Reviews

After Children of Time absolutely knocked my socks off, I had to jump on Shards, especially after it became a BSFA winner. And what a fun, action-packed ride it was. This book retained all of the intricate world-building of CoT, blending it with colourful space opera, producing something that takes inspiration from Star Wars, Final Fantasy, and The Fifth Element. Big space battles, political intrigue, Lovecraftian horror, with a smattering of courtroom drama, police procedural, and a whodunnit. There are excellent commentaries throughout this book on freedom/slavery, prejudice, authority, knowledge, and disability. Speaking of the latter, the diversity and rep in this novel, and the dedicated and thoughtful characterisation, is brilliant. The rag-tag crew of the Vulture God have my heart: a complex and endearing bunch of spacefarers if I ever I saw them.

Also, I love the fact that this book leans into the fantastical a bit more. We wouldn't have got such cool stuff as "unspace" and Intermediaries otherwise (or at least not very easily, had it gone the more scientific route).

Only a small dampener: there were some parts of this novel that were gruesome, violent, and disturbing – had to cringe my way through them. Also some of the Intermediary-focused parts (without giving too much away) were mentally intense... if you read the book you might find that statement a bit ironic...! Although I did power through the last 150 pages while under the weight of COVID, which maybe is another reason why it felt heavy going. So I'm not going to blame the book at all! It was fast-paced, swashbuckling, good fun. :)

mortcheval's review against another edition

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Really dense and hard to get into. Sorry seemed interesting at times but I felt like the meandering prose and drawn out writing style just led to my thoughts drifting off

eayelizabeth's review

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adventurous mysterious slow-paced

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

3.0

I really wanted to love this book but just never could get fully into it. The world building (universe building) is clearly an absolute feat but the characters never felt like they had distinct voices and there was little growth. The plot meandered along, always just a bit shy of hitting the mark for me and leaving the interesting bits in favour of more action scenes. Just not for me, but I respected the craft of it all the same.

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