Redsight by Meredith Mooring is imaginative and, at times, crazy in plot twists. While the science/magic doesn’t always hold together, the book is interesting and I found it a fun read. I struggled with some of the dialogue, both inner and between characters, as it felt very stilted and info dumping at times. I also got whiplash from Korinna, the main character, and the number of times she changed her mind about things. It’s not something I’d seek out again, but it’s worth a borrow

2.5⭐

I’m always going to be down to check out a queernorm sci-fi with a disabled main character. I think this could be a good crossover for people who enjoy YA SFF but want to try adult SFF. (with the caveat that while the romance is a big part of character motivation, it’s not on the level of like, a romantasy)

Unfortunately, I like more meat on my sci-fi bones, so I kept finding myself wanting to know so much more about the culture and politics of the setting, and wishing we got to sit with the characters more to know what things were like before the ~life altering realizations~ start happening.

I don’t know if Mooring has plans for sequels, but I honestly think if the pace was less breakneck and there was more time spent on the larger worldbuilding, this book could have comfortably been a trilogy instead. (especially with how central the whole theme of ~threes~ is to the story, it would have worked very well, thematically, to break it up in a [spoiler] way)

There’s definitely some debut jank here, but there’s a lot of promise with the setting, and I’d be interested in seeing what happens next.

I am definetly buying this when it comes out! One thing that stood out to me the most was the setting, and how the setting was described. I felt it was unique but it also brought me so much nostalgia. I truly know this book is going to be a bestseller when it releases and I hope everyone gets a chance to experience Meredith Mooring in all their glory.

Thank you NetGalley for giving an ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I really enjoyed it. The romance was believable and palpable and with a lot of chemistry. Both Korinna and Aster were well developed characters. I think my main complaints are that, while we do get a quite thorough exploration of why the religious orders are bad, I feel the construction of the Imperium as a threat was a little less solid and horrifying. Also, like, there's a lot of mutilation in this book, and that isn't a problem per se, but there's points where you go like "Oh okay then she's getting skinned again" and it sort of lost impact, I'm afraid. Overall, though, Meredith is a talented and promising author and I'll be keeping an eye on her future works!

The blurb and comparisons given for this book didn't quite suit the actual plot. The world building was the most intriguing aspect of this.

Korinna was a great character at the start. Being able to experience the world the way she does was something completely new for me, but other than that, she had minimal growth and while her attraction for Aster was believable, the relationship from Aster's perspective wasn't as convincing.

Sahar felt sidelined and only given pagetime when the plot called for it. She had immense potential to be a very good character, but simply not given the chance to grow.

The explanation of the magic system needs work. It didn't need to take over 100 pages to learn, somewhat, how tactus works given that Korinna spent her whole life using it.

All in all, is wasn't the worst debut, but could use some more editing.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the latest book that I get to go Full Nerd over! Red sight was a deeply enjoyable (and also at times disturbing) read perfect for fans of Star Wars, Aliette de Bodard, and Everina Maxwell. Korinna is a cleric dedicated to the order of Vermicula, one of the three primordial goddesses whose descendants are blessed with Redsight: the ability to manipulate space and time, allowing them to steer space vessels with perfect precision. All those with Redsight are blind, so when Korinna sees another person’s face with her eyes for the first time, she is immediately drawn to the stranger skulking in the library. This stranger is none other than Aster Haran, feared pirate and herself a priestess of Furia, the exiled third goddess, who hunts for starlight to devour on the fringes of the galaxy. Working within the confines of the Imperium is Sahar, a relatively new cleric of Radiosa, whose priestesses are capable of Lightbending. These three women each in their own way and time must learn to work outside the limits of the systems that made them in order to bring balance back to the universe.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this. The worldbuilding was so fresh and creative. Was the system of magic a little hand-wavy? Sure, but I was having so much fun that I didn’t care (except for the blood typing issue which was fortunately cleared up - my med student brain couldn’t suspend disbelief on that). All of our characters are deeply flawed and at times downright evil, but I was rooting for them anyway. This is a great story of how systems that claim to be benevolent are often oppressive, and it was so satisfying to see Korinna in particular rise above and outside the Order and become a force to be reckoned with in her own right. Also, space serpents? Disability and LGBTQ rep? Space-time pirates? Yes to all of it.

Redsight, didn't quite hit the spot for me, partly due to its comparison to Gideon The Ninth.

However, whilst I don't think Redsight hit the same humorous notes as Gideon, its world building and concept were unique and engaging. Personally, I found the pacing to be slightly too fast, as I tend to prefer more character driven plots and would have loved to see our POV's get more chance at development.

ARC provided by the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

3.5/5

Redsight is an action-packed space opera debut following a blind priestess, Korinna, who works as a spaceship navigator for the galactic empire and as she is exposed to the wider world, she must choose between servitude or freedom. Along the way, we are introduced to a space pirate captain and a regretful judge who who both get swept up in Korinna’s journey. The journey is immensely revelatory for all three women as they work towards their ideas of a better universe, and even as they commit monstrous and destructive actions, the author strives to show that people are more than the worst parts of themselves and to embrace these differences between each other. I enjoyed each pov, all the character voices were distinctive and while each woman face different challenges, they are connected by their struggles with their faith and their complicity in an exploitative system.

The founding mythology of the universe, where three goddesses violently created the universe and later violently turned on each other, and their subsequent religious orders is the backbone of the story. I enjoyed how overtly connected the role of the orders and their history was to the story as well as the contrasting ways they could manipulate tactus (the energy of the universe and the magic system of the book): one order creates, the other transforms and the third consumes. I also really liked the element of body horror and how viscerally gross it would sometimes get.

I think tactus was a little too undefined, it could be used to do almost anything including healing oneself from almost death, flying spaceships and divining truth. Often it would be used as a convenient solution to the characters’ problems and conflict would be solved immediately which prevented me from getting too invested in the stakes.

The book was let down by its incredibly fast pace, the author fits an unbelievable amount of events into a single book (it would honestly be enough for a duology) which was to the detriment of character development and my emotional investment. Many ground-breaking things would happen to the protagonists but I felt that the author never devoted enough time to explore the impact of these experiences on the characters and rather told us how they felt and quickly moved onto the next event. This was super apparent in the romantic subplot - the romance felt very rushed, almost insta-love-like which I severely dislike, and there was a lack of chemistry between the characters which once again made it difficult to become fully invested.

Overall, Redsight is a fun, fast-paced ride with an engaging sociopolitical world and complicated characters albeit rushed at times.

Redsight is an incredible action/adventure story with twists and turns that catch you right where you're least expecting them, while also being a deep and thoughtful metaphysical commentary on what does it mean to be alive and treat others well. Korinna is an incredible, compassionate character and her story draws so much into the discussion about what the impacts of society are on our conception of disability.

The premise for this is fascinating, and there's so much to love about the ideas that go into it. And indeed, some of the execution is great too - the portrayal of a character with significant sight impairment, and the way she goes from living in an environment tailored to her needs (because she lives in a community full of people who share them) and out into a world not set up for her is really well done. I also really enjoyed the seamlessness of the blend between fantasy and SF, and the author has made it feel genuinely coherent on that front, without straining to justify the parts that might not sit naturally together. Religion and magic and lasers are all happening, and at no point in reading does that combination feel awkward or unnatural.

But all the good, all the ideas, all the inspiration is really let down by the characterisation, the prose and the general craft. "Show don't tell" is a worn-out adage, but it's worn out for a reason. So often, what we are told about the characters in Redsight is undermined - or at least not actively supported - by how they act, and what they say. A character is supposed to be embittered and experienced and jaded, and she often acts just as naively as the young women going out into the world for the first time. A supposedly very intelligent scientist makes ridiculous decisions - which would be fine if the writing gave us an emotional intuition of /why/ she did as she did... but it does not.

It often feels more like a fleshed out story plan than a fully written novel. All the plot beats are there, they all make sense, they all fit into a narrative that flows and would have a decent pace... but there just isn't the depth to it that would support what is happening. There needs to be more time spent with the characters, more work done for their motivations and actions to make sense. I don't mind that they make hypocritical or contradictory decisions - people do that - but the book doesn't show me their motivations enough for me to emotionally understand why they behave as they do, and in something so full of dramatic changes of heart, betrayals, and alliances, it truly truly needed that.

I finished the book and definitely enjoyed some parts - the aesthetics of the main character's order are interesting, I liked how religion melded into her life, there is some good genuine bisexual rep, which is pretty rare - and there are such good ideas at the core of this. But it is constantly let down on pretty fundamental levels, and that's all the more disappointing for how good it /could/ have been.

This can find an audience amongst those looking for a sapphic Dune-light with great disability representation.

DNF at 40%.

Shallow and boring. The protagonist is naive and stupid and does everything she's told, all the time. A lot of telling and not a lot of showing. I couldn't continue.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the digital ARC.

When I’m ranting about how stupid a book is to the hubby at 2am, it’s time to DNF the book.

I really wanted to love this, okay??? I kept pushing on past the 20% that is my usual cut-off point, trying to give it a chance to get better.

But it just kept getting worse.

I’ve never encountered this problem before, but I don’t think Mooring…understands space??? I don’t mean in the astrophysicist sense or whatever – I don’t need my sci fi that realistic, and for the most part I wouldn’t be able to tell if an author was getting things wrong about space or not ANYWAY. It’s not like I’m an expert. But Redsight is very much about travelling through space – it’s literally the main character’s entire purpose to move ships through space – and from the way this book is written, the way the characters talk about it and the way the worldbuilding is set up, it’s as if everyone things space is flat. There’s a big chunk of Very Scary space called the Umbra (stupidly obvious name, by the way), which is super dangerous to travel through, and I kept waiting for someone to explain why ships can’t just…go around it. Or under it. Or over it. Or teleport past it, since the Redseers/Navigators seem to teleport their ships around space as a matter of course. But nope, that doesn’t seem to be an option.

???

Same problem: what the hell do you mean, there are ‘borderlands’ in space??? Any borders between different polities are going to have to be three dimensional – probably spherical – not just a line drawn on a 2D map. Space, and thus space-travel, goes in all directions! It’s like Mooring can’t visualise that, and is treating her characters’ travels like they’re moving across a 2D map instead of a 3D one.

So that was all very weird and also maddening.

The MC Korinna is ignorant mostly so Mooring has an excuse to infodump the reader through dialogue – seriously, it makes zero sense that a priesthood of space navigators would be kept so ignorant of how space and wider galactic society work – but she’s also just dumb. This is a character who doesn’t think, doesn’t question, is handed a book written by a literal goddess and dismisses it (without even opening it!) as a dry dusty old tome that can’t help her. A book WRITTEN BY A DIVINITY. That goes way beyond ignorance; that’s a complete inability to take in and process information usefully and draw conclusions or even decent guesses from it.

And I have no time for stupid MCs, even if they are The Most Powerful And Magical Ever. I do not care.

As for the other POV characters…yeah, they’re also naive and one-dimensional and make completely inexplicable decisions.

An attempt was made at intrigue. That is a real and true statement I can make. But is it really intrigue when it’s all either super straightforward or completely irrational???

Two more things: one, Mooring makes the inexplicable decision to have some Really Fucking Important scenes happen off-page, just telling us about them later. In particular, there’s one scene where Korinna has to make a choice where all her options are either horrific or incredibly dangerous for her…and we don’t get to see her make her decision, or the outcome of it. It’s all skipped over, when this is really a defining moment for the character. A life-changing moment. It boggles my mind that Mooring decided to skip it.

And finally, although the idea of the magic, particularly the Redseer/Navigator magic, was very cool, I really didn’t understand how it worked, or what Korinna was doing whenever she used it. I hate ‘hard’ magic systems, I don’t want my magic to be like Maths, I am very happy for it to be strange and mystical. But I still need to know what to picture when magic is happening. I still need to know what the character is doing when she uses her magic. And I had absolutely no clue, at any point. Which doesn’t make your magic feel magical, it just makes it confusing and wishy-washy and hand-wavey. No thank you.

Ultimately, though the premise is very awesome, and the prose is reasonably solid (although I highlighted quite a few paragraphs or bits of imagery that made very little sense…) Redsight reads like it needs a couple more major rewrites before it lives up to its potential. The bone structure of something genuinely epic is in here, but the characters need major work, the worldbuilding could be designed and conveyed much better than it currently is, and the magic could definitely use some fleshing out. As-is, it’s a disappointment.

I unfortunately could not finish this due to the graphic nature of the scenes. However, the premise sounds promising and I know other fantasy and sci-fi lovers will devour this read.

[Thanks to NetGalley & the author for providing me with this ARC]
A gory fast paced fantasy book set in a queer normative world? Count me in!
The book had many aspects that surprised me because a lot of the concepts were very unique and kept me hooked throughout the book. However, the characters are all more than a little naive and this in combination with a redundant story telling made parts of the book a little frustrating. I personally like a writing style that describes more than explains what is happening in the story as it feels much more nuanced and creates an atmospheric setting. More often than not, this book explained what was happening and being said, often even repeating/rephrasing things and conversations.
As this is very much my personal opinion on writing, I would definitely recommend this book to others.

Disclaimer: The ARC was provided to me by NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. The ARC category in no way impacts the rating of the book.

I think this was well written, but unfortunately not for me. I believe many of you out there will absolutely love this, but it just read a bit young for my tastes.

This could just be the author's style, but I left the story feeling that I hardly knew our main characters. I would have enjoyed a closer look at them individually, to really be inside their minds. Everything works out a bit too easily, the characters themselves were frustrating because they were so naive. This all lent to the feeling of the book being a bit young for me.

If the book took a moment to slow down and expound upon the character development, I think it would have been more my speed. However, many folks out there love a fast paced, young feeling sci-fi, and it will be right up their alley!

I will not be giving feedback on this book following Meredith's involvement in defending the abhorrent behavior of Cait Corrain as well as accusing a disabled Black author of being ableist.

3.5, rounding up!

Three goddesses. Three priestesses. An unprecedented power… and an unprecedented weapon. When a disturbing attack takes place, three women are drawn together with opposing aims: the engineer, the navigator, and the space pirate.

The magic/science and world building in this is unique and interesting but took me a little while to grasp, both the “why” and the “how” as the exposition was a little choppy for me. The mix of science, religion and body-horror magic has drawn comparisons to Gideon the Ninth, but I think they’re quite distinct tonally and Redsight lacks the humour and in-depth lore/character work of GtN. However, it will be satisfying to anyone looking for a space opera with fresh ideas, sapphic romance and seriously questionable morality. I also enjoyed the perspective of a blind MC. Looking forward to seeing what else MM can deliver next.

Thank you to Solaris and Meredith Mooring for the opportunity to review, Redsight. The story is a good vs evil across space and time. The story is full of magic, battle and loyalty to those we find home with. A great concept, but the story falls a little flat at times, the imagery of space and out of this world element of this book weren’t there for me to push this story to the next level. The characters emotions and dynamics did lack a little depth, felt they were going through the motions at times. I liked the representation in this book – it was very inclusive with queer, disability and multi-ethnicity backgrounds. Sci-fi only feels big when imaginations are big enough to see us all in the stars, this pushed the rating to a 2.5 for me.

I would like to say I am disappointed in recent behaviours of some authors about abusing the review of books, especially as this scandal has emboiled this author. I won’t punish the book, that’s unfair. Sadly the negative press will likely do more harm than my opinion. We should all be remained it is the reader choice not the writer which books are remembered and shelf worthy.

I won't be posting this review on amazon or my bookstagram account.

Redsight by Meredith Mooring follows three main characters, all with unique gifts under the three goddesses of the galaxy. They must decide whether to overcome centuries of differences to create the world they desire, or remain embedded in the traditional ways of their orders. With both queer and disability representation, this is very exciting upcoming science fiction!

I was lucky enough to receive an ARC of this book, thank you NetGalley!

I went into this book completely blind and wasn’t sure what to expect at all. Despite this, I didn’t struggle to get into it. I really enjoyed the story and the plot was executed excellently; I haven’t read anything like this before! I really enjoyed the premise of the different Orders who worship a different goddess and each magic was entirely unique. I also enjoyed watching the romance within this book blossom as the characters learnt more about themselves and each other. Overall, the book was very well-paced and consistent.

However, there were a few aspects of this book that I struggled with. I found imagery quite difficult due to a lack of in-depth descriptions and world-building, I feel if this was slightly improved upon, the world could’ve been more magical. I also found myself becoming quite confused at times due to some aspects of the magic being under-explained. Other than that, it was a very exciting story!