Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - At the Edge of the Universe

I am truly in awe of SDH and all of his books I've so far read, including this one. Taking a shrinking universe concept, he has created a masterful work that I say is best to go into blindly. SDH is a genius whose praises I cannot sing more loudly. The elements of mental health are all over this book, as with his other works, and he handles them beautifully. The fact that Ozzie, our main character and narrator, is LGBTQ+ is never once the focus. I really appreciate how SDH tells a story with gay characters and not a story about gay characters. This one in particular could have worked with any main character - any race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. - and it would still be the same impactful story. Here we have Ozzie (gay) with a missing boyfriend, and a few other characters including his best friend Lua who uses he/she pronouns depending on their mood and dress. And it never is treated as an odditiy or dressed in a neon sign with sequins calling attention to the diversity and representation of the characters. Lua is just Lua in all his glory and I live for it.

I absolutely LOVE SDH's humor! I love it when a book makes me laugh or giggle and I did both with so many humorous lines and thoughts.

My one gripe with this novel is the ending was a bit quick. We get some explanation for the state of affairs - shall we say - but some things aren't fully explained. In the last chapter - and I'm being vague to avoid spoilers, but those who have read this will hopefully get what I'm saying - there is at least one character that has a large roll in the bulk of the novel and is dealt with rather quickly. I think I understand what happened there, but I just wanted a touch more explanaition of this circumstances we end on. I may add a spoiler to clarify this, or I may not. I'm omitting that for now.

SDH is absolutely a favorite author of mine - one I just discovered this year, 2022, and have devoured many of his works so far - and I look forward to reading his books more and more. I want to say this is like a 4.75 star, because of my gripe, however I have to speak my heart and say it's a lovely 5 star book I look forward to digesting and probably rereading in the future several times. Brilliance doesn't begin to even describe how I feel about this.

Content Warnings

meadowlarks's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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ninaevan's review

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dark emotional mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

Short story: Amazing pitch, strong stakes, great writing- not to young but also appropriately angsty, a little dragged out but the ending was worth the wait. Wow this was a rollarcoaster… CW- a lot of unexpected sensitive content, check warnings.

Long story: my feelings abt it changed so much throughout the book- for the first half I was totally obsessed by the concept and griped by the mystery and then it took so long to reach to reach resolution that for a minute I thought it wouldn’t. From about the half way point til about 50 pages til the end I thought it was a flop because it almost felt like an entire book about the first half of a story… I just expected more lead chasing and clue uncovering. When it opened with the plane crash mystery, it felt like the start of something and then he just never got another lead and I really thought it would be irredeemably undeveloped but those last 50 pages really pulled everything together and it ended up blowing my mind. I do think that something more could have happened in the 200-400 page section or that it could have been cut down cause it was a little long and felt like it was loosing track of the original plot and going off into some other plot but not fully committing to the switch… but again, it pulled thru and achieved the “above 4 star” rating.

My scoring:
5.00 | = everyone in the world must read this book
4.75 | = between 4.5 and 5
4.50 | = dessert island book
4.25 | = between 4 and 4.5
4.00 | = great, solid, recommendable book
3.75 | = almost a 4, but not quite
3.50 | = not a 4, but I had a good time
3.25 | = rough patches, but not bad
3.00 | = meh, read-able but nothing to write home about
2.75 | = between a 2.5 and 3
2.50 | = there’s something I liked here but it wasn’t enough to be good
2.25 | = between a 2 and 2.5
2.00 | = not good and there was nothing I liked
1.00 | = bad

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danileah07's review

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slow-paced

Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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andrewjauer's review against another edition

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4.0

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pogue's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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ohanaaa's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I'm so glad I read this book... and not just because it really reminds me of a situation I've been processing as of late and almost felt like I got tricked into a therapy session. Definitely worth the read. By far the best book I've read so far.

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