Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh

-


I don't think I really understood this book.

Normally, I love slow paced, character driven fare. My favourite books are Robin Hobb's Tawny Man trilogy, I adore the slow, almost plotless works of SE Robertson, but this one just didn't land for me.

The plot is very simple - five teenagers and some adults are sent into space to travel to a faraway Earth-like planet. On the ship, they all start having breakdowns? Idk, it honestly feels like less of a plot, more just a series of vignettes. The space element feels almost secondary - I don't know if this story would be much different if they were going on some other far off trip.

For a book like this to work, the characters need to be solid, and unfortunately, these guys weren't. They were conceptually interesting, but their arcs didn't really go anywhere. There were a lot of 'oh look x is having a mental health crisis' only foŕ the character to be better a chapter later.

I think this book could have really benefited from a tighter pov focus and fewer characters. Five is too many povs too juggle for a character driven piece, and it never really felt like there was a protagonist or any driving arc. There was no real unifying theme beyond 'teenagers in space big uh oh' and honestly, it felt like it just meandered on for a bit until it ran out of steam an stopped.

Idk, this book was just kinda weird, and not really in a good way. It was technically competent, and I could see someone else loving it, but not really for me.

Rating: 2/5 Stars


Representation: POC main characters, mental health issues

Content Warnings: Eating Disorder behaviour and thought patterns, suicide (secondary character), intense depictions of mental health issues including depression, psychosis, panic attacks, and eating disorders, terminal illness

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Mirror Season by Anna-Marie McLemore

-
  I’ll keep this as spoiler free as I can, but it’s a very character heavy book, so ideas about what constitutes a spoiler may vary. If the premise interests you, I highly recommend just diving in. Also upfront, this book (and thusly this review), has sexual assault as a major theme. I think I cover how it’s handled fairly well here, but if you need more details, please feel free to lmk.    I don't really know where to start with this book. I tried several times to come up with something, only to find myself flailing, partly because in general I find it easier to talk about books I didn’t like than ones I did lol. The Mirror Season is one of those books that you don't realise is making you feel things, then you get to the end and start contemplating your life choices. The Mirror Season by Anna-Marie McLemore is a YA magical realism book following Ciela, ‘La Bruja de los Pasteles’, a young woman with the ability to tell exactly what kind of pastry someone needs to make their li
Read more

Review of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

-
  Published in 2005, with a film released in 2010, Kazuo Ishigro's science fiction masterpiece feels disturbingly relevant in the age of pandemics and quarantine. Following a young woman named Kathy as she recounts her time growing up, Never Let Me Go is a love story juxtaposed against a creeping, science fiction horror, juxtaposed against a deeply tragic parable about the power of subtle propaganda to perpetuate deep rooted systemic abuse. Ishiguro’s masterful grasp of restraint, perspective, and emotionality had me gripped from the start. At first, it was the mystery that kept me reading, then it was the overwhelming sense of horror as the truth behind our protagonist’s situation was revealed. From then on, the book is a breadcrumb trail, interspersing fragile glimmers of hope with the unrelenting tide of despair at a conclusion it was clear was coming from the start.  This book isn't going to be for everyone. It's slow, and many of its most interesting parts are sub text
Read more

Call Down The Hawk by Maggie Stiefvater

-
  So my intention was to review this prior to starting Mister Impossible, the second book in the series, because I find it difficult to review single books in a series if I’ve already read the whole thing. Evidently, that did not happen (idk why I bother planning anything, smh), but also I think more people need to read this series SO HERE WE ARE.   Call Down The Hawk is the first book in The Dreamer Trilogy, the adult follow up to Maggie Stiefvater’s YA hit ‘The Raven Cycle’. It focuses heavily on the ‘dreamers’ from TRC, people who are able to pull fantastical items out of their dreams. This is a book with lots and lots of characters, but I’ll outline the main POVs below. We have, in no particular order: The Lynch brothers, the brothers Lynch, ostensibly our protagonists, and the main carryovers from the previous books. Declan, Ronan, and Mathew are, respectively, a muggle, a dreamer, and a dream. Their plot primarily revolves around them becoming embroiled in the wider world of the
Read more