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A review by _inge
The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord
Did not finish book. Stopped at 0%.
This is the second book featuring post climate change disaster The Netherlands (the previous was ‘In Ascension’). And despite loving the rep, I didn’t enjoy either of them!
I loved the premise, but the book itself was too confusing to me. I don’t mind lingering in this confusion for a bit if it pulls off a big reveal in the end, or at least something to make this confusion worthwhile to the reader. I was determined to stick with this, even though I didn’t enjoy reading this from the get-go. There’s so many characters (some even go by multiple names) and so much is happening but never explained. I kept watching the page number as I flipped another. It really was a drag. I kept waiting for the big reveal, but when more characters were introduced with heaps of space politics and confusing names, which weren’t explained anywhere but we had to stick with Houses and planets and more character introductions, I decided to give up. There wasn’t any conflict to keep me reading (and the conflict that was present was a conflict I didn’t understand) and nothing really felt urgent throughout this, but I couldn’t connect with the characters either. I was determined to see this through to the end but it’s so draining at this point, I don’t want to end up in another reading slump.
And wow, the publishers really did Lord dirty. Apparently the twist about this book being a first contact story or the people involved in this story were meant to be a surprise, but the blurb spoiled it. The cover doesn’t look great either, and it hasn’t been mentioned anywhere (!) that this is the third book in a series. Apparently it’s a standalone, but you do come into space politics completely blind. And I don’t like space politics to begin with.
I loved the premise, but the book itself was too confusing to me. I don’t mind lingering in this confusion for a bit if it pulls off a big reveal in the end, or at least something to make this confusion worthwhile to the reader. I was determined to stick with this, even though I didn’t enjoy reading this from the get-go. There’s so many characters (some even go by multiple names) and so much is happening but never explained. I kept watching the page number as I flipped another. It really was a drag. I kept waiting for the big reveal, but when more characters were introduced with heaps of space politics and confusing names, which weren’t explained anywhere but we had to stick with Houses and planets and more character introductions, I decided to give up. There wasn’t any conflict to keep me reading (and the conflict that was present was a conflict I didn’t understand) and nothing really felt urgent throughout this, but I couldn’t connect with the characters either. I was determined to see this through to the end but it’s so draining at this point, I don’t want to end up in another reading slump.
And wow, the publishers really did Lord dirty. Apparently the twist about this book being a first contact story or the people involved in this story were meant to be a surprise, but the blurb spoiled it. The cover doesn’t look great either, and it hasn’t been mentioned anywhere (!) that this is the third book in a series. Apparently it’s a standalone, but you do come into space politics completely blind. And I don’t like space politics to begin with.