essjay's Reviews (635)

I cried and I cried and I laughed and I cried. I have never felt so seen in a book as I did reading this.

Marcy Dermansky writes the most deliciously fucked up characters. I never want to know them, but they're a delight to read about. 

I don't even know that I liked this, I was bored or angry with most of the characters more than half the time, but I'll probably be thinking about it for a while. 

A whole lot of repetitive nothing happened for the first 65%. Then things kind of started to happen. Then it ended. 🤷

The tone of this reminded me so much of Brown's The Lights in the Sky are Stars. 

Genuinely delightful. 

The Terraformers was somehow both too long and too short, and the three separate pieces never entirely came together to form a cohesive whole. I definitely wish each  timeline was a full separate novel or novella so they could have been fleshed out further. 

Each of the three distinct timelines were enjoyable enough, but just as I was settling into them, there would be another jump of hundreds of years that left me struggling to find my footing again. 

A few truly bonkers sex scenes in the second part, and thankfully the sexual relationship between

a cat and a train

was entirely behind closed doors. I mean, they're both people who consent (no, really, you'll have to read it to understand the full breadth of personhood), so it's fine, I just didn't need to read about it. 

Lots to chew on w/r/t the politics of planetary rights, I'll absolutely be thinking about some aspects of this book for a good long while. 

I mostly enjoyed this, even if parts were confusingly explained (if at all), but wtf was that ending?

I'm a mom in my 40s reading these with my 12y/o. I have no emotional attachment to this series whatsoever, I'm only reading them so my kid and I can have our little Book Club discussions. 

That being said, what in the gender essentialist, heteronormative fuck did I just read?! It's like the author has heard of Girl Power and decided it's inherently misandrist. Especially gross and harmful when you consider that this is a Middle Grade series. I'm glad my 12y/o saw through the bullshit on their own, but JFC. 

I was barely hanging on after the first book, and probably won't be reading any further after this one. My kid has already moved on to the third book, so I will get the verdict from them on whether it's worth continuing.