DNF Review – Radiance by Catherynne M. Valente (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 432 pages
Publisher: Tor Books
Release Date: October 20, 2015
ISBN-13: 978-0765335296
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: Swapped through Paperbackswap.com
Rating: 3/5 stars
“Severin Unck’s father is a famous director of Gothic romances in an alternate 1986 in which talking movies are still a daring innovation due to the patent-hoarding Edison family. Rebelling against her father’s films of passion, intrigue, and spirits from beyond, Severin starts making documentaries, traveling through space and investigating the levitator cults of Neptune and the lawless saloons of Mars.
For this is not our solar system, but one drawn from classic science fiction in which all the planets are inhabited and we travel through space on beautiful rockets. Severin is a realist in a fantastic universe.
But her latest film, which investigates the disappearance of a diving colony on a watery Venus populated by island-sized alien creatures, will be her last. Though her crew limps home to earth and her story is preserved by the colony’s last survivor, Severin will never return.”
I have been a huge Valente fan over the years but this book just didn’t hit the mark for me. I read the first 80 pages of this and just didn’t have the patience to finish it; the book jumped around a lot and was about a topic I had absolutely no interest in (filming in an alternate universe).
The story talks about a father/daughter set of filmmakers. The father, likes to direct gothic romances. The daughter, Severin, rebels by making documentaries instead. This book skirts back and forth around the disappearance and possible death of Severin and the events surrounding those events.
Valente has a beautiful but very dense and somewhat ambiguous writing style, it takes concentration and time to read. I just didn’t have the time or patience to navigate through the beautiful (but convoluted) writing and the serpentine story path that jumped between a million different formats (scripts, stories, advertisements, etc).
Overall this was my least favorite Valente book to date. It was scattered and hard to follow; I didn’t have the patience to struggle through it.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– Goodreads Reading Challenge
– Mount TBR Reading Challenge
