I’ve been making progress (slowly) on my reading goal for the years, and I’m currently setting myself up for pain, suffering, and catharsis while listening to Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
Last week I started reading a sci-fi romance titled Cut Her Out In Little Stars.
Already this is pretty unusual--sci-fi can have romance, but usually it’s in the background, not the main focus of the book. This is because authors of sci-fi tend to focus on worldbuilding and not on relationships between characters. So when I read the synopsis, I was intrigued by the idea. Stephanie Meyer’s The Host is also sci-fi romance, and it’s my favorite of her books.
Let’s start off by gushing over this cover, as we do. Gosh, I love it so much. Look at those colors! They’re subtle, but they really do their job of drawing the eye. I know I've been very subtle about it, but I LOVE BRIGHT COLORS SO MUH-HUH-HUCH. I also love how the typography is used to transition from HARDCORE SCI-FI to something a little more soft and romantic. It’s also very simple and graphically easy to read, while still giving hints to the main plotline of the book.
The book starts out with our protagonist, Cara DeLeon. She’s a normal woman living in New York and she’s bored with her life. She hates her job, she’s not in love with her boyfriend, and she’s desperate to leave the city. At the same time, she’s scared to make any changes for fear of never finding anything better. Then she climbs onto the subway and the train crashes, while at the same moment a mysterious energy whisks her off. When she wakes up, she’s on a spaceship 900 years in the future, being interrogated as a hostile invader by a handsome spaceship commander with telepathic abilities.
Cara for the first half of the book
I really really like this premise. I think everyone can relate to the feeling of wanting to escape their humdrum lives, which is why books, video games, and movies are all multi-billion-dollar enterprises. Time travel is a time-tested romance trope, although it’s usually into the past, where men wear kilts and swing swords around. Time travelling into the future is an even riskier business, since she’s the one who is completely at sea and constantly in danger, but this time from LASER GUNS.
Just in case I was too subtle
900 years in the future, mankind is still at war. Commander Nikolai Caine is an Esper, an evolved human with the ability to enter other peoples’ minds and see their thoughts and memories like a spelunker exploring a dangerous cave system. When a strange woman appears on his ship in the middle of battle, he has no choice but to interrogate her and discover what she knows and what their enemy’s plan is. While invading her mind, he breaks through her defenses and they develop a kind of psychic link.
Kinda like this, only it's okay because he's blond
Whew. Sometimes I also have to complain about romances that the leads have much too strong of a connection, much too fast. Not in this case, however. If anything, I wish their link had been MORE of a thing, because at times I wasn’t really sure what they liked about each other. My biggest complaint about the book is that I never fell in love with the love interest. For a romance novel, that’s kind of an issue. Caine is a pretty typical male romantic lead--lots of skeletons in his closet, drawn to the female lead but desperate to resist, a bit of a tsundere. I wish he had been more stable, because poor Cara really felt adrift and there was no one to really anchor her. He’s hot and cold, depending on what the plot requires, and he’s constantly giving in to whatever Cara asks for, no matter how dumb it is. How he made it to commander is beyond me. This weakness of his causes a lot of problems, which is a good thing (plot-wise) but makes romance with him a little dicey.
HOWEVER that is not to say that this makes the book bad. On the contrary, I think it’s very unusual for a romance novel to give their leads actual character flaws, and I look forward to Caine growing and developing over the course of further books. Perhaps he will overcome his weakness, or perhaps that weakness will turn into a strength. Either way, I can see lots of good outcomes.
When I read a book that’s focused on romance, sometimes I have to roll my eyes a little. Why aren’t these two just together already? What’s separating them? Sometimes there doesn’t seem to be a good reason apart from 'otherwise the book would be over too soon'. However, this wasn’t the case when I was reading Cut Her Out In Little Stars. The main leads were separated by so many obstacles I actually was worried they would never be able to overcome them all. Allow me to list just a few.
She's from the past! He has to protect her! His bloodline is strictly controlled and he can only marry another Esper! There are bad guys plotting to hurt anyone he loves! Oh yeah, and she's FROM THE FRIGGING PAST!
As for the larger world (or galaxy) of the book, there are a lot of really interesting politics and history that will be really cool to explore in later books. The book ends on a cliffhanger, which I was not expecting, and I am interested to see how these crazy kids overcome the overwhelming odds to be together.
Link to Goodreads review:
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