Serenity Dee

pointlessly slow and with awful worldbuilding

Revisado: 02-18-24

The narrator was good, aside from a few minor mispronunciations, but the worldbuilding is startlingly parochial, tediously conventional, and depressingly unimaginative. The prose is decent enough, but there are some occasionally jarring turns of phrase that made me stop and go, "Wait, what?"

Most importantly, though, and why I won't be continuing the series, is that for a sapphic story, there's a lot of very conventional heterosexuality. The only real sex scenes we get are between cis men and cis women, including an explicitly lesbian character deriving a climax from PIV intercourse with a cis man and the other heroine attempting to seduce a cis man, and the only appearance of f/f sexuality is a dream sequence of heavy petting and an encounter that happens entirely off the page between scenes. And the two protagonists only reunite for a few seconds before being separated again.

I'm a lesbian. I have no interest in reading about any woman having sex with men, let alone a character who is explicitly lesbian, regardless of the reason. I get enough heterosexuality in the background radiation of general media, I neither need nor want it when I'm reading a book that's supposed to be sapphic or lesbian.

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a promising start that didn't stick the landing

Revisado: 01-23-24

What a fantastic start: the crew of the first extrasolar colony awakens after centuries in cryo sleep while their minds are preserved in quantum computers, only to find that their preserved bodies never left Earth and their ship is still in orbit. And there seem to be no humans besides them alive… until a group of former prisoners also awaken.

And then, by the end, it turns into an insultingly unsubtle morality lesson from Golden Age SF with somewhat updated trappings. Who are the only survivors of the end of Western civilization aside from our quantum Rip Van Winkles? Old Order Mennonites, but not any of the Indigenous people around the world, not even in places where they've been able to maintain their ways uninterrupted. And the saviors of these lost 21st century sleepers? The descendants of Martian colonists whose morality and society feels like it was invented by a committee of white American liberals who don't even recognize their own cultural biases.

Oh, and there's also the execrable trans rep. I mean, Sawyer definitely was sympathetic and supportive, but the framing and details feel dated and clumsy to me, as a trans woman listening in 2024, let alone from the perspective of someone whose perspective is over 30 years in the future. It definitely doesn't feel like it was run by a trans woman at any point. And the trans woman's love interest is a cis dude, which is hilariously out of touch; most trans women aren't straight, and we're more likely to get involved with other trans people than any cis people. I'm married to another trans person, and most of my friends are also involved with one or more other trans people. We trans women neither need or want the romantic or sexual interest of a cis het man to validate our womanhood and it's insulting to assume we do.

At least the voice cast was amazing. Given the talent, it's to be expected, but they really knocked it out of the park. Definitely made the listen worth it.

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fun and engaging with some real depth

Revisado: 10-14-23

Aoibh writes a surprisingly deep exploration of trauma and self-discovery in the guise of an action-packed paranormal romance. There are some flaws; at times it gets rather preachy about environmental causes, and while I agree wholeheartedly with the urgency and vehemence of her sentiments, it does affect my suspension of disbelief to have a 1500-year-old vampire talking like a Greenpeace devotee going on a wide-eyed rant. Also, as a tech nerd trans woman, I know that us tech nerd trans girls almost never date boys, and we mostly are in relationships with each other.(It's a particular annoyance of mine because media portrayals of us tend to present us trans women as a great deal more heterosexual than we actually are.)

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

if it were any better it'd be insipid

Revisado: 06-09-23

The narrator is grating, the characters are flatter than a poster, the plot is devoid of tension or believability, the prose is clunky, and worst of all, it was just engaging enough that I had to finish even though I was actively angry at the inept writing and awful narration.

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transphobic, biphobic, self-indulgent trash

Revisado: 03-05-21

the reader was fine, engaging with the material emotionally and sympathetically. unfortunately, the material is absolute garbage in which the author uses a youthful exploration of queerness and kink as a replacement for an actual personality.

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esto le resultó útil a 2 personas

this isn't a romance

Revisado: 10-16-18

A short note to warn potential listeners: this is listed as romance and is in the romance package but it fails the most critical part of a romance genre novel. Specifically, the ending is neither happily ever after nor happy for now. This is why I'm giving it one star; the ending is not what I read romance novels for, and I'm a little bit angry at the author for this ending.

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esto le resultó útil a 4 personas