Review – Crudrat (Tinkered Stars) by Gail Carriger (3.5/5 stars)
Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 276 pages
Publisher: GAIL CARRIGER LLC
Release Date: April 1, 2022
ASIN: B09S5L2V15
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone, Part of the Tinkered Stars Universe.
Source: Borrowed ebook from library
Rating: 3.5/5 stars
“With only her crud-eating murmel and a fuzzy alien stranger to help, Maura must find a way to survive, before they catch her and blow what’s left of her life into space.
In the far future, on a space-port the size of a city, crudrats scrape out a meager living cleaning the great machines that generate usable power. Only children can safely traverse the cramped tunnels and the massive blades that harvest crud. But one misstep and a crudrat gets caught on a blade edge and killed. Like rats, they scurry through the bulkheads, duty-bound to clean the air ducts so everyone else can breathe.
But, when they grow too big to be useful, they become outcasts. Now one of the forgotten, Maura might just be able to turn rejection into escape – if she’s resourceful enough.”
Series Info/Source: This is set in the Tinkered Stars universe but standaalone. I borrowed a copy of this on ebook from my library.
Thoughts: I absolutely adore the Tinkered Starsong Trilogy and was incredibly excited to read another book set in that world. This ended up being okay but not nearly as well done or as fun as I expected. I think if I had read this before I read the Tinkered Starsong series I might have been more excited about it. That series set my expectations really high and additionally I didn’t get the wonder about learning about this world since I already knew about it from that series.
This story follows Maura, a crudrat, who is getting too big for crud-ratting. Her and a friend start to dream up ways Maura might escape the Wheel. However, they are only dreams until Maura spots an alien getting led to prison and ends up involved in helping him escape.
This started out really slow and I really struggled to engage with Maura and the story. I was hoping that we would learn a lot more about the Wheel and Crudratting here and we do learn a bit more but it just wasn’t built out as much as I had hoped. For the first 50% of this book I struggled to stay engaged, I kept putting the book down to find other things to do. There were also a lot of typos in the first parts of the book; misspellings, faulty punctuation…really basic stuff. I really wanted to love this though, so I stuck with it.
The second half of the book was a lot better. Maura gets to experience a new planet and see new species of aliens. I really enjoyed this a lot and thought Maura really came into her own as the story progressed. I loved that she knew her strengths and was happy to live up to those strengths rather than try to meet other people’s expectations of her. I also loved that we saw other parts of cultures and aliens that were also talked about in the Tinkered Starsong series, this built out some of the races better for me. I did think things ended very unfinished feeling and would love to see a book that builds out more of Maura’s story.
So, I am a bit torn on this one. I really loved the second half of the book but thought the first half was slow and awkward. This book really needs some better editing, luckily I borrowed this from the library and didn’t purchase it, so I don’t own this poorly edited book. Hopefully they will push out an updated, edited version at some point.
My Summary (3.5/5): Overall I am glad I read this but really struggled with both the beginning of the book and the poor editing. I oscillated between 3 and 4 stars, so ultimately decided on 3.5 stars. The real question is whether or not I will read “The 5th Gender”. I am a bit reluctant too because of how poorly edited this book was, but I do love this world and would like to read stories set in it.. I would definitely recommend reading The Tinkered Starsong series over this series. This book does give some additional background on The Wheel, but I am not sure if it was enough background to enhance my enjoyment of The Tinkered Starsong series.
