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A review by josiahdegraaf
Kaleidocide by Dave Swavely
5.0
Pros:
Like I said in my review of book one, this world is incredibly well developed. Swavely has an excellent grasp on where the culture is right now, so that he seems to predict really well where it's going to be headed. Parts of the book just have paragraphs about the history in the time span; while this might normally be considered an info dump, it's so fascinating that I still want more by the book's end. He keeps the worldbuilding from book one while dramatically expanding on them. Excellent, excellent setup.
The plot of the book is excellent. The basic gist is that the leader of a rival state is attempting to murder the protagonist using a variety of methods. Like the last book, there are several clear twists so that you can't really be sure about what's happening until you finally get to the end of the book. Very engaging and with a very fast pace.
The book does a great job in picking up the unfinished character arcs from the last book and continuing to run with them. The protagonist has quite a few flaws, some of which are worked on, some of which are left unfinished by the book's end. I appreciate the fact that, like in the last book, Swavely doesn't feel the need to wrap up everything related to characters. While part of this is contingent on the assumption that he continues to expand on these lines in the next book, this book does a great job of continuing these lines.
Like the last book, Kaleidocide walks a fine line between exploring Christianity and preaching it. And, again, it passes the test and still seems very realistic by the book's end in many ways.
Cons:
The motivations of one female character didn't seem to ever be explained well. Given her importance to the MC's character arc, this was annoying, but is a fairly minor issue.
While I'm not completely sure whether or not this was a pro or con, I will mention that Swavely did a really good job in maintaining suspense, but often that was accomplished by a direct hint at the end of a chapter saying something like, "but if I had known what was going to happen next, I wouldn't have been so confident." While these definitely accomplished their task of keeping me reading, they also seemed a bit out of place and sometimes mildly spoiled what was about to happen.
Overall:
The book does a really good job in summarizing the last book (I tend to forget major events of previous books rather easily, so I appreciated it), to enough of an extent that you could possibly get away with just starting with this book. Silhouette is such a good book, though, that I do not recommend beginning with this one. Kaleidocide does everything a sequel is supposed to do--it expands the story and character arcs from the first book, heightens everything about them, and keeps it all in a self-contained plot. It was very difficult for me to put the book down. Swavely is an excellent new author, and I'm definitely looking forward to what stuff he has coming out next. Get the book.
4.5-5 stars
Like I said in my review of book one, this world is incredibly well developed. Swavely has an excellent grasp on where the culture is right now, so that he seems to predict really well where it's going to be headed. Parts of the book just have paragraphs about the history in the time span; while this might normally be considered an info dump, it's so fascinating that I still want more by the book's end. He keeps the worldbuilding from book one while dramatically expanding on them. Excellent, excellent setup.
The plot of the book is excellent. The basic gist is that the leader of a rival state is attempting to murder the protagonist using a variety of methods. Like the last book, there are several clear twists so that you can't really be sure about what's happening until you finally get to the end of the book. Very engaging and with a very fast pace.
The book does a great job in picking up the unfinished character arcs from the last book and continuing to run with them. The protagonist has quite a few flaws, some of which are worked on, some of which are left unfinished by the book's end. I appreciate the fact that, like in the last book, Swavely doesn't feel the need to wrap up everything related to characters. While part of this is contingent on the assumption that he continues to expand on these lines in the next book, this book does a great job of continuing these lines.
Like the last book, Kaleidocide walks a fine line between exploring Christianity and preaching it. And, again, it passes the test and still seems very realistic by the book's end in many ways.
Cons:
The motivations of one female character didn't seem to ever be explained well. Given her importance to the MC's character arc, this was annoying, but is a fairly minor issue.
While I'm not completely sure whether or not this was a pro or con, I will mention that Swavely did a really good job in maintaining suspense, but often that was accomplished by a direct hint at the end of a chapter saying something like, "but if I had known what was going to happen next, I wouldn't have been so confident." While these definitely accomplished their task of keeping me reading, they also seemed a bit out of place and sometimes mildly spoiled what was about to happen.
Overall:
The book does a really good job in summarizing the last book (I tend to forget major events of previous books rather easily, so I appreciated it), to enough of an extent that you could possibly get away with just starting with this book. Silhouette is such a good book, though, that I do not recommend beginning with this one. Kaleidocide does everything a sequel is supposed to do--it expands the story and character arcs from the first book, heightens everything about them, and keeps it all in a self-contained plot. It was very difficult for me to put the book down. Swavely is an excellent new author, and I'm definitely looking forward to what stuff he has coming out next. Get the book.
4.5-5 stars