/lit/ - Literature

>>19450180
The Cruel Stars, The Cruel Stars #1 - John Birmingham (2019)

This was a moderately fun and action-packed space opera. Its most glaring flaw is that it's a mishmash of basically every other popular SF series there is from every sort of media. I'm not sure if it has a single idea that it didn't borrow. That wouldn't be a problem for me if it worked well, but it works ok at best.

There are six viewpoint characters, five protagonists and the antagonist. The former all converged by the end. It used the modern sort of slang that still made me groan a bit, but I've grown used to it. The most salient examples were calling someone a "douchebro" and the relatively frequent use of "omigod". There are many other examples though. I didn't mind the pop culture references, mostly. One character talks about their love of J.R.R. Tolkien, S.M. Stirling, and other ancient authors. An exception to this was the discussion of lesbian tentacle porn, which made me roll my eyes. There were several other references of varying silliness.

The antagonists are described in the book as space nazis, though I'd also say they're similar to the Butlerian Jihad from Dune. The characters go hard on the nazi narrative. The Human Republic, as they call themselves, want to destroy all AI and non-baseline humans, for reasons of genetic purity. They also mention The Great Replacement as well, though in this case they feel they're being replaced by genetic mutants and cyborgs.

A summary of the plot is that the characters are introduced, have their arcs, try to survive the onslaught, and meet up. That's pretty much the book. I assume the next one is that they plan their counterattack. I don't know if I'd read it. The odds are against me doing so, but it could happen.

Rating: 3/5

>>14823954

7/9

Anyone familiar with this? Looks interesting.

>>14019420