Final Discussion
Apr. 21st, 2024 01:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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albatrosspagesHello everyone!
Here's the final discussion post for Station Eternity.
No one submitted any questions, so I'd like to pose to the group: what do you think generally worked for you in the book, and what didn't? What draws you to mysteries?
I'm excited to see what everyone thought!
(I'll be back with my thoughts below this post later, as well!)
Here's the final discussion post for Station Eternity.
No one submitted any questions, so I'd like to pose to the group: what do you think generally worked for you in the book, and what didn't? What draws you to mysteries?
I'm excited to see what everyone thought!
(I'll be back with my thoughts below this post later, as well!)
no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 02:53 am (UTC)This book felt SO messy and SO disjointed that it was barely a mystery imo? We barely spent any time with Mallory at all in the grand scheme of things, let alone with her actually figuring anything out. She doesn't make deductions about God's Breath and why Xan ended up coming to the station, she doesn't realize he's formed a symbiotic relationship with his ship, I don't even know if she figures out how Ren died or if we're just informed of that in a rushed flashback? Which is odd because that was, ostensibly, the central mystery this book was operating around. The sheer number of character backstory chapters we got that just dumped plot-essential information on the reader instead of showing us the process of discovering this information was deeply, deeply frustrating to me in terms of this book living up to the promises of its genre.
Those flashback chapters also just absolutely destroyed the pacing of the book which imo was pretty bad already. I never once felt like there was any sense of urgency whatsoever regarding the murder or even, honestly, Mallory's fears regarding humans coming to the station. Everything just draaaaagged so severely. I think I might have enjoyed the slow pace more if 1. this wasn't a mystery and 2. I liked literally ANY of the characters.
I could go on a whole tangent about Umineko, a visual novel that I think executes a slower-paced mystery with tons of characters almost perfectly, but I will spare you all lol, the TLDR is it can be done and I have seen it happen! The key is 1. pacing and 2. making the characters interesting even when they aren't likeable. I just couldn't connect to most of the characters here, maybe because of the prose or how they were presented? In any case I found most of them really shallow and often deeply aggravating, which was compounded by the fact that I don't think most of the attempts at humor in this book landed in the slightest. The Gniess are the worst offender here imo but pretty much any attempt at a joke in this book did not land for me.
One other thing I want to mention is that while this book has a "diverse" cast of characters I found the way it actually handled those characters + the issues they face as marginalized people to be clumsy at best and actively bad at worst. I'm mostly thinking about the way the characters of color discuss racism (Phineas and Calliope in particular) but there were a lot of moments that were well-meaning but just felt so blunt/inelegant. This is only tangentially related but there's a throwaway line early on about "English, Chinese, and Indian dialects" that really, really annoyed me (Indian is not a language, it does not have dialects, there are just a lot of languages in India). Not relevant to my broader complaints with the book but I can't stop thinking about it!!
A final note is that I don't think this book really succeeds as a sci-fi novel either. The worldbuilding is so vague and honestly kind of incomprehensible at times that this world didn't feel vivid or well-realized at all. I was also just personally bothered by the idea that humans are the ONLY species incapable of symbiosis both because I think it sets up this false dichotomy between humans and other animals on Earth who do have symbiotic relationships and also because I think it flattens the other aliens too much. I understand the trope of aliens finding humans weak and weird, and I think that could have worked with the whole military plot going on here. I just found it waaay too unbelievable that all these other alien species have evolved the exact same kind of symbiotic relationship and it's ONLY humans that don't have symbiotes. Kind of minimizes the idea of this vast wide universe of alien species that are so different from each other if they all have this very specific biological feature.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 02:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 02:56 pm (UTC)I read the book in one go, so I can't say it's unreadable, as such. In fact, in the very beginning, I was interested in seeing where this was going. It just went nowhere interesting and it became increasingly muddled.
Mysteries,in my opinion, should become clearer the closer you get to the end, not more confusing.
Tbh I had to ask Pop if she picked up on who actually committed the first murder (station symbiote) bc that revelation escaped me. If u can't give me an actual detective, at least u could give me a proper whodunit reveal!
I actually finished the book ages ago but I found myself incapable of commenting chapter by chapter because I found the entire thing so unsatisfying.
But yknow, glad I've read it and now know I have to avoid this author, no matter how appealing the tag lines sound!
no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 03:02 pm (UTC)I like mysteries so I was quite intrigued by the "murder mystery on a spaceship" concept but I don't think it makes effective use of that idea at all. Lafferty doesn't do the classic mystery structure which would be fine if the book was engaging, but what we get instead was just rather scattered and messy. It introduces the cast of suspects sooo late into the story and then gives each of them a POV chapter or two, to very mixed effect, as none of them ever felt like 'real' suspects, and none of them seemed to have any motivation for being involved in the main conflict of humans arriving on the alien station. By the end I was so disengaged with the mystery that I almost zoomed over who actually did the original murder.
I was not interested in any of the aliens which seems like it should be the most obvious thing to make interesting.
I just did not vibe with this book. When Mallory and Xan bonded over liking Octavia Butler rather than Kurt Vonnegut, I sighed. When Calliope says she wrote RPF fanfiction on AO3 about a military incident she was involved in, I sighed twice.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 03:05 pm (UTC)And I had to go back and check 🥲
no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 03:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 03:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 05:34 pm (UTC)OTOH, the book would've been way better with abt 6 less POVs (especially since so many of them went nowhere w/r/t the plot.) The way I ROLLED MY EYES while reading the last POV...so unnecessary.
Anyhoo, I began resenting the book at the point (probably 50-ish % in?) where the plot moved on from 'space murder mystery' and toward 'JUST VIBES'. I'm not a 'JUST VIBES' reader. But I stuck to it cuz I wanted to see how it was going to end.
The cherry on top was the story beats abt the Gneiss (the rock aliens) I found all of them either boring or annoying. So seeing the book focus so hard on them in the last 20% of the novel was a bit of a reading ordeal for me.
HAVING SAID ALL THAT, this is an extremely readable book. Given how I finished it in abt 3 days? I was entertained enough to add the sequel to my library TBR. Though it's likely I won't pick it up until next year.
In the end, I'm left more frustrated with how Lafferty lost control of the story. Maybe she gave it up voluntarily? Because there was a good story buried under all of the random POVs and them JUST VIBES... :|
ETA: with mysteries, I like going along the characters and seeing them figure things out. Like, I don't even try to solve the crime/mystery/murder, I just like seeing the deduction process and then the reveal moments.
Which means that this book failed despite having a hell of a premise. The reveal was dull AF. It didn't help that the book had literally abandoned the space murder mystery premise for something else. Only to pick it back up toward the end. Hmm.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 05:37 pm (UTC)I didn't like that the twist as to who the Big Bad was in this novel ended up being anti-climatic AND convoluted as well? IDK, I remember thinking "okay then" when the reveal happened, LOLsob.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 05:41 pm (UTC)I understand the trope of aliens finding humans weak and weird, and I think that could have worked with the whole military plot going on here.
And see, I wish the military thing had either been brought up earlier OR not brought up at all. To me it felt like the author sprung that angle on me out of nowhere. So I hated the whole thing abt God's Breath. There was enough of a plot with the whole actual!murder mystery. The book didn't need disaster movie + the evils of the military + JUST VIBES shoved into the plot. >:(
I'm still not sure what to make of the way the author wrote abt the POCs, tbh. Sigh.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 05:44 pm (UTC)Tbh I had to ask Pop if she picked up on who actually committed the first murder (station symbiote) bc that revelation escaped me.
Huh, I'm legit blanking out on who the culprit was. O__o. Would you mind telling me?
no subject
Date: 2024-04-22 05:48 pm (UTC)When Calliope says she wrote RPF fanfiction on AO3 about a military incident she was involved in, I sighed twice.
The way I sighed when Cal said that. I'm still not sure if the author meant it as wink-wink (a.k.a. "hey, I'm one of y'all for the RPF folks) OR if it was supposed to be a How Do You Do, Fellow Kids (a.k.a. "I'm trying to be hip with what the Youth (TM) are into".) it was a moment that legit took me OUT and, in some ways, marked the moment when I was like "let me stop stressing out abt this book and get to the end of it," LOLsob.
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Date: 2024-04-22 05:51 pm (UTC)It was a moment that made me put the book down for a moment and try to process that. Full disclosure: I loathe fandom/fannish references in profic. It's close to nails on the chalkboard for my brain. So seeing that character talk abt posting RPF and the 'karma' thing was just very very. IDK.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-23 06:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-23 11:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-23 11:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-23 11:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-23 11:45 am (UTC)I doubt I will read it, but I will be interested to hear what you think of book 2!
And I think you're so right about the deduction and the reveal, those parts are so satisfying when done well and the story clicks together. That was just missing.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-23 04:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-23 04:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-23 04:52 pm (UTC)And that says a lot abt this author's writing technique. I didn't even bat an eye when the people-eating thing started, hahah.
That was just missing.
Exactly! I love them reveals so it was odd that my reaction when that happened in this book was "Oh, okay. Let me go get some lunch now." Which makes the fact that ppl equate Mallory with JESSICA GODDAMN FLETCHER as one of the wildest things ever. I know it's because both solve murders and are mystery authors, but the comparison doesn't quite ring true to me.
I doubt I will read it, but I will be interested to hear what you think of book 2!
Well...I ended up borrowing it from my library last night. Read the first chapter and a half while getting the sense that this was MORE of the same as in the first book. So I read some reviews to see if I could get a better sense of what the general consensus was like + to see if there was anything that would pique my interest...
Instead of feeling enthusiastic and diving back in (and despite the v. positive reviews), I skipped ahead to the last chapter so I could find out the murder's identity and their reason for killing ppl. Followed by half of the epilogue.
Based on the little I read & the reviews, it's MORE GNEISS and a bad plot. So, feel free to save yourself from starting Book2. Someone, who gave the book 3 stars, said that it was like 20 lbs of plot in a 5 lb bag (I'm paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it) in addition to the plot being extremely stressful. So I said, NO THANK YOU, and picked up Vol 5 of TGCF, hahah.
no subject
Date: 2024-04-24 11:02 am (UTC)Thank you for being brave enough to give it a try and return to tell the tale. Wild to think she looked at book 1 and was like "Okay, let me increase the thing" and then increased the wrong thing.
I am sure TGCF will be more satisfying LOL!!!
no subject
Date: 2024-04-24 04:53 pm (UTC)But that also came at the cost of lessening the presence of other characters such as Xan for whatever reason.
Oh, yeah, TGCF Vol. 5 has been A BLAST so far. I'm abt 25% in. So it's a win for me!
no subject
Date: 2024-04-25 04:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-27 04:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-04-28 11:04 am (UTC)Next book!
Date: 2024-05-12 09:37 am (UTC)Maybe we could have a discussion based on our experiences with this book? And or another poll for next? 🤔
Re: Next book!
Date: 2024-05-17 07:22 am (UTC)