Paperback, 464 pages
English language
Published Nov. 25, 2022 by Penguin Publishing Group.
Amateur detective Mallory Viridian’s talent for solving murders ruined her life on Earth and drove her to live on an alien space station, but her problems still follow her in this witty, self-aware novel that puts a speculative spin on murder mysteries, from the Hugo-nominated author of Six Wakes.
From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide.
But when the station agrees to …
Amateur detective Mallory Viridian’s talent for solving murders ruined her life on Earth and drove her to live on an alien space station, but her problems still follow her in this witty, self-aware novel that puts a speculative spin on murder mysteries, from the Hugo-nominated author of Six Wakes.
From idyllic small towns to claustrophobic urban landscapes, Mallory Viridian is constantly embroiled in murder cases that only she has the insight to solve. But outside of a classic mystery novel, being surrounded by death doesn’t make you a charming amateur detective, it makes you a suspect and a social pariah. So when Mallory gets the opportunity to take refuge on a sentient space station, she thinks she has the solution. Surely the murders will stop if her only company is alien beings. At first her new existence is peacefully quiet…and markedly devoid of homicide.
But when the station agrees to allow additional human guests, Mallory knows the break from her peculiar reality is over. After the first Earth shuttle arrives, and aliens and humans alike begin to die, the station is thrown into peril. Stuck smack-dab in the middle of an extraterrestrial whodunit, and wondering how in the world this keeps happening to her anyway, Mallory has to solve the crime—and fast—or the list of victims could grow to include everyone on board….
The ending was a bit messy and all that characterization felt a bit long, but I really enjoyed it!
<spoiler> I almost never DNF but I just really wasn’t enjoying this. For something that was billed as a science fiction murder mystery series similar to Midsomer Murders (or if that wasn’t the intent, calling the series Midsolar Murders was a huge misstep) there was a distinct lack of on-page murder mystery solving or intrigue. Instead it’s just backstory, 1/3 of a book spent freaking out about humans moving to the space station, and then after the halfway point new backstory for new point of view characters. It felt like the entire book was basically being used as setup for the intended series without including enough plot or forward movement to make me at all interested in continuing. Or even finishing it, obviously.
The aliens really bothered me too, they kept making throwaway comments about how humans are fragile bags of water walking around and then themselves turning out to …
<spoiler> I almost never DNF but I just really wasn’t enjoying this. For something that was billed as a science fiction murder mystery series similar to Midsomer Murders (or if that wasn’t the intent, calling the series Midsolar Murders was a huge misstep) there was a distinct lack of on-page murder mystery solving or intrigue. Instead it’s just backstory, 1/3 of a book spent freaking out about humans moving to the space station, and then after the halfway point new backstory for new point of view characters. It felt like the entire book was basically being used as setup for the intended series without including enough plot or forward movement to make me at all interested in continuing. Or even finishing it, obviously.
The aliens really bothered me too, they kept making throwaway comments about how humans are fragile bags of water walking around and then themselves turning out to be full of blood also?? Blood is liquid, yes? It implies a liquid vascular system? Or just sentient versions of earth animals like wasps or chameleons, or straight up “just the rock biters from The Neverending Story.” Plus how do we all have the same type of ear canal and eardrums that the translator devices work the same, yet again we keep hearing how wildly different and fragile humans are? </spoiler>
And for me the biggest, and this honestly probably biased me against the rest of the book: you can’t have a throwaway joke about authors arguing about using “singular they” and then have a strictly binary gender system and zero characters that use singular they or other non-binary pronouns without sounding like you come down on the bigoted side!! There aren’t even any acknowledged binary trans characters! Yikes yikes yikes. I mean I’d say it’s just crap anyway not having trans characters at all in your near-future science fiction, but that just rubs in the salt. Will not be reading more by this author.
This was first contact meets reluctant girl detective and was highly entertaining.
Only 4 stars because I do feel the ending got away from the author a little but that would be my only quibble with this book. I don't really have much more to say about it apart from that I do recommend and I did enjoy.
