Thursday, October 25, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Space Unicorn Blues by TJ Berry




Space Unicorn Blues is a strange book, which doesn't seem to know what it wants to be.  On one hand, it's a space opera story of a group of former enemies/allies joining together to escape an oppressive colonizing force.  On the other hand, its a light hearted romp with witty characters and situations setup by a universe featuring oppressed aliens that look just like mythological creatures from humanity's old days, such as Unicorns, Satyrs, Dryads, etc.  It's genuinely funny at times mind you, but its a little jarring considering the other themes in play in this story.

And yet for the most part, Space Unicorn Blues does work, when it could instead be an utter disaster.  I finished the book in one day, which is not something I do with books I find myself disliking, and some of the characters and worldbuilding is incredibly well done, even when it should be a little silly.

More specific talk after the jump:

-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------------
Gary Cobalt is finally being released from prison after ten years and now needs to regain his ship in order to truly find a way to be free from everything.  But Gary is a half-unicorn, and with FTL travel in the universe powered by magical items - such as shavings from a unicorn's horn, he knows that the sinister human government, known as The Reason, will stop at nothing to capture him for use as fuel if he's not careful.  And with the mysterious Pymmie, an alien race with mastery over time and space, returning for the first time in 100 years, this whole known part of the universe, filled with humans and oppressed magical species, is bursting with activity, making it harder for Gary to stay hidden and free.

But in getting his ship back, Gary finds himself once again matched up with Captain Jenny Perata, the very woman who imprisoned him for two years upon his own ship and used him for fuel until disaster struck.  Jenny has a deal for him - help Jenny use the ship to make a delivery to the Pymmie Summit and Gary can take the ship and go free.  But can Gary and Jenny truly work together after what she did to him, and the disaster that occurred the last time the two worked together?

And in the ten years Jenny has had since Gary went to jail, Jenny has found herself recognizing the shitty actions she took back then - and her wife has been imprisoned by the Reason for being non-human.  Jenny needs to save her wife at any cost...but Jenny Perata is known for one thing in particular - plans that might work out in the end, but go disastrously wrong in the process.  And this plan seems destined to go worse than any she's ever tried before...assuming Gary doesn't kill her in justifiable revenge first.
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In the present time period of the story, Space Unicorn Blues works because of its main characters, Gary and Jenny - with side character Ricky being really fun on the side.  Both have tortured pasts that they wish to get away from, and the story takes turns following each character from their own perspectives, as they grow and learn as they're forced into crazier and crazier situations as they desperately try and make the delivery they're tasked for for their own reasons.  By the end of the book, you end up rooting for both of them quite a bit, and the cliffhanger ending is bittersweet as a result.

Jenny incidentally is a handicapped hero, stuck in a wheelchair after losing her legs in a space battle years before the story begins. This actually is done extremely well, with Jenny managing around her disability, preferring zero G where she can float around and pretend to have the mobility she lost, and otherwise having to find ways to cope in gravity, and Jenny actually being ambivalent when presented with the potential prospect of healing.

As I mentioned above the jump, Space Unicorn Blues seems to have issues deciding what it wants to be.  It can have moments and whole big segments where the story plays as a comedy - and it's genuinely extremely funny mind you - and then have whole segments featuring humanity being colonizing and oppressing assholes, who deserve to have the worst happen to them.  It's an incredibly awkward fit, and it's a bit jarring, working out only because the writing is good enough that both angles this book takes are done decently well, even if they don't actually fit together.

More of an issue is that the book wants to have Jenny seem to go through a redemption arc, but never really establishes the past Jenny needs redemption for.  We know Jenny once imprisoned Gary for over two years and used him for fuel.....but the Jenny we meet is so blatantly a different character it never quite matches up for what we see (and why Jenny's wife and best friend would go along with it is.....never quite explained).

The ending is also an annoying cliffhanger which relies upon what is essentially a prophecy made in the second chapter of this book to be a huge tease, and that prophecy is otherwise completely unfulfilled in this book, which is rather annoying - when a book teases something at the VERY beginning and then never follows up on it until the end (and even not then), it just succeeds in annoying me.

The result is that I'm not quite sure if I will or will not be continuing with this story's sequel when it comes out next year.  On one hand, the humor and characters in this book do work well enough that I'd be interested; on the other, the negatives here are enough that it won't be extremely high on my "must read" list.  We'll see.
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