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lanid's review against another edition
adventurous
reflective
tense
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Content Warnings
Moderate: Injury/Injury detail, Gore, Genocide, Body horror, Violence, Blood, and Torture
Minor: War, Suicidal thoughts, Slavery, and Sexual content
bluejayreads's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
I’ve been in a reading slump for a while. I DNF’ed Warbreaker, I listened to a couple 12-hour lecture series, “read” an entire book of philosophical essays while retaining none of it, DNF’ed another book that I didn’t bother to review, and none of the books I had available to me sounded interesting. Eventually I gave my husband a brief summary of all the books I had available and asked him to pick for me, and he picked this one.
And I’m so glad he did. This book is 20 hours long and I enjoyed every moment of it.
Viv is a fantastic protagonist. She has no idea what’s happening and she desperately wants to get home, but she didn’t become a tech billionaire twice by avoiding action and moaning about the life she left behind, and she absolutely is not going to let a little thing like not understanding how this weird new world works stop her from getting what she wants. She is in many ways the weakest member of the “team” she’s gathered, but she makes up for it in tenacity, being The One In Charge, and some strange powers of her own. She is also very flawed as a human being, but she is forced to address it.
The rest of the “team” are also amazing. There’s a cat-woman with a temper who also happens to be a legendary villain who destroyed whole stars in her heyday; a monk (the martial arts kind) who has sorta-kinda gone rogue from his order but not really; a tribal chieftain’s daughter who is also a spaceship; and a sentient AI whose body is entirely made up of nanobots that take whatever shape he wants. They’re all unique and fantastic and I love how the dynamic develops between them and each other and them and Viv.
I also absolutely love the setting. It’s space, so it’s very sci-fi and high tech, but each place they land is a new culture, a new setting, a new world with its own people and quirks and history. There’s peaceful agrarian socialist planets, tribal warriors developed out of the wreckage of high-tech civilizations, and dead fleets floating in space. Each moment of travel is a brand new adventure and yet every place felt vibrant and fully-realized.
If you want plot twists, this book has plot twists. There were no less than three times where I nearly said “holy shit” out loud because there was a new revelation and suddenly it all made sense. I definitely could have seen them coming, but I didn’t. This book also holds the record for earliest fake-out ending – I thought I must be getting close to the end, then I checked the timestamp and realized I was only 63% in and there was still 7 hours of adventure left.
There’s so many twists and revelations that I don’t feel I can say much about the plot itself without giving something away. But it is absolutely worth experiencing for yourself. “Guardians of the Galaxy” is a fairly apt comparison, although because of the Empress I think “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” is more accurate. If you like found families, awesome high-tech space settings, sci-fi that almost but not quite feels like magic, brilliant characters who have to face their flaws, and/or multiple plot twists, you’ll like this book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Body horror, Kidnapping, Genocide, and Violence
Moderate: Confinement, Torture, and Blood
Minor: Sexual content and Vomit
Existential dread, drowning, cisnormative languagepolychromatic_hedgehog_parable's review
adventurous
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.25
i do not remember how i used to enjoy books this long. this book was very long. the pacing felt slow to me.
very queer.
ugh, the first few chapters with all the evil tech references was pure gold. References persist throughout the book at a smaller rate and they were beautiful.
How does someone say "I know about the place that you come from!" and then you never ask them about it????
Viv frequently made leaps in logic, and I realize that this was her characterization, but it might have been more interesting if she had failed with consequences once or twice, or if the individual reveals were more logical/satisfying.
idk if I missed something but the "my home must be in the rosary bead" leap at the beginning, which underpinned the rest of the plot, was too much for me. why put in so much sacrifice to complete a task without much data to support that its completion will get you what you want?
also, for all the work that was put into handling translations and atmosphere, similar work could have been put into nutrition, gravitational force, temperature, etc? even just like, reflecting on the homogeneity of organisms then waiving it away lol. Maybe this is just part of the space opera genre, and I'm getting a bit too hung up on details?
MIRRORS
very queer.
ugh, the first few chapters with all the evil tech references was pure gold. References persist throughout the book at a smaller rate and they were beautiful.
How does someone say "I know about the place that you come from!" and then you never ask them about it????
Viv frequently made leaps in logic, and I realize that this was her characterization, but it might have been more interesting if she had failed with consequences once or twice, or if the individual reveals were more logical/satisfying.
idk if I missed something but the "my home must be in the rosary bead" leap at the beginning, which underpinned the rest of the plot, was too much for me. why put in so much sacrifice to complete a task without much data to support that its completion will get you what you want?
also, for all the work that was put into handling translations and atmosphere, similar work could have been put into nutrition, gravitational force, temperature, etc? even just like, reflecting on the homogeneity of organisms then waiving it away lol. Maybe this is just part of the space opera genre, and I'm getting a bit too hung up on details?
MIRRORS
Content Warnings
Moderate: Confinement and Torture
Minor: Blood, Body horror, and Vomit
spidersbooksthatburn's review against another edition
I think what turned me off of this book is I was initially very stoked for Vivian's covert exit from her life, the intrigue of managing anonymity after being so famous. Emotionally I was all set for something that felt like a heist and then the book abruptly transforms into something else. I was fully absorbed into the first set of rules and then just couldn't make the pivot into the galaxy-hopping ragtag band story.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Confinement, Blood, Violence, Torture, and Death
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