A review by jdhacker
The Given Sacrifice by S.M. Stirling

adventurous medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

1.75

We're almost there...almost to the end of my stack of these increasingly annoying Change novels. This is the last one in the Artos story arc, preparing to move on to the next generation. And man...this and the last 3-4 books could have been combined into maybe 2 books the way they've been written. By the end we're getting random multi-year time skips between (uninteresting) chapters, we have a whole series of anti-climatic resolves to story arcs and/or character deaths whether protagonists or antagonists. At least he's got the length under control. But these still feel like he's phoning it in to keep the checks coming in and fulfill some obligation to the publisher so they'll keep taking other books/projects he'd rather be working on.