Rating Books, Negative Reviews and the Book that Inspired This Post: "Space Opera" by Catherynne M. Valente

I recently realized that the overwhelming majority of my reviews are positive or very positive in nature. It is very rare for me to (a) give an extremely low rating to a book, and (b) write a review that is entirely negative. After all, someone took the time and effort to write a book. So I in turn try very hard to find something positive in their work. Such an approach, although well-intended, could be misleading to those who are trying to decide whether or not to read a certain book.

I have already reviewed a book by Catherynne M. Valente on my blog. However, I chose not to rate it at the time rather than give it a very low rating. I did, however, provide reasons as to why it was not for me. Well, I have now made a second attempt to read a book by this author.

Space Opera is supposed to be a humorous sci-fi novel set in a world where the intergalactic community decides on whether or not a newly discovered species is "sentient" and thus worthy of existence via participation in an intergalactic talent show. The book starts out with aliens arriving on Earth and informing the humans of these terms.

I am not sure, I am fully qualified to talk about this book as I gave up on it at the 60% mark on my e-reader. The book reads like a mash-up of Douglas Adams and Dr. Seuss but with a marked absence of a plot or characters. At about 30% mark, I realized I could not keep all the various species and planets straight in my head. At 50% - they were an endless blur with no visible end to descriptions.However, I was still hoping for our human characters to finally do something. Nope, no such luck! At 60%, I just stopped caring. And I never DNF ("do not finish") books... There is always a first. I am still marking it as "read" since this was the time I'll never get back. One out of five stars.