SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Space Opera by Catherynne M Valente https://t.co/cQlieg5U1K Short Review: 4 out of 10 (1/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) May 4, 2018

Short Review (cont): Space Opera is a book that is clearly trying to channel a Douglas Adams-ian type of humor on steroids, but, for me at least, is somehow both too over the top and at the same time somehow too predictable to work beyond a few laughs. (2/3)

— garik16 (@garik16) May 4, 2018

Catherynne M. Valente's "Space Opera" is a pretty crazy novel.  I've read two of Valente's prior works before - her novella Six-Gun Snow White and her short story "A Fall Counts Anywhere" (from the Robots vs Fairies Anthology) - and Space Opera follows seemingly both works (especially "A Fall Counts Anywhere") in one key way: in each of these works, when Valente commits to a bit/idea, she REALLY commits to it.  In Space Opera's case, the bit is a Douglas Adams-esque galaxy run based upon an absolutely absurd idea - that the survival of species and universal precedence depends upon performance in an intergalactic version of Eurovision, and that two completely out of place has-beens are humanity's only hope.

To go off tangent for a second, My brother is a huge Seinfeld fan, but he will often tell people he can't watch "Curb Your Enthusiasm" because the humor is too much, how it's basically a too unfiltered version of Seinfeld that is too painful for him to watch.  That's basically how I felt about "Space Opera" - like "A Fall Counts Anywhere," it takes it's absurd premise up to an extreme level, but whereas that work was a short story, this is a 300 page book, and it's so over the top that it largely lost it for me.

More after the Jump:


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary------------------------------------------------------
Years ago, Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes - Singer Decimal Jones, Omni-Instrument Player Oort St. Ultraviolet, and drummer Mira Wonderful Star (no those are not their real names, and no it doesn't matter) - put out a glam rock album that was a massive smash.  It was their only smash, and they were soon forgotten, and in a tragic accident, Mira Wonderful Star was dead.  Their time on the world's stage was over.

But when an Alien race appears to all of humanity, it becomes clear that their time on the Galactic Stage has only just begun: see, the galaxy is recovering from the Sentience Wars, and has decided on one way to determine whether or not a newly discovered race of beings is "sentient" and worth being part of the galactic community - whether they can perform and come in a place OTHER than last at a Galactic Singing/Performance competition.  But Alien tastes are different from those of humans, and the only performers still at least partially alive from their list of acts that might manage to accomplish this feat are the aforementioned Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes.

But the two glam rockers are missing their third, and are....not the sanest of people.  And the Galaxy truly is a messed up place.  Yeah, humanity's almost certainly doomed.
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Space Opera is a book that I suspect some people are going to really really enjoy, and I can get why it has gotten some great reviews.  Unfortunately those "some people" do not include me.  The book is absolutely zany, alternating in chapters and portions between following Decibel Jones as he encounters the craziness of galactic performers, flashbacks to the Absolute Zeroes' prior histories, and flashbacks to prior contests and events on the Galactic stage before the plot beings.  Whatever the time period being talked about in the story, the book never slips from its commitment to being completely and utterly over the top.

Admittedly, I'm not the hugest Douglas Adams Fan - the only DA books I've read are the five Hitchhiker novels - but what made the Hitchhiker novels work for me is that our hapless protagonist - and the rest of the main cast - there are easily lovable and that things that happen to them both aren't predictable and have room to breathe in their absurdity.  Space Opera kind of fails in all of those respects - you'll see the ending coming from a mile away, so events never really surprise, there's basically never a moment to breathe, and well I never felt really any interest in the characters.  Maybe it's because I'm a lot closer of a person myself to Arthur Dent than Decibel Jones, but Decibel Jones was so overly ridiculous (and everyone admits this in-story) as to be barely a character in and of himself.  He's mostly just another joke in this story, which made it not really work for me.

The whole final act therefore totally didn't work for me (again, being totally predictable) and when the plot here never takes any actually surprising turns, despite the zaniness involved in the middle, I basically lost interest 80% through and finished solely out of completeness.  Again, I see already that others had a different opinion, and perhaps another author could do a more extreme version of Douglas Adams in a way that I enjoyed, but to me it misses several of the key elements that made Hitchhikers such fun to read.

Douglas Adams was willing to let the Earth get blown up, had interesting characters, AND had zaniness you couldn't help but laugh at.  Space Opera to me at least lacks at least the first two, and the jokes get kind of repetitive after a while to the point where it loses the third by the end.  For me at least, it did not work. Alas.