With a striking cover, an intriguing plot, thrilling action, and a diverse cast, Persephone Station makes a great queer SFF read first thing in 2021! ... There were nonbinary characters, sapphic characters, and other gender-neutral characters all throughout the book. It may not seem much to some, but it was so delightful for me to see this kind of representation, especially in SFF ... As for the writing style, it was straightforward, and yet it also left mysteries for the readers here and there ... The plot of Persephone Station was certainly distinctive. I loved the plot twist in the end. My main problem would have to be the pacing. It was fast-paced and action-packed at the early parts of the book. After that, it kind of dwindled down in the middle ... When it comes to the worldbuilding, the author created something so vivid and expansive ... Overall, Persephone Station is a solid read, one that will whisk you away into space, on an alien planet, on a wild ride. Those who are looking for action and remarkable plot will adore this one.
Leicht takes influence from cyberpunk novels and Star Trek, pulling together an action-packed plot ... Persephone Station gathers narrative speed with all the grace of a snowball rolling downhill in an old cartoon, sliding and bounding from the moment our heroes find themselves in over their heads, which happens almost immediately ... Leicht has crafted a fully imagined world that functions like a living, breathing member of the story. Various aspects of the world beyond Persephone bleed into the story, but never in a way that feels cheap or unearned ... The highly likeable characters help balance Persephone Station’s erratic pacing ... a positive, entertaining story of grit and determination in which the will to do good prevails despite great cost.
Stina Leicht is trying to do a lot with Persephone Station. She's trying to do a book that feels both weighty and light, both serious and fun, and for long stretches, she pulls off what is a very difficult balancing act. And while success would've been masterful, given the weight of all the different stories she's carrying, the falls and failures seem almost inevitable ... Leicht dumps a lot of background here — character backstories, corporate info, the histories of Rosie and Vissia. And I get it. This stuff has to go somewhere. It's not fluff (well, not most of it), and much of it becomes important later. But two things go wrong. First, after the thumping shocks of the opening, the middlegame happens in a kind of vacuum without propulsion and without stakes. You know all the main characters will survive this mid-point action because all of their plotlines have become so tangled that any resolution requires them all to make it to the end. Second, that neatly measured tempo established in the front of the book simply vanishes for a long, muddling stretch ... Most of this is okay. Most of it — even the squishy middle bit — is buoyed along by Leicht's talent for making characters you want to hang with just a little bit longer ... But of all the parts that make up Persephone Station — amid all the miniguns, explosions and robots — it's the four people in the center of it all that stitch it together. Even in the moments when it feels like it's coming apart at the seams.
Leicht goes to great length to give us a wide array of characters with diverse gender identities, different planets of birth, and varying shades of humanity (or lack thereof) ... Though it can feel challenging to work through the sometimes muddled initial exposition, the eventual star of this novel is its worldbuilding. Leicht creates a fascinating, compelling universe that combines the violent, human-settled frontier with the strange, unique beauty and alluring intricacies of diverse life forms across the galaxy ... The book is a sobering, allegorical view on the grisly business of expansion, and who gets displaced, or worse, in that process ... Leicht’s novel feels important now, as exploitation and violence continue on our planet. It feels empowering to read of characters on interplanetary adventures fighting for the underdog.
Like many excellent novels, and like Stephen King recommends in his book On Writing, the fight to save Ogenth from Serrao-Orlov is smashed together with another main plot—the emergence of artificial intelligence in human bodies ... Persephone Station has everything a grimdark fan could want in a science fiction novel. The characters are outcasts, heavily armed and highly flawed ... Persephone Station is a bit of mashup of grimdark fighting fiction, space opera, and cyberpunk. It has just enough science to bring it to life without distracting from the characters and their relationships and is loaded with many interesting subplots that come together to create a very entertaining story with depth and complexity even if it is not mind-blowingly original. Leicht’s prose is crystal clear and unpretentious ... Give this one a go for a fun read.
Leicht’s talent for action sequences comes really to the fore throughout the novel, the skills honed in previous novels really pay off here as Angel’s team gets themselves on the mission ... Leicht goes in for a lot of the tropes and gives then a shiny chrome finish. When the bullets fly, the pages especially turn. Leicht’s previous novels and taste for speed and high octane action really pay off here. I, as a reader of her previous fiction, was left wondering why she hadn’t tried her hand at this sooner ... Further, rather than making them faceless figures to stand and die, Leicht takes great pains for us to care about these ex-soldier mercenaries caught on the horns of this conflict, as well as others in the city, and also in Serrao-Orlov as well, and building the world through those characters, in sometimes unexpected ways ... I suspect that the author began with characters and the world grew out of their creation, rather than the reverse, here, because this subplot and worldbuilding by character development is the hallmark of this book. We get a slice of the universe that the author has created by the backstories of the characters, making for a complex and complicated world we get spotlights on as being relevant to the persons on the page. It’s a worldbuilding technique that makes for a somewhat akin to pointillism to give the reader the ability to form the dots to a coherent whole ... It does mean that a reader looking for large infodumps on how Leicht’s space opera universe works are going to be sorely disappointed. But it does mean the world sections we do see and experience and explore are in the end character relevant and tie into the narrative. And Leicht can’t resist fun bits like naming the AI of a ship Kurosawa, or name the town that Rosie’s Bar is in West Brynner. The book really loves its inspirational source materials even as it puts them into a new framework ... I think Persephone Station could have used a little more in different points of view to complete the circle and really make this a transcendent leap from fantasy into space opera for the author. A couple of missing points thanks to, I think, not seeing enough or certain perspectives leaves the novel for me only very very good and a great way to start 2021. Given Leicht’s style of worldbuilding and all that is introduced, and all that is left to be explored, the author certainly could put out many more novels in this verse, with or without Angel’s team. I for one would be quite eager to read them.
This enjoyable and thrilling read features excellent worldbuilding and lively characterizations. The engaging crew and well-drawn plot will have readers hoping this will become a series.
...imaginative and entertaining ... she keeps her prose flowing smoothly with tight, accessible sentences that remain light on technical jargon ... Ms. Leicht’s new saga spans more than five hundred pages yet keeps surging forward at an enjoyable and engrossing pace. And its exciting battle sequences rival those featured in many other science-fiction novels.
In this earnest space opera, an ensemble of badass women and nonbinary and queer characters fight corporate overlords on the semilawless planet Persephone ... With too many sluggish infodumps and a broad diversity checklist to hit regardless of authenticity, the narrative gets tangled and many threads get lost ... Rosie, however, is a bright spot. Their gender-fluid nonbinariness is just one part of a delightfully complex, genuine, and amoral character who could make this novel worth your time. Readers willing to overlook the endless exposition may enjoy some diversity that's often missing in SF.
...sprawling ... Despite fast-paced, no-nonsense prose, this first foray into science fiction from fantasy author Leicht (Blackthorn) is overcrowded with an abundance of low-impact, short-term conflicts, unnecessary twists, and convoluted backstory. And though the gender diversity is well handled, the novel’s anti-colonialist themes are undermined.
