Space Opera

Author: Catherynne M. Valente

Rating: 2/5

Decibel Jones and the Absolute Trios, or rather what’s left of the band, is selected to represent Earth in the Metagalactic Grand Prix, a universal singing competition (think Eurovision but an alien version) which helps maintain peace among different civilisations.

Spoilers ahead.

Detailed Summary

After the Sentience War, all the big civilisations across the galaxy decide to hold a song contest called the Metagalactic Grand Prix. All sentient beings have to perform. The Esca, a race of aliens, come to Earth to get humans to compete. If the humans end in last place, they will be exterminated. The Esca won first place last year and want to help the humans. They have a shortlist of potential musicians but all are dead save for Decibel Jones and the Absolute Zeros, a rock trio. The drummer Mira Wonderful Star died after she proposed to Decibel, was turned down and had a car accident (or something like that). Decibel and Oort aren’t on speaking terms. But the Esca force them to go to the spaceship (with Oort’s cat in tow which is given the ability to speak English). The competitors are able to assassinate each other etc. before the performance. Decibel has sex with an alien but she mutes him and he’s unable to perform. On stage, Decibel gives birth to an Esca and regains the ability to speak. The book ends with Oort returning home to his daughters. Humanity didn’t end up last place, I guess.

Plot and Pacing

I really wanted to like this book but it was overwritten and underwhelming. The idea for Space Opera came from a reply to Valente’s tweet, daring her to write a sci-fi book about Eurovision. As an aside, I was surprised that so many (I guess, American?) readers hadn’t heard of Eurovision prior to this book. While I wouldn’t consider myself a fan of Eurovison, I was intrigued by the idea of music establishing peace across the galaxy (save for whichever alien ends up in last place, the poor guys). I loved that an underdog band, Decibel Jones and the Absolute Trios, were selected out of the millions of musicians. I loved how they were whisked away to space after a hilarious sequence of agents “grabbing Decibel’s McQueen-sheathed elbow with extravagantly aggressive masculinity and attempting to assert their dominance using only biceps, baritones, and a genetic inability to remove their sunglasses.”

But rather than really focusing on the inner turmoil of the characters (there was a tiny bit of this but not enough in my opinion) and showing how the competition went, there were a lot of descriptions of random aliens and their weird powers and quirky ways of having sex. And I was just…not put off exactly but really bored. Espeically because the descriptions were written in a way that were meant to be funny but I wanted to know more about Decibel Jones and why the band members had such animosity towards each other. (This was only explained in like a paragraph–Mira, the drummer, wanted to marry Decibel but he laughed in her face and she killed herself, or something to that extent.)

Tangents can be fun to read but what keeps me engaged is trying to peace together how a seemingly random tangent is relevant to the plot. In Space Opera, there were tangents upon tangents for no other reason than to have tangents. That really deteriorated my reading experience.

Characters

I honestly didn’t feel a pull towards any of the characters. I liked how Valente played on the trope of retired band members and discussed how they hadn’t quite found success. I thought it was hilarious how both Decibel and Oort questioned their sexuality and because they were in the public light, decided they didn’t want to contradict anything they said previously about their love lives so called themselves “omnisexual.” I also appreciated the diversity of the characters and how they didn’t quite feel like “Englishblokeman.” Other than that, they didn’t really stand out to me.

Writing Style

Okay, so, this book is meant to be comedy sci-fi and it was definitely a valient effort. There was a lot of beautiful, quirky prose like:

The only question is this:

Do you have enough empathy and yearning and desperation to connect to others outside yourself and scream into the void in four-part harmony? Enough brainpower and fine motor control and aesthetic ideation to look at feathers and stones and stuff that comes out of a worm’s more unpleasant holes and see gowns, veils, platform heels? Enough sheer style and excess energy to do something that provides no direct, material benefit to your personal survival, that might even mark you out from the pack as shiny, glittery prey, to do it for no other reason than that it rocks?

Like, I wanted more of that!

The vast majority of this book consisted of description upon description, like Valente was trying too hard to be funny and it rubbed me the wrong way. The writing is definitely very creative and I got a lot of Douglas Adams vibes from the book (which I guess was kind of the point) but it was so over the top! Not every line needed to be witty to the nth degree. Especially when there were like five pages describing an alien species that didn’t progress the plot in any way. It was just too much.

This book has been on my TBR list for ages and I was glad to finally finish it. Thank you, r/fantasy bingo challenge, for, once again, forcing me through this book.