2019/78: Space Opera -- Catherynne Valente

2019/78: Space Opera -- Catherynne Valente

The newborn and the dead and the long-suffering and the extremely well-traveled, the baby and the girl and the boys in the band and the wormholes—all of them singing the screamy bit like a song could save the world, roaring like lions and squawking like dodos and thundering like rhinoceroses and weeping like a man who died with a final mix in his hands and dancing like a kid wearing a hundred scarves and howling like an interdimensional wind tunnel of regret, belting it out with your future gurgling in your arms like sentient human goddamned beings. [loc. 3449]

Read as part of the Hugo voting pack: in short, Eurovision in Spaaaaaace! A tour de force of breathless cascades of prose, humour, invention and philosophy, freely acknowledging its debt to Douglas Adams, Space Opera is an extremely enjoyable read with some marvellous moments, a tragic poly love story, and a plethora of weird alien species (some of which feel more Banks than Adams).
( minor spoilers )