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A review by jugglingpup
Ancestral Night by Elizabeth Bear
3.0
To see more reviews check out MI Book Reviews.
I got an ARC of the sequel of this book. The author seemed cool and the idea behind the stories sounded like ones I could get into. So I grabbed this one from my library and I had planned on having both books read by now. Oops.
The biggest thing standing between me and reading both books are the books themselves. This book is DENSE. There is so much detail about everything. There is so much detail about the engines and gravity and other sci-fi stuff. This is the sort of book that a few years ago would have made me tear my hair out and claim all sci-fi sucked. There was just SO MUCH detail about the mechanics of things that it often over shadowed the story. I came here for a story, not a instruction booklet.
That being said, Bear was able to suck me back in each and every time I started to drift away from the story. There were so many details about the cultures and different societies. There were space pirates. There were cool things like afthands. The MC literally had her feet replaced with a second set of hands to be better equipped to be in low to no gravity situations. There were such cool details.
I am so torn on this book. I did read it, all almost 500 pages of it, but I still don’t know how I feel. I often got invested in characters, but then the sci-fi got in the way again. This book just might not be for me, but I also sorta enjoyed it. Most of my strong feelings are about Bear saying repeatedly that the other crew mate was not the MC’s type because he was a guy was annoying and about just how much hardcore sci-fi existed for a book I saw labeled as a space opera. I described this to one partner as imagine classic erotica, but the sci-fi version. There was a lot of SCI-FI, but then there would be long interludes of philosophy and weird bits I wasn’t expecting. It was a wild ride.
If you are curious or not a hardcore sci-fi fan, then parcel this one out. I read a few chapters a day and it took me almost two weeks. If I had tried to read this straight through I wouldn’t have finished it. It is a lot. I adored that not everyone was humanoid. There us a dolphin doctor at the end and I LOST IT. I was texting everyone. Her name was K’kk’jkooOOoo. How could I not love this.
I got an ARC of the sequel of this book. The author seemed cool and the idea behind the stories sounded like ones I could get into. So I grabbed this one from my library and I had planned on having both books read by now. Oops.
The biggest thing standing between me and reading both books are the books themselves. This book is DENSE. There is so much detail about everything. There is so much detail about the engines and gravity and other sci-fi stuff. This is the sort of book that a few years ago would have made me tear my hair out and claim all sci-fi sucked. There was just SO MUCH detail about the mechanics of things that it often over shadowed the story. I came here for a story, not a instruction booklet.
That being said, Bear was able to suck me back in each and every time I started to drift away from the story. There were so many details about the cultures and different societies. There were space pirates. There were cool things like afthands. The MC literally had her feet replaced with a second set of hands to be better equipped to be in low to no gravity situations. There were such cool details.
I am so torn on this book. I did read it, all almost 500 pages of it, but I still don’t know how I feel. I often got invested in characters, but then the sci-fi got in the way again. This book just might not be for me, but I also sorta enjoyed it. Most of my strong feelings are about Bear saying repeatedly that the other crew mate was not the MC’s type because he was a guy was annoying and about just how much hardcore sci-fi existed for a book I saw labeled as a space opera. I described this to one partner as imagine classic erotica, but the sci-fi version. There was a lot of SCI-FI, but then there would be long interludes of philosophy and weird bits I wasn’t expecting. It was a wild ride.
If you are curious or not a hardcore sci-fi fan, then parcel this one out. I read a few chapters a day and it took me almost two weeks. If I had tried to read this straight through I wouldn’t have finished it. It is a lot. I adored that not everyone was humanoid. There us a dolphin doctor at the end and I LOST IT. I was texting everyone. Her name was K’kk’jkooOOoo. How could I not love this.