Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.84 AVERAGE
3.84 AVERAGE
Very curious book, left me with a lot to think about, not sure how much I liked it because of some of the morbidity.
I love this series so much. I was very anxious about this sequel because of how much I loved the first one but it did not disappoint. I keep trying to write the rest of this review and stumbling all over myself so hopefully more to follow.
adventurous
emotional
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
ohhooho the exploration of identity... the relationship btwn self and the body..... the ethical dilemmas around the AIs........ the posthumanism of it all.... TASTY
While The Swan Riders was a well matched sequel to The Scorpion Rules, I found that I had similar issues surrounding the technological dystopian theme. At certain points the advanced workings of the AI’s were not explained as well as they could have been, and I was forced to stop and think/ even double back in order to make sense of what I just read. However, individuals who take delight in technological advancements and what they could mean for the future of our world may very well take delight in this series.
*I received an advanced reader copy of this book from Indigo Books & Music Inc. in exchange for an honest review*
*I received an advanced reader copy of this book from Indigo Books & Music Inc. in exchange for an honest review*
I spent the last 50% of this book raging in disappointment. [b:The Scorpion Rules|11516221|The Scorpion Rules (Prisoners of Peace, #1)|Erin Bow|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1428689952s/11516221.jpg|16452676] was excellent; an interesting premise, an engaging and strong main character, and a strong plot that brought you along at a fast pace. None of that is present in [b:The Swan Riders|26409580|The Swan Riders (Prisoners of Peace, #2)|Erin Bow|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1457761446s/26409580.jpg|46414238].
At the end of the previous book, to save her own life and that of her fellow condemned Prisoner of Peace Elian, the main character Greta willingly became an artificial intelligence. While the first bit of the book dealt with how she adapted to her new expansive intelligence and inhuman experiences, Greta quickly became a background character in her own story. She went from a quiet but compassionate and firm natural leader to a passive person who was largely reduced to saying character names in an admonishing tone. Taking away an aspect of a character needs to be countered with the elevation of another aspect, if it's not, you just end up with a shadow character. That's what we got in this book: a shadow character. Perhaps it was intentional, perhaps not, but it didn't engage me.
For me, the plot of The Swan Riders was weak for one reason: Talis. I found it very, very hard to care about an AI that had spent the last few centuries committing genocide, mass murder, and ritual child murder as ways to force peace onto a resistant world. I didn't care that he was in pain or his 'journey'. It's like how the Star Wars prequels tried to make Darth Vader a sympathetic character: sorry, but petulant fascism is not interesting to me.
The Swan Riders are young. Talis created an army of children to serve as beasts of burden when he wished to take a human form, burning them up quickly and painfully. In hundreds of years, he'd never thought to ask how it felt for them to be ridden. It's hard to care about Talis or Michael or whomever, when his entire ideal of world peace revolves around children dying.
Ultimately, the entire book felt far too slow to me, taking ages to get to self-evident points. It took until the end chapter to really get to the point: that peace through terror is not peace. That soldiers will willingly die for you if you give them respect. That blowing up entire cities over and over again, century after century, accomplishes nothing. Surprise.
A disappointing sequel all in all.
At the end of the previous book, to save her own life and that of her fellow condemned Prisoner of Peace Elian, the main character Greta willingly became an artificial intelligence. While the first bit of the book dealt with how she adapted to her new expansive intelligence and inhuman experiences, Greta quickly became a background character in her own story. She went from a quiet but compassionate and firm natural leader to a passive person who was largely reduced to saying character names in an admonishing tone. Taking away an aspect of a character needs to be countered with the elevation of another aspect, if it's not, you just end up with a shadow character. That's what we got in this book: a shadow character. Perhaps it was intentional, perhaps not, but it didn't engage me.
For me, the plot of The Swan Riders was weak for one reason: Talis. I found it very, very hard to care about an AI that had spent the last few centuries committing genocide, mass murder, and ritual child murder as ways to force peace onto a resistant world. I didn't care that he was in pain or his 'journey'. It's like how the Star Wars prequels tried to make Darth Vader a sympathetic character: sorry, but petulant fascism is not interesting to me.
The Swan Riders are young. Talis created an army of children to serve as beasts of burden when he wished to take a human form, burning them up quickly and painfully. In hundreds of years, he'd never thought to ask how it felt for them to be ridden. It's hard to care about Talis or Michael or whomever, when his entire ideal of world peace revolves around children dying.
Ultimately, the entire book felt far too slow to me, taking ages to get to self-evident points. It took until the end chapter to really get to the point: that peace through terror is not peace. That soldiers will willingly die for you if you give them respect. That blowing up entire cities over and over again, century after century, accomplishes nothing. Surprise.
A disappointing sequel all in all.
Part of me thinks I should have reread The Scorpion Rules before reading this, and part of me thinks it wouldn't have helped all that much. It might be the fact that I am perpetually wading through peri-menopausal brain fog at the moment, but I found it really hard to keep track of the A.I. personalities who borrowed bodies, and keep the A.I. separate from the bodies, and then there was more than one Talis and jesus, forget about it. I didn't enjoy this as much as The Scorpion Rules. I did like the ethical debates, and the back-and-forth between Greta and Talis, the immortal, towering intelligence that has to take more than just human feelings into account without (hopefully) becoming a monster, and the witty banter. But as a story it didn't hang together quite as well. Plain Kate is still Bow's masterpiece, in my opinion.
I thought this book was horrifyingly emotional, brutally inventive, and powerfully disturbing. I didn't realize it was the second in a series because the storytelling style fit the mysterious expressions of humanity I was picking up.
Want to see more from me? Check out my Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCferU-BCL2dlFjWdD0rS75Q/videos?view_as=subscriber
Just like book 1, Tallis was by far my favourite part of the story. He is sassy and sarcastic and I love the little comments he makes throughout the book. He's very similar to Deadpool in my opinion, AND I LOVE DEADPOOL. Greta really annoyed me in this book. She didn' t seem to have an ounce of personality and I just did not care what she was doing or what happened to her.
I was very disappointed that Xie was no longer in the book. She is mentioned from time to time but we never see her. The possible relationship between Xie and Greta was a big reason why I loved book 1 so much.
The pacing was weird overall. For most of the book, I was confused with what was going on and why something had happened. I would have given this around a 2/2.5 but I just love Tallis so much he deserves that 3 star.
Just like book 1, Tallis was by far my favourite part of the story. He is sassy and sarcastic and I love the little comments he makes throughout the book. He's very similar to Deadpool in my opinion, AND I LOVE DEADPOOL. Greta really annoyed me in this book. She didn' t seem to have an ounce of personality and I just did not care what she was doing or what happened to her.
I was very disappointed that Xie was no longer in the book. She is mentioned from time to time but we never see her. The possible relationship between Xie and Greta was a big reason why I loved book 1 so much.
The pacing was weird overall. For most of the book, I was confused with what was going on and why something had happened. I would have given this around a 2/2.5 but I just love Tallis so much he deserves that 3 star.
I've been to a few plays in foreign languages. It's always an interesting experience because I never manage to truly get the plot and yet, I feel things. I feel anger, suspense, fear and humor, even when I don't understand quite why. Reading this book was exactly like that.
Admittedly, I'm not a huge sci-fi fan because scientific stuff requires an effort for me to understand. When I'm reading sci-fi, I tend to skim over the sciencey things and focus on the point, on the characters and plot.
The sci-fi that I enjoy is generally the type that eases you in. They explain everything simply and play on concepts in such a way that as the technology evolves, you're right there with them. Unwind is a classic example of a book that does this well.
With this book, I couldn't follow at all. Maybe I'm not scientifically minded but I was so lost. I didn't get why things happened, didn't understand exactly what happened and why. I managed to get the consequences but heck, I have no idea why things had to happen this way. I don't know if I'm the only one who's feeling this way.
That said, I was there with them on this adventure. I loved reading about Talis, loved everything about Elián, loved how we get to know FX and his love. I would have loved to know more. The best bits to me were those we got to see them as people.
Even if the plot didn't make sense to me and the characters could use more development, the writing is so compelling. It works. I would probably read anything this author wrote and enjoy it. If the writing wasn't this good, there's no way I would have managed to finish this book (especially this fast).
I think there were themes in this book that weren't explored at all. I feel that the author has this technological concept but hasn't developed it at all. We can't enjoy the game if we aren't clear on the rules. Moreover, we won't care if the rules are broken. So it was a little bit of a mess. Like you have ideas such as rebellion, what a name means, what is knowledge, what's the responsibility of a leader, what does being human mean but all of these aren't developed enough and the technology doesn't help at all.
All in all, I'm sorry. The first book was so good. I think this needed to be worked on more. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading this.
what I'm taking with me
• There was a moment a terminal spoke? What
• I would read a book about Eilán's farming adventures.
• Where was Xie??? Where was the gay?? The other princes and princesses added a lot to the first book.
• Greta is suffering a little bit from the "super appreciated character" syndrome, I don't understand what makes her so special.
• The snark is strong in this book. It's wonderful.
Admittedly, I'm not a huge sci-fi fan because scientific stuff requires an effort for me to understand. When I'm reading sci-fi, I tend to skim over the sciencey things and focus on the point, on the characters and plot.
The sci-fi that I enjoy is generally the type that eases you in. They explain everything simply and play on concepts in such a way that as the technology evolves, you're right there with them. Unwind is a classic example of a book that does this well.
With this book, I couldn't follow at all. Maybe I'm not scientifically minded but I was so lost. I didn't get why things happened, didn't understand exactly what happened and why. I managed to get the consequences but heck, I have no idea why things had to happen this way. I don't know if I'm the only one who's feeling this way.
That said, I was there with them on this adventure. I loved reading about Talis, loved everything about Elián, loved how we get to know FX and his love. I would have loved to know more. The best bits to me were those we got to see them as people.
Even if the plot didn't make sense to me and the characters could use more development, the writing is so compelling. It works. I would probably read anything this author wrote and enjoy it. If the writing wasn't this good, there's no way I would have managed to finish this book (especially this fast).
I think there were themes in this book that weren't explored at all. I feel that the author has this technological concept but hasn't developed it at all. We can't enjoy the game if we aren't clear on the rules. Moreover, we won't care if the rules are broken. So it was a little bit of a mess. Like you have ideas such as rebellion, what a name means, what is knowledge, what's the responsibility of a leader, what does being human mean but all of these aren't developed enough and the technology doesn't help at all.
All in all, I'm sorry. The first book was so good. I think this needed to be worked on more. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading this.
what I'm taking with me
• There was a moment a terminal spoke? What
• I would read a book about Eilán's farming adventures.
• Where was Xie??? Where was the gay?? The other princes and princesses added a lot to the first book.
• Greta is suffering a little bit from the "super appreciated character" syndrome, I don't understand what makes her so special.
• The snark is strong in this book. It's wonderful.