Battlestar Ataxia: Review of Violet Allen’s Plastic, Prism, Void

Vanessa Wolosz Under Review:Plastic, Prism, Void. Violet Allen. Littlepuss Press, May 2026. It’s possible that Violet Allen is totally allergic to binaries, to stability and boundaries and the very act of defining. Her debut novel, Plastic, Prism, Void, is a palimpsest of narrative trial-and-error, of throwing story elements at a wall and piecing together whatever doesn’t stick. To call this space opera sci-fi romantasy an experimental novel would be an understatement. This book and its protagonist are unbearable. And somehow, I think it works. If you’re in the market for an immersive novel with reader stand-ins and a straightforward plot, Plastic, Prism, Void is not for you. The title is apt: this is a plastic narrative. It constantly shifts perspective, with individual conversations taking place over spontaneous setting changes. A quirk of this book is that, mid-sentence (dialogue or otherwise), time often skips, dropping you, the reader, into the middle of a completely disparate…