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A review by mackle13
Chasing the Dragon by Justina Robson
3.0
Not a bad book, but probably the weakest in the series. I just felt like not that much actually happened, nor did we really get any sort of profound character development. Even more annoyingly, some of the characters changed in odd and unexplained ways. (For instance, when did Malachi become so unbearingly overprotective? Or maybe I've just forgotten.)
I have two major complaints about the book:
1) It seemed really jumpy. While it did a decent job of helping me fill in my memory blanks of what happened in the series thus far, it was sort of all over the place. I would say this could be due to the perspective changes, but I don't think that's really it. Mostly it was because things would happen, or be said to have happened or be happening, and I kept thinking I'd skipped a page or something. It didn't seem to flow very naturally at all.
2) A lot of action seemed to happen "off-stage". Some of this we are filled in about via dialogue, but other stuff is just left completely unexplained. I imagine that this is going to be redressed in the next book, since it was left very unresolved.
I never really felt attached to the characters or the action like I have in past books, and there was really no tension.
Overall the book felt sort of rushed, haphazard, and very much like filler - just getting the gang back together in order to get to the next part of the story, as opposed to a viable piece of the story in and of itself.
All in all I was disappointed in a book that I'd been anticipating. That said, with all those complaints, it was still more generally enjoyable than a lot of the rest of what I've been reading lately... so it gets bonus points for that.
I have two major complaints about the book:
1) It seemed really jumpy. While it did a decent job of helping me fill in my memory blanks of what happened in the series thus far, it was sort of all over the place. I would say this could be due to the perspective changes, but I don't think that's really it. Mostly it was because things would happen, or be said to have happened or be happening, and I kept thinking I'd skipped a page or something. It didn't seem to flow very naturally at all.
2) A lot of action seemed to happen "off-stage". Some of this we are filled in about via dialogue, but other stuff is just left completely unexplained. I imagine that this is going to be redressed in the next book, since it was left very unresolved.
I never really felt attached to the characters or the action like I have in past books, and there was really no tension.
Overall the book felt sort of rushed, haphazard, and very much like filler - just getting the gang back together in order to get to the next part of the story, as opposed to a viable piece of the story in and of itself.
All in all I was disappointed in a book that I'd been anticipating. That said, with all those complaints, it was still more generally enjoyable than a lot of the rest of what I've been reading lately... so it gets bonus points for that.