"Persephone Station" Discuss Everything *Spoilers*

[SFFBC, Ancillary Mod]

Some questions to get us started:

1. What do you think of the world?
2. What do you think of the characters?
3. What worked or didn't for you?
4. Overall thoughts?

Non-spoiler thread here: First impressions

[Willow]

For me, the world was the most interesting part of the book. I would love to see Stina Leicht's notes on everything about the world-building!

The characters were interesting but they blended a bit too much together, in my opinion.

Again, the characters didn't work for me, and I thought the writing was too jumbled, repetitive, and stilted.

Overall, I wasn't a fan, but I would recommend to readers who want diversity in sci-fi.

[Ellen]

Finished and liked this book. I got a bit of a Star Wars meets Ghost in a Shell vibe.

[Chris]

I thought this one was just OK. I generally like both found family and action, but they didn't grab me emotionally here.

I am curious whether those who voted for this based on a comparison to Cowboy Bebop felt it was an accurate selling point. For me, this was military sci-fi--a team on a mission--as opposed to a ragtag gang wandering around, collecting bounties because they have nothing better to do.

The Emissaries were interesting. I would have liked more from their perspective. As it was, I just thought of them as clients who were different from the usual.

[Gabi]

This book didn't work for me. Which makes me a bit sad, because the author seems to be such a positive and fun person (my impression after reading the afterword). I will give it 3 stars for my personal category of "books where I'm so not the target audience", but my personal enjoyment of the book reaches only 2 stars if only.

The characters had a Betty Chambers vibe but fell flat on personality. Like Willow said, they blended into each other, nobody seemed to have some distinctive characteristics.

The worldbuilding was okay-ish. I would have loved to read more about the alieness of the aliens. Most of the time they felt just like another human character.

The death blow for me was the style, though. The constant "x said" "y said" combined with a very basic grammatical structure of sentences didn't work for me. It made me sometimes zone out of the plot while listening.

Overall thought is that this novel is the book variant of junk food. Nice for the moment but with no lasting nutrition.

Oh, and I'm really curious how one can distinguish female, male and non-binary when seeing a group for the first time. The author mentioned this at least 2 times.

[Olga]

Totally agree with everything said above. Especially about the frustrating "they said". There are tons of other verbs and ways to show who is speaking. The only diversity I've noticed was the occasional "asked".

Overall the story left me with a feeling that it could be so much deeper and better. The natives were so good at some points, but those were few and far between.

Plot "twists" were attempted at, but (imo) poorly executed. It took me about one chapter to see that when Rosie asked Kennedy to snitch on Kurasawa's crew, she wasn't really going to betray them.

[I was listening to the book, so my apologies for likely mistakes in characters' names.]

[Liane]

I liked this book, but it wasn’t great. I thought the world building was good and the characters were unique, but perhaps just because they were mostly female. The emissaries were interesting, but they could’ve been expanded and fleshed out a lot more. That was a significant lack. Lastly, everything wrapped up too happily for me.

[aPriL does feral sometimes]

I agree with the above comments. The book was competently written, a good beach read.

[Kaia]

I agree with the other comments here. I enjoyed the book and found the action exciting, but I don’t think it will stick with me. I wished the characters and some aspects of the story had a bit more depth, and I was confused about the plot in a few places. I liked the characters, though, and it was a fast read (especially the second half). It would be interesting if the author wrote another book focused more on the Emissaries. I’d love to read more about their history and know what happens to them after the story ends.

[Tom]

I'm almost done with this and I'm beginning to wonder why I bothered. The dialogue is atrocious. Seriously, ""She was in charge, but she took an extremely fatal log to the head.” What makes something extremely fatal as opposed to something that is only mildly fatal?

And the description of the villain: "Vissia wore a long white lab coat over an impeccable designer suit. Genuine gabardine wool in an austere black wrapped her pale slender form in artfully expert folds and seams beneath the boxy white cloth. The skirt’s hem rode just above her knee. Her dark brown hair had been smoothed into a classic chignon." I had to check to make sure I wasn't reading a runway report at Fashion Week.

[J.W.]

Woof.... I got through this one quickly, but I admit it's at least a little because I started to skim. It's far and away too long to carry its main plot thread for as many pages as it goes on for in my opinion. At about half the length, I probably would have liked it a lot more. The characters were good, the world was interesting, but it took a -long- time to get anywhere.