Book review: Burndive
Burndive
★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆
(3.5)
I’m going to start a new ‘rating system’ when I review books, because just giving overall stars to the whole thing doesn’t really encompass how I would rate specific elements of books. There’s general ones of course, like do I like the characters or are they GOOD characters, is the plot good, what about the worldbuilding, etc. But nowadays I also look to see how female characters are done (or if they are even THERE) and if it’s an m/m book, how homophobic it actually is.
Even if I give a book 4 stars there might be parts of it that are TERRIBLE. Kind of like The Rifter and how the handling of women was just unnecessarily violent and awful and if I was just rating the book on female representation and treatment it’d get like…half a star. But I liked so much else about it that overall I gave it four, and other parts I would have given five. So I’m gonna break stuff down more specifically now, for all books. At least into the parts that I care about the most.
A quick overall review of Burndive here and then specifics after (now right away Your Mileage May Vary on this, because I’ve heard nothing but praise about it and I just didn’t jive to it the same way). I thought the book was interesting, got continually better as it went from a less-than-mediocre sci-fi story to a fairly decent sci-fi story, but I don’t think I’d read it again. I might go and read the first once in the “series” since everyone seems to agree it’s the best and Jos Musey seems like an interesting character, but generally Burndive was just kind of...average. Nothing really impressed me or stood out above a standard sci-fi affair, with a lot of complicated and vaguely defined tech terms, futuristic drug use, spaceships, space stations, aliens, space marines, vague intergalactic wars. Ryan at least was a character at the heart of it and the book wasn’t using empty cutout characters to show off the sci-fi world (because that would have made this book unpalatable, there’s nothing to show off in this world), but besides different names for the same standard sci-fi elements it didn’t feel different from…most sci-fi. So on that front it was only average and didn’t offer anything new, on the female characters front it was heavily disappointing, on the very vague and pretty much irrelevant/removable m/m side it was exasperating. I think the best parts were the way Ryan’s mental state and emotions were portrayed-they were the most believable and understandable without being completely spelled out all the time, even if it made him a bit of an asshole teenager. As a reader you could always see where he was coming from, even though you could also see when other characters he was clashing with had a point. That was the strongest element of the book and the reason why I’d be interested to read the first in the series, to see that same thing with Jos Musey. There were some moments that were really compelling and interesting, and other parts I just had to slog through and didn’t enjoy at all. I think about half of the book was good.
I’ve had this series recommended to me a lot, and people absolutely love it and also praise the genius of the POV switch (which I found so unnecessary and not smooth or integrated well at all), and I guess I’m just gonna be that person who is overly picky again, because while I didn’t hate this book, it didn’t impress or really involve me. It’s forgettable in the huge slew of other generic sci-fi I have ever read in my life. It was a decent read that continually got better as it went along, but that’s about it. Nowhere near the top of any list of anything I’ve read.
Plot: 3/5
There is no plot. It’s kind of a bildungsroman. I was over halfway through before I realized I didn’t really know what the point of it all was or where it was heading or why I should care. Frankly, Ryan’s dad is driving the plot, with the peace talks with the alien race. Ryan is along for the ride (at least, after the midway point of the book he is-the first half is just him being an aimless punk teenager on a space station) and kind of representing the everyman who would be affected by what Azarcon Sr. is doing, as well as the general opinions about the aliens and symps and the political things and all that. Ryan is an observer to the plot, he really has no agency and no control (another problem I had with this book), so he is not really involved in moving anything or changing the story. The story is really about this punk rich kid with no life goals and a lot of rebellious streaks in him being forced to be somewhere he doesn’t want to be and deal with things he doesn’t want to deal with and growing up because of that. Bildungsroman. It’s funny because the back blurb of the book blatantly spells out a thing that’s only very slowly revealed during the course of the book-the embassy attack that Ryan lived through. It happens prior to the book’s events and Ryan is sort of having PTSD from it a little bit, enough so that when he thinks about it his thought processes sort of scatter and get very vague and visceral, with a tiny bit more detail each time, but for a while it’s literally “what happened in Hong Kong” and no other details. Unless of course you read the back cover, because then there’s no need to put it together at all; it outright tells you. And the back cover is actually really wrong about the story in general so…I would advise you not to read the back cover. I actually didn’t until I was nearly done with the book, which was probably for the best because it’s very misleading.
Because there’s no plot, it’s hard to rate the quality of something that doesn’t exist. I’m giving it a 3 because the events occurring seemed solid and well thought out, it’s just that Ryan had nothing to do with them. The story would have happened with or without him.
World-building: 4/5
Standard, predictable, safe world-building. It’s a space opera. These days I like my sci-fi to be less generic and actually speculative, as in taking where we as a current society are actually putting our development efforts and building that into a picture of a future, rather than just going “oh in a hundred years of course we’ll have space ships and space stations for civilians because reasons!” No. We won’t. We don’t really give a shit about NASA and space anymore because we no longer have anyone to one-up or beat in the space race. I do not see a future in the next few hundred years where we have developed far enough to be living in space or on other planets with the kind of sophisticated technology most sci-fi presents us with.
It’s so clichéd to just go-the future! Of course spaceships, of course lasers and cool new future drugs! This is not a thing with Burndive alone; it’s a thing with LOTS of sci-fi. It never impresses me anymore. It’s like we’re still back in the 60s predicting the future of space travel, which was the big thing at the time. We’re not doing that now; it’s irrelevant now. Authors have got to pay attention to actual science before they make science fiction.
Burndive doesn’t do this. It’s just military space-opera sci-fi. It really has no base creativity. It doesn’t really take the time to explore anything about an actual possible future; it uses a standard familiar template and mixes up a bit of its own terms and ideas to create a slightly modified generic pallet to work from. So I penalized it a point. I would penalize it more but it’s such a common thing and a personal preference that it seems unfair to come down too hard on it for this. If you like space-operas as your setting, then you’d probably like this. It’s a solidly put together world, but just unimaginative.
Character: 5/5
Strongest part of the book, and I will completely give it credit for that since a lot of sci-fi is built around the world and scenarios and kind of forgets about making characters (like Inception) or makes them the most broadly drawn archetypes (like Cameron’s Avatar). And I mention movies because I’ve slowed down on reading sci-fi because this IS such a big problem, although it’s the same in movies. But movies are quicker. And occasionally you get things like Moon and Source Code. And then in books you occasionally get things like Burndive, where, as I mentioned, it’s a bildungsroman so it’s ABOUT Ryan and his character.
While Ryan is not exactly likeable all the time (or most of it), he’s believable and a lot of elements about him are really well done. The spoiled bratty rich boy thing gets across, as does the lonely aimless anger at pretty much his whole life, sort of the helpless despair at his family situation, also the effects of the embassy attack that are like PTSD. Ryan’s put together out of many parts and they’re all done well and never heavy-handed. The book (well, most of it) is in very very limited 3rd, so the narration is never being too “and he felt like this because of THIS”. The plot is him, despite the back of the book proclaiming otherwise. Even when the book randomly and unnecessarily switches to 1st near the end, Ryan still doesn’t tell you much about what he feels. He most describes it without being open about it.
So he’s not always likeable, but he is pretty much the core of the book. And he’s a teenager, so despite some actually awful stuff having happened to him, he does whine a lot about how bad and terrible everything in his life is despite it generally being pretty excellent when it’s normal, but it’s punctuated with some very extreme lows (like the fact that someone tries to assassinate him). This kind of makes him a package of extremes, so his actual situations are hard to identify with because he’s either a spoiled child of two famous people with basically everything he wants or in terrifying situations like a bomb attack or a very close assassination attempt. Even if his emotions that stem from that are all understandable, the situations are a little estranged-there’s nothing about him that most people could identify with. Identifying with characters is not a requirement to me when I’m reading, but I know that puts me in a serious minority-I just like the characters to be believable and interesting. Ryan is both, and also frustrating and sometimes really annoying. But perhaps not easy to identify with.
And because bildungsroman, he grows and changes throughout the book. By the end he is someone different. I think this is perhaps what the random switch into 1st person is supposed to be about, especially as it comes on the heels of a big thing about the themes of privacy and appearances and distancing yourself, so it’s maybe supposed to be Ryan “opening” himself to the reader. But it just doesn’t work. Because it changes absolutely nothing in the narration. Ryan’s 1st POV reads exactly like 3rd, he’s not more involved with the audience, you get just about the same amount of information/emotional states from him as you did in 3rd. It just appears heavy-handed and random instead. Also the wording is exactly the same-it doesn’t give him a unique voice or way of speaking; it’s literally just 3rd person but written with 1st pronouns.
Also, race? Azarcon sounds like a Spanish or Mexican name, and Ryan’s mom’s family is clearly Chinese. This makes the fact that Ryan has blue eyes and blond hair (though both are fake) and that the cover of my version of the book has a very white/Caucasian featured fellow on it very odd. Also the rest of Ryan’s family also had ethnic names, like Ashrafi and Ramcharan, which sound Arabic and Indian. Ryan’s father is adopted, so only the Azarcon name/nationality is relevant, but Ryan is for sure at least half Chinese, which doesn’t necessarily make him dark-skinned but he would have Asian facial features, which…I don’t really get from the book (or the cover). The most is that he sometimes wears silk stuff with dragons patterned on it which, I don’t know, sounds like a Mortal Kombat outfit and pretty clichéd. Also a terrible way to get across the nationality of your character especially in a futuristic space station/non-Earth setting. The name is sort of kind of enough, but I wish he hadn’t been blond and blue eyed the whole book, or that it was mentioned so often. Also Ryan’s grandfather, who is probably Middle Eastern (his name is Omar Ashrafi) is not really described as…looking like that. Or looking like anything at all, in fact. He’s not even described as being old, which he might not LOOK, since Ryan’s 40 year old mom has cosmetic enhancements that make her look like she’s in her 20s. In a world like this, where people can change the appearance that would normally go hand in hand with a basic aspect of them (a race, an age) we have to be told what they look like because assuming does not work. In fact, almost no one gets descriptions other than perhaps hair color. We’re told a LOT about superficial things on Ryan (his fake hair color, his fake eye color) but nothing about his features ( except he’s apparently hot) or his build or body type. I think Sid might be blond, and Ryan’s dad maybe has dark hair, Ryan’s mom is dark haired, and Evan is maybe blond and Musey is maybe also dark haired. But I don’t KNOW for sure; and beyond that these people could pretty much look like anything. I mean, I don’t want like six paragraphs waxing on about how everybody looks, but a couple details would help get a rough outline of these characters especially when appearances can change/go against the norm. The most description is on the alien, which makes sense, but it’s really lacking elsewhere.
Basically, if Ryan is PoC, it’s extremely undermined. Which is kind of unfortunate.
Female characters: 1/5
HAH. No. Just no. There really aren’t any. Not ones that are important, or really characterized without a lot of effort on the reader’s part, or do things. Ryan’s mom is arguably the most important, and she doesn’t really DO anything but [SPOILERS] have an affair and die [/SPOILERS] which….I don’t know. The latter seemed like a really cheap heavy-handed thing that literally served as a way to move some male characters to a spot they needed to be in. And if you really want to get psychological on it; she’s punished for the affair she has by death. She’s married to a guy who is never ever there and never plans to be because he lives on his spaceship (even Ryan has only met him in person 3 times before he goes to live on his ship), has this punk kid who constantly gives her grief and a family who disapproves of most things she ever did/does, but she handles her entire household and is basically a PR genius, and she’s obviously really lonely because essentially she doesn’t have a husband and her son doesn’t really care about her. So just to get some personal support and comfort she has this affair with Sid, and then even that is taken from her when Sid accompanies Ryan aboard the Macedon and that situation is intended to be permanent. And then, she gets killed.
You see her only through Ryan’s eyes and Ryan really has no empathy for her, in fact he doesn’t seem to feel much of anything at all for her except missing her a tiny bit when he’s away from her and some very strange jumbled feelings about her affair and some strnge jumbled feelings about her death later on. So you have to take these pieces you see about her, uncolor them from Ryan’s POV, and put them back together to see her perspective. Which does not make her an active character, it makes her kind of this background thing that you can pay attention to if you want, but you don’t have to or need to. She’s still a very small character and none of this stuff is really explored about her, and essentially it’s unnecessary to the story, and then she dies. Her husband, who may or may not have had affairs of his own it’s kind of unclear and you have to go off his word versus the ship’s prostitute, gets to live no matter if he was loyal or if he had an affair. Also he’s kind of an asshole. Either way it’s bullshit.
The only other female characters are Shiri, who is pointless and is used in the most offensive way as a shield of heterosexuality by Ryan (more on this later) and in one full conversation where she is an exposition sounding board, and Aki, who…isn’t a character, she’s just a female with a name. This is a book about men doing important things and engaging with each other and having interesting relationships with each other and only each other. There are very superficial relationships between men and women thrown in like afterthoughts (Ryan’s mom and Sid is probably the only one that isn’t like that, but it’s kind of a background thing in the actual action of the book, you mostly “see” it from Ryan just ruminating on it; Ryan and Shiri’s relationship is empty and he’s pretty dickish to her and it mostly boils down to Ryan missing frequent sex with her), and no relationships between any women. There are politically powerful women present, but they are not characters with depth (and in fact all seem to be traitors/disliked heavily by the people inside the book) and in a book that is essentially all ABOUT character-that’s short-shafting them. All the female characters could be removed from the narrative with absolutely no change to the story, except for Ryan’s mom. And then she dies. So yeah. Super low score on the women front. Disappoint. Especially from a female author.
LGTB-friendly: 2.5/5
I especially look for homophobia specifically in m/m books (published ones) these days, because it is actuallyso rampant often in underhanded, subtle, you-can’t-even-tell-unless-you’re-really-thinking-about-it ways, and it’s now one of the things that infuriates me most about books that tote themselves as being “LGBT-friendly”. Because pretty much NONE OF THEM ARE. Havemercy, Nightrunners, Last Herald Mage, Kushiel’s Various Nouns, I could go on. All of them are pretty damn awful. And I’m not saying that all books with homophobic characters in them ARE homophobic, because THAT’S not true. It’s the way the authors themselves presents the world and creates situations, not the characters. It’s a difference in the actual writing, the way there are often subtle changes and shifts in how the author chooses to portray anything dealing with homosexuality, different from the same scenario if it had been heterosexual or with straight characters. You can have a homophobic character who is purposefully used to point out what a shitty attitude that is, but sometimes those attitudes actually get reinforced by the author, accidentally, just through word choices and how they choose to have things happen.
And Burndive gets a pretty low rating too, meaning; there’s lots of homophobia! It’s also intertwined with the lack of female characters/token girlfriend element that I talked about before. It’s not an m/m book, it’s really a SCI-FI book, but there are heavy slashy moments and gay characters and occasionally it gets tightly focused on. ALL Ryan Azarcon’s most important and influential relationships are with men-especially his bodyguard Sid, his father and a little bit his grandfather, Jos Musey, and Evan. Practically even Yuri, who he meets for two seconds when the guy kidnaps him and yet has more empathy for than he does for his ex-girlfriend whom he treats like shit. The only guys Ryan doesn’t have some kind of UST moments with are his dad and grandfather. But the moments with the others in the book are pretty much treated as jokes, and unwanted things, or are covered up by other “no seriously Ryan is straight” moments that don’t even work because they are not integrated well or believably, especially with the lack of developed female characters or female characters AT ALL.
Sid, Ryan’s bodyguard for the past seven years and close (and really only) friend, is kind of the biggest male presence in Ryan’s life and if the same feelings and interactions that Ryan has with him would have been occurring with a female character you BET they’d’ve hooked up in the story. But Sid is clearly outlined as being in love with/having a deep emotional connection to Ryan’s mother, just to make sure you get the idea he’s straight and unavailable emotionally and physically. Then all of Ryan’s negative thoughts and anger about their affair don’t seem to be “how dare my mother have an affair/how dare she have feelings for Sid/how dare Sid have feelings for her/how unprofessional of him/this is ruining our family in yet another way/ I’m angry at her/ I’m angry at Sid/this is gross” and more like “I don’t like it, I JUST DON’T LIKE IT” and because he never specifies an actual reason, it kind of reads that he’s jealous that it’s not HIM Sid is interested in. Especially since once he’s on the Macedon and he and Sid are away from his mother, Ryan starts making constant mentions about Sid being his boyfriend or he and Sid having an affair and Sid’s general reaction is “stop being a sick little pus” (about word for word that’s one of his replies to Ryan’s semi-flirting). This is where my extreme problems with this come in; the jokes are treated not as Ryan just being a punk (which he is) but being “sick”. Why did that extra adjective have to be thrown in there? It makes Sid come off as “ew, don’t even joke” and not “stop trying to make trouble, you little twerp”. Because the second is how Sid reacts to pretty much anything stupid Ryan says/does, the first is a reaction he ONLY has to the gay jokes. So it highlights them, presents them as somehow worse/different than Ryan’s usual antics, and hooray homophobia.
Then you’ve got Evan, who is basically the official ship’s prostitute (which would seem to insinuate that attitudes towards homosexuality are pretty relaxed/normal in this world? Since he clearly services everybody/even maybe exclusively men. But that hint again gets underscored by the way the characters actually talk about homosexuality, which is mostly joking/derogatory). He hits on Ryan, hard, from the second they meet. He seems to be super cool with his job and pretty much seems to enjoy it, and he’s established as gay even though there are plenty of women on the ship (so I guess he just sleeps with anybody as his job but is technically gay) and Ryan seems unsettled but sort of okay with it, AS LONG AS EVAN DOES NOT ACTUALLY MEAN THE FLIRTING,OH NO.
Ryan deflects Evan’s actual advances with “GIRLFRIEND, I HAVE A GIRLFRIEND!” (even though they’re broken up and fifty bajillion miles apart at the time) and it’s this kind of panicked “straight guy” reaction that is just completely unnecessary. Ryan is a blunt, don’t-think-before-you-talk, tell-it-like-he’s-sure-it-is kind of guy and he could just outright say, “I do not want to fuck you, Evan, now or ever” and that would be done. Instead it’s this “oh my GOD how to I react to this unwanted thing I must panic and assert my total heterosexuality with a LIE!!” thing that just. Ugh. I’m sick of that. Especially for a book set like 130 years in the future, surely we’ll have gotten over this, “OH MY GOD A GAY, HE’S DEMONSTRATING REAL GAYNESS AT ME, EW EW EW” thing. I just didn’t see the reason for this! He can’t just say “no, I have no interest in you sorry bro”, oh no, instead it has to be “I AM TOTES FUCKING A WOMAN FOR REALS! I’M SO STRAIGHT OMG!” even when he’s not. It really seemed out of character for him, which is what I mean with the difference between a character being homophobic and the author being so. If Ryan had been going around the whole book (or even at all in the book, even right before this moment) thinking that he and Shiri were definitely gonna get back together and it was just distance keeping them from doing so, or just anything at all that would make it look like Ryan isn’t just bringing her up as a shield against Evan’s gayness, I wouldn’t have a problem with that. But it DOES come out of nowhere, and only in response to getting seriously hit on by a guy. It’s really an unfortunate moment. And from then on Ryan thinks a lot more about Shiri and sex with her (though not actually about dating her or even liking her), so it’s even like a mental cover-up as well. ‘Burndiving’ (which the title refers to, sort of, I think it’s more about Ryan’s mental state though) is a thing where you sort of hack the internet to send messages without being traced, and Ryan wants to learn just so he can message Shiri, but you never SEE any of these messages between them, there’s no sense of a relationship other than Ryan going “wow I wish I was having sex with her I really miss sex a lot”, you never really get a picture of their relationship except in one long conversation that is entirely for expositioning some things, and in it Ryan is a dick to her and basically says he misses fucking her and that’s all she was good for hanging around with. She kind of accepts this treatment which is unfortunate, but at least she seems to have a life goal other than getting back with him. Ryan doesn’t seem to WANT to get back with her-he does when dudes are coming onto him, but when he’s talking with her it’s constant “can’t lead her on and let her think there’s stuff between us still!” Basically Ryan is an asshole.
I suppose there could be an argument for “Ryan flirts with Sid because he knows it’s fake and it’s a joke and it doesn’t mean anything and maybe a way to get back at him (??) for the affair (??), but then Evan flirts for real and Ryan panics”, and I would buy that except for the badly done Shiri thing and the part where Ryan does seem to have a lot of strange misplaced jealousy over Sid and his mother’s affair that seems to have a lot more to do with Sid than what his mother is doing to their family by it. All of it combined just does not work in any kind of way because there is always one element that does not fit in with the others. It ends up reading like Ryan is gay or at least bisexual and that the author is not actually aware of that. This could honestly just be an issue of a female writer trying to write a straight guy, like with Harry Potter. JK Rowling had Harry constantly mentioning the good looks of other boys and only attracted to boyish athletic girls and at the very least he was a homosocial person just because of the way he was written, and I’m pretty sure that’s just because Rowling is a woman. Lowachee is also a woman, so there may be some of the same issues here just because of the subconscious female perspective filtering in, and giving aspects to a male character that may not be purposeful.
So basically Ryan has all these very important, complex, interesting, and involved relationships with men - ones that frequently seem to have elements that want to go beyond friendship. Yet Aki, the one named women he meets onboard Macedon, is the one he specifically has attraction to yet she has nearly no characterization and Ryan barely interacts with her. It’s just kind of that, “oh, he’s supposed to be a straight guy so LET’S MAKE HIM ATTRACTED TO THE WOMAN”. It just honestly makes no sense, and it’s disappointing because there’s no chemistry or relationship of any sort between them, she’s just a pretty girl, the exact same way there’s no chemistry between Ryan and his ex-girlfriend Shiri. It’s a constant problem in any media really, where there’s a token love-interest chick tacked into a story just for…I have no idea. Sex, I guess. Even though no sex happens in this book at all. Shiri and Aki seem to exist to prove ‘nope nope nope Ryan is SO straight, he totally looks at the ladies, look at him notice the ladies!’ Meanwhile he flirts constantly with his male bodyguard and gets deeply interested/involved with Musey and hangs around a lot with the ship’s gay prostitute. If this is purposeful, it just makes the book come off as really homophobic because, again, it’s taking the homosexual elements that honestly DO exist and overwriting them with a superficial veneer of “but no, Ryan is STRAIGHT, lol lolol nobody gonna have any sort of emotional same-sex relationship here hahaha oh that’s cute you thought there might be”. It’s just, “there’s a woman and of course he’s attracted to her because WOMAN, not because of emotions or getting to know each other or shared interests or chemistry or anything”. And of course bisexuality doesn’t exist.
Then Musey-there is literally a point at which Ryan touches Musey in a friendly/almost overly-friendly way on the arm and thanks him for something, and Musey immediately rejects it and counters with “you’ve been hanging out with Evan too much” (word-for-word his reply), kind of like this STOP YOU’RE BEING TOO GAY thing. And I…it’s just another homophobic moment, and also pointing out these moments where apparently this kind of behavior is unwelcome in the world, not just to the character. Musey is probably an even blunter person than Ryan, and he could just say “don’t touch me like that, not interested” even if he’s very closed off about sex and relationships and anything like that in general. In fact, given what I know of Musey’s backstory, he probably SHOULD just be like “HANDS OFF, BRO, SERIOUSLY”.
Directly after this scene, Ryan is sitting in a mess hall and it’s specifically pointed out he sits “with the girl and flirted” (word-for-word again). “The girl” is Aki, but because that sentence is worded that way, immediately after his little UST moment with Musey (it’s basically the next paragraph even if there’s a bit of a skip in time between the scenes), it’s just another OH HE IS STRAIGHT, SO SO STRAIGHT, LOOK AT HIM BE INTO “THE GIRL”. BECAUSE OF FEMALENESS. I would almost kind of buy this as another hint of Ryan being severely closeted except it’s never DEALT with like that, it’s just these tiny obnoxious moments and there’s no result into a “Ryan’s behavior with women is an act even to himself” so instead it comes off like the author has no clue what’s going on with her character and how gay he really comes off to a reader. Because he does. All his moments like this with men ring as legitimate, and the forced “and then I sat with a girl and flirted so much, look at my straightness!” come off as just that. Overcompensation and denial. The more involved and close he gets in his actions and interactions with men, the more he thinks about Shiri and how cute she is and how long it’s been since he’s sexed up a woman, and it just reads as so much denial and self-delusion. But there’s no real closure to this, it doesn’t lead to anything, the book is not about Ryan having a sexuality realization except when it almost tries to be but it isn’t. It’s just constantly played as a joke-near the end of the book, when Musey expresses a very stifled concern for Ryan, Evan make a joke that soon he’ll be “asking him out”. And it’s just laughed off like ‘aahaha oh isn’t that funny and GAY, Ryan is totes not gay’. Why does the joke have to jump to this? Why couldn’t the joke be, “watch out, soon you guys will actually be friends?” Because that would work better, in fact, than this little ‘no homo’ jibe. Because Ryan has no friends (except Sid) and Musey has no friends (except the alien captain guy) and so it would actually be way more relevant to make a little quip about them building a friendship despite the unlikeliness of it and how they didn’t get along at all in the beginning of the book. But no. IT HAS TO JUMP TO THE “OH AHAHAH YOU’RE SO GAY FOR EACH OTHER BUT SO NOT, NO HOMO BRO”. I am just so sick of this kind of thing. And it’s exactly the kind of thing that seems thoughtless, like the author just included it because, because it sounds and feels normal, and doesn’t realize how homophobic it comes off because homophobia is so engrained into our culture that we can’t even recognize it sometimes. But if you are including this kind of stuff in your books and trying NOT to be homophobic, you HAVE TO BE CAREFUL. Because otherwise stuff like this happens!
So basically this book just kind of queer-baits and then hates itself for it. Lots and lots of “no homo” moments. I’m serious. It kind of made me mad. It’s not as bad as all the other books I listed at the start, but it still seems really unnecessary for the book to have these moments of hating the gay aspects of itself. Just INCLUDING gay characters does not actually make an open-minded accepting book, and I think somehow that gets overlooked these days because people are so thrilled to see LGBT representation at all that they kind of block out that the treatment of these characters and the subject is still mostly mockery and insincerity.
All these rating together add up to about 3.5 stars, which is just about what I’d give the book on the whole! Amazing how that works out.