Different quirky read. Not exactly what I was expecting, but had fun nonetheless. You had me with alternate worlds. This is how you mesh different genres. To say more is to say too much. This was an enjoyable and emotional read and I'm looking at more by the author.

#THESISTERSPUNTNIK #TERRIFAVRO #NETGALLEY

Thank you to NetGalley for an ARC to review!

This books was weird and wonderful.
An enjoyable read and something different for me.

Thank you to Netgalley for the ARC of this title. I am providing my honest feedback.

I think this story is fun and extremely unique. It is difficult to follow at some points and keep up with what is going on where and when, but overall I loved the concept. I think a little world building in the beginning would help anchor readers and make it easier to follow.

Debbie Reynolds Biondi bops around the multiverse, creating comics relating the story of Sputnik Chick (a thinly veiled version of her); the comics eventually spin off a successful tv show.

Debbie’s originally from an alternate version of Earth, Atomic Mean Time (AMT), and only arrived in Earth Standard Time (ours) because she destroyed her Earth, after pulling everyone she could from AMT into Earth Standard Time (EST). These people merged with those of EST, changing their memories and life trajectories (Debbie lost her husband this way.)

Years later, suffering from time sickness because of her tendency to slide between different time periods and Earths, Debbie needs to keep writing Sputnik Chick stories but realizes she needs help, and employs an intern, Unicorn Girl, to help her generate new stories for the show.

Years later, in an alternate reality where there are no stories, Debbie encounters a man she used to know in a yet another reality, a dystopia whose genesis was a racist, homophobic comic book Debbie stole years earlier. Debbie needs to find and get rid of this comic book so she can prevent the dystopia, which is filled with cyborg children and evil AIs using the comic to send people "back to where they came from", even if it means sending them back in time.

This book is weird, horrifying, bonkers bizarre at times, and wryly, darkly funny. Terri Favro walks a fine line balancing many things together: immigration to North America, robots, time travel, the art and power of storytelling, body augmentations and alternations, pandemics, and evolving languages. It's a fantastic mix that could have fallen into incoherency, but Favro keeps everything together to tell a story about prejudice, nostalgia, society, and love.

Thank you to Netgalley and to ECW Press for this ARC in exchange for my review.

Debbie Reynolds Biondi is the creator of a comic book series called Sputnik Chick: A Girl With No Past. Debbie lives in different timelines. The comic book series has been an outlet for Debbie to detail her experiences in Atomic Mean Time. In Earth Standard Time, Debbie travels with her apprentice, Unicorn Girl, and Cassandra - an AI who knows all about pop culture.
There are over 2,000 alternate timelines - each created by the detonation of an atomic bomb in Earth Standard Time - and Debbie and Unicorn Girl and Cassandra travel through them, collectively known as the Sisters Sputnik. Debbie's storytelling skills has her treated with celebrity status throughout the realities and in one particular world, where all books and music have disappeared, Debbie is in bed with an old Earth Standard lover, and he begs her to tell him a story.

This book is ... really unusual; highly unique; a pop-culture jambalaya; a literary paella; psychedelic fiction. Think Harlan Ellison and Thomas Disch meet Ernest Cline and Charlie N. Holmberg and the four of them write a story.

I really liked the characters here and the general concept is fabulous. But at times I found this a little hard to follow ... and I like off-the-wall unusual sci-fi with mind-bending, time-wrenching concepts. The story-within-a-story ... was that really necessary? As a reader, it felt like author Terri Favro had a short story in the Sputnik universe, and to make it a novel, added a little bit around it.

This is, however, one of the books that I think about long after I've read it. A moment will strike and I'll remember something in the book and wonder about it. Because of this, this is likely one of the few books I will read a second time, but I' think I need to re-read Favro's Sputnik's Children again before I do. It's been almost five years since I read and reviewed that book - a pre-cursor to this.

Looking for a good book? The Sisters Sputnik by Terri Favro is a unique, adventurous fantasy, but it might be good to read/re-read Sputnik's Children, by the same author, first.
I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

This was so borderline that I went back and forth a few times trying to decide on a grade. In the end, I decided middle of the road was best. It was difficult to get into the story, being thrown into the narrative with very little prepation (the author has another novel called Sputnik's Children, which may have been required reading, but I didn't see anything indicating this was a sequel) but I thought maybe once I got into the swing of things it would settle down. Unfortunately it never seemed to find its stride and almost seemed to be tripping over itself at points.

I'm torn on pop culture references in novels. A few can be fine, but this felt too try-hard. "Like Stan Lee, you know, the guy who created Marvel Comics, do you get the reference?" It dropped references in the same way The Big Bang Theory did, for the "Oh hey I know that reference!" It was like a less obnoxious/obvious Ready Player One (people who liked Ready Player One will probably love this one).

By the end, I think the idea is good, the writing and worldbuilding is decent, but the story stringing it all together just failed to work for me.

I tried, I really did, but she lost me. This is an enthusiastic and energetic read filled with ideas. Time traveling storytellers and alternate worlds are interesting to be sure but this just wasn't for me. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC.

I lived Favro’s prior book, Sputnik’s Children. It’s the sweet spot of my generation. It had a lot of what the East Germans call Ostalgie, a warm love for a time past. This book is equally overflowing with pop culture references but was less seamless to follow. I found it to be a little too self aware and clever. It would take me out of the narrative pretty often. I wish it had been a bit more stripped down and focused on a single idea to track. I liked it, glad I read it but I do recommend it with some caveats.

My thanks to both NetGalley and ECW Press for an advance copy of this science fiction work.

The idea of alternate worlds is both a fascinating concept and a great comfort to me. The more I look at Twitter, or the occasional Facebook reminds me of that old joke, "Beam me up Scotty, there is no intelligent life down here". The idea of a happy world, a happy me, and happy everybody is a nice idea. Terri Favro in her book The Sisters Sputnik takes the idea of alternate worlds, adds a lot of twists and makes them well not all happy people running around but weird realities where memory, music and media are dying, things have changed a lot, and maybe it's not just one world running out of time but all of them.

Debbie Reynolds Bondi, comic book creator, and Unicorn Girl, her younger apprentice, traveling companion and partner in The Sputnik Sisters, are a time- traveling world skipping duo who share stories, songs and pop culture memories throughout the multiverse. Created when an atomic war on Earth Standard Time created ripples of new dimension, 2,052 alternate worlds, all with different histories, different people, but slowly fading. While traveling the two come across an old love of Debbie's from Earth Standard Time, who asks for story. Debbie does so telling a story that crosses time, space social and entertainment history, and features the Sisters attempt to change what has happened, and what might happen.

The book is good, with ideas that fill every page, so many that other writers would have entire series made from them, but Terri Favro just writes them and moves on. That takes a lot of skill. The book is a bit of a struggle to get into, finding the mindset and the writing style might e difficult, but is rewarding. I have not read the previous book Sputnik's Children, so that might have helped. However not reading the book did not hinder my enjoyment at all. What I did find interesting was the role our previous pandemic played in the book. Mentions of mask, mask etiquette and idiots who did not wear masks and the effects are mentioned, and this is the first book that I have seen this new normal been included in a book.

Science fiction with a lot of thought, and a lot of plot. As I stated there is a lot of ideas, and a lot of work put into this book. Recommended for people who like their science fiction with a lot of weird, and a million interesting ideas, and for people who like strong women characters. Also those familiar with the works of Mark Leyner, just for the outrageous ideas, and Steve Erickson, for the rules of the different worlds and how the whole system works will enjoy this. This is the first book that I have read of the authors, but plan to go back and read the first one. A very fun read.

An energetic jumble of pop culture references and joyous alternate universe novel full of colorful characters. I love our unconventional comic-writing grandma hero and her unicorn-girl side-kick. I think if you like the Umbrella Academy this might talk to you - less gun-happy, but it has a similar unorthodox irreverent feel. What made me take off stars was the beginning which reads like a voiceover. I don't like that form of telling, no matter how interesting the voice might be, it just doesn't grab my interest enough. But it is a very personal criticism - I think I would have liked more happening at the beginning and having the world explanation and history of the characters sprinkled more lightly throughout the novel. Prepare to be served a dissected, criticized modernity full of humanity and warnings about the future.

Traveling storytellers offer tales to entertain people throughout the multiverse in Terri Favro’s The Sisters Sputnik.

Creator of the comic book series Sputnik Chick: A Girl With No Past, Debbie Biondi used the outlet to document her life in Atomic Mean Time; in Earth Standard Time, Debbie, her apprentice Unicorn Girl, and Cassandra, an AI that makes pop culture references, serve as the Sisters Sputnik, traveling the multiverse telling tales of what had occurred in Earth Standard Time, including everything from the seriousness of the World Wars to the more fun exploits of Hollywood celebrities. As the trio make their way to their next storytelling engagement, they spend the night with one of Debbie’s Earth Standard Time lovers and she gives in to his pleas to tell a story. Over the course of the night, she regales him with the Sisters’ adventures in alternate realities and their attempt to correct the changes that were stirred in to action by an evil book of comic strips, which includes a post-pandemic Toronto with robot-worshipping children, a disco-era filled with synthetic beings bent on sending people to their historic familial “homes”, and a deviated 1950s where Frank Sinatra and the woman meant to be the Queen of England have a fling.

Told using a framing tale narrative method, the adventures in different times and versions of reality are woven together with Debbie as the common thread tying it together in a cohesive whole, allowing for the futuristic and sci-fi as well as the nostalgic and historical, however outdated some of the sentiments conveyed therein by select characters are. A sequel to Sputnik’s Children, it is set up well to be able to be read as a stand alone or as a companion story as it describes pertinent details that provide helpful context while continuing to further Debbie’s entertaining adventures. The inclusion of a pandemic, mask etiquette, and social wariness, as well as the dangerous and prejudicial attitudes that drove much of the action forward in this novel, was eerily relevant to recent events in society while also reflecting history, demonstrating the strange and cyclical nature of time and reality.

Overall, I’d give it a 4 out of 5 stars.

*I received a copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.