Jacqie's Reviews > Spin the Sky

I was intrigued by the idea of retelling the Odyssey, only in space. However, the book didn't live up to my hopes.

The writing of characters felt simplistic. Our main character, Cesar Vaquero ( King Cowboy? really?) comes home after his 15 year absence a la the Odyssey, and his family doesn't recognize him because his hair is white instead of red and he now has a beard- even after living with him for weeks. His wife even sleeps with him again, and even though she wonders if all guys are alike in bed, she doesn't suspect that he's actually her husband. Nor does she notice his defining thigh scar. Couldn't believe it. The characters were written about so breezily that they felt one-dimensional. Lupe, the old cook at the ranch, is all about feeding people soup and judging women for wearing pants instead of skirts. That's the kind of characterization we get.

The worldbuilding didn't make much sense to me either. Orbital habitats have huge amounts of space, so much that you can have a working cattle ranch in orbit and barely be able to make out the ceiling because it's so high. This is a big contradiction to most other space-settlement fiction I've read, where space and resources are at a premium, and while I skimmed, I never found a logical explanation.

So, the book did not live up to the concept.