Y'know what, I think I like this better than the alternative. "This" being: |not all of the aliens are evil! Unfortunately, some of the aliens are evil, and they're taking over the alien government.|
We get a lot of tasty lore in this book. In particular, we learn why |the humans are stuck on this one planet|, and also more about how |the protagonist Spensa's (non-unique) ability to teleport and do pseudo-psionics| works. There are also |the delvers|.
Speaking of which. |Delvers| are |giant extradimensional beings| that |live in hyperspace [not called hyperspace but it's basically hyperspace]| and |don't like realspace people. And especially don't like it when realspace people mess around with hyperspace|. Apparently |it's painful and annoying to them, or something. So if you do too much hyperspace, they might decide to go into realspace for a bit and delete your planet|. But it's |revealed at the end of the book| that |they also don't realize the people whose planets they're deleting are sentient, and when one does realize that (via Spensa doing telepathy stuff at it during the climax), it immediately nopes back into hyperspace|.
Also, there's a plot twist in here that genuinely shocked me. That doesn't happen often.
One thing I do not like is that, because we |do a lot of interacting with aliens|, we |see bits of alien biology|. Many of these |aliens do not conform to the human "male and female and nothing else" pattern|, and while that could just be worldbuilding, it also smacks of {T-ish the whole gender ideology thing}. But it's not applied to humans, so there's that at least.
One thing I do like is how Spensa's character arc went from "|let's murder all the aliens!|" to "|let's murder all the aliens except the ones I'm friends with!|" to "|let's only fight the evil aliens and leave the rest of them alone!|". I also liked that |her disguise as an alien who totally isn't a human trust me on this| isn't |foolproof; multiple characters see through it to some degree or other. However, this doesn't lead to the inevitable "we found out you're a human, now go to jail" arc, because A) both of these characters have their own agendas which would be jeapordized by a "there are human spies everywhere" furor, and B) both of them draw somewhat wrong conclusions|.
|If you didn't highlight the spoiler tags, the fact that I said| potato soup |in this paragraph will be confusing to you. Or it might not be, if you read enough of my blog and know that I do this sort of thing on heavily redacted posts.|
My shipping was correct! It is now canon! Sort of.
Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: ...probably still T for sci-fi violence. A harder T, though, for the stuff mentioned in the paragraph with the content warning tag.
4 stars.
Favorite lines:
"Keep them distracted."
"Resigned sigh."
I looped us after an enemy ship. "Did you just say the words resigned sigh?"
Page 10. It's Spensa, talking with her robot copilot.
Cobb folded his arms where he stood near the door. "I asked my command staff, scientists, and engineers to tackle the hyperdrive problem. How do we find a way off this planet? All the ideas I got back were wildly implausible, except one. It's only mildly implausible."
Page 49.
(Endnote: Did I mention the |samurai fox-gerbils|?)
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