I like--sometimes even love--Valente's writing, and I still found Space Opera to be at best enough content for a one-page piece of flash fiction, stretched out excruciatingly into a novel. (And how the same person who wrote The Refrigerator Monologues could go on to write a book in which the protagonist's manpain for his never-allowed-any-agency deceased girlfriend is the key emotional thorough-line is beyond me.)