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tessisreading2's review against another edition
2.0
More interesting than readable, unfortunately. This is one of those science-fiction-turned-fantasy settings, where the world is an abandoned colony, so while the names are Earth-based and the tech level is a mishmash of futuristic and ancient, the setting is totally fantasy-like. One of the biggest problems for me, straight off the bat, was the proliferation of apostrophes; I think this guy wrote Star Trek books and, like, it may work for Vulcans but come on. A'leigh'na? Please, can you just do "Alena"? It's a stylistic tic that drives me nuts.
My larger issue with the book was the lack of viewpoint. The author's note at the end was what it took for this to make sense: on the one hand, he's writing mostly from the point of view of members of an extremely violent military caste who are being threatened by a populist psychopath; on the other hand, he really doesn't shy away from how stupid and insane said military caste is. Like, the populist psychopath kind of has a point. The ending is extremely rushed and. But you never really get a sense of where the author is coming from on this. Individual characters are good or bad or in-between, but the writing style is more remote and epic and involves a lot of philosophical debates, so the fact that there's no real side chosen there just makes the whole thing seem weird.
The author's note, mentioned earlier, makes all this make a lot more sense - the author is a Russian, presumably descended from White Russian emigres, who grew up in the US, and this book is an outgrowth of his conversations with Soviet Russians. Got it. Because on the one hand imperial Russia was a cesspool of autocracy and violence, and on the other hand the Russian Revolution was nuts and the Soviet Union was also a cesspool of prejudice and violence. It's really hard to come to a point of view when you look at the revolutionary period (which is essentially when this book is set, a revolutionary period) because, like, the tsarist forces were always happy to take some time off to pogrom the local Jews, but the communists were busy throwing "class enemies" down mineshafts to starve to death. It was all just awful. And that's kind of where this book lands, the stuff that happens is all just awful. Unfortunately, I think this actually makes it sound more interesting than it is, because the characterizations are very flat, the dialogue isn't particularly strong, and those names make it hard to get through. So, like, an interesting book, but I don't get the sense the author was really sure where he was going. And he should have taken out the apostrophes.
My larger issue with the book was the lack of viewpoint. The author's note at the end was what it took for this to make sense: on the one hand, he's writing mostly from the point of view of members of an extremely violent military caste who are being threatened by a populist psychopath; on the other hand, he really doesn't shy away from how stupid and insane said military caste is. Like, the populist psychopath kind of has a point. The ending is extremely rushed and
Spoiler
ends with basically the extinguishing of said violent military caste and the corrupt nobility who propped it up, but also with the deaths of the populist psychopath because otherwise it would be sadThe author's note, mentioned earlier, makes all this make a lot more sense - the author is a Russian, presumably descended from White Russian emigres, who grew up in the US, and this book is an outgrowth of his conversations with Soviet Russians. Got it. Because on the one hand imperial Russia was a cesspool of autocracy and violence, and on the other hand the Russian Revolution was nuts and the Soviet Union was also a cesspool of prejudice and violence. It's really hard to come to a point of view when you look at the revolutionary period (which is essentially when this book is set, a revolutionary period) because, like, the tsarist forces were always happy to take some time off to pogrom the local Jews, but the communists were busy throwing "class enemies" down mineshafts to starve to death. It was all just awful. And that's kind of where this book lands, the stuff that happens is all just awful. Unfortunately, I think this actually makes it sound more interesting than it is, because the characterizations are very flat, the dialogue isn't particularly strong, and those names make it hard to get through. So, like, an interesting book, but I don't get the sense the author was really sure where he was going. And he should have taken out the apostrophes.
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