Nova is primarily a space opera. If you don’t like space opera, don’t worry, the book is more than just space opera. It is a thoughtful extrapolation of the future (well, except for the faux pas), as well as a philosophical mind-twister. But it is primarily a space opera.

Lorq Von Ray assembles a rag-tag crew to hunt the hitherto scarce source of power in a nova, all the while trying to beat his childhood enemies at the same game. Shakespearean intrigue of mythical proportions plows straight into a well-conceived action-adventure. With gorgeous prose. What’s not to like?

If you are one of those people who thoroughly dislikes new age quackery, such as the tarot, it will take a large suspension of disbelief to overcome the faux pas of making the tarot a scientific method of guiding the characters’ lives (as if!). But if that hurdle can be got over, Nova is well worth it.

Now I understand why it is a popular book. It is conventional. Very few, if any, science fiction tropes are involved at all (aside from some cutesie names, such as “vids” for “movies”, all phone calls are videophone calls [although none of those are cellphone calls; the book was written in the painfully early nineties, so it gets a pass on that one], and time travel). The drama of the story is in efforts of the two protagonists, Kivrin in the 1300s and Dunworthy in the 2050s, trying to get Kivrin out of the plague. But the drama is conventional drama. There is no sensawonder here. Which would be fine, if there were some Weighty Concepts of Great Literature being explored here. But there’s none of those either. Here’s what I would consider the themes of the book (if I was forced to by an English Teacher with a weapon of some sort):

• Everybody dies
• Everybody dies sometime
• Although a few good souls help dying people, most people are Fatally Flawed
• And those few good souls will most likely die, as well

The themes aren’t great explorations of the meaning of death or anything cool like that; it’s just a bunch of statements and restatements that get old after awhile. Especially since they aren’t handled with anything like subtlety.

The plot drives me batty for the same reason that the plot of Pride and Prejudice drives me batty: that’s it? Oh, so the whole reason this easily-foreseen and overly-foreshadowed dilemma has come to pass is for that stupid reason? Granted, it’s not *quite* so dumb as Pride and Prejudice, but each plot element was, when it wasn’t expected, pretty non-surprising (hint: it often involved people dying you didn’t necessarily expect to die). I admire Willis for willingly killing off her characters, but fer-cryin’-out-loud, it gets old.

I’m one of those people who will not finish a book if I’m not getting enough out of it. I finished the book. So it’s not a total failure. But the more I reflect on it, the more I could have done without this book. So I think I’ll stop reflecting on it.