Opera (Firefly, Dark Matter, Farscape, Star Trek, Star Wars - don't try to tell me those last two aren't Space Opera, THEY TOTALLY ARE) - but I haven't read much of it. I picked up The Wrong Stars mostly because reviews said it had a demisexual main character, rather than because it's a Space Opera. Regardless, I am SO GLAD I DID. The book is excellent.

First off, the diversity! Over the course of the story, we meet people who are, in no particular order, gay, bisexual, demisexual, asexual, transgender, and non-binary. The story is set 500 years after Earth sends out its first colony ships, and in that time, culture has evolved. Marriage is not common, but contractually-bound relationships exist. Promiscuity and non-monogamy aren't viewed any different than monogamy, and in the same way, the distinctions between gay, straight, and bi don't carry any negative connotations. It's not a complete utopia - it's still a capitalist society, and there is still scarcity - but socially, at least, it has definitely evolved a lot from the present!

Elena, one of our main characters, was a biologist sent out on one of the first colony ships. Stocked with seeds, crude replicators, and cryo-sleep pods, a small crew was sent out, in stasis, on a five-hundred year journey to a system with probable life-supporting planets. They were called Goldilocks ships, in the hope they'd find a planet that was "just right." What humanity didn't expect was that in the intervening five hundred years, they would make contact with an alien species and be given the means for true space travel via wormholes. Some of the ships arrived at their destinations to find human colonies already thriving on their target planets! Elena, however, found something quite different, and it's a very disconcerting difference. She is rescued by the motley crew of the White Raven, and they quickly get drawn into the mystery.

I really enjoyed the world-building and characterization in The Wrong Stars. The science of it made sense to me, but I'm not very versed in science, so I can't really say how realistic it is. It was at least pretty internally consistent. I'd like to learn more about how the AIs are created, though. Luckily, there is a sequel coming! The Dreaming Stars should be coming out this September, and I'm DEFINITELY going to read it.

If you like Dark Matter, Firefly, or Farscape, you should definitely read The Wrong Stars. There's a little bit of light romance threaded into the larger plot, and one fade-to-black sex scene. It's definitely not the focus of the book. There is some violence, but nothing incredibly graphic. I would put it at about the same maturity level as Star Trek.


You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.com