3.0
Persephone Station
ByPublisher Description
Hugo Award–nominated author Stina Leicht has created a “thoroughly enjoyable” (NPR) queer space opera and military science fiction adventure for fans of The Mandalorian and Cowboy Bebop in this high-stakes adventure.
Persephone Station, a seemingly backwater planet that has been largely ignored by the United Republic of Worlds, becomes the focus for the Serrao-Orlov Corporation as the planet has a few secrets the corporation tenaciously wants to exploit.
Rosie—owner of Monk’s Bar, in the corporate town of West Brynner, caters to wannabe criminals and rich Earther tourists, of a sort, at the front bar. However, exactly two types of people drink at Monk’s bar: members of a rather exclusive criminal class and those who seek to employ them.
Angel—ex-marine and head of a semi-organized band of beneficent criminals, wayward assassins, and washed-up mercenaries with a penchant for doing the honorable thing is asked to perform a job for Rosie. What this job reveals will affect Persephone and put Angel and her squad up against an army. Despite the odds, they are ready for a fight with the Serrao-Orlove Corporation. For Angel, she knows that once honor is lost, there is no regaining it. That doesn’t mean she can’t damned well try.
Persephone Station, a seemingly backwater planet that has been largely ignored by the United Republic of Worlds, becomes the focus for the Serrao-Orlov Corporation as the planet has a few secrets the corporation tenaciously wants to exploit.
Rosie—owner of Monk’s Bar, in the corporate town of West Brynner, caters to wannabe criminals and rich Earther tourists, of a sort, at the front bar. However, exactly two types of people drink at Monk’s bar: members of a rather exclusive criminal class and those who seek to employ them.
Angel—ex-marine and head of a semi-organized band of beneficent criminals, wayward assassins, and washed-up mercenaries with a penchant for doing the honorable thing is asked to perform a job for Rosie. What this job reveals will affect Persephone and put Angel and her squad up against an army. Despite the odds, they are ready for a fight with the Serrao-Orlove Corporation. For Angel, she knows that once honor is lost, there is no regaining it. That doesn’t mean she can’t damned well try.
Download the free Fable app
Stay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
Rate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
Curate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesStay organized
Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.Build a better TBR
Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building toolRate and review
Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tagsCurate your feed
Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesPersephone Station Reviews
3.0
“Just not my jam.”
“This was a huge disappointment for me. This had so much promise by the synopsis. Interesting setting, evil corporations, mercenaries, crazy odds and high stakes.... All things I love!
But the thing is? The writing failed to accomplish anything it needed to in order to bring this story to life. When I tell you that it was 80% into the book before I sort of started to care about that characters, I'm not joking. Also it was 80% into the story before anything interesting actually happened. Allow me to be more detailed in my criticisms.
First, the world building killed the book. Way, way, way too much time is spent info-dumping, or giving a history lesson, and not nearly enough effort was put into the characters. I know their histories, yes even the minor character only mentioned once, and I know they're supposed to be a crew, but I never felt the chemistry and kinship between them. Dialogue was stiff. But I know everything about that one fella's ex-girlfriend's goldfish's cousin.
Also the dialogue? Yeah. Yeah. The overuse of "said" was insane and I'm not even a "said is dead" type of person. Every dialogue tag was simply "Angel said" or "Rosie said" or "Kennedy asked" with absolutely no variation. It was grating. There was a lot of dialogue as well, like so much, and it slowed everything significantly. In the middle of battle, there's conversation that made me feel like it was a battle happening on the other side of the planet.
----- "Spoiler" in this next part -----
This was so unengaging. Action was blatantly absent throughout roughly 80-90% of the book, and it's absent in the first 80-90% of the story as well. And I'm talking about simple actions as well. There's a little movement but too much is just history or info-dumps. The characters being flat doesn't help. They're too one-dimentional and I could not bring myself to care about any of them. Characters died and I just didn't feel a thing for them. Not even a passing "aw". Nope.
I wouldn't recommend this to anyone and I will not be reading it again or buying it (even though the cover artist is one of my FAVORITES UGH).”
“i'm really disappointed in this book as a lover of the things it was compared to in its marketing. i've always been a star wars fan and i picked up this book when i was looking for more queer stories to read. this was a disappointment on most fronts. the "queerness" in this book is entirely surface level and feels only there for diversity's sake and not to actually diversify the perspectives and themes. non-binary is treated as a third gender rather than a departure from binary gender systems, and gender is consistently used in the book to identify and differentiate nameless characters in the background of scenes which also feels inherently not queer? like there's a scene with two med techs and they identify which one is which with "the male med tech does this and the female med tech does that." if you are sorting people into gendered categories by their appearances just to differentiate them then doesn't that kind of go against the entire point of having ngc characters? and on an alien planet with characters from all over space including indigenous nonhuman alien species, it is amazing how unimaginative this world is. could the author really not imagine a world any different from our own? animals and plants are largely only described in terms of how they compare to earthen wildlife even though none of the perspective characters are from or have been to earth!! sure, it's not unreasonable to think that they could know what an earthen bear looks like, but i'm supposed to believe they never made a single new word to describe species of other planets? nothing about this feels sci-fi, it just looks like america with a new coat of paint slapped on top. also, the book is supposed to be about an entire cast of characters and immediately establishes itself in the first 3 chapters to be a story told from multiple perspectives. so why does everything important only ever happen from one specific character's perspective? most of the characters are rather flat and one-note, only defined by a couple characteristics/traits or backgrounds, none of them really ever get a character arc? or get further developed? and easily the least interesting of the perspective characters is the one we spend 90% of the book with. the final climax is told from her pov despite the fact that she has by far the LEAST amount of stakes in that conflict! and then there is zero resolution for any of the other perspective characters. they escape the conflict and then boom. epilogue. im not joking there's zero immediate plot resolution. and then even in the epilogue, one of the perspective characters is only ever mentioned ONCE. and not like. how they're doing or ARE THEY OKAY just that they did a favor for someone. are you actually serious. that is Crazy. imagine if you were reading the heroes of olympus series and you only find out what happens to jason at the end of the first book and not piper or leo. if at the end piper had gotten hurt and then there was an epilogue where they never say that she's okay or if she's even still alive and all it says about leo is "yeah i never ended up seeing him again." who in their right mind thought it was okay to end a book like this??? and that's not even getting into how clunky the writing was. you can't tell whose perspective you're seeing based on the writing style, it's the same for all of them. everyone talks mostly the same way and uses the same shorthand for things. and character relationships are told rather than shown. you never feel a character's feelings for someone, you're just told a snippet of backstory like that accomplishes the same thing. it doesn't. and GOD this could have used a prologue. it's fine to have a sci fi or fantasy world that requires a foreword or prologue to explain things before you get into it. when there's a lot of things that are fundamentally different, it is going to be difficult to get that across naturally alongside character thoughts or action. now maybe it could be possible for such a task to be done well however it certainly wasn't in this case. it felt so simultaneously confusing and yet overexplained. it was so afraid to just take a moment to exposition dump that instead it dumped too much information at a time into little snippets but still not enough to actually understand the worldbuilding. i picked this book back up again because i thought maybe i just hadnt given it enough of a chance when id put it down a few years ago and i just had to push past the slow bit to get to the good parts. the first chapter is genuinely great. the next 9 chapters are a slog to get through before it actually starts to hold my interest. after that it is still somewhat choppy waters but the story is at least interesting enough to keep reading despite the writing problems and characters still not gaining much depth. and then it's passable enough to make it to the ending which will likely piss you off. so yes it does pick up eventually but id hesitate to say there's really any "good parts." it's at least been comforting reading other people's reviews to know that im not the only one who sees these glaring problems. it's just so disappointing because i loved the premise. the story has so much promise. i was genuinely so interested in this book and it just flopped. i can't say it's a bad book but it's certainly not good and the parts of it i liked are drowning in all the parts i didn't. im excited to be done with it so i can read a better book”
About Stina Leicht
Stina Leicht is a science fiction and fantasy writer living in central Texas. Her second novel, And Blue Skies from Pain, was on the Locus Recommended Reading list for 2012. She was an Astounding Award for Best New Writer finalist in 2011 and in 2012. In 2011 she was also shortlisted for the Crawford Award. She is also the author of Loki’s Ring.
Start a Book Club
Start a public or private book club with this book on the Fable app today!FAQ
Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?
Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?
How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?
Do you sell physical books too?
Are book clubs free to join on Fable?
How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?
