Tl:dr… This book no longer exists in its previous form. It may never exist again. How that happened is a lesson in online manners and performative fragility (and one that my readers can look up, because a lot more people have dissected it since December 2023.)
It may be that the original publisher Del Rey will demand this cover be removed. Which is sad. I’d argue: 1) It was splashed everywhere even after The Debacle in December 2023, and 2) It is a killer cover, far better than this book deserved. (The only thing bothering me is the size differential of those ‘O’s.)
So just in case, here’s a cover shot of a much better version of Ariadne’s story:
Back in 2022, I saw this announcement on social media:
Greek myth? Ariadne and Dionysus? Space opera? Queer?
I was all for it!
When Netgalley announced last fall that the Advance Reader Copy was available, I applied as a reviewer. Got access in November, but had to wait until early December to actually open the file on my Netgalley shelf.
All unaware of the brewing storm of Corrain’s review-bombing other debut authors, I sat down with my phone and read it.
It wasn’t an immediately terrible book. Some engaging moments. A bit of sex, some which actually worked toward character growth. Some interesting characters. Greek myth shoehorned into a space opera. Just enough worldbuilding to tell me the author wasn’t used to deep worldbuilding.
It read like a fanfic.
I don’t mean that unkindly. Or perhaps I do. I mean it as ‘There are pro writers and skilled AF amateurs who write top-level fanfic prose…and this isn’t that.’
It feels more like the gaudy glory days of Wattpad circa 2015, when a whole bunch of earnest young creators, carbonated by popular film media & YA fantasy book empires, were trying their own epics.
Except that Corrain (a pseudonym) is an adultish person now nearly in their thirties.
A person who apparently came up in the ranks of late Star Wars fandom (Reylo, if you care). I have also read some stunning pieces in that fandom…and Corrain’s work by comparison was unremarkable. Verging somewhere between ‘earnest juvenile writing’ and ‘clunky but enthusiastic’.
I had very high expectations for this book from Del Rey.
I could even forgive Ariadne’s very contemporary voice and thought patterns (when what I wanted was Kushiel’s Dart in space opera with a Greek slant instead of AU French.)
Let’s touch on worldbuilding.
Here be spoilers, but it’s unlikely this version of this book will see daylight in the next few years. You’ve been warned.
The concept of Olympian gods as energy beings living inside a sun, and feasting on mortal worship…that was interesting, but not as original as you’d think. I’ve definitely seen similar concepts in published original SFF, and at least once in a Marvel MCU Warprize!Tony fanfic (where the concept of god/mortal thralldom was more clearly elaborated with higher stakes and better writing).
Some hints that Ariadne’s maternal line stems from Prometheus, which should *absolutely* terrify this book’s Zeus but he seems oblivious to it. He’s a fairly shallow ruler of the gods, anyway.
(Here’s me, thinking about Terry Pratchett’s gods of Dunmanifestin & how hilariously they underscore the menace and pettiness of the Greek gods.)
An entire secondary plot, with the SpaceCrete version of Daedalus and Icarus, was pushed off to the second book because it didn’t fit Ariadne’s first-person viewpoint. These two characters risked their lives to set her free. She barely remembers them until she feels guilt & worry later in the book!
Corrain’s political divisions between Space Crete and its rivals make no sense, if SpaceCrete is suffering that much ecological collapse on its home planet. The union of rivals should easily be able to starve out & wallop SpaceCrete. (For a better done and actually queer version, look at Emily Skrutskie’s space operas.)
Ariadne sacrifices herself in a boss fight between Ares and Dionysus, to help her lover. That was an interesting sequence, and set up the second book’s stakes very well. Resurrected by Dionysus, Ariadne is no longer all mortal (tracks well per many versions of the myth.) What is she? Dun dun DUN, stay tuned for Prometheus’s firebrand great granddaughter to…wait, probably not.
A pity, because that could be a plotline for the ages.
What really irritated me was the disconnect between the actual Crown of Starlight book and the marketing. Corrain, their agent, or their publisher convinced a *lot* of fan artists to do some gorgeous, silly, and gorgeously fun fan art of Ariane & Dionysus.
This thing was all over social media. It had street teams.
The advance (unconfirmed) has been said to have been between $200,000 and $500,000USD.
And yet, with a series deal, this in-their-late-twenties author behaved like the most juvenile of Goodreads Heathers and tried to review-bomb other debut authors. Some who were to be published by the same publisher. Many who were POC (Corrain presents as very White).
The excuse, in a sorry-not-sorry social media post and later interview, was first ‘drug interactions and anxiety’. Fear of not ‘succeeding’ with the first novel.
In this brave new world of publishing, Corrain’s literary agent did not sit them down on THE FIRST DAY and explain:
Reviews are for readers.
Success isn’t guaranteed.
Bad reputations are hard to repair.
And so, who knows what pseudonym Corrain will pop up with next? Will Del Rey actually try to publish this book in 2027 or 2028, hoping the outrage has died down? Will Corrain find a similarly disgraced bottom-of-the-barrel literary agent? Will they self-publish?
Unless Corrain grows *amazingly* as a writer, I’ll be able to spot the next incarnation from the writing alone.
I’m not entirely sure I care that much. Del Rey set themselves up for this one, and ticked down considerably on my scale of SFF publishers.
I’ve read it, sort of reviewed it, and now it is behind me.
I wish it had been the kind of book heralded by the cover.