I did keep thinking that one nonsensical aspect of the worldbuilding, which is that bugs on her world just randomly evolved to look like humans (complete with ginormous boobs) would have been incredibly easy to work around in this setting, which is just to give them some kind of magic that adapts them outwardly to mimic their prey in whatever new world they go to. This would have been so much easier for me to buy than a bunch of alien wasps just happening to evolve to look exactly like humans on a planet with no humans, including mammalian secondary sexual characteristics.
That would have been a GREAT workaround. I kept thinking about cockroach milk and wondering if anyone was ever going to mention that.
There was another bit that felt very urban fantasy to me, which was where they lie to the kids on the campus about what's really going on and convince them that it was a gas main explosion instead of stranded on an alien world with zombies. It would make way more sense and give them a much better shot at survival to tell them the truth! But "never tell normals about the magic" is really integral to a lot of urban fantasy worldbuilding, even when it didn't really make sense here.
Ohh, that makes a lot of sense. I was confused and irritated when everyone just bailed on the stranded college students without even warning them to stay inside and lock the doors, when they knew that they'd be attacked by giant spiders overnight. I actually thought I must have been missing some key information, and when it turned out that the spiders mostly ate the cuckoos I thought that they'd always figured that would happen (though they still should have warned them!) But it being an urban fantasy trope does make that make more sense.
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Date: 2022-04-06 07:19 pm (UTC)That would have been a GREAT workaround. I kept thinking about cockroach milk and wondering if anyone was ever going to mention that.
There was another bit that felt very urban fantasy to me, which was where they lie to the kids on the campus about what's really going on and convince them that it was a gas main explosion instead of stranded on an alien world with zombies. It would make way more sense and give them a much better shot at survival to tell them the truth! But "never tell normals about the magic" is really integral to a lot of urban fantasy worldbuilding, even when it didn't really make sense here.
Ohh, that makes a lot of sense. I was confused and irritated when everyone just bailed on the stranded college students without even warning them to stay inside and lock the doors, when they knew that they'd be attacked by giant spiders overnight. I actually thought I must have been missing some key information, and when it turned out that the spiders mostly ate the cuckoos I thought that they'd always figured that would happen (though they still should have warned them!) But it being an urban fantasy trope does make that make more sense.