Name: Space Unicorn Blues
ISBN: 9780857667823

TJ Berry

Humanity joining the intergalactic community has been a disaster for Bala, the magical creatures of the galaxy: they've been exploited, enslaved and ground down for parts. Now the Century Summit is approaching, when humans will be judged by godlike aliens. When Jenny Perata, disabled Maori shuttle captain, is contracted to take a shipment to the summit, she must enlist half-unicorn Gary Cobalt, whose horn powers faster-than-light travel. But he's just been released from prison, for murdering the wife of Jenny's co-pilot, Cowboy Jim... When the Reason regime suddenly enact laws making Bala property, JennyÍs ship becomes the last hope for magic.

Space Unicorn Blues

Sarah Escorsa

💀 DNF at 71%. 

Yet another Wonderfully Wonderful Buddy Read (WWBR™) courtesy of the MacHalos! We sure know how to pick them! Go us and stuff!

This book, being a great cure for insomnia, was pretty painful to read and I don’t want to spend the next 12546 hours writing a crappy non-review for it, so let’s just go for a quick Good/Bad thingie, shall we? 




① The world is uniquely original, originally unique, and bloody shrimping cool. 

② The cast of characters is one of the most scrumptiously diverse ever, thank you very much. LGBTQ characters! BIPOC characters! Disabled characters! Anything-you-can-think-of characters! 

③ A world populated by the most wonderful array of delicious creatures! (Sorry, I meant sentient beings.) There are unicorns (duh)! There are centaurs! There are fauns! There are dwarves! There are dryads (and gay ones at that!) There are elves! There are pixies! Anything-you-can-think-of creatures sentient beings!


 

① BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH. The author obviously needs to follow Glen Cook’s Crash Course on Fast-Forwarding. I mean, it takes her 5 bloody shrimping chapters to get through the first scene. FIVE WHOLE, VERY LONG CHAPTERS. Please kill me somebody and stuff.

② The characters are unlikeable as fish. Which is a shame given how potentially tasty and gloriously diverse they are. I badly wanted to care about this cast but didn’t give a stinking shrimp about any of them. Okay, so I did care about Boges the dwarf (who shines in the 1.245 pages she is featured in). Oh, and the spaceship-that-is-a-biome has a pretty cool personality, too.

③ Those dialogues 🥱🥱. Need I say more? Didn't think so.

④ I 
  might
 have mentioned it before, but 😴😴😴.

The end and stuff. (view spoiler)[
  

  

  
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[Pre-review nonsense]

This could have been a bloody shrimping cool story. Only that it wasn't.



➽ Review to come and stuff.



[June 2018]

Unicorns in space. A misfit crew. Need I say more? Didn't think so.

T. J. Berry

A misfit crew race across the galaxy to prevent the genocide of magical creatures, in this unique science fiction debut. Having magical powers makes you less than human, a resource to be exploited. Half-unicorn Gary Cobalt is sick of slavery, captivity, and his horn being ground down to power faster-than-light travel. When he's finally free, all he wants is to run away in his ancestors' stone ship. Instead, Captain Jenny Perata steals the ship out from under him, so she can make an urgent delivery. But Jenny held him captive for a decade, and then Gary murdered her best friend... who was also the wife of her co-pilot, Cowboy Jim. What could possibly go right? File Under: Science Fiction

Space Unicorn Blues

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