Your rating:
On the small space station Azura, Maxion Belmont is constantly torn between his two passions—engineering and music. Both are hobbies handed down from his father, which is bittersweet since his death two years ago. While his hydrodriver is great for repairing starship parts, his father’s old string instrument tugs at the latent grief Max hides from his mom and classmates with each chord he strums. When a foreign starship appears on the horizon, Azura welcomes their first tourist in years. But there’s something weird about Mr. Hames, the stranger-turned-substitute teacher. He has no idea how to teach and keeps raving about the existence of alien creatures in the vacuum of star whales. As Max and the rest of Mr. Hames’s class-turned-starship crew begin to uncover the mysteries of the star whales, they discover they aren’t the only ones looking for the elusive creatures—and not every whaler has good intentions.
No posts yet
Kick off the convo with a theory, question, musing, or update
Your rating:
Not enough Star Whales!!!
Seriously I am very disappointed in this story, when reading the synopsis you think you're going to get this amazing tale about kids discovering whales in space and then watch them deal with poachers, instead the Star Whales make up about 10% of this story. And that's mostly at the end which makes it even more frustrating because you keep waiting and waiting and waiting, and then when it finally happens its so incredibly short lived. I also was very disappointed in the lack of resolution in regards to the poachers, like it all feels swept under the rug. The revelation at the end with the parents on the space station was so frustrating as it could have been utilized earlier. The Music was another element that I feel was under utilized, Max rarely uses the music in the book and its more like this background idea of "i love making music" I was expecting more uses of the music but it really only makes a small appearance at the start and then the end.
As for the reminder of the story which is actually the bulk of the story, you are dealing with Max and his grief and trauma over the loss of his father. Now I have no issue with middle grade books tackling heavy topics like this, it's actually very common in middle grade books and I love it. What I do hate is when its being heavily pushed down my throat by the author, it started to feel so heavy handed that I realized the whole point of this story was never about the Whales it was about the grief. It also made it a 100 times worse when the resolution of this grief that you follow is resolved in a epilogue with a simple manner. Because it was so heavy handed in the story I was expecting this big release of emotions and it ultimately boiling over and Max releasing everything because honestly its what he needed, but that never happened, and it made the journey of his struggle feel unresolved by the end. Sure there is a conversation but it lacked the depth that I was expecting. I also really wish more effort was put towards the healing of Arsenio and Max's broken friendship, another element that just came way to late in the story and felt unsatisfying. It was like it was more important to show the grief then to show the healing and it made it very frustrating for me by the time I got to the end.
Its easy to read but I wish there had been more balance between the two plot lines because I did struggle and had to push myself through the story because for the longest time it just didn't feel like the Star Whales were ever going to appear.
0
© 2024 Pagebound