Spinning Starlight by R.C. Lewis

TL;DR sci-fi The Wild Swans retelling

TBR #1537, added Mar 8 2016

finished 6/5/16

Stitching Snow definitely had exceeded my expectations, so I was looking forward to Spinning Starlight. I was lucky enough to nab a copy of it the next time I went to the library.

And I have to say, Spinning Starlight is just as good! In fact, it felt like even more of a unique story than Stitching Snow did. The small amount of knowledge I had about The Wild Swans was from Wikipedia (thanks to my own writing research), so I loved seeing how the story was used.

I also really loved the worldbuilding. Stitching Snow had a vaguely fantasy-like aspect of it thanks to the kingdom of Windsong, but Spinning Starlight was entirely sci-fi. I loved exploring a universe that had no connections to Earth whatsoever and how their tech was integrated into their lives.

I was definitely interested in how Liddi's implant would be handled in the story, since there are definitely some easy plot holes with that. I was impressed with how it was integrated into the story and became a big driving force in the plot. (That said, it can also be easily argued that Liddi's inability to communicate -- or lack of desire to -- stagnated the action around the middle of the book.)

I liked Liddi and Tiav. I was also impressed by how Liddi's brothers were characterized even though they were absent for most of the story -- the flashbacks between chapters were cool transitions and were good insight, and the rest was handled by Liddi's narration. I felt like the main antagonist was one-dimensional, though.

The only thing I was disappointed about was not really knowing how the technology worked. I wouldn't really expect Liddi to go into detail about it, since it's not anything special for her and she doesn't tinker for most of the story, but the conduits did come off as kind of fantastical. All I know is that they resemble the portals (which are actually organic), and that the antagonist was hell-bent on keeping them safe. The explanations that were given didn't make any sense to me.

(I was also reading really fast because I wanted to know what happened. That may be part of it. Also, my science and technology background consists of spending all my time on a Windows Vista laptop and some html coding, so I'm not the best when it comes to these kinds of things.)

I also wish that this were part of a series, or that it had been tied in with Stitching Snow's universe, because it seems like kind of a waste to have all the Seven Points and then focus on only two planets. I would've liked to see a lot more.

The top reviews on Goodreads are a little mixed; I read through some of the 3-or-lower ratings, and most of the complaints were lack of depth in the worldbuilding and the issue of communication in the middle of the book. I can agree with the arguments, but they didn't detract from the story for me.

TL;DR this is another good sci-fi standalone and is unique within the retelling subgenre (though "unique retelling" is probably an oxymoron tbh).