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3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
I wasn't strong enough, this just isn't a well crafted novel, massive passing issues and some very mid writing. It being advertised at Joan of Arc in space was also a mistake because I feel like this books just massively misunderstands Joan of Arc. Instead of believing that she is divinely chosen Misery is convinced she's actually hallucinating, I'm assuming for a reveal that she isn't and it's just done really poorly. But taking the religiosity out of Joan of Arc is not it. Whereas Joan of Arc grabbed her life by the reins in some amazing self-righteousness, Misery does some awful things but it always just feels like she is moved by the plot, she is good at everything but always by divine intervention, she seriously does nothing of her own. Also the gender: this world is a world where everyone has a little pronoun nametag and every character is introduced like a twitter bio with their pronouns in parentheses next to their name (instead of just using them in a sentence). And that's about it, there is one scene where a character in this world somehow doesn't understand "she/they" so Misery can look at the camera and give an explanation to a character who doesn't understand despite this seeming extremely normalized in their world. Like very obviously for the audience in a poorly done way, it felt like if someone walked up to me right now and asked what a car is. No amount of space autism you give that character makes that scene believable. But that's it, nothing else about gender (in fact "she" is only ever used in the narrative for Misery despite the character saying she prefers they), despite the fact that dressing in a man's clothes was one of the charges that got Joan of Arc put to fucking death. You'd think the book would have had more to say. It also imitates the style of The Locked Tomb (TLT) and includes memes and internetisms in the writing and dialogue, yet manages something impressive by being unfunny. I enjoyed TLT and often found the memes funny, but here they land dead on arrival. IDK how the author managed that, like I said: impressive. Background characters are also hollow, papercut outs of ppl. It just doesn't have much that actually makes it worth reading, like everything is so hollow and incomplete, maybe if it had gone through more drafts it could be good, but it just kind of fails at everything it tries to do.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Very heavy sci-fi with religious tones compared or described as a retelling of the Joan of Arc story. I liked it, but I think I missed a lot that I would only get on a second read and I didn't like it enough to reread.
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-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
In the Empire of the Faithful, they are called by the Larex Forge to holiness, and they have been fighting a long war against the Heretics who have touched the Void. Misery Nomaki is concerned that her own stone-working powers do not come from holiness, but from voidmadness. But she still finds herself in the center of the Empire, being proclaimed as the next Messiah. As she trains with others on the Angelsteeth station and learns to pilot a Seraph, she will start to believe in herself and her calling. Will she be the one to vanquish the Heretics once and for all?
This was an entertaining far-future re-imagining of the Joan of Arc story, but with battle mechs. The world-building is excellent, and it is interesting to watch the main character go from reluctant participant to being fully convinced of being called by god. It also does a good job of casting doubt on which side is good and which side is bad. Only have a few minor quibbles with it overall (sometimes it head-hops a little and the slang is a little too much from right now), but still really enjoyed it overall. I would love to see more of this world.
This was an entertaining far-future re-imagining of the Joan of Arc story, but with battle mechs. The world-building is excellent, and it is interesting to watch the main character go from reluctant participant to being fully convinced of being called by god. It also does a good job of casting doubt on which side is good and which side is bad. Only have a few minor quibbles with it overall (sometimes it head-hops a little and the slang is a little too much from right now), but still really enjoyed it overall. I would love to see more of this world.
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A blast that almost makes it. This is a retalling of Joan of Arc. It has a patina of science fiction but is really fantasy. A cute bit early says the Heretics might follow the inverse of Clarke's statement that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. They think the magic must have a scientific origin, but this book doesn't get into that.
There are too problems, and I've complained about them in a number of books. First, it's overwritten and drags on. It should have been at least a third shorter and it would have moved much better. Second, the author is another idiot focused on the illiterate use of pronouns. There are plenty on non-binary ones used in the book, but "they" is still used for the singular. Wrong. Use one. Also, with gender both on clothing and in the augmented reality used by people, there's no need to formally introduce pronouns to the reader, just use them (see how I use a plural to refer to the plural?). The ultimate is right near the end, with "They are a difficult one." Ignorance as its finest. Xie, Sie, Ze, and plenty of others exist for non-binary. Use something or invent something. Stop using plural for singular. There's no need.
Without those two issues, this ambitious adventure would rank much higher. I'll still try the next one in the series.
There are too problems, and I've complained about them in a number of books. First, it's overwritten and drags on. It should have been at least a third shorter and it would have moved much better. Second, the author is another idiot focused on the illiterate use of pronouns. There are plenty on non-binary ones used in the book, but "they" is still used for the singular. Wrong. Use one. Also, with gender both on clothing and in the augmented reality used by people, there's no need to formally introduce pronouns to the reader, just use them (see how I use a plural to refer to the plural?). The ultimate is right near the end, with "They are a difficult one." Ignorance as its finest. Xie, Sie, Ze, and plenty of others exist for non-binary. Use something or invent something. Stop using plural for singular. There's no need.
Without those two issues, this ambitious adventure would rank much higher. I'll still try the next one in the series.
Don't know why goodreads thought I did the kindle edition, I read the hardcover, but eh, whatever it happens.
As for the book. This was an incredibly mixed experience, impressively so might I add. Overall I'm giving it the 3 instead of the 2 stars because the basic concept is just so appealing to me that I may as well land in its favor. So what is that concept? Well, the very very basic idea of it is that The Genesis of Misery is a retelling of Joan of Arc through the lense of hard sci-fantasy with Mecha. That sounds pretty fucking cool, and you know what, there were times where it was *very* fucking cool, but overall it just couldn't stick the landing in a lot of places for me.
Starting with the first mixed element, the characters. Misery as a protagonist is actually incredibly compelling. She's awful, like truly I'd never want to meet her in my life, but the way she is awful is well done, and it spans such a wide variety that is truly impressive. And this isn't a dig, the way the book portrays her, it definitely feels like you're supposed to think she is not the greatest person around, even when she isn't doing a warcrime, and is in fact doing cool stuff. The issue here is the rest of the cast. The side characters are mostly just there, there's two or three that do add things to the book, but I never found myself caring about them. For the most part, the side characters feel like they are there just because its hard to write a book about a single person, and all that thought ended up being put on that single person.
Next up, I don't talk about it often, but we're going to discuss the actual writing. It was weird. Like, sometimes it was going extremely flowery, and then the flowery would disappear for long stretches of time where there would be phrases like "yeet," and "fuck around and fine out," within the actual text. It was pretty jarring whenever it happened and just didn't work for me. An additional element that didn't quite work for me is the way pronouns were touched on in the text, and I do recognize this is entirely just up to preference. I felt like the way characters pronouns were established just felt very clunky most of the time, anytime a character was introduced explicitly the book would say "pronouns [x/y]" instead of having it be portrayed more naturalistically. And to be fair, I can understand why that would be done because there is a lot of gender diversity. It may in fact be pretty hard to naturalistically work in what people go by when just about every character uses some different combination of pronouns and neo-pronouns. The implementation missed the mark with me, but I do think its cool that the effort was made regardless.
Next up we'll touch on the world which in my view was a little half-baked (soon you will see this is an intentionally a pun). There were a lot of small things that came off as the start of a cool idea that just wasn't fully developed. For example, the military hierarchy. The different divisions of the military were all broken up like food -servings, courses, dishes, etc.- but then the actual positions in the military -captain, general, and the like- all stayed the same. There's no real reason for things to be divided into meal based groups that I could see within world outside of, "it sounds neat." And you know what, sometimes it sounds neat just works, but the lack of full commitment made it fall flat. The other big thing for me was the naming of the mechs. Now, before I get into it, this could very well be subverted in the next two books, we already have the god established as a Demiurge, and for those that don't know that carries a very particular meaning when it comes to Gnosticism, so it could turn what I'm about to say on its head; the naming of the mechs is just kinda wrong? Like power-wise its just wrong. The basic mechs are called Seraphs, a shortening of seraphim which are the most powerful branch of angels within the heirarchy, and spoiler alert, That's all very nitpicky I'll admit. But it did bug me.
Then the actual story is where I had the most back and forth on. Sometimes it would hit really hard and fast and it would just feel right, and then other times it was hard to care. I do think in part the things that pulled me out were the other elements I commented on, because when the building blocks of the story are all in my head, almost all of them work. There are some things that just felt bad outright, like a scene near the halfway point I don't really know how that made it through to the final draft, but luckily I can't really remember anything that hit quite the same way. The final 25% of the book was where it felt like it all clicked into place best overall, and it does at the very least provide an interesting thread for the beginning of book 2.
So yeah, I'm very mixed. There is definitely a lot to like here, the gender representation, the protagonist, the main story, and that gorgeous cover, but there's also a lot that did not land. I kinda wish this book went through a few more rounds of revisions before getting published, just to iron out the kinks into a more cohesive whole, but alas that is not this world. I really wanted to like this, as I've wanted to like Neon Yang's works in the past, but tensorate didn't click with me, and sadly this did not either. They do seem like a very cool person, and they're friends with some authors I truly adore, but I have to say this will probably be my last try at one of Yang's books.
As for the book. This was an incredibly mixed experience, impressively so might I add. Overall I'm giving it the 3 instead of the 2 stars because the basic concept is just so appealing to me that I may as well land in its favor. So what is that concept? Well, the very very basic idea of it is that The Genesis of Misery is a retelling of Joan of Arc through the lense of hard sci-fantasy with Mecha. That sounds pretty fucking cool, and you know what, there were times where it was *very* fucking cool, but overall it just couldn't stick the landing in a lot of places for me.
Starting with the first mixed element, the characters. Misery as a protagonist is actually incredibly compelling. She's awful, like truly I'd never want to meet her in my life, but the way she is awful is well done, and it spans such a wide variety that is truly impressive. And this isn't a dig, the way the book portrays her, it definitely feels like you're supposed to think she is not the greatest person around, even when she isn't doing a warcrime, and is in fact doing cool stuff. The issue here is the rest of the cast. The side characters are mostly just there, there's two or three that do add things to the book, but I never found myself caring about them. For the most part, the side characters feel like they are there just because its hard to write a book about a single person, and all that thought ended up being put on that single person.
Next up, I don't talk about it often, but we're going to discuss the actual writing. It was weird. Like, sometimes it was going extremely flowery, and then the flowery would disappear for long stretches of time where there would be phrases like "yeet," and "fuck around and fine out," within the actual text. It was pretty jarring whenever it happened and just didn't work for me. An additional element that didn't quite work for me is the way pronouns were touched on in the text, and I do recognize this is entirely just up to preference. I felt like the way characters pronouns were established just felt very clunky most of the time, anytime a character was introduced explicitly the book would say "pronouns [x/y]" instead of having it be portrayed more naturalistically. And to be fair, I can understand why that would be done because there is a lot of gender diversity. It may in fact be pretty hard to naturalistically work in what people go by when just about every character uses some different combination of pronouns and neo-pronouns. The implementation missed the mark with me, but I do think its cool that the effort was made regardless.
Next up we'll touch on the world which in my view was a little half-baked (soon you will see this is an intentionally a pun). There were a lot of small things that came off as the start of a cool idea that just wasn't fully developed. For example, the military hierarchy. The different divisions of the military were all broken up like food -servings, courses, dishes, etc.- but then the actual positions in the military -captain, general, and the like- all stayed the same. There's no real reason for things to be divided into meal based groups that I could see within world outside of, "it sounds neat." And you know what, sometimes it sounds neat just works, but the lack of full commitment made it fall flat. The other big thing for me was the naming of the mechs. Now, before I get into it, this could very well be subverted in the next two books, we already have the god established as a Demiurge, and for those that don't know that carries a very particular meaning when it comes to Gnosticism, so it could turn what I'm about to say on its head; the naming of the mechs is just kinda wrong? Like power-wise its just wrong. The basic mechs are called Seraphs, a shortening of seraphim which are the most powerful branch of angels within the heirarchy, and spoiler alert,
Spoiler
the strongest mech around, the one they find very deep into the book is called an archangel. Now that sounds pretty strong of course, and there are a few named archangels that are actually way past their traditional power range, but archangels are literally the second weakest variety of angel. Like I said, this could be intentional, but its never touched on in the actual book, and with the half-baked nature of the military naming schemes it does just feel like that was chosen because those names sounded cool.Then the actual story is where I had the most back and forth on. Sometimes it would hit really hard and fast and it would just feel right, and then other times it was hard to care. I do think in part the things that pulled me out were the other elements I commented on, because when the building blocks of the story are all in my head, almost all of them work. There are some things that just felt bad outright, like a scene near the halfway point
Spoiler
wherein Misery wakes up from a failed run with the Seraph in the hospital, having died. She and Lightning walk to the hanger to see her seraph all turned into warp stone, and then as Misery is going to touch it, she passes out. So then she wakes up in the medical wing with lightning, immediately goes back to the seraph and actually gets in it that time.So yeah, I'm very mixed. There is definitely a lot to like here, the gender representation, the protagonist, the main story, and that gorgeous cover, but there's also a lot that did not land. I kinda wish this book went through a few more rounds of revisions before getting published, just to iron out the kinks into a more cohesive whole, but alas that is not this world. I really wanted to like this, as I've wanted to like Neon Yang's works in the past, but tensorate didn't click with me, and sadly this did not either. They do seem like a very cool person, and they're friends with some authors I truly adore, but I have to say this will probably be my last try at one of Yang's books.
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes