Book Review: Planetfall by Emma Newman

I listened to Planetfall narrated by Emma Newman herself. The opening scene sucked me in from the get-go in spite I’m not a huge fan of the first-person narrative. It rarely works for me. Anyway, the main characters thought the pattern and the mentioning of parasites at the beginning was like yeah this will work, I want to hear more, but the book never delivered what I wanted. It felt familiar and after listening to it two hours I found the first person narrative irksome.

I’m afraid I can’t give you a good review because I had to force myself to sit still and listen to the book. I found the main character Renata Ghali’s struggles and compulsive behavior compelling, but it wasn’t enough. There was still this weird distance between me and her, a dissonance of some sort.

I’m trying to write this review but I can’t. When I think about the book, it is this continuous motion that passes me by, and all my mind can seize is the word parasite and the sound the stolen items made when stepped on. (I have this weird obsession with parasites. I find them fascinating. It baffles me how they and us/animals have developed in tandem. It is like an arms race and this twisted co-dependent relationship morphed into one. And don’t even get me started with bacteria and how they can alter our moods. Evolution is weirdly wonderful.)

This was one of those books I tested with if I and the first-person narrative can be friends. We still go separate ways. Give this a go if you don’t have a long established relationship sci-fi and can jump behind someone’s eyes more easily than I.

Thank you for reading!