Click here to watch a video review of this book on my channel, From Beginning to Bookend. Space Opera is Eurovision in space! The fate of the world rests on the shoulders of the washed up lead singer of a band notorious for inventing "the entire electro-funk glamgrind genre." With puns, pop-culture references, and some unapologetic observations about the human race, Valente escorts readers through the cosmos to the glittering, psychedelic, bizarre Metagalactic Grand Prix where alien races com...

Once upon a time on a small, watery, excitable planet called Earth, in a small, watery, excitable country called Italy, a soft-spoken, rather nice-looking gentleman by the name of Enrico Fermi was born into a family so overprotective that he felt compelled to invent the atomic bomb. Somewhere in between discovering various heretofore cripplingly socially anxious particles and transuranic elements and digging through plutonium to find the treat at the bottom of the nuclear box, he found the time

2.5 stars. Review first posted on Fantasy Literature (along with my co-reviewer Jana's review). It took me nearly two months to read this Eurovision in space/Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy mashup, start to finish. My journey began with Anticipation, shifted to Befuddlement and Boredom, passed through Dismay, flirted with DNF, picked up again a few weeks later with Resolution, and ended with an overdose of Whimsy and Zaniness.Oort St. Ultraviolet and his old bandmate Decibel Jones, the two rema...

So, one time I bought a bottle of Miracle-Gro for my houseplants. I used it once or twice and then stuck it in the back of a cupboard and forgot about it. Years later, when I was moving house, I cleared out the cupboard and found the bottle, which had leaked somehow and the Miracle-Gro had actually *made the bottle itself grow*! There were all these baroque sort of globules growing fractally off the side of it. It was magical and also a bit disturbing. This book reminded me of my miraculous Mira...

2ish stars.Funny in the way Mad Libs is funny. Random, nonsensical, fill-in-the-blank humor that is occasionally amusing because it's bound to be at some point by sheer volume of silliness. Valente is obviously pleased with herself, which draws another comparison to Mad Libs. It’s apparently much funnier to the person actually filling in the blanks with erratic strings of adjectives, adverbs, and made-up words than to the ones reading it.

Life is beautiful. And life is stupid. Once upon a time on a small, watery, exciteable planet called Earth ... we find out that we are indeed not alone in the universe. On the contrary. The universe is teeming with all kinds of life (including the most improbable forms of FTL transportation) and after a horrible intergalactic war, every sentient species has agreed on a form of contest with which to entertain but also combat one another. And it is a way of discerning if a species is sentient o

This is another book that I blurbed, so I'm just expanding on what I already said. This book is SO MUCH FUN. The bountiful silliness, and the space setting, will automatically inspire comparisons to Douglas Adams --- but this is really something different and outrageous, all its own. I found the story of a washed up pop group trying to save the world quite moving and sweet, and just lovely.

Life is beautiful and life is stupid. As long as you keep that in mind, and never give more weight to one than the other, the history of the galaxy, the history of a planet, the history of a person is a simple tune with lyrics flashed on-screen and a helpful, friendly bouncing disco ball of glittering, occasionally peaceful light to help you follow along.Cue the music. Cue the dancers.Cue tomorrow I have alot of reasons to not to like this book. It took me over a month to finish it,

DNF at 52% I tried this book on audio and physical copy, and although I wasn’t hating it, I found I wasn’t caring either. The tangents away from the plot and characters onto stories of aliens I will never remember, and glazed over during, felt like a sign that I should set this aside. This book seems to focus more on the writing, jokes, and over the top world than the characters or plot. This is magical and odd in a way only Valente can do. But after having read a few of her books, I don’t think...

This book is what comes from combining refined sugar, cocaine, and a word processor. The comma to period ratio was about 100:1. They were frenzied, rabid sentences.Never in this life would I have thought I’d be complaining about the writing from the author of The Refrigerator Monologues.As far as the subject matter, if you liked The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet you’ll like this: hard agenda covered in soft confectionary science fiction.DNF 41%

My WRITE IN VOTE for GR's 2018 CHOICE AWARDS, SCIENCE FICTION==<<>>==<<>>==<<>>==<<>>==<<>>==<<>>==<<>>==<<>>Like being at the best cocktail party--EVER!So funny, clever, over-the-top, philosophical Eurovision/Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that had hints of This is Spinal Tap and cameos by:How you ask. Simple. After nearly annihilating the universe, the varying factions created the Grand Prix, a song competition. Humans are out to prove their sentience. Sounds easy? Not so fast, grasshopper.

Humorous writing is not for everyone; senses of humor just tend to be too different and/or incompatible. This one hits my sense of humor square on: absurdist, wry and with a core of profundity that works very well with the lush writing that the author has on display elsewhere.After the Sentience Wars interstellar civilization has implemented the Metagalactic Grand Prix song contest which all prospective sentient species must compete in and not come last. A new species that comes last is deemed t...

If you are a mostly adult SFF + YA reader like me, it doesn't matter which books you've read - this will be one of the weirdest you've ever found. It's Eurovision in space, against aliens, and if the humans lose, they will be exterminated.This is the kind of book that doesn't make sense, but it also does. It's so over-the-top it's almost exhausting, it's comedy, it's so alien - but it's also a very human, very serious book. Its main themes are what it means to be human, whether human life is red...

If I were to give this book a one word review, it would be:OverwrittenThis book, in my opinion tries WAY too hard. What it tries way too hard to do, I am not quite sure, but I was starting to get a headache trying to keep up with all the stuff it was throwing my way. It seemed like every sentence had to have a punchline. Every description came with a built in footnote story. It was delivered under what seemed like the influence of 1000 energy drinks. The fact that the content was so out there an...

Life is beautiful. Life is stupid.This book was all kinds of freaking wonderful, packed to the gills with glam and snark and a buttload of heart-wrenching brutal honesty wrapped up with a bow of sex, aliens, and rock and roll.A lot of people are equating this with Hitchhiker's Guide, but in a lot of ways, it's better. And worse. The sheer amount of delightful rock-and-roll trivia and snark made me think of Rob Reid's Year Zero, but this was better. Think about all the aging Glam Rock stars who h...

I’M GETTING HIGH JUST FROM READING THIS BLURB

3.5*When I heard that Valente was creating a ‘Eurovision Song Contest’ in space with alien civilisations battling by song, I was totally sold, especially since I’d wanted to read something of hers for ages. The problem you see is that the author had to write it in a humouristic, tongue-in-cheek, tone and I don’t do well with that style. I still read it, enjoyed it to a certain extent, smiled a few times, recognised the writing skill, but never truly connected with the story or characters - and t...

As much as I love Valente, I just can’t handle this book. So over the top and so not my thing. I did hate The Hitchhiker’s Guide, so I should have known...

While I love Catherynne M. Valente's sentences for their cleverness, biting humour and commentary, I find that my reaction to her work really depends on whether I'm listening to it or reading it. I tend to struggle with her long and convoluted senteneces when I read her text, but just adore her work when I listen to it as I really like her wordplay. I was concerned reading reviews for this book as people kept making glowing comments and references to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (Even t...

Catherynne M. Valente is an incredible prose stylist. Exceedingly verbose, deliriously lyrical; she whips up the craziest, most beautiful images with her long-winded sentences. Reading her feels like drinking a strange and unusual cocktail, and you have to be ready to get dizzy when you crack her books open: it’s all part of the fun. But it is not for everyone… The synopsis of “Eurovision in space meets Douglas Adams with a David Bowie-like protagonist” was not something I could have resisted fr...