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A review by gardens_and_dragons
A Half-Built Garden by Ruthanna Emrys
Did not finish book. Stopped at 17%.
Well, this book had a lot of very interesting concepts. it tries to cover peaceful first contact with aliens, the future of radical, socialist, government governments versus capitalist, governments, motherhood, and how that interacts with leadership, communication, identity (Jewishness), gender politics, polyamory/alt family dynamics.
This isn’t to say that I disagreed with most things the author was saying, but it felt so convoluted to fit into a book all at once - the actual first contact story was buried under exposition and lots of stuff that could have been cut down. (I just read the Texicalaan duology, and they handle actually making a story that interweaves similar themes and is BY FAR better written).
I think that it was a huge disservice that most characters felt tokenized, too. It felt somewhat forced on the part of the author. I think it would have been stronger with another editing pass to distillate some of the concepts a little better.
This isn’t to say that I disagreed with most things the author was saying, but it felt so convoluted to fit into a book all at once - the actual first contact story was buried under exposition and lots of stuff that could have been cut down. (I just read the Texicalaan duology, and they handle actually making a story that interweaves similar themes and is BY FAR better written).
I think that it was a huge disservice that most characters felt tokenized, too. It felt somewhat forced on the part of the author. I think it would have been stronger with another editing pass to distillate some of the concepts a little better.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Xenophobia and Pregnancy