Radiance

I wanted to like Radiance. I understand the nostalgia for a solar system of princesses on Mars, and lush tropical wonderlands on Venus. The rocky, barren wastes revealed by space probes can represent something of a loss.While Radiance has great qualities, I did find it hard work. The story flits about in style, format and point of view. I could see that the story was about our everyday viewpoint colliding with the vastness that lies beyond. Other-worldly animals and plants had familiar names to cover up their weirdness. I got the point there, which did not make the story any easier to follow.As part of the idea that people take their own viewpoint out into strange places, Radiance has many references to travellers carrying familiar stories with them into space. But although the story of Radiance uses all kinds of easily recognised genres, it somehow lacks a familiar pattern. In an adventure story there is usually some mundane home that people leave behind. Dorothy leaves Kansas for Oz, for example. I mention the Wizard of Oz because there are a number of allusions to Kansas in Radiance. But the people mentioning Kansas don’t seem to know where it is. They certainly don’t know how to get there. Dorothy’s home remains an arty metaphor. Maybe that’s why I felt lost. There was no Kansas. Everywhere seemed to be Oz.At one stage in the book someone says: “Something has to be real. Something real has to anchor the magic.” I would say this is very true, and sums up what Radiance was lacking.Radiance is a brave effort and beautifully written, but I was rather glad to get to the end.

I was curious to know what others thought of this book and was aghast to find mixed reviews. I do feel that's a positive sign for a work of art, for this is what this novel is. Beautiful, Noir, a murder mystery, brain bending pager Turner, set in a alternate future where we can travel the solar system.

I did not like this book, or did I? To be honest I am not sure. I read this as an eBook and Kindle and I must advise you not to do the same. I had to keep checking the timeline at the front of the book to position the chapter I was reading in context. This would have been much easier with a paper book. The layout of the book itself is somewhat novel (excuse the pun), as we read of scraps of film, interviews, meetings, memoirs and travelogues, with which to try to piece together the disappearance of our lead character Severin.I wanted to love this book. The idea of storytelling in the Golden Age of Science Fiction, where Venus was jungle and Mars a desert plant and Pluto a cold and lonely place enthralled me. There is no question of doubt that Ms Valente can write. Her prose is well written, descriptive and rich language. Yet the first third of the book is not engrossing. Several times I was tempted to call it a day (most unlike me), but I persevered and came to enjoy individual chapters, but did not feel caught up in the book. I loved the environments Valente created with a scientific background which had moved at different speeds with different technologies than our own has. Overall I believe that she has striven to deliver something different and for that must be applauded. As an enjoyable read, however, it has not succeeded for me. Many think differently and for that reason this may be the book for you.

For starters, this is a novel with a fractured timeline, so the story skips around and is told in a mixture of interviews, gossip and through extracts of old classic film, among other narrative modes. So you need to pay attention. Initially I wondered what I was getting myself into – for the sheer oddness of the world wasn’t anything I was prepared for, given that I’m allergic to reading any kind of blurb. Was it worth the effort? Oh, yes.The story revolves around Severin Unck, whose peculiar upbringing on film sets while accompanying her father and a series of step-mothers, has left her with a desire to make her own films – this time the non-fiction type. This is a world where the Moon and all the planets in the solar system are inhabitable, just about… with the help of a substance secreted by the mysterious callowhales who live on Mars. So we’re also talking about a mysterious alien creature on top of everything else – though there are a plethora of those, which are often renamed for their Earth counterparts. In addition to being a whole lot busier than our solar system, there are some other oddities to this version of the 20th century. Films continue to be manufactured as silent, despite there being the technology to produce talkies, which are considered crass and generally rejected by the general populace. No… I didn’t get it, either. But Valente has a knack of announcing this is how it is and after an initial jolt of surprise, I found myself accepting it. But what this does, is overlay the whole book with the period feel of the early 1920’s – even when the date is later. Though the timeline jumps around like a flea on a hot brick…There is a mystery surrounding Severin’s disappearance and this is the narrative engine for the book, as it circles around the characters who impacted on her life at various times and finally, the puzzle is fully explained. On the way, all sorts of ideas are examined, such as what makes art; how we define family; the nature of goodness, as opposed to badness; what makes us human… In less skilful hands this potpourri of a story could have rapidly descended into an unmanageable mess and it is a testament to Valente’s technical ability that it didn’t. Furthermore, she manages to produce an extraordinary novel bristling with life and vibrancy, peopled by an astonishing cast of eccentrics.If you yearn to read something completely different – and even if you don’t – go and track this book down. It won’t be to everyone’s taste, but I’ll guarantee you won’t have read anything else quite like it.

I loved the premise of this book -- a space-opera-type mystery set in an alternate reality where silent movies have never given way to talkies, and movie stars hop between our solar system's planets -- but had a tough time getting my bearings in the first couple of chapters. Fortunately I kept going and as the story progressed and all the threads converged I fell completely under its spell. This turned out to be one of those books that I immediately wanted to pick up and re-read, to catch what I missed the first time.

The prologue to this book is FASCINATING. It really drew me in. Unfortunately after that it was pretty much downhill. The book is an interesting vision of an alternative history of filmmaking, most it taking place on the other planets and moons of our solar system. But there are significant problems with the structure and voice, so much so that it interferes with the enjoyment of the book.For example, early on, two different scenes are portrayed in tandem: A movie opening and a funeral. It’s only when you reach the end of the chapter that you realize the alternating events are told by entirely separate people and Valente doesn’t have the writing chops to pull off two different PoVs here. Both characters have the exact same voice. Not being able to write from different PoVs is a problem for a book containing so many of them.The second issue is, you can tell Valente is a feminist. Which is fine in the “real world,” but makes the writing so utterly dreary and boring. You can always tell a feminist because:1: The heroine, you know the one that we lady folk are supposed to identify with, utterly rejects all things feminine, as is told to us early on. Severin Unck has a masculine name, a masculine personality, eschews women’s clothing, and can run and gun like Annie Oakley, apparently, while somehow being the most bee-yoo-tee-full woman anyone has ever seen on the silver screen. All while not caring a whit about her hair and makeup, which are almost always described as miraculously perfect. “I woke up like this.” Mary Sue.Any female character who exudes any kind of femininity is referred to negatively, even once as “inhuman.” Through the mouths of feminine characters we are told “Nothing real is pretty.”Yikes, it’s safe to say this author has some issues. I hope she works those out someday because she’s got a great imagination.2: You can also tell she’s a feminist because every single male character is horrid. They are either whiny, or manipulative, or abusive, or boorish, unfaithful cads. There’s not one likable male character in the bunch. Which is a neat trick considering just how many male characters there are.The book is a mystery told in alternating timelines about the disappearance and presumed death of young filmmaker Severin Unck. One of the biggest problems is that Severin is a self-obsessed, cynical bore and so I don’t really care what happened to her. Possibly the solar system is better off without her movies, anyway, judging by the way she hates everyone and everything.She’s just better than everyone else, in her own opinion. Her only saving grace is for one moment in an interview she acknowledges she has not proven her mythical heroine status by actually producing a good film. Yet. Ask her in two years, she says. She’s so confident she knows better and is more capable than her famous father and every other director in the solar system.The author’s utter distaste for parents and parenting drips from every scene. You’re supposed to feel sorry for Severin, having been raised so poorly by so many crappy people, but her attitude and the way she treats other people prevents you from caring about her. Plus, it’s all told and not shown, so there’s little emotion at all for a girl who was given heroin by one of her stepmothers.There are also strange info dumps where Severin and her lover remind each other about Severin’s many stepmothers, two people saying “Remember the time….?” “Oh, yes, remember this….?” over and over, sort of like a checklist of Severin’s many stepmothers. The audience reading the book becomes the audience of the story, reading interviews and watching film clips to glean information, which makes everything seem stilted and performed instead of real and engaging.Another info dump is utterly pointless. It’s an entire chapter consisting of just a list of a ship’s crew and the things they brought along with them. 250 tins of marmalade, if you need to know. I didn’t. Who cares? So much of this book has zero payoff. Long descriptions of scenes and people that ultimately do nothing for the story and serve no purpose, all while the book is telling you that a good story is meticulously planned with every detail leading up to the finale.Everyone in the novel sounds exactly the same and everyone is awful. I would imagine it took quite a number of people to bring this novel to fruition, at least according to the author’s list of people to thank at the back. You’d think somewhere in all those people, at least one person would’ve pointed out that there is not one single likable character in the entire book.This is a book about movies, written by a person who clearly does not like movies. It’s a book with a lot of people in it, written by a person who does not like people. This book is a bitter diatribe about an era and a profession that the author has little respect for and even when she endeavored to create her own history of it, she only managed to somehow make it all comically worse than it actually was historically. So, it’s not nostalgic; it’s just angry and pointless.I wanted to love this book. I wanted it to live up to that stunning prologue. But it just didn’t. I had to force myself to keep reading past page 80 it was so boring. This author has a lot of raw talent, but her disdain for her subject matter and characters made it too painful to read.

So, imagine that at around the time George Melies filmed A Trip to the Moon, we actually discovered space travel. And all the planets--the moon, Venus, Neptune, Mars, etc--were habitable. And unlike A Trip to the Moon, no one lived on these planets but giant callowhales, and these whales produced milk that facilitated our ability to live on these planets, though no one knows what these callowhales are.Okay, then imagine that silent films are considered so artistic that films are produced primarily without sound, and also in black and white.Now put yourself in the Hollywood, film-noir mentality. An Orson Welles movie, perhaps.Meet Severin. She’s the daughter of a famous gothic film director, and has always grown up under the spotlight as a beloved film icon. She becomes a documentarian, traveling the stars and making her own films. Her fifth film—The Radiant Car Thy Sparrows Drew—explores a city that’s disappeared on Venus, and a child that circles the city. She and her crew travel to Venus, begin filming.And then she disappears.Told through scripts, gossip columns, interviews, and a fictional first-person detective, Radiance explores the impact of Severin’s disappearance on those who loved her, as well as the history of a person who’s always been in the limelight. As always, Valente’s writing is mesmerizing and unique, and I’m awed by her ability to capture so many different tones. Radiance is her first science fiction novel (she has several sci-fi short stories, one of which was the jumping off point for this novel), and it combines the pulp aesthetic of 1950s sci-fi with postmodern storytelling strategies.This is a book that’s meant to be read fast. If you let too much time go by between reading, you’ll miss connections. It wasn’t until about halfway through that I realized what was going on with some of the parts, and I went back to reread so I could make sure I was following! But it’s utterly unique and beautiful. For sci-fi, fantasy, and film fans, you should absolutely read this.

Seriously, it's impossible to describe this novel without Launching into a full blown synopsis that would take longer to tell than to read the novel in its entirety. Hitch hikers guide meets goblin market in an alternate universe of jazz age brilliance. Total ho,eric adventure story, little nuggets and gems poetical references, and absolutely stunning in its craft. Disorienting at first due to its non-conventional format, but if you just let yourself flow and not force it into any sort of linear narrative, you'll come away with the literary experience equivalent of a day at the spa--just relaxing with the effect of making everything glow with beauty. God, I love this book.

24 hours after I finished this book, I am still thinking about it. When I first started reading, I was really struggling with it. The style is unusual to say the least, but as the story builds, it really pays off. I didn't think I could love a story about a missing filmmaker in the golden age of Hollywood (if Hollywood was on the moon and all planets in our universe were colonized) as much as I did. It's a beautiful, haunting tale, and I'm happy I pushed through so I was able to experience it.

This may not be everyone's cup of tea, but if you can imagine a world where the 1920's silent films, art deco, and noir exist in a quantum physic's, multiverse timeline, well then I think you'll enjoy this very much.It takes a leap of the imagination, but if you can let your mind give way to Valente's worlds, you will be overwhelmed with where she dares to take you. I have been a fan of hers for many years now, beginning with Palimpsest. She is an author like none other.Bravo!

I loved the book. Being a fan of really-really old movies, I could not dislike it. It brings to mind all those old noirs and gothic horrors and papier-mache monsters. In fact, the movie I most associated this with was the 1924 Aeilta: Queen of Mars.Nevertheless, it definitely requires a certain frame of mind and the readiness to enjoy all the diverse bits without necessarily expecting a logical narrative with a beginning and an end.

This is a weird one: a multi- point of view history of 20th century film making if Jules Verne style space travel had worked. Flits around through time and place, but if you have patience, the story comes together nicely. Very cool.

Cat Valente writes weird books, and I love them. This one is no exception. Radiance follows the unfolding of a great mystery as told through audio transcripts, gossip magazines, film clips, and other forms. It's beautifully written. It's almost certainly not for everyone; it is quite odd, but I expect that those who like it will absolutely love it.

If you like lush language, nonlinear storytelling, old movies, and the sort of over the top imagination science fiction writers used to describe the planets we'd not yet seen, you will like Radiance.

Some books you pick up casually, to keep you company on the train, to relax with at night. Other books you think about all day. You can't wait to get home and be done with whatever it is you have to do to read this book.I love this book. I'm sad it's over. I watched the percentage on my kindle app tick up and begged it to never read 100. I recommend you buy this book on paper. It helps to be able to flip back and forth to the timeline sometimes.

The scope of Radiance is so ambitious; I really admire Valente’s confident writing. It really shines here, both in terms of style and story. The setting is an alternate solar system, with a path that seems to have diverged sometime in the late 1800’s, when Edison was actively inventing. Valente tackles noir detectives, screenplays, Gothic penny dreadfuls, advertisements, fairy tales, silver-screen gossip columns, murder mysteries, and the multiverse, all the while revealing pieces related to a mysterious disappearance and the people left behind trying to make sense of it.

The flow of this book was weird for me. It jumps from pov to pov and style to style and is rarely clear about where it's going. Even so, it was interesting and mysterious and the mystery gets solved, more or less. It's like nothing I've ever read before.

I really loved this book. It's not the easiest story, the narration and the plot are a bit confusing. I found it to be immersive and magical and so fun. I definitely recommend this book to fans of magical realism.

My god, what an imagination Valente has. I'm in love with anything she writes.