This may be the shortest book review I'll ever post, because it's actually a review of the reasons I will NOT read the book.
I knew nothing about Cassandra Khaw's ALL-CONSUMING WORLD except that an acquaintance said that it was a modern-day space opera. So I checked out a library copy.
The blurb on the cover provided the first potential strike against Khaw, as the blurb-ist said: "Profane and gorgeous... the angry queer space opera you've been waiting for." But I didn't stop there, since after all the author was not responsible for what a blurb-writer said.
The second strike was all the author, though. The back cover ballyhoo for the author certainly had the author's approval, inasmuch as it stated of Cassandra that "THEIR short stories can be found" in such-and-such places. The use of the term "their" for some individual who didn't want to be typed as male or female strikes me as the height of idiocy. If transgenders want to come up with a new pronoun for themselves, don't borrow one that's familiar and distort it. It's as if they're trying to see what ridiculous crime against grammar "they" can get away with.
I read five pages, none of which established characters or settings, until I came to this winning phrase:
It's fortunate that this day and age has surrendered homophobia to the firing squad of basic human decency, because Maya would have had to gun down the bigots otherwise. Not that she wouldn't have shot them up anyway for being terminally wrong.
And with that third strike, I was made aware that, regardless of my opinions for or against queer identity, the author intended to subject me to a lecture, not an adventure.
In one way, Cassandra's name is apt. No matter how good her arguments might be, once she strikes out with me three times, I won't believe anything else she says.
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