Persephone Station in Do Better: SFF without Sexual Violence

Apr 24, 2021 Liberté rated it it was ok

Shelves: scifi, 2021-female-authors-challenge, female-authors

I'm waffling between "I did not like it" and "It was okay" so giving the book the benefit of the doubt and knowing that mileage may vary, I'm going with 2 stars. I read the audiobook version of this, and I have to say if you are on the fence about the text versus the audio version, don't go with the audio version. I think that may have been part of my issue with the book, but given that others in my book club had issues as well, comme ci comme ça.

First, some good stuff: this book does have fairl I'm waffling between "I did not like it" and "It was okay" so giving the book the benefit of the doubt and knowing that mileage may vary, I'm going with 2 stars. I read the audiobook version of this, and I have to say if you are on the fence about the text versus the audio version, don't go with the audio version. I think that may have been part of my issue with the book, but given that others in my book club had issues as well, comme ci comme ça.

First, some good stuff: this book does have fairly good representation. Almost every character is a woman or nonbinary, there is ethnic diversity, and there is at least one background F/F pairing. This certainly goes further than a lot of previous scifi (although it's becoming more common to have majority-esque female casts and some queer rep), but since none of the main characters are in a romance together, this generally leaves the queer rep to the background. It takes about half the book to get to the most compelling relationship (friendship) between two main characters, but that did end up being kinda nice. There was also some neat scifi stuff that had potential, especially with the AI and the background worldbuilding.

This brings me to my next comment: I think this book would have worked much better as a draft of a script than as a novel. I'll allow that the author's prose could just not be my style, but there are several instances where I know it's not just me. There is very little build-up; key points are introduced and resolved in the space of a breath for both plot and characters ((view spoiler)). Other plot points are introduced as if they were major ((view spoiler)) and then are never picked up again.

Another major issue I had with the story was that most of the character voices did not feel distinct to me. Some of this lies with the narrator, who honestly seemed to rush through the story and didn't pace the delivery very well (and I don't think I've nitpicked about this before in an audiobook, so you know it was intense), but some of it lies with the author. Characters, especially non-POV characters, react in generic ways that would rely on an actor's performance for more nuance, or don't react at all while Plot Things happen and then react ((view spoiler)). The author somehow forgets she killed a character and references them being in a scene at the end? Everyone is sympathetic, like the author wanted to make sure we'd sympathize with everyone but the antagonist. Not everybody needs to have good reasons to do things! (view spoiler) It's okay for characters to not play by the rules of Plato's perfect society and still be sympathetic. It made everyone feel less real and more like the author was assuring us she knew what a good person "should" do.

This is a lot of detail, but mostly because I wanted to understand (and note) for myself why this book just didn't quite finish ~becoming. ...more

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Jan 02, 2021 Cobwebs-Iced-Across-SpaceTime rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: all-sci-fi-my-challenge, january_2021_reads, a1-netgalley, a1-i-own-books, 2021_cli-fi_climate-nf_challenge, 2021_alphabet_challenge, 2021_january-new_hob, apocalyptic-dystopian-futuristic, authors-female-sf-my-challenge, 2021_reads

PERSEPHONE STATION is a stunning feminist, divergent, Science Fiction work capably coping with issues of corporate greed, institutionalized deception, denial of indigenous sentient species, and inextricably, one of my favorite SF exploratory themes: Sentient Artificial Intelligence. Lately it seems no matter what title I choose, A.I. is present, with all the questions, concerns, hopes, and dread that poses. Author Stina Leicht delivers superbly. This is my first 2021 read, and it's a champion. I ...more

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Feb 13, 2021 Rosie rated it liked it

DNF at 41%. It was fine.
Loved the queer and non-binary and POC representation, but the writing was not compelling enough for me to commit more hours to it. Strong opening scene but then lots of info-dumping dialogue. The plot is interesting but the writing and storytelling was not IMO.
3 stars because there’s nothing BAD about it per se. I want more stories like this written, just written differently!

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Feb 28, 2021 max rated it did not like it

Shelves: dnf

Got to the part where the nonbinary character was transphobic (“you know my sexual inclinations so unless you’ve grown a cock don’t fuck me” or whatever) and DNF’d. We love TERF rhetoric! But rly why did u think u could write a trans character and did u not have any trans ppl read ur manuscript????

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