smartflutist661's reviews
1370 reviews

Not quite was I was expecting, but still good. It may have benefited from being longer (even a duology), so it could spend more time with the implications of the shatterlings as well as flesh out the Andromeda mystery a bit. (Although there was enough of what felt like dead space that I think it could maybe have been fit in here as well.) It was a fascinating universe to spend time in, though. I loved the way we got a feel for the longevity of the Lines. Unfortunately, I didn't find the characters very well-differentiated, though in some ways that's appropriate.

An interesting but not particularly compelling examination of apartheid South Africa. The writing had a very distinctive cadence that was evocative, even if I didn't like it very much. Also

I'm not convinced Vercueil/most of this wasn't just a med-induced hallucination

.

Reasonably believable competency porn, with a nice combination of (cast of) character development, plot, and politics in a pretty standard naval SF package.

I don't remember book 1 all that well, having read it minimum of a decade ago. But I feel like Morn had a lot more of a personality in it. While, yes, she's

eaten up by addiction and trauma

here, it's like that's all she is. And there's minimal plot, it's mostly character-driven, so Morn's lack of character hurts. Slap a fresh coat of character on Morn and focus a bit more on the "hmm, what's up with these pirates, the UMCP, and the Amnion", and there's something really interesting going on (even if it remains mostly about Morn).

Also the physics was either distractingly bad or distractingly poorly explained.

Quite conflicted about this one. The first half of the book feels like it's completely lost the plot, literally—it just kind of wanders around aimlessly following characters pine after each other while pretending to be deep and complex (both the book and the characters). But I enjoyed the endgame well enough once it remembers there's a plot going on. Basically it crawls so far up its own ass that it comes out the other end still going.

Also, the politics aren't all that controversial, and there's minimal subtlety, so it mostly comes off as strident rather than impassioned, persuasive, or interesting.

As workmanlike as most of Lackey's work I've read, but I particularly enjoyed the musical aspects here. There was also almost zero magic until nearly the end, but lots of setup for broad magical and political conflict. (Also liked the traditional treatment of elves and nontraditional treatment of

the lost heir

.)

I was pretty bored for most of the beginning, and also knew exactly where it would end up going. And while I usually love a death march towards inevitable doom, usually the doomed have done something to deserve it. But the

slaughter of the entire village by "the Devil"

at the end made up for some of that.

A fun continuation of the (anti-)rebellion. Enjoyed Sula a lot more than Martinez in this one. Also kind of hope there's a bit more interrogation of the status quo—though the Naxids claiming dominion over the Praxis is clearly bad, I'm not convinced the Praxis continuing to exist is that much better. Will definitely continue to see how this ends.

This suffered a little bit from being both a middle book and a conclusion at the same time, I think. But it definitely fulfilled the promise of moving into the more Cosmere-aware phase of the various series. I was most surprised by how much I enjoyed Szeth's plot/chapters. Also loved that we got a bunch of Rosharan pre-history. 

I feel like a decent chunk of the first 200 pages or so could be cut without losing anything particularly important. On the other hand, in some ways I enjoyed the beginning more than the end (once

the quest starts

). The (real) world had an interesting retro-contemporary feel; I'm not sure if that's because most of the King I've read was set in the 80s, because Charlie felt like a teen from the 80s, if it was intentional or just because King's... of advanced age.

Overall an excellent story, though I definitely expected

Charlie to destroy the passage completely

at the end.