Book Review: “Persephone Station” by Stina Leicht

Persephone Station by Stina Leicht

OK, the cover blurbs weren’t so promising.  Lot’s of stuff about ‘mercs’ fighting ‘the corporation’ and some inscrutable comment about ‘feminist’.  It sounded a bit high concept for me, not to mention video gameish.

But this book is much better than the commentaries on the cover would suggest.

Now, to me the overall situation doesn’t make all that much sense.  A corporation owns a whole planet?  Weird native species that noone knows is there?  A ‘bad side of town’ where the corporation let’s anything go?   Not very plausible to me.

There is definitely a ‘feminist’ concept here. It’s pretty much a standard ‘rogue band of ex-military’ trying to do the good an honorable thing (equipped with military grade weaponry).  Lots of testosterone and aggressive banter.  But here the mercs and gangsters are predominantly female and non-binary.  Heck, the corporate exec, the big villain, is female.

By the way, this situation is not explained in any way.  What happened to all the males?  I mean, it’s one thing to ‘let girls play too’, but another thing to imagine that macho men simply don’t exist.

Anyway.

And, by the way, the aliens are shapeshifters, so they’re definitely identity-fluid. : – )

I’m not sure what all this proves, though it does make for some ‘mother-daughter’ and ‘sisters in arms’ relationships that are a lot more sentimental than an all-male cast would allow.

The tech is good, and, of course, gender neutral.  Space ships. Blasters.  Power armor.  Dogfights. “Dungeon” fights.  It’s video game standard stuff, and the robots don’t care whether you call them ‘he’, ‘she’ or ‘they’.

The aliens are neat, as well, though their pacifism is way too good to be true.  Noble savages, living in a high tech Shangri La.  Right.  

The AIs are, well, flat out unbelievable for a number of reasons.  Grumble. I leave it as an exercise for the reader.  (Let’s start with the question of latency.  And don’t get me started on the college-dropout-level psychology of ‘emotion’.)

Anyway.

Stuff happens.  Raids, dogfights, stalking through an underground lab and a space station.  Sound familiar?  Pretty much a video game, no?

But the characters are interesting enough and dialog is not bad. 

And, most of all, Leitch does a good job of writing, even if the story isn’t deep.   So, I’d say it’s all worth the read.

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1. Stina Leicht, Persephone Station, New York, Saga Press, 2021.

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