A review by grumpymonday
Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

mysterious slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? N/A
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

Whoa this is a difficult book to rate. I thought I would really enjoy it due to the Mass Effect vibes it gives off. But in summary unfortunately I didn't really like it. I really struggled to get through this and had to pretty much skim the last pages to finish it off.

Positives:
Some interesting themes, and technologies and alien races.

Criticism/ negatives:
- Unnecessarily long - cut at least 200 pages of it to make it 3/5. In this format it's wastes readers time, a lot! I kept looking at the bottom of the page to see what page I was on,disappointed by the progress.

- Massive info and character dumps in the beginning of the book. Poor first impressions
- Core mystery is not given enough intrigue to make me want to enjoy the journey.
- Core characters are not given...character to enjoy the journey with them
- Something is off with the writing, I wasn't really caring about anything happening in the book and had to re-read a lot of pages as attention kept drifting.

Why did I read it then? Good question, I guess there was still something in the main mystery I was hoping that would pay off in the end. But no, and would not recommend this to scifi fans either. Unfortunately will not continue with this series.