Space Opera

Rock musicians (glam rock!), science fiction, and humor are three of my favorite things. I was looking forward to the book and thought for sure it would be a winner. Valente has a solid imagination, a way with words, and a unique, quirky sense of humor.

The majority of Space Opera was whimsical wordplay and fantastic descriptions and not a lot of plot or interesting/believable characters. I see all the comparisons to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and I get it, especially when she imitates or creates homage to Adams with lines like this:

“Life is beautiful and life is stupid. This is, in fact, widely regarded as a universal rule not less inviolable than the Second Law of Thermodynamics, the Uncertainty Principle, and No Post on Sundays.”

That bring to mind this:

“The story so far:
In the beginning the Universe was created.
This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”
― Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The Hitchhiker's Guide was also not so strong on plot, I will admit, but Trillion, Zaphod, Marvin, etc., were all vivid characters and Arthur was the “ordinary” guy that served as our guide through Adam's absurd galaxy.

I can't say I'm going to remember Space Opera's lead characters Oort or Decibel Jones (except maybe their weird names) for much of anything. The “superior” alien beings are even less memorable. Other than appearances, it's hard to tell one from the other. They all have a kooky-yet-condescending vibe when dealing with the earthling protagonists. (That was another thing about Hitchhiker's, the aliens looked down on Arthur but the readers knew he had something to offer.)

Instead of letting the reader experience the fantastic new galaxy through the eyes of say, Oort, and seeing the changes it makes on the character, we get countless ways of saying a planet is dark. The first chapter, instead of setting up a story, is nine pages on the notion of who is and who isn't sentient, and just who are we to decide that anyway. The sentience question is a major theme of the book, but I got the point after a paragraph or two. The humans in this story are objects of an agenda and not the focus of compelling storytelling.

This is very similar to the way I felt about Valente's Radiance. It seems with this author, no matter how appealing her concept is, there will be a lot of time spent on zany wordplay for its own sake. What amused me at the start wore me out by the end, and I was glad to see the last page.