A review by zed_dog
Bluebird by Ciel Pierlot

Did not finish book. Stopped at 73%.

This book was frustrating for a few reasons. First, it’s written in the wrong POV mode: it very clearly wants to be a first-person narrative (the phrase “…but she digresses…” has no reason to exist), and if it were, it might have had the chance to develop a compelling narrative voice (I kept wishing the story were being narrated by Murderbot, rather than in awkward close third person). 

Then the main character: the thing is, I really wanted to like Rig, because she fits an archetype which I usually go for—the lovable rogue/outlaw with heart/underestimated eiron. But she doesn’t seem to be much more than the archetype. And I get really tired of narration that tells me how to think of a character: we keep being told what Rig is good at instead of shown; some of it checks out (she does seem to be good at flying a spaceship—but again, didn’t need to tell me), but other things not so much (she’s supposed to be clever and good at talking her way out of things, but we pretty much never see that happen). All throughout, the reader gets too much information that the MC isn’t privy to, and it makes the pace at which she figures things out annoyingly slow (which doesn’t help the “she’s remarkably smart!” claim). It feels generally over-written, in a YA-like way. 

I finally put the book down after

Rig tells a primary bad guy some vital information for no   reason except to make sure it can come back to bite her later

. 

Overall: frustrating, because I so wanted to like it. Sword lesbians? Hell yeah. Space opera? Absolutely. Anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist allegory? Sounds grand; sign me up. I did like some of the aspects of the worldbuilding, especially the cultural details of the displaced/subjugated people, and their various forms of resistance.