Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is, without a doubt, the most ridiculous book I have read so far this year. The premise is actually solid: a spaceship from the early days of stellar exploration is found at the very edge of the Solar System, 500 years after lift-off. It has been retrofitted with an incredibly advanced FTL drive, and the sole survivor claims to have made first contact with an alien species. As it gradually turns out that the universe is hiding some rather sinister secrets, the discovery could either mean an incredible opportunity or spell impending doom for the human kind. This otherwise brilliant premise has been squandered away by a combination of atrocious writing, cringeworthy characterisation and ridiculous plot devices. Apart from the intriguing idea and the initial, perhaps 50 pages, where the writing is more or less decent, there is absolutely NOTHING good or valuable about this novel. The only reason why I read until the very end was sheer curiosity. I wanted to see how ridiculous the book could get—and boy, I was surprised. To begin with, characterisation is a trainwreck of gargantuan proportions. For all of Pratt’s attempts to physically differentiate the characters (by making one of them a cyborg, fusing another two into a single body, etc. etc.), they are all practically interchangeable: Valiant, foolhardy, happy-go-lucky, tongue-in-cheek space cowboys, who do one dumb thing after the other, do not have a single flaw and are utterly implausible. I cannot think of a single logical or congruous thing any of them did throughout the novel. A hardened space captain would take her crew on a suicide mission because of a budding romantic interest? Everyone would offer to stay on an exploding space station? Said captain would go and take over a pirate asteroid and lounge like a queen after she has witnessed the death of everyone she knows? Sure. All plausible, logical choices anyone would make. Then there is the lesbian romance between the two main characters, which immediately strikes you as ludicrous. A woman who has just lost her entire crew, including the object of her romantic desires (male), immediately throws herself into the arms of another woman (!!!), and they both, despite their age, start acting like schoolgirls during recess? The real treat starts after they consume the fruits of their infantile courtship. The amounts of platitudes and clichés they start spewing at each other can’t help make you wonder if Tim Pratt has ever seen an actual relationship between adult humans—or has perhaps only read about one, in books from the 18th century? Then comes the plot, where everyone does their best to get themselves repeatedly killed, but just walks unscathed out of seemingly impossible situations, with a grin on their face, as the author conveniently saves them with one plot device after the other. What is worse, the book makes desperate attempts at being funny, but instead of (self-)irony, sarcastic quips or at least situational comedy, you get characters that keep bragging about being invincible—which they actually are, because Tim Pratt repeatedly saves them from their ill-fated exploits. The constant merry banter between the characters reminds a lot of another pioneer of something I call “fluffy” space opera, Becky Chambers, where there is also a lot more ‘soap’ than ‘space’ to the opera part. Why am I writing all this? Because The Wrong Stars is not some nameless self-published pulp—it has a decent publisher, has been heavily promoted and even made the shortlist of a major award (PKD). So I pay 8 bucks and expect—quite reasonably, I think—something that is relatively decent, but instead get a book that seems to have been written by a 12-year-old for 8-year-olds??? If this is what modern science fiction looks like, there is no wonder all major awards in recent years have been swept by the fantasy and speculative fiction genre.