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A review by lisafer
Echo in Onyx by Sharon Shinn
4.0
There was a lot I enjoyed about this book.... Shinn is always fantastic at creating new worlds and societies, and this one didn't disappoint.
I'm not going to describe the whole story (other reviews will cover that just fine), but note that I really enjoyed the romance. Instead of a will they/won't they or Darcy-and-Elizabeth kind of story, the love story was simple and straight-forward, complicated only by the fact that our protagonist was keeping a crucial secret from her lover for Very Good Reasons, so the reader was left waiting for all the stories to unravel and figure out if the affection was stronger than the characters' moral codes.
I was disappointed in the legal system of their world, where "self-defense" was barely discussed as a viable reason for lethal force. I think I would've appreciated a little exploration of the moral ground - perhaps with the result not changing but the powers that be at least *recognizing* the defense argument (with perhaps it being unable to prove, thus the guilty verdict arising out of that and the cover-up?). I feel that we scraped the surface with the court ladies and the priestesses empathizing with the situation, but a conversation actually ADDRESSING it would have been nice.
Still, the book had lots of intriguing plot and set-up for fascinating world politics, and the idea of echoes was different from anything I'd ever read before. I think this is probably a 3 1/2 star book, but I'm rounding up this time. I look forward to reading it once it's available, as my brain processes read books differently from audiobooks, and there may be small things I missed along the way.
I'm not going to describe the whole story (other reviews will cover that just fine), but note that I really enjoyed the romance. Instead of a will they/won't they or Darcy-and-Elizabeth kind of story, the love story was simple and straight-forward, complicated only by the fact that our protagonist was keeping a crucial secret from her lover for Very Good Reasons, so the reader was left waiting for all the stories to unravel and figure out if the affection was stronger than the characters' moral codes.
I was disappointed in the legal system of their world, where "self-defense" was barely discussed as a viable reason for lethal force. I think I would've appreciated a little exploration of the moral ground - perhaps with the result not changing but the powers that be at least *recognizing* the defense argument (with perhaps it being unable to prove, thus the guilty verdict arising out of that and the cover-up?). I feel that we scraped the surface with the court ladies and the priestesses empathizing with the situation, but a conversation actually ADDRESSING it would have been nice.
Still, the book had lots of intriguing plot and set-up for fascinating world politics, and the idea of echoes was different from anything I'd ever read before. I think this is probably a 3 1/2 star book, but I'm rounding up this time. I look forward to reading it once it's available, as my brain processes read books differently from audiobooks, and there may be small things I missed along the way.