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melyanna 's review for:
The Call of the Void
by S.M. Gaither
It took me almost 3 months to finish this and I had to put it down in frustration several times.
Serious middle book issues with pacing—somehow I got through the first half pretty quickly while at the same time wondering why nothing was happening and why it all felt to be taking forever.
If you’re going into this one expected politics and intrigue, you’ll be sorely disappointed. The actual court stuff only really happens around the halfway point, and it’s so clumsy that I wish it hadn’t been there at all. I usually love it, but this? No. This was everything you can do wrong about political intrigue, done wrong.
There’s no gradual building of alliances, no double-dealing, no using known allies to figure out who’s who and what’s what in this unfamiliar court. The one obvious enemy is the only real enemy, and the only strategy employed by the good guys is to… just doggedly focus all the attention on the other person hoping to persuade him to join their cause.
That’s it. That’s all. There’s some silliness about being cautious with food and drink in case of poison, but not a thought spared for the dress presented by the suspicious servant nobody trusts. The intended ally keeps resisting, does a complete 180 for no apparent reason, and then the enemy does the predictable thing and things go south again. It’s all very dramatic for the characters, but it adds very little to the story as a whole.
Which is a shame, because I genuinely enjoy the concept and world-building, and the previous two books had me interested enough in the conflict that I stuck with this one to the end.
It did pick up again a little after the clumsy politics, but I’m not entirely sure if I feel like continuing this with the final two books in this series. I’ll take a break from it for now in any case. I need a palate cleanser or two after this disappointing and somewhat frustrating read.
Serious middle book issues with pacing—somehow I got through the first half pretty quickly while at the same time wondering why nothing was happening and why it all felt to be taking forever.
If you’re going into this one expected politics and intrigue, you’ll be sorely disappointed. The actual court stuff only really happens around the halfway point, and it’s so clumsy that I wish it hadn’t been there at all. I usually love it, but this? No. This was everything you can do wrong about political intrigue, done wrong.
There’s no gradual building of alliances, no double-dealing, no using known allies to figure out who’s who and what’s what in this unfamiliar court. The one obvious enemy is the only real enemy, and the only strategy employed by the good guys is to… just doggedly focus all the attention on the other person hoping to persuade him to join their cause.
That’s it. That’s all. There’s some silliness about being cautious with food and drink in case of poison, but not a thought spared for the dress presented by the suspicious servant nobody trusts. The intended ally keeps resisting, does a complete 180 for no apparent reason, and then the enemy does the predictable thing and things go south again. It’s all very dramatic for the characters, but it adds very little to the story as a whole.
Which is a shame, because I genuinely enjoy the concept and world-building, and the previous two books had me interested enough in the conflict that I stuck with this one to the end.
It did pick up again a little after the clumsy politics, but I’m not entirely sure if I feel like continuing this with the final two books in this series. I’ll take a break from it for now in any case. I need a palate cleanser or two after this disappointing and somewhat frustrating read.