DNF @ 23%Gahhhh I just can't. Again with the oodles of description and minimal action. The writing itself is gorgeous but when I get so wrapped up in the words that I get lost and don't know how to find my way back to what's going on (assuming something IS actually going on) then it's a no go, unfortunately.

Updated review after a second reading in November 2018.--"I used to look up at night and dream of the solar system."Ms. Valente wrote the kind of book I wish I could write, and for that I am both in awe of her, and kinda pissed off. Seriously, the woman took some of my all-time favorite things, chucked them in a blender and then wrote this book.A documentary film maker goes missing while she is shooting her final project, about a mysteriously deserted colonial settlement on Venus. Her story is p...

This book was one of a kind! I can honestly say that I've never read a novel like "Radiance" before, and I love it when I encounter those kinds of reading surprises. "Radiance" takes place on different planets, and it follows different plots and destinies in a non-linear way. It sounds confusing, and it is! But it's amazing how Catherynne M. Valente is still able to make sense of everything and maintain a common thread throughout. It's hard to describe what this book is about, but basically we f...

This is a real mess in every sense. I think i really enjoy books which encompass several different genres and this one has great fun moving through them. Its a really interesting (and confusing) world of rocketships and silent movies.Your inner astronomer will have issues though. I was fine with the cannon rockets, despite several unanswered technical questions. I was fine with people living on other planets in the solar system and those planets having life. But then i realised people where livi...

Re-read 5/24/20:After re-reading my gushing review from years ago and having just re-read the fantastic book, I wonder if there's anything I can add to it?Ah, how about this: Getting a nice hardbound version and sipping the tale like a great wine is recommended. Re-reads are not only welcome -- but delightful.And damn... the ending is both nearly incomprehensible and immensely satisfying. Active readers will have a huge, huge kick. :)Original review:This was A-Fucking-Mazing.This is what all SF

DECOPUNK PULP SF ALT-HISTORY SPACE OPERA MYSTERY.that... that is like my aesthetic explained in 7 words. [dies]

I full on genuflect to the brilliance, imagination and gorgeous mind behind this book. It's recognizably the woman who wrote Palimpsest, but even more tender, even more full of such stuff as dreams are made on. I'll never forget this patchwork of glorious pieces. I hope to write more soon.

2.5 stars - I think I'm going to be the odd one out on this one but it just didn't work for me. It had moments of brilliance but it just didn't come together as a cohesive whole. I love weird books and books that don't follow linear narratives and that use different ways of telling the story. This has all of that so I should have loved it but unfortunately I didn't and by the end I just didn't care.

Outer space is the ultimate gothic mansion. What better place to search for things that go bump in the night? Radiance unfolds in a bygone era that never quite existed. The golden age of silent film... on the moon. Diving bells for the seas of Venus. The Ottoman empire stretching to Jupiter. These are the familiar bare bones of our solar system, clothed in the feathers and flesh of extraterrestrial fauna, and wearing a dandy top hat. It's an image partly reminiscent of a lot of classic sci-fi (f...

Catherynne M. Valente is at the top of my list of authors whose talent makes me positively green with envy. Her command of the English language is . . . humbling. Her words are not only strangely beautiful, easily understood despite the complete lack of anything familiar, but they are also riddled with truths . . . sometimes painful truths . . . that are wondrously expressed: Come in from that assault on all senses, that pummelling of rod and cone and drum and cilia. Come in from the great spo...

Executive Summary: This book just wasn't for me, but then I don't like literary fiction. The parts I enjoyed were just too infrequent. Full Review This book wasn't on my radar at all. Ms. Valente was on the Sword & Laser podcast late last year, but I apparently forgot all about it. That should have been my first warning.I'm a big fan of movies. I'm a pretty big fan of science-fiction. This should have been a happy marriage for me, but it wasn't. I've seen hundreds of films. I've read hundreds

Watch a mini-review in my August 2017 wrap up!Now THIS is a book that will stay with me...Obviously, Valente's writing deserves all kinds of praise. It's lush. You just swim though her prose. I can understand her use of language being a bit too much for some people, but I ate it up like a rich meal paired with the perfect wine, topped off with a melt-in-your mouth dessert that leaves you uncomfortably full in the very best way.This truly does not feel like other novels. It's epistolary, and that...

4.5A wonderful present from Lys, I literally squealed when I saw it. :*It's close to 5 but I'm not sure how to rate it yet. Deathless is still my favourite of Valente's books and this one maybe didn't "flow" like I wanted it to. However I can't do anything but be amazed at her writing style and ideas and, most of all, knowledge of mythology. Radiance is extremely complex and full of references to mythology...I probably could re-read it all over again and find completely new elements. The blurb d...

Documentary filmmaker Severin Unck never returned from her last project on Venus. Thus begins the meta-fictional odyssey into Severin Unck's life and fate. Radiance is the story of Severin Unck's life (and death?), told by Severin and the people who knew her in the form of articles, journal entries, scripts, and films, most notably Severin's own. I was apprehensive at first, since this sounds like a first class ticket to fancy-pants town, like a lot of books that use meta-fictional devices. Howe...

The prologue is the mother of the tale and the governess of the audience. She knows you have to bring them in slow, teach them how to behave. Catherynne M Valente doesn't have a silver tongue; she has a 24 karat gold tongue studded with stars and diamonds of every color. Her vocabulary is a menagerie of tigers and dragons; white wolves and black unicorns. Radiance is a alt-history space opera noir set in a solar-system where every planet has been colonized by mankind. The moon is home to a

Because I am unable to resist the seductions of irony, here is a quote from Robert Downey Jr.:This is probably going to get quoted in every publication just because I said it. And I’m not even saying anything. I’m not talking about my films, I’m not talking about my life, and I’m not talking about the world. And yet, the media will print it simply because I said it. And at this moment in time, I bet there is an artist around the corner of this hotel, on the street, with a mind far beyond ours, b...

This is the second book about a movie producer and his daughter's disappearance/death that I have read. Only this book isn't written as a typical thriller-that-could-be-real-life, this is (amongst many other things) space opera!In this alternate solar system, life is everyhwere. There are even whales on Venus (and boy, did I love those!). Due to Edison's family being pricks (hoarding patents), there are only silent movies but space travel is a normal occurrence for humanity.Severin Unck's father...

A truly brilliant read, one of my favourites of the year so far. This book is incredibly written, with a fascinating well thought out structure and a brilliant world fantastically built. There is so much in this book that it almost shouldn't work - and yet it does, brilliantly. I would highly recommend.

This science fiction book, which is not really a science fiction book, tells a story, which is not really a story that is part tone poem, part pulp novel, part experimental romance, and parts of many other things. In fact it's not really a book is it? Just pieces of one. And yet, I love it right in the face.

I was looking forward to this, until I tried it. I really didn’t get far — tried the start, then skipped around, looking for something to like. Beyond the concept, and chapter names, well, nothing appealed. Seemed a muddled mess to me. Well, YMMV. But if you like a traditional, coherent SF/F storyline, transparent prose and somewhat believable characters, you're likely to be disappointed. 1.5 stars, courtesy roundup.