Reviews with content warning for Violence - Persephone Station

This was okay? It felt like it wanted to be longer than it was, which is something because it already clocks in at like 500ish pages. It just felt like so much was going on at once and so, so much of that was battle stuff that didn’t tell us very much about the larger plot or character relationships. It just all felt squished, which was disappointing because I think there’s a lot in here that’s actually interesting and could have been drawn out in different ways, but it was all compressed to make it fit into this single book—or maybe that the book couldn’t decide what it was about.

Some of it was still fun—many of the characters did feel somewhat compelling, if we could only Get Into It—but they felt pretty un- or underexplored.

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troisha's review

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adventurous emotional tense medium-paced

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

3.5

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booksthatburn's review

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This kept infodumping, telling me how I should feel about something in a kind of irksome way. I don’t mind infodumps of information, but the barrage of info and how I should process felt like I wasn’t being trusted to figure anything out. There was a particular scene right before I stopped reading where a character narrates this whole initial meeting, change of heart, and now strong ties between herself and a person she’s telling us about who’s asleep in the next room. It’s the kind of backstory that either needs its own novella or just two sentences to say where they are now, because the choice to do this in-between thing felt like I was being told about some other story I could have been reading instead. I constantly felt like I had both too much and not enough information about what was happening, and I decided to stop.

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elwirax's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

The beginning of "Persephone Station" was quite a struggle to get through with the info dumping and confusing scenes. Howbeit, when the action picked up it was much more enjoyable. The diversity and queerness was great and I appreciated the non binary representation which I rarely have the pleasure of reading about.

However, I think that "Persephone Station" tried to do too much which negated from other aspects of the book. I wish there had been more focus on character development rather than action. I found it difficult to care about any of the characters even when their lives were at stake. I was invested in the snippets of backstories- particularily that of Kennedy's- but felt there wasn't enough to create well rounded characters. The world building also lacked full development. Although there are solid explorations of alien species, artificial intelligence and illnesses these were not explored in a satisfactory way, leaving me with many questions.

Throughout the book there's a secondary storyline that doesn't really mix into the main one until the very end and even then they do not tie up neatly. The ending of this book was wrapped up quite conveniently and with many plot holes

The author tended to use the word "said" so frequently that by the end I found it utterly inffureable. It made the writing seem juvenile (although this may just be a personal irk).

I had high hopes for this book but for 500 pages It was quite dissapointing. Despite this, if you're into the idea of a predominantly female cast with non stop action then this may be for you. If you're more into character development and world building this is not the book for you.

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morevna's review

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adventurous dark medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No

2.25

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reviewsandreadathons's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional fast-paced

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

4.5

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sirius_feanor's review

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adventurous fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.25

I was a bit of struggle for me to get into the story and to understand the whole world setting. But once you get that it's a pretty interesting space action book. Although, sometimes I felt as if I am reading the novelisation of a Sci-Fi TV series.
The best thing about this book was ALL the diversity and representation within characters, and the input into normalisation of using they/them pronouns for a non-binary character.

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