Station Eternity

"Your princess is here, and she's fucking metal!"

This book was kind of a mess. I love sci-fi, and the premise of a murder mystery aboard a literal space station had me all sorts of curious and cautiously excited. I guess I was picturing a Holmes-ian mystery in a Deep Space Nine or Babylon 5 episode when I picked this up. This was....definitely not that.

Mallory has lived her life constantly on the run from murders that happen around her. From a young age, she's borne witness to murder after murder from people around her, and she's had enough. First contact with aliens has come and gone, and Mallory makes her destination the one place humans can't go–Station Eternity. But even after being there doesn't save her when the sentient station starts accepting more humans, and all her past trauma comes back with a vengeance.

This was an incredibly convoluted story, made worse with the inclusion of the backstories of nearly everybody around her. Full chapters are dedicated to how a character got to the station, and not all of it was relevant. There was also lots of infodumps disguised as dialogue which really dragged things out in places.

I also felt like the later scenes weren't exactly coherent in what they were supposed to get across. (subplot/backup character spoilers)Particularly where it involved the Gneiss's...Gneissi? Gneissus? Stephanie, Tina, and Ferdinand. Late in the book we get a plot dump about these rock-like aliens turning into...space ships and things? And there's this sideplot involving Stephanie and her grandfather/ship being at odds with one another that comes to a head in the middle of the murder investigation plot that felt unnecessary. Things just felt incredibly chaotic near the end.

Finally, (end spoilers here) there just wasn't a lot of murder investigation. Mallory clearly has been through this before and a lot is made of her investigatory skills early on, but the only real investigation she does is get stung by a hornet and realize her aunt is the murderer. Everything else is just a lot of chaotic flailing and dialogue.

So, I guess, in short, this wasn't exactly what I was looking for. I thought the premise was interesting and potentially rewarding, but we didn't get any of that delicious payoff. Kind of a letdown, honestly.