Space Opera

This book is David Bowie meets The Hunger Games as written by Douglas Adams. I laughed. I cried. I kicked my feet with glee. I wasn't prepared for the roller-coaster feelings ride that this book took me on.

This was so much fun to read! A glorious heartbreaking fizzy concoction of words images and earworms. Comparisons to Douglas Adams are apt but don't do this story justice. Valente is no one hit wonder. She rocks!

I straight up didn't know that you could actually write in sequins, glitter, neon lights, and lasers. That is until I read this book. Valente has a talent for creating stories that are at once entirely familiar and entirely fantastic/out-of-this-world. Space Opera covered all of those bases and more.

I was really excited by the concept of this book (as I love both sci-fi and Eurovision), but there ultimately just wasn’t enough story or character development here to hold my interest. The writing grated on my nerves, and the plot was pretty thin.

A fun, crazy story. A fast read that you wish would never end. Definitely for a lover of words and the feel of language. Ms. Valente is endlessly creative, playing with ideas of love, loss, regret, and what it means to be alive and sentient.

It is a wonderful wonderful book! Very funny but also very thought provoking. Also, for all animal lovers out there, you will love all the aliens, a lot of them are similar to real organisms and that makes it very fascinating.

"The reincarnation of David Bowie must save humanity via interplanetary Eurovision" is the most amazing premise for a story I've ever seen. Everyone should read this. (I read it all in one go, only stopping for bathroom breaks and more tea.)

If you like random, nonsensical page-long run-on sentences with no plot advancement, no laugh out loud humor, and no characters you care about, then this is for you. If you like good books, run away....faster than the speed of light.

It feels like the author just put onto page random stuff that popped into her head. That would be better done in her personal journal. And never, ever, ever shown to the public.

I am almost 60% full and I feel like I’ll earn a cookie ir something if I finish this Godawful piece if “writing,” but I doubt it.

It feels like the positive reviews must be written by the author's friends and family.

The majority of reviews for this book are overwhelmingly positive, so I thought a different viewpoint might be of use to those contemplating its’ purchase. After finishing the book (which was seriously in doubt many times), I will say that the story itself is compelling. The writing is excellent in many instances. However, I can’t count the number of times I would have thrown the book across the room if it weren’t contained on my phone. There were sentences that went on for three or more pages!! Sentences that I had to reread multiple times because by the time I reached the end I had forgotten the subject. Sometimes I never did figure it out.

Be prepared to be infuriated many times but ultimately enjoy.

I remember being a youth in my single digits and hanging out on the bus stop and there was the older high school kids waiting with the younger elementary school kids. All of us younger kids thought the older kids were the coolest people ever and some of the elementary school kids would say or do almost anything to make those cool older think they were also cool.

You know how blurb compares this book to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Well if Hitchiker's is those cool older kids then Space Opera is younger ones; it is trying so very hard to be funny, clever and cool that it more often than not fails at being anything other than laborious to read.

The plot is the same as the episode Cromulans episode of Rick and Morty only lacking the humor and brevity of only being 25 minutes of television opting instead for throwing every adjective imaginable in every combination possible hoping that it will be stylish and amusing but instead becomes meandering, irritating and muddled. I have finished most chapters unsure what even happened or what the point the point was other than yet another failed attempt at being clever; the plot advances at a rate slow enough you'd swear it was an AMC tv show and if there was any character development it was few and far between; unless a very detailed description of the crochet dress and hair style some woman in an audience was wearing counts as character development.

I groaned and sighed asking myself "Why am I still reading this book?" so many times I lost count.

Though the last time I was this displeased with a novel it ended up becoming a best seller and was turned into a major motion picture directed by Steven Spielberg so I guess the author has nothing to worry about

Before you invest any money in this book, order the sample. If you like what you see there, then buy the book. If not, be warned - the entire book is just like that. Clever, I guess but definitely not my thing.

(Disclaimer: I received this free book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)

Um excuse me, read that summary and tell me you don't think this whole book sounds like a lot of fun? This cover is amazing and I love it. I actually am never going to give away my galley. UNLESS I see the hard cover in stores and then I'm going to swoon, and then buy this.

Space Opera grabs you from the first page. It is humorous, scientific, and sassy. It sounds like an unlikely combo, and even now you might be thinking - really? But yes. Really. At the same time, there's a thorough examination of war and humanity within these glitter flecked pages. (I want real glitter in this book okay?!)

We are asked what war brings out of people and what is at the core - if anything - of humanity. There are these soul stopping questions among the singing and costumes that bring you up short. It's like you remember that you're reading this science fiction book that has some serious things to say about humanity

Earth has just discovered that it is not alone in the universe. There's a multitude of alien races out there, not all of them very nice, and they recently only just avoided annihilating one another in the Sentience Wars, a conflict driven over what races were and were not intelligent. To replace interstellar warfare, they have introduced the Metagalactic Grand Prix, essentially a world-spanning singing contest. In order to prove itself worthy, Earth must send its finest musical artists to literally sing for the planet's survival. Unfortunately, the only artists acceptable to the aliens are washed-up has-been Decibel Jones and Oort St. Ultraviolet, whose brief superstardom years earlier has left both of them in very different conditions. To save the world, they have to put the band back together.

Space Opera is a comic SF novel written by Catherynne M. Valente, inspired by Douglas Adams and the Eurovision Song Contest, that kitsch and silly musical talent show which has replaced armoured warfare as the primary means of measuring international competition on the European continent. As the book is careful to make clear, this means it should be zany, crazy, neon-drenched, glitterball-kicking fun. And to be fair, Catherynne M. Valente has a go. There's a lot of invention in this novel, various original alien species and entertainingly bananas planets that are described with inventive glee.

The problem is that the book tells you it's going to be crazy fun, but never really kicks off into being zany fun on its own merits. It also tells you that it's inspired by Douglas Adams but doesn't really learn any of the lessons of Adams' work, which is centred in a dry wit, and a lot of English restraint which occasionally cuts loose in bananas set pieces which will leave you giggling in your chair like a loon. Instead, Space Opera has to settle for generating the occasional wry smile.

The book is oddly structured. At 290 pages of both large and very well-spaced type, it's very short (which is good, as the premise is too thin to support a prolonged narrative) but bizarrely lopsided. Approximately the first 200 pages of the book are dedicated to lengthy profiles of each alien race, the history of their worlds and the history of the Metagalactic Grand Prix. We're also introduced to our two protagonists and a couple of other alien characters, who explain the situation and travel to the planet where the Grand Prix is being hosted and, er, that's it. The actual plot of the book is rounded off in a mere 90 pages, the bulk of which is taken up by a drinks reception. The actual singing competition is over in a just a few pages. A compelling narrative this does not make.

The writing is meant to be witty and funny, but this is made difficult by the book being almost entirely written in long paragraphs, run-on sentences and an inventive but nonstandard use of commas (i.e. mostly forgetting there is any such thing as commas). It feels like this book should have been written in shorter bursts which made its points more succinctly. As it stands, despite the book's short length, reading it and parsing the enormous blocks of text feels like far more work than it should be for a book that is, by design, supposed to be short, zany and disposable fun.

The character work is fine, by which I mean protagonist Decibel Jones is a monumental tool it's hard to have much time for, but Oort St. Ultraviolet is a well-motivated fellow and we get some well-defined band dynamics. Mira is by far the most interesting character in the book, but gets the least amount of development by dint of having died some time before it starts. The story is okay, but so extremely brief that I wonder if this was originally supposed to be a short story and was padded out to novel length for commercial reasons.

A fairly major problem for the well-read SF and fantasy fan will be the nagging feeling this has been done before, and much better: Terry Pratchett's Soul Music and Robert Rankin's The Da-Da-De-Da-Da Code are both amusing and finely readable musical-influenced genre novels (although neither are the author's best). In fact, I kept wondering what madcap monk-genius Rankin would have made of this premise on one of his good days. I suspect it would have been a lot more entertaining. Rick and Morty also produced a reasonably entertaining episode with a similar premise a couple of years back, which was fine (although again not one of the show's best).

Space Opera (**½) is a weirdly-paced, oddly-structured novel which is nowhere near as amusing as it wants to be, but manages to raise a few laughs here and there, but is also overwritten and overwrought with a thin story. A quintessentially non-essential read.

4.5 Stars

"Compared to you, humans are joyful rosebushes bouncing through the stars. If you ever stop napping long enough to escape the Earth, you would sweep across this galaxy like nothing before, an endless wave of carnage." (Elakhi to Capo, Oort's rather thankfully lazy cat.)

I love Cat Valente. I love her love of words, her writing, her narration, her Twitter, her Patreon, her recipes (YUM!), and her ethos. Thus, it should come as no surprise that I love this book.

Space Opera is being touted as a mashup of Eurovision and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and that does capture the general feeling. Decibel Jones and former bandmate Oort St. Ultraviolet (he of the Absolute Zeros) are just sleeping off a hangover and a failed marriage when an alien presence that I'll just call Roadrunner arrives to explain the fate of earth hangs in the balance and well, they better get on with it and do something about it. Well, actually the whole planet gets the message but it appears that Decibel Jones and the remaining Absolute Zero are going to be the ones to safeguard Earth's standing and help us avoid binning and a planetary reboot. The way to save the earth is rather simple- just don't lose in the intergalactic competition that's the equivalent of Eurovision. Perform well enough to convince everyone that you're really sentient. Don't come in dead last or... you'll be dead.

At the heart of this book, we can question just how sentient the human race is. And how (or not) enlightened they are. And who else is sentient here on our wooly blue planet? Have we been wiping out some of our fellow sentients? And I'm not talking about the rhinos and elephants and lions. What about Aborigines and indigenous people and what the hell with ethnic cleansing?

But all that serious business is couched in a book that is a fun read moving along, if not at the speed of light, fast enough to keep the reader engaged and rooting for Dess and Oort. I know that readers new to Cat Valente's style are sometimes overwhelmed by her dense style of writing, which presses her love of words firmly toward the reader. The exuberance of the style is well suited to this subject matter, however. BECAUSE THERE'S A PLANET TO SAVE, assuming of course that it's worthy of saving. It's a book ripe for reading aloud or listening to Heath Miller's narration on audiobook. Just like the craziness of Hitchhiker's Guide, I loved it. Life may be beautiful, stupid and complicated (no 42 here, sorry) but singing and dancing can certainly only help make things better.

In the setup for Catherynne M. Valente’s new “Eurovision in space” novel Space Opera, a has-been, burned-out, Bowie-wannabe rock star called Decibel Jones is inexplicably chosen to sing for humanity’s right to exist in an intergalactic competition. Unfortunately, after the amusingly gonzo kickoff, the subsequent two-thirds of the book is the most epic filler of all time – a plotless pile of twisty-worded tangents about everything on Earth the author can think of, packed with in-jokes and puns and double-entendres and tonal shifts from slapstick to droll to burlesque to self-deprecating to farcical and my god it’s way more exhausting than funny and I’m not kidding it goes on FOREVER before anything resembling a story returns and it almost gets good again until it contrives a flimsy solution to the main problem, then cuts off mid-climax and goes straight to the denouement. I normally like Valente’s writing; how she managed to write a novel without a single interesting character and stretch about 5000 words of story into 80,000 words is, admittedly, an impressive feat, and also completely mystifying and frustrating and disappointing.

'Space Opera' was a fun experience that I feel like I was adjacent to really enjoying. I was a band and choir nerd in high school without ever really getting into popular music. I'm aware of the existence of Eurovision and enjoy seeing friends online get excited about it each year without ever feeling compelled to do more than glance at any actual entries. I enjoy 'found family' narratives but didn't really feel much like they _wanted_ to get the band back together, and thought that saving the Earth in a song contest is a cool idea, but am still unsure that humanity actually did it. It's overall very much like listening to the neighbors throwing a boisterously loud party, and smiling and being happy for them, and then going back to whatever I'm doing by myself that evening. I think this is a great book -- exuberant and hopeful and melancholy and very, very funny -- that just happened to wash over me like a wave of sound and pyrotechnics, and left me blinking and wondering what just happened.

Howlingly funny, this Eurovision in Space tale is of a has-been glam rock star named Decibel Jones becoming humanity’s only chance for surviving First Contact and being accepted into the galactic social scene. Galactic war nearly extinguished every light of sentient life in the universe, and the only way all the space-faring beings can get over the stresses of interstellar trade and land grabs is to have galactic concert contests. And even time new species capable of traveling beyond their planetary atmosphere are discovered, they have to prove their sentience and showmanship by not placing dead last, because that ‘dead last’ gets taken completely literally. (The titles of some of the winning song entries is reason #116 to read/listen to this book.)
Valente’s style is incisive, snarky, insightful, and heartfelt. There are sentences that could spark entire PhD theses, or lead to spiritual epiphanies, between the belly laughs. I got to hear her read aloud at Confluence, and it was amazing. This audio book is read by Heath Miller, and no matter how good your inner voice is, his is probably much, much better. Unless you’re Benedict Cumberbatch or Tom Hiddleston. And this is definitely a story to listen to, so catch Catherynne Valente at a con if you can, and add this audiobook to your list of Must Hear.
And according to tor.com, Space Opera has already been optioned by Universal Pictures!

Space Opera is the funniest thing to come along in years. But it also bears saying that Space Opera does what SF does best, better than any genre no matter how hard they try, which is to take inclusiveness in stride and show, by not making a big deal of it, that is works, thank you very much and let’s please move on, shall we? Even if some of the minor characters in the book cannot see past relative levels of pigmentation and school ties, the protagonists are so beyond all that that they can direct their energies, attention, and creativity to more interesting outcomes than put-downs. A lifestyle of glitter makeup, pop music and psychotropics may understandably not be your lifestyle of choice, but the infectious good will and insouciance of Decibel Jones is what makes his music so magic, so frigging redemptive of humanity. If ay space aliens out there are listening to our broadcasts, please choose our SF over our fake news.

It would be hard to talk about Catherynne M. Valente’s Space Opera without mentioning Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (a debt Valente acknowledges in her afterword). After all, both are science-fiction books that serve more as comedic works than something serious; both orbit around humanity suddenly discovering that they’re no longer the only life in the universe; both follow human representatives as they make their way into a very strange universe; and both even feature a wise guide to interactions that’s universally adopted and beloved. Both even have the same issues, in which the plot often feels like an afterthought tacked on to tie together the lunacy of the rest of it.

It’s to Valente’s credit, then, that Space Opera finds its own voice and emerges from Hitchhiker‘s shadow to become its own thing, even as Adams’ DNA is evident throughout. Inspired by Eurovision, of all things, Space Opera revolves around an intergalactic music competition in which new races are invited to compete to prove their own sentience. After all, if you can’t produce art, can you really be said to be sentient?

That’s a great hook for the novel, and it gives Space Opera some heft, allowing it to meditate upon the power of art, the way music is all about emotional connections and pain, and so much more. But in the end, Space Opera is a comedy, and it’s a genuinely funny one, one that’s often as funny for the way in which it talks as it is the elaborate gags being set up around it. (That being said, my favorite gag in the entire book is the slow realization of what persona the robotic race has adopted to communicate and aid the humans.) I had some issues with Valente’s writing – she has a tendency towards very long sentences, anchored by too many dependent clauses, that have a way of losing the reader – and her plotting is occasionally so loose as to be nonexistent. But there’s a lot of fun to be had here, and the fact that the books holds its own in the comparisons to Adams is praise enough.

It's nothing more than lazy clickbait for geeks in book-form. But, hey, there is something really remarkable here: Valente can ape Douglas Adam's style almost perfectly, and yet make something completely soulless. All that's left is "haha I'm random :3" humor that treats its audience like morons.

* Cats are funny and temperamental right?
* C'mon! People hate Microsoft's Clippy right?!
* "If that reporter hadn't been employed by a rag with enough bored lawyers on retainer to choke a humpback whale," HahahAhaHa...

Copying Douglas Adam's style is fine, but Valente missed out on a key ingredient of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: it's a helluva lot shorter than this. I was repeatedly shocked how long Valente dragged out scenes that had NOTHING to do with anything, and long after the joke or novelty was funny.

Consequently, I barely know --or care-- who Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros are. It spends way too much time pretending to be a philosophical or socially-aware book. Valente shadowboxes prejudice and rigid gender roles, but then leans hard on cliches and the flimsiest of characterizations. So when we get to the mess of an ending, it was thunderously not earned.

Valente, by some peculiar talent, managed to cram into 300+ pages about 30 pages of a good book. Will some people like this bloated, pandering fizzle? Sure. This was recommended to me by a (presumably well-meaning) friend. But this is the sort of catastrophic misfire, whizzing a fun premise down its leg, that makes me question my friend's future recommendations.

Eurovision in space.

No, really.

This is humorous sf, strongly influenced by Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. Not everyone will love it. Some people will find it hopelessly over the top, especially if that's how they felt about Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy.

I loved it.

Earth has discovered that we are not alone in the big, beautiful universe, or even in the galaxy. There's a galactic confederation that, since the Sentience Wars a hundred years ago, have worked at system to decide who gets to join the sentience club, and who gets eliminated permanently, with their planet getting a chance to try again when another species has evolved far enough to be contemplating space travel.

The system is a totally over-the-top musical competition. It's an interstellar, inter-species Eurovision, and performance on stage matters at least as much as the song itself. New species competing for the first time don't have to win; they do have to not lose. Established species who finish dead last are confined to their own planet for a long time to contemplate their mistakes. New species competing for the first time, if they finish dead last, are eliminated permanently, their species exterminated, with as little damage to their planet as reasonably possible so that the biosphere can try again to produce a sentient species.

The aliens have been monitoring Earth's transmissions since the beginning of radio, and they have a list of possible representatives to compete on Earth's behalf in the Galactivision competition. Unfortunately, most of them are dead.

The trio Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeroes are chosen, not quite by default.

Unfortunately, only two of the three, Decibel himself and Oort (I listened to the audiobook and didn't, alas, get his last name well enough to reproduce it here), are left, Mira Wonder Star having died in a car crash. Neither of the m thinks they can really do it without Mira, but since the alternative is that Earth finishes dead last by default and everyone dies, they are shortly on their way to the contest site, 7,000 lightyears away. They're accompanied by a couple of friendly aliens, one of whom is apparently a big, blue flamingo. Oh, and Oort's children's cat, Kaypro, is with them, and newly endowed with the ability to talk.

This is a completely madcap, insane rollercoaster ride, so far over the top you can't even see the top anymore, and it's a lot of fun. It's also sharp and insightful and warm and decent. The characters learn and grow and are well worth spending the time with, especially, but not exclusively, Decibel and Oort. Valente uses the language beautifully, and it was a lot of fun to listen to Heath Miller reading it.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook.

As someone who adores epic space opera tales written by female authors, I was excited for this book. I'd never read anything by Valente before, and this seemed like a great introduction to her work. It absolutely was a fantastic primer on her delightful and illustrative writing style, but this was not the intricate political tale I'd been expecting.

If you took out all the endless narrative describing events in the past, text bloated with luscious prose and evocative imagery, this story would have worked much better as a novella. I thoroughly enjoyed all of the characters, from Dess to the roadrunner to Omar to the cat (honestly, the cat was probably my favorite), and the detailed descriptions of so much world-building were a master-class in description. But like the Eurovision music contest this book draws its inspiration from, everything just verged on TOO MUCH.

This book is an enjoyable romp through a dazzling larger universe. But if it were a movie, it'd be all spectacle and not quite as much detailed plot as expected from the title. This does work as an introduction to Valente's work, which I'm eager to read more of, but remember to treat the title as a clever work trick rather than as an advertisement for what you'll find within.

The author is in love with over-abundant descriptions and run-on sentences. It's taken me three weeks to get through two chapters! I don't know if I can stomach the pain getting through a single sentence while trying to remember what it is describing anyway. Worst book I've read hands down. Of the little free time I have, I don't think I want to finish this book knowing every sentence is literally like this one, "Once upon a time on a small, watery, excitable planet called Earth, in a small, watery country called England (which was bound and determined never to get too excited about anything), a leggy psychedelic ambidextrous omnisexual genderspat glitterpunk financially punch-drunk ethnically ambitious glamrock messiah by the name of Danesh Jalo was born to a family so large and benignly neglectful that they only noticed he'd stopped coming home on weekends when his grandmother was nearly run over with all her groceries in front of the Piccadilly Square tube station, stunned into slack-jawed immobility by the sight of her Danesh, twenty feet hight, in a frock the color of ther customary afternoon sip of Pernod, filling up ever centimeter of a gargantuan billboard."

I literally stopped caring after the description of England. I can't even finish this book, because every sentence is like this. Not for me!

Catherynne Valente is kind of the best. As a country and a species, we really don't deserve her. When I first saw the description for this book a couple months back, I almost started tearing up at how purely amazing it sounded. If David Bowie saving the world from aliens with the power of glamrock doesn't sound like the best possible thing, you may not be sentient.

Anyway, Space Opera lived up to my expectations. Absurdly funny, insanely rich language, but so much heart. And for how ridiculous this book is, it has stuff to say. Valente manages to create characters that feel messed up and real and like they're trying so hard, all within this context of pure insanity; it's pretty incredible. If I had 1% of Valente's imagination I would be ecstatic. I definitely read this book instead of going to multiple lectures. I regret nothing.

As a direct consequence of this book, I looked up the video for Hard Rock Hallelujah. Eurovision is beautiful.

Also buy all of her other books and please at least read the Fairyland series, and Deathless, and--well, just everything.

When you start a book by Catherynne Valente, you are always in for a treat. Whether it is a girl going to Fairyland on the back of a magical flying leopard or a clever peasant girl encountering Koschei the Deathless (stepping out of Russian folklore) as his bride and then his destruction. But here, you get the epic tale of two aging rock stars as the last hope for humanity in a sing-for-your-world's-salvation contest.

Decibel Jones (born Danesh Jalo) and Oort St. Ultraviolet (born Omar Calisșkan), are the surviving members of the glamrock band "Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros" and find themselves on the short list to represent Humanity in the Metagalactic Grand Prix - a way for the galactic civilization to avoid any more intergalactic wars. Humanity has few allies (including the representative of the sponsoring race, something like a blue flamingo), but also many potential enemies, since losing means Humanity is not deemed sentient and will be eliminated from the universe.

The story (inspired by live-tweeting the Eurovision song contest) is more than a little bit like something Douglas Adams might have written. But Cat Valente's use of language is wholly unique to her works: every sentence is hand crafted and dense with alliteration, florid adjectives, or the occasional profanity, depending on the need. All of the common tropes of both science fiction and rock music are pulled out, tried on, altered, and fitted just right, all to drive the story's varied needs. It's also a huge amount of fun.

The narration, by Heath Miller, matches the text beautifully. He manages the dense text wonderfully, using his facility for accents to highlight the different characters. And when the story calls for it, he sings (I presume he dances too, but it's hard to tell because it's an audiobook). Between the hilarious story and the excellent narration, there is always the risk of driving off the road laughing, so be careful if listening on your commute.

Once, Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros were once the biggest band in the world. They’ve broken up, and their a bit washed up these days, but none of that matter when aliens invade Earth, looking for the greatest musicians on the planet to represent Earth in the galaxy’s greatest song contest, The Metagalactic Grand Prix. Decibel and remaining band mate Oort St. Ultraviolet get the nod, by virtue of being the only band on short list that’s still alive. Invitation to the Grand Prix is a great honor, and will give humanity the stars. But if they come in last, the Earth will be destroyed. So, no pressure.
Equal parts Douglas Adams and FM radio count down, Space Opera hilarious, tragic, and breathtakingly intelligent. Valente’s novel examines the utopian science fiction trope of the society that is not merely scientifically advanced but culturally advanced, and twists it to great effect. Continuing her style from previous work like Radiance and The Refrigerator Monologs, She once again has invented entire pop cultures out of whole cloth to both satirize and celebrate parts of our own. In this case, it is the Eurovision song contest, a post-War signing competition that functions much like the Olympics but run by record labels. As someone who likes the idea of Eurovision more than the actual glitzy performances, I expected to be lost in a sea of references, but that was not the case. Outside of a few section quotes and an explanation in the acknowledgements, there is little actual mention, and you don’t need previous experience going in.
Valente structures her novel in her own instantly recognizable style, shifting between the history of the contest and the competing alien cultures and the story of the Absolutes Zeros from their first show to the intergalactic stage. She does more telling than showing, and the non-linear style can be disorienting if that isn’t your thing, but she pays it all off beautifully in the end.

I haven't read anything quite this fun since Douglas Adams died. It's silly, but silly in a very sophisticated way. As an American, however, I wish I had understood up front that it was (very) loosely based on the idea of the Eurovision contest. I'm only peripherally aware of Eurovision, and learned of the inspiration only by reading Valente's author's note at the end, so I probably missed out on a few subtle jokes.

The only criticism I would offer is that the story is a bit heavy on music puns. I mean, I love puns, and even I found it to become a bit much. (Not to mention implausible, that a song name in an alien language would translate into a pun on a popular English-language song. Many times.) But that's just a quibble. This was good enough that I'm planning to track down some of Valente's other works as well.

Thoroughly enjoyed this.

Stylistically I think if you enjoy the later Douglas Adams books or Iain M Banks this would be a good choice for you.

Some things I particularly enjoyed:
- Plot device where past trauma is gradually uncovered, I thought this made the second read a very different experience as there's a lot of things you pick up once you know where it's going.
- Fun digressions. These serve almost as self contained short stories and they do a lot of world building.
- Lovely ending.

Kurt Vonnegut meets Monty Python at Studio 54. All the avatars of David Bowie combine for one last message. My brain is completely infected by the desire to create metaphors.

Buy this book now. You will get some of the references, miss some & feel like you're on the inside either way. This book will either be a tremendous hit or a cult favorite - don't you want to be in on it at the beginning? It's science fiction, it's coming of age for Earth as a whole, it's very very funny & it's always rock'n'roll.

It’s the Arockalypse Now bare your soul. —“Hard Rock Hallelujah,” Lordi

So I'll admit, when I first started reading Space Opera, I thought, "Wow, this is just really overwritten." The book had gotten so many glowing reviews I perservered, and I'm glad I did. Because the hyper-wordy-stream-of-association overwriting fits the theme of the book perfectly - a glam rock superstar out to save the human race by being as over-the-top as possible. Valente clearly owes (and acknowledges) an immense debt to Douglas Adams, and to her credit, she mostly manages to pull off an original voice in the face of said debt. I laughed out loud continually throughout the book, and even jotted down a few notes on wise observations. A fun beach read or weekend binge.

If the galaxy-spanning narration and opening tone perhaps owes something to Douglas Adams and the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", the meat of this book is pure Catherynne Valente. If you like Doug Adams, if you like Clifford Simak, you will like this book. If you like Cat Valente and her "The Girl Who..." series you'll love this book -- because they share a freshness of concept, perfectly matched prose, and a re-imagining of a genre in ways you couldn't expect.

It's truly difficult to review something that is as blisteringly funny as this book without resorting to a bunch of gobbledygook word soup, so I'm not even going to try. Seriously, this book is sheer (and glittering, spangled and bedazzled) synesthetic and anarchic lunacy, in the best of all possible ways. It's everything absurd and sublime that I loved the first seventeen times that I read "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" shoved into a sequined spandex leotard (and a rainbow-dyed fur coat named Robert.) Even when it takes a hard left turn into its total of 2 contemplative moments, it is still riotously funny and subversive.

Holy heck, Ms. Valente! If I must read another convoluted sentence, it would be like I was reading something that threw up purple prose salad all over my kindle. This is a case where less is more. I’m being truthful- it hurt my brain. Try this on:

“an incomprehensible and humiliating radioactive bukkake show (book) of genres, styles, and vocals akin to a peacock vomiting forever into the howling void without one single note of merit, true innovation, or even a nodding acquaintance with the concept of depth in art- but you can dance to it. If you hate yourself.” pg. 13

Apt indeed.

I purchased the hardback version in June and read it shortly thereafter, and loved it so much I immediately bought the audiobook.

Decibel Jones is a great character. The story does a wonderful job of being funny and over the top one moment, then makes a very biting commentary on some of the less than admirable aspects of human nature. I understand why many people compare it to Douglas Adams writing. Valente is in a similar space, but isn't imitating. It would be truer to say that she shares a similar sensibility: a love for humanity in both our best and worst aspects, a fondness for words, and a passion for finding glimmers of hope in the least likely places.

Enjoyed it very much!

I was kind of depressed by the first two chapters, they felt very cynical. Then I got to the third chapter and started to become interested in the characters and decided, for better or for worse, I was along for the ride. I felt like the book took until about page 188 to get going, but once it did, it was awesome (that's the last 100 pages for those of you playing the home game). It does meander quite a bit, and the cynicism is everywhere, but I loved Decibel and Mira and Oort, and as the culmination of their story (or beginning of their new one) it was quite spectacular.

This book has gotten a lot of comparisons to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and in some ways, that's a valid comparison. They're both funny and have big, complex universes. In other ways, however, this is a superior book (and I say that as someone who has a Hitchhiker's tattoo). Valente's world has all of the whimsy of her Fairyland series or of Hitchhiker's but still isn't afraid to ask the Big Questions. Valente engages with politics, morality, and what it means to be human, and moreover she does it all while dousing everything in glitter and glam. It's a big, beautiful heart of a book, and I just loved it to pieces.

Can I say enough good stuff about this book? The worldbuilding is fantastic, the aliens read like aliens, she is engaging in contemporary culture in a direct and interesting way, and it is so obvious that she had a blast writing it. This is a book that you will want to read in one sitting but at the same time won't want to end.

As an American, I've never gotten to really experience Eurovision but Space Opera makes me feel a bit like I have. Introducing so many distinct alien species in a single book is no easy task but Ms. Valente has done an outstanding job of it and every description was some mixture of hilarious and poigniant. I laughed and I cried and I held my breath waiting to see what would happen and when I reached the end, I'd had the best new book experience I've had in quite a long time. As a huge Douglas Adams fan, I believe he would be very pleased to see this book so brilliantly carrying on the science fiction comedy tradition he so exemplified. In case you can't tell, I really just loved it and I'm looking forward to reading it again.

I read the marketing blurb on the dust jacket and was immediately reminded of one of my favorite sci-fi authors as a child, Alan Dean Foster. Foster was great at treating the absurd seriously and putting whimsy and gaiety into what is normally a very stuffy and formal genre. To say I had high hopes would be an understatement. Instead I was assaulted with in-jokes, tangents on tangents on irrelevant information. The story (when it advances as there are only two or three sentences dedicated to the main plot per page turn) could be interesting enough. However, the story gets bogged down in it's own self importance and uses as many words as possible to describe absolutely nothing important to the story. I think a rewrite as a 70 page novella would be a delightful read.

I couldn't finish this book. Heed the warnings of the other non-five-star reviews: literally every simple action in the book has three paragraphs of fluff around it. It took 3 or 4 chapters for the main character to wake up. Let me mimic what you're in for:

Normal Action: Billy opened the door.
Action in 'Space Opera': Billy looked forward to the drab door, a slab so empty and barren it reminded him of Death Valley, not that he had ever been there, but it matched his expectations of something that embodies featureless and gray. As gray as dreary average day in London. And that of a London in a particularly dreary season and year, with everyone walking down the path having that grim face that says 'If I don't see the sun soon, I'll jump in front of a trolley'. That type of dreary, the dreadful dreary. Reaching his hand for the knob, he was reminded of...

I'll spare you, if you thought that was long and winded for the simple act of opening a bloody door, then please do not read this book, nearly everything in it is like this. There were a few times where it went on quickly and I had a chuckle but besides that I was just intensely bored waiting for something, anything, to happen.

The good reviews here are from two types of people:
(1) Those who don't read often and have the patience for this
(2) Those who like this style

There's nothing wrong with this style. Actually, that's a lie, this style is called 'Purple Prose' and there's plenty wrong with it, however there is nothing wrong with liking this style. But if you're like me and cannot handle it to this amount (I honestly thought others were exaggerating), then stay far, far away from this. It's a shame because it's a unique story and can be cleverly written, it's just way too dense to get through.

It took only the core concept of "Eurovision in Space" to sell me on <u>Space Opera</u>. I went in otherwise blind, because, I thought, what better synopsis could there be for a book?

This book took me on a ride. A ride through all the stages of a long-term relationship and back all the way to the beginning again. It is space, and aliens, and humanity, and sex, and rock n roll, and glitter, and heartbreaking philosophical insight. It features prose so dense, yet so brilliant, you'll think you might burn your eyes out for looking straight into a star, yet comedy so light you might just float up to the ceiling from laughing.

To sum it up, this book is quite simply... out of this world good!

Apparently, only Douglas Adams can write this kind of funny space books. We should probably just retire the genre until Adams is reborn. The attempts (mere attempts) at humor try soooo hard and fall sooo flat. I couldn't finish it. The writing is strained and the descriptions go on for so long that nothing seems to actually happen. It's clear that the author worked hard and there are many many references, but it doesn't work as a story. Go read a book by Adams instead.

It says so on the cover.

It's sparkly and dark and absurd and poingnant and ridiculous and profound and non-linear and inevitable and literally have no idea what the fresh hell it was I just read but I adore it.

The joy and frustration of Valente as she merrily tears sentience standards to shreds as the words froth over the pages in a wildly exuberant display give some idea to the visions in her mind. Of glitter and glam. Of stodgy authors and Hollywood executives who insist on life forms recognizable to humanity and that the 18th & 19th centuries were somehow the pinnacle of human art evolution. Throw away your preconceptions and learn who is really intelligently alive. And who can rock. If David Bowie and Douglas Adams had a love child - well, this would be their preferred reading.

So I was always going to love this book: wordy, hitchhiker's-esque paean to Eurovision with a Bowie-worshipping glam rock hero? That's like a list of all the things I love. What I didn't expect was for it to exceed my (very high) expectations. I didn't expect a different kind of northern working class heroes and families that made me teary-eyed and a little bit homesick as well as laugh or biting social commentary along with a sense of hope and A LOT of glitter.

If you mourned Douglas Adams and you mourned Bowie. Read this. It makes it not so bad.

I loved this book; it's silly and sweet and profound all at once. It moved me to tears. It made me laugh. I could not have picked a better book to read on a mini vacation. If you loved Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, you will love this; if you love the rest of Catherynne Valente's work, you will love this. If you want science fiction with a little more glitter, a little more heart, a little more optimism--this is the book that you should have read yesterday, and need to pick up immediately. I absolutely could not recommend it more.

Decided to get this from the library instead of buying since I've never read this author before. Glad I did because it's terrible. Nearly every sentence is a paragraph, a run on mess of commas. Got tired of that a few chapters in and skipped ahead. It's the same for the entire book. Good premise, but failed to deliver.

What a dazzler! Haven't had this much fun since The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Theme: "Life is beautiful and life is stupid."

Skip superlatives (rare, beautiful, humorous, consistent, satisfying, re-readable)...go straight to book. There are plans for a movie, so get reading.

This book should be read differently then other books, which is why it's so spectacular! The book evokes the emotions in a stylistically appropriate way.

On a side note I would like to say I feel sorry for that last one-star reviewer- obviously his/her child has Tourette' s as I can't imagine dislike of a book would cause anyone to "tear it up." That review is suspicious, to say the least.

Space Opera is exactly what it's meant to be- FUN!

This is the main thing you need to know about Space Opera: it is Eurovision. In space!

Was that not enough? Ok, it is also an incredibly inventive, heartbreaking, hilarious, glam rock piece of glitter-filled amazingness, and you will be doing yourself a disservice if you don't read it.

Life is beautiful, and life is stupid.

Honestly felt less like a coherent plot and more like a series of jokes strung together in a vague way. Unlikeable protagonists. Very little actually happens over the course of the story.
My recommendation is to read a sample of the first chapter. You'll know quickly if you like it or not. The rest of the book is that way.

I know this is the new hot, funny science fiction and I'm probably in a minority for not loving it completely.
Why? I felt the contest portion was too rushed from all the build up. And also, red panda ex machina.

What a ride. How is it even possible for one human being to have so many ideas in their brain? I am astounded. I literally shared entire passages with other people, and not nearly all the ones I wanted to.

“Earth began to get used to the proximity of the end of everything.
It had a beat.
And you could dance to it.”
Buy this book and read it ... sentence by delicious sentence, it will make everything alright. You will laugh until you snort, you may well tear up, you will be confused... you will experience epiphany.

This book is what comes from combining refined sugar, cocaine, and a word processor. The comma to period ratio was about 100:1. They were frenzied, rabid sentences.

Never in this life would I have thought I’d be complaining about the writing from the author of The Refrigerator Monologues.

As far as the subject matter, if you liked The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet you’ll like this: hard agenda covered in soft confectionary science fiction.

DNF 41%

Look, I’m not even sure what happened. It’s a roller coaster ride of prose and I was mostly just throwing my arms up and screaming. But it’s often funny, often clever, definitely unique, and worth your time.

Got this for my son - he wanted it based upon all the rave reviews.

By chapter three he was so disgusted with the poor story telling and horrible writing that he tore the book up in disgust.

The book is full of massive run-in sentences and incomplete sentences.