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wordswritinstarlight 's review for:
Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City
by K.J. Parker
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Things I will say in this book’s favor: the actual writing is very nice. The style is a great balance between conversational and eloquent, and the author has a great grasp of creative ways to use language. The world-building is fairly well-thought-out with few exceptions, and completely without any elements that make the reader come to a sudden stop and say “hang on, that doesn’t work.” This is the end of my positive review of the book.
I fucking hated this book. I found the main character to be absolutely insufferable with very few redeeming qualities. Orhan is abrasive and arrogant in both his internal monologue and his interactions with other characters, and more frustratingly to me personally, he’s downright callous about the actual people involved in this siege. I’ve never read a book ostensibly about human ingenuity (a troop of engineers wind up in charge of a city during a siege! when you’re ahammer engineer, everything looks like a nail!) with so little human emotion in it. I’ve loved plenty of characters who talk a big game about not caring about the people around them, so I kept soldiering on through this book expecting to come around on Orhan, but he’s missing the part of the character arc where the character realizes and/or reveals that actually they do care, even just a little. It made me insane. I hate to agree with the objectively incorrect rioters, but they actually DON’T have a lot of reason to believe that Orhan gives enough of a fuck to save them. This is a book about the importance of optics in management more than anything else.
And then, if you please,he just up and fucking dies of injuries sustained while he’s just. Wandering the city with his thumb up his ass mid-battle, having abandoned his leadership position (which he gained through force and deception, and therefore you would be forgiven for assuming he wants) to more or less the first person who showed up and had any kind of authority at all. This book really makes you spend almost three hundred pages with this bona fide asshole, and then invites you to jump off a fucking bridge if you wanted any kind of resolution about anything at all. Actual siege of the city? Dunno, he dies midway through. Personal arc? What personal arc? The two and a half actual emotional relationships we see him have? Nope, he refuses to see anyone while he’s on his deathbed because he doesn’t want to deal with their feelings. I know that there’s some kind of trend over the past few years of not having “endings” because they are Pedestrian And Boring, but as a wild concept, narrative structure is good, actually. End your fucking plot or I’m coming to your house with a baseball bat. Resolve ANYTHING. I spent hours of my life with your fucker of a protagonist, give me Something for my time.
Also, as a final note, it made me really insane how much this book is presented by, starring, and also featuring Adult Men Only. I can count the named female characters on one hand, none of whom interact with each other, and we’re told offhand that there are women in crowds every once in a while. And what the fuck are they doing with the kids in this city. Where are they. And I’m not accepting “well, Orhan wouldn’t need to be dealing with them, and he’s very short-sighted about the human end of the equation so he never thinks about Actual People who aren’t right in front of him” as an answer. It comes up REPEATEDLY that every adult is being pressed into service. If you need every single able-bodied adult working on the defense effort, you also need government-sponsored child care.
If you read this book for:
Crafty governmental scheming and creative problem solving: I recommend Hands of the Emperor or The Goblin Emperor, both of which I thought of longingly throughout this slog.
Interesting societal commentary: I recommend Ancillary Justice or The Bone Orchard, both of which have, like, women in them.
Battle scenes, tactics, and strategy: I recommend 1632, The Gilded Ones, or The Captive Prince, all of which have great ground battles and extensive dissections of how they were plotted and planned.
I fucking hated this book. I found the main character to be absolutely insufferable with very few redeeming qualities. Orhan is abrasive and arrogant in both his internal monologue and his interactions with other characters, and more frustratingly to me personally, he’s downright callous about the actual people involved in this siege. I’ve never read a book ostensibly about human ingenuity (a troop of engineers wind up in charge of a city during a siege! when you’re a
And then, if you please,
Also, as a final note, it made me really insane how much this book is presented by, starring, and also featuring Adult Men Only. I can count the named female characters on one hand, none of whom interact with each other, and we’re told offhand that there are women in crowds every once in a while. And what the fuck are they doing with the kids in this city. Where are they. And I’m not accepting “well, Orhan wouldn’t need to be dealing with them, and he’s very short-sighted about the human end of the equation so he never thinks about Actual People who aren’t right in front of him” as an answer. It comes up REPEATEDLY that every adult is being pressed into service. If you need every single able-bodied adult working on the defense effort, you also need government-sponsored child care.
If you read this book for:
Crafty governmental scheming and creative problem solving: I recommend Hands of the Emperor or The Goblin Emperor, both of which I thought of longingly throughout this slog.
Interesting societal commentary: I recommend Ancillary Justice or The Bone Orchard, both of which have, like, women in them.
Battle scenes, tactics, and strategy: I recommend 1632, The Gilded Ones, or The Captive Prince, all of which have great ground battles and extensive dissections of how they were plotted and planned.