silk-punk military fantasy with characters breaking the world.. multiple times and having to remake it?? 

This is like a 3.85 for me. It’s hard to describe, but this felt like a history textbook at times from the way the narration feels removed from the story. Events and moments are happening to character, but it doesn’t feel like you’re experiencing it with them. The scope of the story is massive and we do jump around a lot, character to character. I think it helps knowing this is like the prologue to the true story and explains why the book reads this.

I do hope the gods feel a bit more imposing in the later installments, they read kinda corny at times. I think my big nit is that Ken does not dwell on scenes long enough. I think it comes from his history in short stories. Too much happens in a paragraph, sometimes we need vividness in a moment to feel something. Overall, I loved the layers of political maneuvering,  battle strategy, and I was engaged in the story he was trying to tell, but I can’t say I had an emotional attachment in moments where it needed to count and to some of the characters. 

But I have high hopes for book 2! It doesn’t sound like but I did enjoy it for the most part,  the pacing be off sometimes.