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beginningbookend's review against another edition
3.0
I feel kind of bad giving this book a 3/5 stars, but there were some things about my personal reaction to the book that made it difficult for me. I don't have complaints about the story itself. The writing was masterful, the descriptive language was incredibly evocative, I never found myself bored. That said, I wish I'd gotten a friend to spoil me some on the content of the book.
So, if you're like me and would prefer to go into things with some idea of what to expect ratings- and content-wise:
So, if you're like me and would prefer to go into things with some idea of what to expect ratings- and content-wise:
Spoiler
This book tends to go into gory detail on the results of battle and has a number of scenes of some pretty graphic eviscerations, etc. I'm pretty sure I can think of at least four or five incidents off the top of my head. Also, chapter 21 has a scene of female-on-male rape, and the aftermath of that, so be prepared to skip if it's not your thing.hjswinford's review against another edition
4.0
whoa. What a world. What COOL characters! What politics and drama!! I really enjoyed this so much. It felt like such an original voice telling a story in a unique world where the narrative lets you fend for yourself. Jedao was so cool, both in his concept and as a character. Even though I was less confused in this book than in Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, I still had to go back and read some portions again because it was very easy to miss a detail here or there and therefore entirely lose your footing. I definitely want to keep reading this series because the good qualities FAR outweighed the weird and confusing.
emmaaaad's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
walkerct's review against another edition
2.0
I read this book primarily because I saw that it and its sequel were nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in back to back years. One of my reading goals this year is to read all of the 2018 nominees, so I decided to tackle this one first so that I would be ready to take on [b:Raven Stratagem|30691976|Raven Stratagem (The Machineries of Empire, #2)|Yoon Ha Lee|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1466524955s/30691976.jpg|51237351] in a couple of months. Needless to say, I am now much less enthused about this prospect.
A lot of people have compared this book to [a:Ann Leckie|3365457|Ann Leckie|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1402526383p2/3365457.jpg]'s Imperial Radch series. Granted, there are a number of similarities in regard to setting (an expansive galactic empire with a rigid social structure) and protagonist (a once loyal soldier of that empire that begins to doubt its mission and their place in it). There are even some similarities in the way the novels tackle gender identity, though it's much more important to the Radch novels than to this one. However the biggest difference, and the reason that I find the Radch series infinitely more enjoyable, is how the characters are handled. That is to say that Leckie grounds her novels in well-thought out character motivations while Lee seems to have forgone creating any interesting characters in favor of going all-in on the sci-fi military hardware aspects of the story. I'll come back to my problems with the characters in a bit.
Simply put, 70% of the creative effort of this books seems to have gone into thinking up cool sounding weapons. It's got threshold winnowers, kaleidoscope bombs, amputation guns, logic grenades, scorch pistols, directional storm generators, fungal canisters, calendrical swords, dire cannons, erasure cannons, shatter grenades, carrion bombs, invariant ice, and that's honestly just a small sample of them. A lot of the book reads more like the description of a FPS DLC weapons pack than anything else. To be honest, this book would probably make for a pretty awesome video game. Lee is very inventive when it comes to the technology of the world.
All of that technology is dependent on the society adhering to a strict calendar system decided upon by the Hexarchate, a group of six rulers who represent the factions that make up the society's government, military, etc. Committing heresy against the calendar system has very real consequences, affecting the way that certain technologies function, which means that the Hexarchate has a vested interest in maintaining ironclad control over society. Each faction has a distinct ethos and distinct skills. The Kel are extremely loyal and disciplined, and make up the bulk of the fighting force; the Shuos are clever and manipulative and handle intelligence and espionage, etc. These factions cooperate and clash in predictable ways. The appearance is of a deep, complex ruling system ala the Seven Kingdoms in the ASOIAF series, but to me it all came across as little more than window dressing. Sure, it sounds nice and complex, but a lot of that is due to the jargon-y nature of Lee's writing. Once you strip that away you realize that the complexity is more implied than shown, and it seems to have little impact on the plot of this book, though hopefully that changes in the later books.
One of the most polarizing aspects of the book is the lack of exposition/clarification of the calendrical system and how it alters the reality of the world. The book really just drops you into the middle of things without any kind of handy glossary or expository dialogue to provide context. Personally, I prefer books that force the reader to figure things out as they go along, rather than slowing down the plot with often clunky explanations (looking at you, [b:Ready Player One|9969571|Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)|Ernest Cline|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1500930947s/9969571.jpg|14863741]). That being said, the extreme obscurity of the language used warranted more explanation than was given.
I could have forgiven the book its obtuseness were it not for its single weakest point, the characters. Kel Cheris is by far one of the least interesting SF protagonists I have ever come across. Aside for her love of dramas and her soft spot towards servitors (helper robots) we learn next to nothing of note about her. I kept thinking that as the book progressed that more of her personality would show through, but if anything the opposite happened. It seems like Lee himself got tired of her, because starting around the halfway point we spend more time watching what random soldiers are doing and learning about Shuos Jedao's backstory. It's pretty obvious that Shuos Jedao is the only character that Lee really cares about, and that all he wanted from Cheris was for her to serve as a half-assed foil for him. I know a lot of reviewers point out the Jedao/Cheris conversations as one of the book's highlights, and I can see why, but I felt that they largely fell flat. I think there was a real opportunity to showcase the deep history of the society and how culture and people change over time, but instead their conversations are almost completely concerned with military tactics, and Jedao ends up sounding exactly like most of the modern day characters sound. It's a total waste. For an example of a similar character dynamic to Kel/Cheris that is handled way better, I would check out [b:Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening|29396738|Monstress, Vol. 1 Awakening (Monstress, #1)|Marjorie M. Liu|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1471648131s/29396738.jpg|51531861]. Finally, the villain of the book is extremely disappointing. For the vast majority of the book they are relegated to a series of catty communications between them and the leader of the heresy. I found no reason to care about them at all, and the final confrontation (if you can even call it that) seemed like an afterthought intended largely to clear the slate for the sequel.
And that's maybe the biggest disappointment about the book. As some of the other reviewers pointed out, at the conclusion you realize that the entire story is a setup for the NEXT book, and pretty much everything that happened in this book is inconsequential. I really hope Raven Strategem improves on the character work, otherwise I'm going to be back with a similarly disappointed review in a couple of months.
A lot of people have compared this book to [a:Ann Leckie|3365457|Ann Leckie|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1402526383p2/3365457.jpg]'s Imperial Radch series. Granted, there are a number of similarities in regard to setting (an expansive galactic empire with a rigid social structure) and protagonist (a once loyal soldier of that empire that begins to doubt its mission and their place in it). There are even some similarities in the way the novels tackle gender identity, though it's much more important to the Radch novels than to this one. However the biggest difference, and the reason that I find the Radch series infinitely more enjoyable, is how the characters are handled. That is to say that Leckie grounds her novels in well-thought out character motivations while Lee seems to have forgone creating any interesting characters in favor of going all-in on the sci-fi military hardware aspects of the story. I'll come back to my problems with the characters in a bit.
Simply put, 70% of the creative effort of this books seems to have gone into thinking up cool sounding weapons. It's got threshold winnowers, kaleidoscope bombs, amputation guns, logic grenades, scorch pistols, directional storm generators, fungal canisters, calendrical swords, dire cannons, erasure cannons, shatter grenades, carrion bombs, invariant ice, and that's honestly just a small sample of them. A lot of the book reads more like the description of a FPS DLC weapons pack than anything else. To be honest, this book would probably make for a pretty awesome video game. Lee is very inventive when it comes to the technology of the world.
All of that technology is dependent on the society adhering to a strict calendar system decided upon by the Hexarchate, a group of six rulers who represent the factions that make up the society's government, military, etc. Committing heresy against the calendar system has very real consequences, affecting the way that certain technologies function, which means that the Hexarchate has a vested interest in maintaining ironclad control over society. Each faction has a distinct ethos and distinct skills. The Kel are extremely loyal and disciplined, and make up the bulk of the fighting force; the Shuos are clever and manipulative and handle intelligence and espionage, etc. These factions cooperate and clash in predictable ways. The appearance is of a deep, complex ruling system ala the Seven Kingdoms in the ASOIAF series, but to me it all came across as little more than window dressing. Sure, it sounds nice and complex, but a lot of that is due to the jargon-y nature of Lee's writing. Once you strip that away you realize that the complexity is more implied than shown, and it seems to have little impact on the plot of this book, though hopefully that changes in the later books.
One of the most polarizing aspects of the book is the lack of exposition/clarification of the calendrical system and how it alters the reality of the world. The book really just drops you into the middle of things without any kind of handy glossary or expository dialogue to provide context. Personally, I prefer books that force the reader to figure things out as they go along, rather than slowing down the plot with often clunky explanations (looking at you, [b:Ready Player One|9969571|Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1)|Ernest Cline|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1500930947s/9969571.jpg|14863741]). That being said, the extreme obscurity of the language used warranted more explanation than was given.
I could have forgiven the book its obtuseness were it not for its single weakest point, the characters. Kel Cheris is by far one of the least interesting SF protagonists I have ever come across. Aside for her love of dramas and her soft spot towards servitors (helper robots) we learn next to nothing of note about her. I kept thinking that as the book progressed that more of her personality would show through, but if anything the opposite happened. It seems like Lee himself got tired of her, because starting around the halfway point we spend more time watching what random soldiers are doing and learning about Shuos Jedao's backstory. It's pretty obvious that Shuos Jedao is the only character that Lee really cares about, and that all he wanted from Cheris was for her to serve as a half-assed foil for him. I know a lot of reviewers point out the Jedao/Cheris conversations as one of the book's highlights, and I can see why, but I felt that they largely fell flat. I think there was a real opportunity to showcase the deep history of the society and how culture and people change over time, but instead their conversations are almost completely concerned with military tactics, and Jedao ends up sounding exactly like most of the modern day characters sound. It's a total waste. For an example of a similar character dynamic to Kel/Cheris that is handled way better, I would check out [b:Monstress, Vol. 1: Awakening|29396738|Monstress, Vol. 1 Awakening (Monstress, #1)|Marjorie M. Liu|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1471648131s/29396738.jpg|51531861]. Finally, the villain of the book is extremely disappointing. For the vast majority of the book they are relegated to a series of catty communications between them and the leader of the heresy. I found no reason to care about them at all, and the final confrontation (if you can even call it that) seemed like an afterthought intended largely to clear the slate for the sequel.
And that's maybe the biggest disappointment about the book. As some of the other reviewers pointed out, at the conclusion you realize that the entire story is a setup for the NEXT book, and pretty much everything that happened in this book is inconsequential. I really hope Raven Strategem improves on the character work, otherwise I'm going to be back with a similarly disappointed review in a couple of months.
gronklfluff's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
fast-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
4.0
kateofmind's review
I keep giving military SF a try but it keeps losing me. This had some intriguing variation on the theme but I got bored anyway.
gappedteeth's review against another edition
challenging
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
a bit confusing but the world and characters are a+
iamtuaig's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
ghostnayto's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.5
ratgrrrl's review against another edition
4.0
I don't have the brain to do this justice right now and everyone has said everything I could say with more eloquence, so I will probably come back to this at some point. But for now, I have so very many feelings about this book and how it has given me some perspective on my capacity to process and engage with certain things (due to my chronic conditions, severe ADHD, and listening to audiobooks, while playing Elden Ring as a way to keep my head above a protracted depressive episode), and how it's sometimes possible for me to have a personal and extremely subjective rating of a book, which I might end up rating differently because of its obvious quality and my experience of it being dictated by personal biases.
All that to say, I enjoyed this book and was blown away by the concepts, characters, and just how rich and realised everything and everyone was. It took me a long time to hooked on the main character and grounded in the detailed universe, and I just have to be honest that, as much as I love fantasy and sci-fi, the military and tactics of it all isn't my cup of tea. This and my own capacity issues meant that I struggled and was lost, which is very much on me, but the prose and inspiration always carried me through. Once the character dynamics became clear and continued to deepen I was absolutely hooked.
For the first half of the book I was feeling like this was a 3/5 for me, but a 4/5 actually, and ended up enjoying it so much the scores aligned. Honestly, this could be 5/5 and I'm just not the best person for this novel. I do plan to check out at least the next book in the series in the future and thoroughly recommend it to anyone who enjoys military and hard sci-fi.
The narration of the audiobook was really good. The voices and emotions were really effective. The only issue I had was the hard transition from character voice to abrupt and breaking the flow "they said". It's really jarring, but thankfully the author is great and there is very little repetition of that. This is something of a bugbear of mine.
So yeah, my brain is mush and this book is better then me.
All that to say, I enjoyed this book and was blown away by the concepts, characters, and just how rich and realised everything and everyone was. It took me a long time to hooked on the main character and grounded in the detailed universe, and I just have to be honest that, as much as I love fantasy and sci-fi, the military and tactics of it all isn't my cup of tea. This and my own capacity issues meant that I struggled and was lost, which is very much on me, but the prose and inspiration always carried me through. Once the character dynamics became clear and continued to deepen I was absolutely hooked.
For the first half of the book I was feeling like this was a 3/5 for me, but a 4/5 actually, and ended up enjoying it so much the scores aligned. Honestly, this could be 5/5 and I'm just not the best person for this novel. I do plan to check out at least the next book in the series in the future and thoroughly recommend it to anyone who enjoys military and hard sci-fi.
The narration of the audiobook was really good. The voices and emotions were really effective. The only issue I had was the hard transition from character voice to abrupt and breaking the flow "they said". It's really jarring, but thankfully the author is great and there is very little repetition of that. This is something of a bugbear of mine.
So yeah, my brain is mush and this book is better then me.