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A review by bumblebeabooks
Do You Dream of Terra-Two? by Temi Oh
3.0
Thoughts about this book, in no particular order:
-I love the premise: a small crew on a spaceship sent to discover a new world sets a great stage for close character interactions, claustrophobic tension, and bare, contemplative emotional depth.
-I liked how different the characters were to each other and how flawed they each are—they're selfish, they made poor decisions, they're emotional, etc. None of them are entirely likable, but I still found myself rooting for (most) of them throughout.
-This book is strongest at its beginning and in its final few chapters - it loses that strength in the middle, where it either meanders or races, but does not balance the two well against each other.
-A lot of the sci-fi logistics don't really make a lot of sense (for example, I doubt a space agency would go through years of training and candidates to prepare for a multi-decade isolated mission and not consider compatibility as a vital element between the final crew candidates?)
-Even though this is 500+ pages, it was a quick, fun read!
-Astrid + Juno's characters felt the most compelling, nuanced, and developed, and I loved reading from their perspectives. I almost wish they had been our only POV characters. Some other characters suffer from underdevelopment/lack of page time, perhaps making parts of the conclusions to their character arcs feel undeserved, and some of their characterization feeling inconsistent or incomplete...
-This book is seriously lacking in copyedits. There are dozens of mistakes throughout ("expresso", sentences accidentally repeated, names getting mixed up, timeline inconsistencies, typos, missing line breaks when dialogue switches speaker, etc). These aren't detrimental to the book, but they are incredibly distracting
Overall: a fun, quick read with an intriguing premise but mediocre execution. I wish this story had spent more time in some places/with certain characters, and less time in others, and I wish it had received more consistent and focused editing. It scratched the itch for some entertaining space sci-fi, posited some interesting ideas, and made me interested in looking into the author's other work, but I don't know that I'll spend much time thinking about this book now that I've finished it.
-I love the premise: a small crew on a spaceship sent to discover a new world sets a great stage for close character interactions, claustrophobic tension, and bare, contemplative emotional depth.
-I liked how different the characters were to each other and how flawed they each are—they're selfish, they made poor decisions, they're emotional, etc. None of them are entirely likable, but I still found myself rooting for (most) of them throughout.
-This book is strongest at its beginning and in its final few chapters - it loses that strength in the middle, where it either meanders or races, but does not balance the two well against each other.
-A lot of the sci-fi logistics don't really make a lot of sense (for example, I doubt a space agency would go through years of training and candidates to prepare for a multi-decade isolated mission and not consider compatibility as a vital element between the final crew candidates?)
-Even though this is 500+ pages, it was a quick, fun read!
-Astrid + Juno's characters felt the most compelling, nuanced, and developed, and I loved reading from their perspectives. I almost wish they had been our only POV characters. Some other characters suffer from underdevelopment/lack of page time, perhaps making parts of the conclusions to their character arcs feel undeserved, and some of their characterization feeling inconsistent or incomplete...
-This book is seriously lacking in copyedits. There are dozens of mistakes throughout ("expresso", sentences accidentally repeated, names getting mixed up, timeline inconsistencies, typos, missing line breaks when dialogue switches speaker, etc). These aren't detrimental to the book, but they are incredibly distracting
Overall: a fun, quick read with an intriguing premise but mediocre execution. I wish this story had spent more time in some places/with certain characters, and less time in others, and I wish it had received more consistent and focused editing. It scratched the itch for some entertaining space sci-fi, posited some interesting ideas, and made me interested in looking into the author's other work, but I don't know that I'll spend much time thinking about this book now that I've finished it.