Reading Update

[jaggedwolf]

Finished The Dreaming Stars, the second book in Tim Pratt's Axiom trilogy.

Everything I liked about the first book is true of the second - punchily written space adventure with a interesting crew, charming f/f romance between the mains, cool aliens. This one takes a little longer to get to the main plot, but I didn't mind the more easygoing first half, since there were consequence from the previous book to handle and set up for this one. I liked the breathing room to see what everyone had spent their time doing, to see a bit of Callie's past and to let Elena experience more of the oddness of being a time refuge from the 21st century.

It had less awkward "Let Me Tell You About My Identity" bits than the first one too, thankfully. I think when it comes to gender identity/sexuality, the most naturally-written bit of the series remains the Liars' - squidlike aliens that often interact with humans - pick-as-they-will approach to pronouns. We find out in this book that Lantern picked "she" solely because it sounds nice to her. Gosh, I do love the Liars.

Cutting for spoilers...

Now that they're together, it seems Callie and Elena have progressed from inappropriately-timed horny thoughts to accidentally saying the horny thoughts on public comms channels, pfft. As my friend described them, they are excellent mildly chaotic gfs, and have a good dynamic together. I like very much that Callie's response to Elena going "uh no I'm not going to safely wait on the planet, I'm going to stay on the ship and help" is "okay, fine, you're part of the crew and now have a 10% stake in our LLC". Also, Elena is great troll, what with messing with Callie by asking her about human-Liar intercourse, having already looked it up.

I kinda wish Elena had more to do with the major plot, but the unexpected promotion to XO definitely feels like it's setting her up for something in the next book. Man, her life's been a rush since the goldilocks ship.

VR-world and drugs was an interesting way to let us get closer to the Axiom without putting our leads in too much danger, and as a way to wrap up both Sebastian and Stephen's storylines. I figured they'd need to do...something...with Sebastian, but getting to see his worst self in the Hypnos and then having him help in the Axiom virtual reality while hopped up on drugs was not what I expected. And it really did make its own sort of weird sense, given his narcissism.

The ending with the note tied off that shimmer Callie kept seeing, and the eye symbol makes me wonder if there's a good Axiom out there, and that's the one blinking at them every time they use the Axiom bridge-generator. Creeeepy.

Stephen got a subplot! What a good sad old man whose religion is drugs. (This isn't a metaphor, there's a church that's literally about taking drugs with a bunch of people.) I didn't expect him to get a love interest of his own. With Stephen/Fortier and Callie/Elena I can see the criticism that Pratt's writing here tends towards insta-love as opposed to a longer build-up before feelings happen. I don't really have a rejoinder to that, other than that I didn't really mind in either case. I bought that they worked well together, and I suppose the high-stakes, long-distance nature of life in space might've made it more believable that they'd be this decisive.

Anyway, I'm glad Stephen got to bow out of the fight towards his own happy ending, as disappointed as Callie was.

Here is several tiny bits that I enjoyed:

• Ashok thinks Sebastian is hot. Ashok thinks Sebastian was hotter when there was a giant metal spider attached to the back of his head, oh my god
• Callie crashing her own funeral to be a dramatic dick, and then being horrified at her ex talking to Elena
• Elena simply grinning and eating shrimp as Callie struggles to introduce her at said funeral
• Lantern has ~feelings~ for somebody :O
• Callie feeling relieved that while the drugs gave her sympathetic insight towards Sebastian, it didn't make her suddenly feel sorry for the Axiom, it made her angrier at them.
• Ashok deciding to turn on the gravity at a time corresponding to the gravitational constant <3
• The repeated Sebastian simulations. That was a good look into his brain, instead of having him markedly better after the drug therapies
• Elena attempting to better understand the Liars' non-verbal methods of communication

Anyway, this book series has been super fun, can't wait to read the next one and also can't believe I'd have never heard of it if it weren't for a random comment on ffa comparing it with Starship Iris.