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dontsaycat's review
2.0
È stata una lettura gradevole, ma l'autore è molto ingenuo sia nella scrittura che nell'uso dei trope dei generi a cui si ispira, dunque il romanzo risulta un po' derivativo e poco credibile alle volte. Il fatto che il romanzo sia scritto in versi comunque non ostacola la lettura, anzi la rende più scorrevole, di questo ha senz'altro merito (lui e il traduttore Nicola Manuppelli).
kittyg's review
3.0
I was sent this free from the publisher, but that in no way affects my review.
This book is a tough one to rate but I think it just about gets a 3.5* rating. It's a very cool world with a lot of interesting and fairly original ideas. I haven't before encountered a book quite like it, but then I haven't read a huge deal of Sci-fi.
The city that we focus on for this story is called Vox. It's a dark place with very few sources of light and no Sun which brightens the way. The world is dark, dark, dark and there are all sorts of criminals and drugs running rampant. People have little hope, and it's a fairly nasty way to live or imagine living. I have to say that I thought the concept of a world without a Sun to be pretty bleak, but highly interesting.
The city of Vox is powered by three 'Hearts' which give out power. They're the main source of energy, and one of them is stolen at the beginning of this book leaving our main character, and Investigator, to try and figure out how it was stolen and what's happened. The plot reads a lot like the early Dresden Files books in that it's fairly crime focused with fantastical elements incorporated into the story.
The main character is called Virgil and he's well known around the City for a big case which he solved a while back. He's slowly gone down hill since his big break though, and has gradually slipped from grace and fallen into the world of Phos (a drug) and decline. He's a good investigator, but he;s clearly no longer respected by that many, and he has to face the reality of his own living situation and lifestyle if he faces any real chance of figuring out exactly what happened.
The only niggle I did have with this book was the structure. The story is written in Verse which would be pretty cool if it was rhyming (as I do think rhyming verse is always pretty exciting) however unfortunately all that the layout served to do in this one was be a BIG distraction. Because each line is capitalised whether or not it's the start of a sentence it makes it very disjointed and you get taken away from the message of the sentence often by the layout and format. I really struggled at first with this, and as it went on I became more adjusted. The other major issue was with the speech because whereas in a 'normal' book this would be laid out on different paragraphs for different characters, it was just thrown in one after another on the lines, making it once more very confusing, especially with the random capitals. Overall I felt that the formatting was added as an attempt to make this book different and interesting, but this backfired on the author and it wasn't really a good addition to the story. If this had been an average book, formatted in the usual way for a sci-fi, I think it could easily have been a 4* read, but it joust couldn't get that rating for the irritation I suffered from the layout.
On the whole I'd say that the story and characters were decent and that the concept was solid and interesting but the book let itself down with the layouts. The cover is beautiful and represents aspects of the book well, and the book is pretty good, but I just couldn't give it any more than 3.5*s for the style. An interesting read, worth checking out if you don't mind the formatting.
This book is a tough one to rate but I think it just about gets a 3.5* rating. It's a very cool world with a lot of interesting and fairly original ideas. I haven't before encountered a book quite like it, but then I haven't read a huge deal of Sci-fi.
The city that we focus on for this story is called Vox. It's a dark place with very few sources of light and no Sun which brightens the way. The world is dark, dark, dark and there are all sorts of criminals and drugs running rampant. People have little hope, and it's a fairly nasty way to live or imagine living. I have to say that I thought the concept of a world without a Sun to be pretty bleak, but highly interesting.
The city of Vox is powered by three 'Hearts' which give out power. They're the main source of energy, and one of them is stolen at the beginning of this book leaving our main character, and Investigator, to try and figure out how it was stolen and what's happened. The plot reads a lot like the early Dresden Files books in that it's fairly crime focused with fantastical elements incorporated into the story.
The main character is called Virgil and he's well known around the City for a big case which he solved a while back. He's slowly gone down hill since his big break though, and has gradually slipped from grace and fallen into the world of Phos (a drug) and decline. He's a good investigator, but he;s clearly no longer respected by that many, and he has to face the reality of his own living situation and lifestyle if he faces any real chance of figuring out exactly what happened.
The only niggle I did have with this book was the structure. The story is written in Verse which would be pretty cool if it was rhyming (as I do think rhyming verse is always pretty exciting) however unfortunately all that the layout served to do in this one was be a BIG distraction. Because each line is capitalised whether or not it's the start of a sentence it makes it very disjointed and you get taken away from the message of the sentence often by the layout and format. I really struggled at first with this, and as it went on I became more adjusted. The other major issue was with the speech because whereas in a 'normal' book this would be laid out on different paragraphs for different characters, it was just thrown in one after another on the lines, making it once more very confusing, especially with the random capitals. Overall I felt that the formatting was added as an attempt to make this book different and interesting, but this backfired on the author and it wasn't really a good addition to the story. If this had been an average book, formatted in the usual way for a sci-fi, I think it could easily have been a 4* read, but it joust couldn't get that rating for the irritation I suffered from the layout.
On the whole I'd say that the story and characters were decent and that the concept was solid and interesting but the book let itself down with the layouts. The cover is beautiful and represents aspects of the book well, and the book is pretty good, but I just couldn't give it any more than 3.5*s for the style. An interesting read, worth checking out if you don't mind the formatting.
cina's review
4.0
Langmead's ambitious verse delivers a synergy of Blade Runner and Tron, forged beneath a Dick Tracy hammer. It's well written, well paced, and the world of Vox is imaginative. Looking forward to reading more by this author.
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