Reviews

The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson

sloanegrace's review

adventurous emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

4.75

dsollick's review

3.0

I wanted so badly to love this, and there are some really good concepts and ideas, but it felt stretched thin and turned into a slog.

klilla's review

mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes

1.5

nostoat's review against another edition

4.5

This book wasn't entirely what I wanted it to be and I think it did struggle a bit with pacing or... something. I almost stopped reading at the halfway mark, which would have been a mistake because WHAT a story! What a tale! I will always be enchanted by stories of not-humans insisting on humanity, and insisting on disrupting the norms of humanity. And I love stories about divinity. I feel like there are underpinnings to this book that I didn't quite grasp—a dive into quantum mechanics in the last fourth will do that to you—but I was deeply compelled by it regardless. I think this book has incredibly rich depths to be plumbed with a reading group, perhaps.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: War

Moderate: Sexual assault

ewc's review against another edition

adventurous dark inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

friendly_green_dragon's review

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

aleffert's review

3.0

I wanted to like this a lot, but it was slow and exposition heavy but also confusing and hard to follow because it dropped concepts without explaining them. Were they in cyberspace sometimes? What was the deal with their bodies? What the heck was the legal system + constitution stuff? I am not great at close reading, but I needed some damn sign posts.

And suddenly we're near the end and it's randomly going through a weird version of the double slit experiment to explain ummm something about the metaphysics of this universe. Parts of it were really brilliant, and I am all for communing with elder gods in an ancient library, but this felt like a first draft.

rhiannon_reads_books's review

challenging lighthearted mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

mizuka's review

4.0

Time exists ... just as space does. It exists even when we have passed from it.

Whoever categorised this book as Young Adult did it a great disservice. Same with the cover / blurb, which didn't make it apparent how heavily scifi it was going to be. Like a lot of modern scifi, it just throws words at you like "secondary AI", "nanodrop", "avatar" etc. with little warning and even less explanation of what these might actually mean in the concept of the book.

On top of that, the book delves quite deeply into physics -- it straight up discusses wavefunctions, entropy, locality and all that. I studied (or attempted to, anyway) some of quantum physics and thermodynamics in university, so I made it out OK, but I'm not sure how other readers would deal with all the talk of superposition and stuff.

The plot itself felt oddly listless -- there wasn't a central driving force pulling the plot forwards. I think the book would have benefitted from committing more fully to the One Thousand and One Nights-esque concept of the girl telling the god stories to delay death. Instead we have what looks very much like a traditional novel broken up by random interludes.

In spite of those, I definitely feel like this is a book worth finishing. By the end of the book the author comes into her own with the beautiful spirituality and lyrical cadence that recalled to me The Waste Land, especially the dialogue between the god and the girl

Spoiler

when they share a heart

.

missdibler's review

slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? N/A
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

I personally couldn't get on with how this book was written.  This is a DNF for me.