Wednesday, December 26, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: The Dreaming Stars by Tim Pratt




The Dreaming Stars is the second in Tim Pratt's "The Axiom" space opera series, after last year's "The Wrong Stars (which I reviewed here).  I really really enjoyed the Wrong Stars, which featured really great characters, an unpredictable plot with plenty of drama, and a lot of really funny humor.  With The Dreaming Stars, the entire great cast of the first book returns and the universe expands as our heroes get involved with another crisis that threatens to awake the dangerous aliens in the background of this whole series.

And again, I really enjoyed The Dreaming Stars, although perhaps a little less than I did its predecessor.  The story is maybe a little less humorous, but the characters remain excellent and their development really works and the plot is again excellent - although the book maintains the same pacing issues as the original.  I'd recommend if you can to avoid reading the official plot summary of this book if you enjoyed the first book in the series, as it kind of gives away some stuff that takes a while to happen, but even if you do, you should enjoy this book quite a bit as it still is pretty damn good.

Note: Spoilers for The Wrong Stars follow but are kind of inevitable:


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary----------------------------------------------------
After the events of The Wrong Stars, Callie, Elena, and the crews of the White Raven and the Anjou are assumed to be dead by the universe.  And until they can be sure that the Axiom-supporting faction - the truth tellers - of Liars isn't still hunting for them, that means they have no choice but to lie low in their captured pirate asteroid, which is driving Callie nuts with boredom.  And Elena has nothing better to do but to try to fix whatever the Axiom devices did to Sebastian's personality....but every time they wake him up in virtual reality, he attempts to do nothing but try to kill them all, so it's not going so well.

But when the crew gets word that the truth tellers faction of Liars on the outside of one of the 29 human colonized planets has disappeared, they get the urge to investigate...an urge only furthered when the crew finds out that humans have been disappearing from that space as well.  If this is the work of Axiom devices, it could result in the Axiom discovering humanity and waking up to destroy the entire human race, so the crew sets out to the system to discover what is happening.

But what the crew finds there will reveal the Axiom are a threat to humanity in a way they could never have anticipated - and in order to stop them, the crew will be forced to take the biggest risks possible.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Dreaming Stars picks up shortly after The Wrong Stars and continues to follow the lovable quirky crew of the White Raven - Callie, Stephen, Drake, Janice, Asok, Elena and Lantern - and the crew is as lovable as ever, even as they deal with new threats and changes to their relationships.  This book also adds a third point of view - whereas the first two books were told more or less completely from Callie and Elena's POVs, this book also follows the POV of Stephen, who is feeling a bit more out of it than any of the rest of the crew without his congregation to fall back upon.  Stephen is alas a bit less interesting than Callie or Elena but he's still a solid character whose POV is nice to see as he tries to cope and adapt to his new situation, and he's never boring.

The rest of the cast also remains excellent - Callie and Elena continue their relationship and both try to figure out how this is going to work out, and their POVs remain terrific.  Asok is a joy to read about even if we never see his POV, as is Lantern, and Drake/Janice are amusing if still not really full entities.  And the new add-ons - Sebastian and Q - are rather interesting as well in their own very different ways.  And we also get to meet the infamous Michael, Callie's ex who was the mind that Shall was based upon, and he's far different than I expected, and the result was far more interesting as a result.

The plot is very well done, with the Axiom threat this time (and of course it's an Axiom threat despite the mystery about it, the series is titled "The Axiom" after all) being very different than int he prior book and being both completely fitting and completely surprising in how it works, and the resolution is both surprising and totally perfect for this series and set up well.  Still, this resolution is rather abrupt with the book taking a long time to setup the situation before resolving it in a much shorter time.

The book felt a bit less humorous than its predecessor, especially after the first third of the book, which was a little bit of a disappointment - but it's not like the book ever goes dark and the characters remain lovable and light.  I can't tell if that's because some of the funny parts of this setting and the characters have lost their originality or if there's just less jokes in this book.  It still works really well but it's a slight drop-off from the first book as a result.

The ending of this book is satisfying but is a little cliffhanger-y, so I'm excited for the next book, which is supposed to come out next year.  If you somehow haven't picked up The Wrong Stars yet, you should check this series out.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)