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A review by wa_reader
Fury by Laurann Dohner
Did not finish book. Stopped at 80%.
Dystopian near future sci fi romance with spice.
3.5* for the spicy romance, but <2* for the sci fi & general writing style.
The first third of the story had good pace, with some events between characters sorted out quickly with no excessive hand-wringing (good!). The world build was interesting and generally held together pretty well in this section.
Then some aspects of the worldbuild, plotlines, and writing style began to drag so much that they stopped my enjoyment of the read, then stopped the read altogether.
Draglines:
* The Species are effectively learning American english/slang (given they're freshly released from whole-life lab testing/torture). But.. The whole book jumps in and out of use of conjunctions from sentence to sentence. Not just for the "common English not a first language" speakers (which would make more sense plot-wise). This is a bit jarring. Makes the book sound more like a young adult book, or like it's been translated to English haphazardly (though it sounds like the author speaks English??).
* Gender segregation. Much of explanation of character roles/Homeland dorm learning focii reads like it's culturally 1950's. While I love exploring different philosophies/ politics/ culture future predictions via sci fi, the language use in this book did not read like a deliberate exploration of an idea, but just a weird conservative cultural thing. Sort of like hearing people go out of their way to say "he or she" instead of the grammatically correct "they" when describing something that doesn't need to be (or grammatically shouldn't be) gendered, like say a Doctor, or a Teacher, or a group of people. Given all the cooked conspiracy theories and conservative backsliding that's come out since Covid-19, I find I am highly allergic to even subtle use of that style of language and outdated gendered rubbish. It's bad enough to put up with that in real life, I don't want it in a "fun read". That being said, I reckon this wouldn't stand out or become an issue for most readers.
* Some chunks of plot were heavily dialogue focused, with not much expression or action points to give tone. So it read more like a script for TV and became a bit hard to follow. And given the young adult feel, frankly felt a bit like a *The 100* script, from one of the later "jumped the shark" series/episodes.
Did not finish. Ebook via Libby
3.5* for the spicy romance, but <2* for the sci fi & general writing style.
The first third of the story had good pace, with some events between characters sorted out quickly with no excessive hand-wringing (good!). The world build was interesting and generally held together pretty well in this section.
Then some aspects of the worldbuild, plotlines, and writing style began to drag so much that they stopped my enjoyment of the read, then stopped the read altogether.
Draglines:
* The Species are effectively learning American english/slang (given they're freshly released from whole-life lab testing/torture). But.. The whole book jumps in and out of use of conjunctions from sentence to sentence. Not just for the "common English not a first language" speakers (which would make more sense plot-wise). This is a bit jarring. Makes the book sound more like a young adult book, or like it's been translated to English haphazardly (though it sounds like the author speaks English??).
* Gender segregation. Much of explanation of character roles/Homeland dorm learning focii reads like it's culturally 1950's. While I love exploring different philosophies/ politics/ culture future predictions via sci fi, the language use in this book did not read like a deliberate exploration of an idea, but just a weird conservative cultural thing. Sort of like hearing people go out of their way to say "he or she" instead of the grammatically correct "they" when describing something that doesn't need to be (or grammatically shouldn't be) gendered, like say a Doctor, or a Teacher, or a group of people. Given all the cooked conspiracy theories and conservative backsliding that's come out since Covid-19, I find I am highly allergic to even subtle use of that style of language and outdated gendered rubbish. It's bad enough to put up with that in real life, I don't want it in a "fun read". That being said, I reckon this wouldn't stand out or become an issue for most readers.
* Some chunks of plot were heavily dialogue focused, with not much expression or action points to give tone. So it read more like a script for TV and became a bit hard to follow. And given the young adult feel, frankly felt a bit like a *The 100* script, from one of the later "jumped the shark" series/episodes.
Did not finish. Ebook via Libby