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celestriakle's review
dark
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
1.0
Jesus christ, what an absolute disaster of a book. Let me preface with this: I enjoyed Gideon the Ninth. In that book, Harrow might have been my favorite character. I was excited to read this. And instead of getting what I wanted, I was given this absolute shitshow.
Let's start with my biggest complaint: absolutely fucking nothing happens for the first 60% of this book. That's not even an exaggeration; I was reading on an e-reader and the first time I felt even a spark of interest at the goings-ons was 60%. Most of the mysteries that are presented in the first part of the book are either easily solved or not actually relevant (it's never actually important to understand thanergy vs thalergy, though the book goes to great pains to explain this repeatedly), leaving the reader with absolutely nothing to engage with. I don't know how you make killing a planet or diving through a river of souls boring, but Muir sure managed it. The only thing that kept me going was a desire to know that my assumptions were correct.
You needed one, maybe two Caanan house chapters to get the point across, but no, instead they intercut current-events with this AU every other chapter for the first two Acts, and every time I reached one, it ground the pacing to a halt. It's not subtle what these chapters are doing; the broad strokes of the mystery are very easy to solve (even if the details aren't). I didn't care about this AU Caanan House; it wasn't important and most of their content ultimately had very little relevance on the revelations they gave.
Meanwhile, the actual current present is hardly more interesting. Harrow goes from being this active character trying to figure things out in GTN to doing fuck all and, quite literally, getting dragged around the plot. She shuffles around being confused and helpless and sad and useless. Now, I get she has reasons to be sad and scared, that's fine, but she does nothing. That is not the Harrow I know. Harrow does things scared. Harrow is an active participant in her own plot. Reading this, the dialogue hardly sounded like her own voice, and I just didn't care for her plight. Somehow, they'd made my favorite character boring. (And for clarity, I love a moping character who doesn't want to do things. Shinji Ikari is my favoritest boy. But that personality is NOT the one I fell in love with Harrow for, and even Shinji is still a dynamic part of his plot. Harrow isn't. People talk around Harrow and she barely engages with any of it.)
Now, if they had surrounded Harrow with an enjoyable cast, this might have been fine. But Ianthe, Mercymorn, and Augustine are all bland and insufferable, and worse, they're all the same character copy/pasted three times. There were multiple occasions where I got confused about who was talking or doing something because their personalities were so similar. They were unpleasant (again, a thing I often like, Silas was great in Gideon), annoying, and I never had any reason to care about them. It's baffling how Muir managed this because one of the strong points of GTN was that each part of that massive cast had really strong characterization; everyone felt unique and immediately engaging, no matter how little they ended up being on screen. (Oh, and I can't forget to mention the Saint of Duty, who had scarcely any personality at all. At least God was interesting, but he appeared least of the five.)
It's also worth mentioning that it is well-known, in this book, memes appear. That's cool. That's fine. Except for the moments they're used? "None pizza left beef", "hi hungry im dad", and "jail for mother" all make a cameo, and frankly, I'm baffled at their inclusion. Why, in god's name, are they mentioned when they are. All three appear at critical, emotionally heavy moments where they are a meta-joke. The character referencing them isn't actually making a reference or joke intentionally; it's just for you, the reader. (Except maybe the dad one.) None pizza left beef made me put the book down for a week because it was so inappropriate and completely shattered the mood of the emotional revelation it was a part of.
Here's what I will say: at 60% the book does start to get engaging. At 80%, it becomes the book I'd been wanting to read all along. It sucked me in; it had everything I wanted. Characters I loved appeared; new characters I enjoyed appeared; people were making choices and progressing the action. There were new mysteries to dissect, and I was finally getting the answers I wanted. Characters were developing and I was seeing new and interesting sides of everyone. The final climax is so good, I was absolutely riveted.
And then the book just stops. This book does not have an ending. Literally, in the middle of the climax, it just ends. Maybe I should have seen this coming since Gideon did something similar, but at least in Gideon, the fight was over and the bast majority of mysteries got answered. Here, the characters are still trapped in life-or-death situations. And it just ends. You get nothing. In my opinion, if you're writing a book series, you don't need to give all the answers, but between books should be a resting point. There should be closing action and a pause point. If you just stop in the middle of your climax, you've fucked up, and you've left me as a reader absolutely furious. I read this whole slog of a book for that climax, and it finally got me invested, and it just ends. Friends and family encouraged me to persevere, and it was not worth it.
As a side note, it's worth mentioning how incredibly creepy and weird Muir is about fat people. The cast of GTN is huge, and more characters appear in this book, and still, the only one who isn't thin is Ortus. Particularly in the beginning of the book, the language used to describe and refer to Ortus is deeply, deeply offensive. He gets some vindication by the end, but he still spends most of the book being abused by the narration and with his fatness closely tied to his laziness and cowardice.
Having said all that, my last caveat is this: it took me 6 months to read this book. (I took breaks and stopped periodically.) Most of the friends who I spoke with finished this book in less than a week. If you are the sort of reader who finishes books at high speeds, the pacing issues that drained me will likely be a nonissue for you.
Let's start with my biggest complaint: absolutely fucking nothing happens for the first 60% of this book. That's not even an exaggeration; I was reading on an e-reader and the first time I felt even a spark of interest at the goings-ons was 60%. Most of the mysteries that are presented in the first part of the book are either easily solved or not actually relevant (it's never actually important to understand thanergy vs thalergy, though the book goes to great pains to explain this repeatedly), leaving the reader with absolutely nothing to engage with. I don't know how you make killing a planet or diving through a river of souls boring, but Muir sure managed it. The only thing that kept me going was a desire to know that my assumptions were correct.
You needed one, maybe two Caanan house chapters to get the point across, but no, instead they intercut current-events with this AU every other chapter for the first two Acts, and every time I reached one, it ground the pacing to a halt. It's not subtle what these chapters are doing; the broad strokes of the mystery are very easy to solve (even if the details aren't). I didn't care about this AU Caanan House; it wasn't important and most of their content ultimately had very little relevance on the revelations they gave.
Meanwhile, the actual current present is hardly more interesting. Harrow goes from being this active character trying to figure things out in GTN to doing fuck all and, quite literally, getting dragged around the plot. She shuffles around being confused and helpless and sad and useless. Now, I get she has reasons to be sad and scared, that's fine, but she does nothing. That is not the Harrow I know. Harrow does things scared. Harrow is an active participant in her own plot. Reading this, the dialogue hardly sounded like her own voice, and I just didn't care for her plight. Somehow, they'd made my favorite character boring. (And for clarity, I love a moping character who doesn't want to do things. Shinji Ikari is my favoritest boy. But that personality is NOT the one I fell in love with Harrow for, and even Shinji is still a dynamic part of his plot. Harrow isn't. People talk around Harrow and she barely engages with any of it.)
Now, if they had surrounded Harrow with an enjoyable cast, this might have been fine. But Ianthe, Mercymorn, and Augustine are all bland and insufferable, and worse, they're all the same character copy/pasted three times. There were multiple occasions where I got confused about who was talking or doing something because their personalities were so similar. They were unpleasant (again, a thing I often like, Silas was great in Gideon), annoying, and I never had any reason to care about them. It's baffling how Muir managed this because one of the strong points of GTN was that each part of that massive cast had really strong characterization; everyone felt unique and immediately engaging, no matter how little they ended up being on screen. (Oh, and I can't forget to mention the Saint of Duty, who had scarcely any personality at all. At least God was interesting, but he appeared least of the five.)
It's also worth mentioning that it is well-known, in this book, memes appear. That's cool. That's fine. Except for the moments they're used? "None pizza left beef", "hi hungry im dad", and "jail for mother" all make a cameo, and frankly, I'm baffled at their inclusion. Why, in god's name, are they mentioned when they are. All three appear at critical, emotionally heavy moments where they are a meta-joke. The character referencing them isn't actually making a reference or joke intentionally; it's just for you, the reader. (Except maybe the dad one.) None pizza left beef made me put the book down for a week because it was so inappropriate and completely shattered the mood of the emotional revelation it was a part of.
Here's what I will say: at 60% the book does start to get engaging. At 80%, it becomes the book I'd been wanting to read all along. It sucked me in; it had everything I wanted. Characters I loved appeared; new characters I enjoyed appeared; people were making choices and progressing the action. There were new mysteries to dissect, and I was finally getting the answers I wanted. Characters were developing and I was seeing new and interesting sides of everyone. The final climax is so good, I was absolutely riveted.
And then the book just stops. This book does not have an ending. Literally, in the middle of the climax, it just ends. Maybe I should have seen this coming since Gideon did something similar, but at least in Gideon, the fight was over and the bast majority of mysteries got answered. Here, the characters are still trapped in life-or-death situations. And it just ends. You get nothing. In my opinion, if you're writing a book series, you don't need to give all the answers, but between books should be a resting point. There should be closing action and a pause point. If you just stop in the middle of your climax, you've fucked up, and you've left me as a reader absolutely furious. I read this whole slog of a book for that climax, and it finally got me invested, and it just ends. Friends and family encouraged me to persevere, and it was not worth it.
As a side note, it's worth mentioning how incredibly creepy and weird Muir is about fat people. The cast of GTN is huge, and more characters appear in this book, and still, the only one who isn't thin is Ortus. Particularly in the beginning of the book, the language used to describe and refer to Ortus is deeply, deeply offensive. He gets some vindication by the end, but he still spends most of the book being abused by the narration and with his fatness closely tied to his laziness and cowardice.
Having said all that, my last caveat is this: it took me 6 months to read this book. (I took breaks and stopped periodically.) Most of the friends who I spoke with finished this book in less than a week. If you are the sort of reader who finishes books at high speeds, the pacing issues that drained me will likely be a nonissue for you.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Gore, Fatphobia, and Violence
There are more content warnings but I can't remember them all.
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