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caryndi's review
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
At the end of this book, I think maybe in the author's notes, the author says something about how it was based on a dream and that was a real, "oh, yeah, that tracks" moment for me. Because it felt like a dream, in that way where you have a GREAT dream and then you wake up an think on it and notice all the holes in whatever your brain was doing while you were asleep.
I would have DNFed this were it not an insomnia read (if I gave up on it I would have had to find another book and I didn't feel like sorting through my TBR at the time). There were a lot of things about this book that didn't hit for me. It was vaguely steampunk/fantasy with the requisite genre conventions (airships, another humanoid species) but the world seemed very thinly thought out.
I also had a hard time figuring out what the author wanted us to think about the main character. Minor spoilers for his political arc:He was part of a government that was wiling to gas protestors (bad!). But then when he was in charge of "defending" against a protest he made the decision not to do that (good!). So now he's being punished and he's upset because he liked being part of that government (sympathetic?). But he's not actually being punished, he's being tested as a future ruler because he speaks his own mind (good?). So maybe someday he can be in charge of that horrible government (???)!
Then there were the women. Oh boy. Aside from those who were offscreen (I believe we had a ruler who was a woman) we had a) the protagonist's dead sister, who he still talked to in his head/we got some flashbacks to but was mostly a plot device that helped him understand his name; 2) the sexy other-species woman with the SAME NAME as his sister who was the lover of another political figure beforeshe fell in love with our protagonist (I have no idea why tbh, but it could have been because he gave her the absolute minimum attention) , and the chief engineer of the titular tower, who the protagonist weirdly assumed was in love with him (?) but she was not, but she did fuck up big with the tower and needed his help to save her ass . They rarely felt like real people. Mostly they just felt like they existed to need the protagonist so he could feel important.
And THEN we had the....progression? of the protagonist through the book. Obvious spoilers here:He went to this outer province to help build a tower for defense against enemy airships. Then he spent his time waffling between whether it should be built or not. He threatened to report that it was failing, then he figured out it had been sabotaged and offered solutions, then he decided to sabotage it for his sexy lover, then he decided to NOT sabotage it so he could be in charge someday, then he blew the whole thing up. It felt like a lot of unnecessary back-and-forth—at the end of the book, he mentioned doing a political "dance" so maybe it was supposed to be that? But to me it just made him feel indecisive and not like he was driven by anything.
As a whole, this book was strange in that it kept introducing "conflicts" that were way too easy to solve. An example: Early on in the book, the MC faces an assassination attempt, that he's able to escape. And then no one tries to assassinate him again because the first guy failed? It would have made more sense for this to be an ongoing conflict rather than the MC's wavering overwhat to do with the tower and the magic that was powering it .
Anyway, that was a lot of words to say that I didn't enjoy this book and wouldn't recommend it.
I would have DNFed this were it not an insomnia read (if I gave up on it I would have had to find another book and I didn't feel like sorting through my TBR at the time). There were a lot of things about this book that didn't hit for me. It was vaguely steampunk/fantasy with the requisite genre conventions (airships, another humanoid species) but the world seemed very thinly thought out.
I also had a hard time figuring out what the author wanted us to think about the main character. Minor spoilers for his political arc:
Then there were the women. Oh boy. Aside from those who were offscreen (I believe we had a ruler who was a woman) we had a) the protagonist's dead sister, who he still talked to in his head/we got some flashbacks to but was mostly a plot device that helped him understand his name; 2) the sexy other-species woman with the SAME NAME as his sister who was the lover of another political figure before
And THEN we had the....progression? of the protagonist through the book. Obvious spoilers here:
As a whole, this book was strange in that it kept introducing "conflicts" that were way too easy to solve. An example: Early on in the book, the MC faces an assassination attempt, that he's able to escape. And then no one tries to assassinate him again because the first guy failed? It would have made more sense for this to be an ongoing conflict rather than the MC's wavering over
Anyway, that was a lot of words to say that I didn't enjoy this book and wouldn't recommend it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Alcohol, Alcoholism, Violence, Xenophobia, and Death
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