5 stars from my teenage self who read it new, probably honestly would only get 3 from my current self if it hadn't been a favorite at that age. ( )

I first read this years ago—to my surprise, probably within a few years of its original publication. I’m rereading it now since I’ve started reading more SF again recently, and I thought it would be a good time to reread some old favorites and classics. ( )

The planet Damiem, home only to a small human outpost there to protect its native people, is about to experience a rare and beautiful phenomenon as the remnants of a nearby stellar explosion pass through its atmosphere. A few visitors have been permitted to come and watch... but some of them may not be who they say they are at all.

It's an interesting and hard-to-pin-down novel. On one level, it's a fairly straightforward SF thriller. There are nefarious plans, culminating in a hostage situation and gunfire and action and such. But it definitely feels like there's a lot more going on underneath the surface.

For one thing, although it's not always reflected in the tone of the writing, this is dark. Like, really, really dark. The history of what was done to the alien people on this planet is comprehensively, intimately, viscerally horrific. The story of what happened to the exploding star is incredibly sad when we first hear it, and then later takes on some additional tragic and sinister twists. And there's some stuff about child pornography that is treated so casually that it's easy to somehow forget to be appalled by it, which is its own kind of disturbing. None of this is graphic or gory or explicit, but I think that actually jut makes it worse. Tiptree is utterly masterful at knowing just exactly how much to show or tell us and how much to leave to our imaginations for maximum effect.

The combination of all of this doesn't feel like it should work all that well, really. Especially as the plot has a lot of implausibilities and contrivances, not to mention characters who are so cavalier about obvious signs of looming danger that you really want to smack some sense of caution into them. And I'm not remotely sure how I feel about any aspect of the ending.

And yet, somehow it all ends up being effective. I felt a real sense of building dread through the first half of the novel, the action-y stuff definitely held my interest, and some of the more disturbing moments had me finishing a scene, taking a deep breath, and deciding I needed to go and do something else for a little bit to let my brain settle before coming back to it, which is not something a story manages to do to me very often.

Rating: It's very hard to know how to rate this. I'm going to give it a 4/5, but some unsettled part of my brain that is still chewing over the way it deals with all those painful themes of exploitation and such is convinced that's selling it short. ( )

An intelligently, intricately plotted thriller that starts off innocently enough with a party to view the final passage of a nova. Aliens, spacers, pushers, and porn stars interact to form a clever commentary on love and autonomy. Starts off slow but worth sticking it out. ( )

Ultimately a pretty good book. I found the first third or so to be a bit of a slog but, once the world-building and character introductions are out of the way, it became more compelling. The genius on display in Sheldon's short fiction, (especially the incredible 'Her Smoke Rose Up Forever' collection, is mostly missing from this book. Her other full-length novel, 'Up the Walls of the World', exhibited flashes of that brilliance and also included more interesting characters and settings. While there are a couple of decent ideas here, there are also plenty of problems. Nevertheless, for Tiptree fans/completists, this is a worthy book to read. ( )