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A review by sugarloaf
The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard
3.25
This book got off to an incredibly promising start with a captivating description of a post-apocalyptic Paris in a world where fallen angels are hunted for their bones, which can be ground into an essence used for magic. The city is grimy, tattered and dangerous, ruled by Houses which scheme against each other for power and littered with gangs who scrape and scavenge to get by. It was a great setting for a dark mystery like this book; it provided a fantastic atmosphere and suspense.
Then the plot starts. The author does a really terrible job making any of the characters someone you should care about because the book feels like a series of scenes that were never stitched together properly. We will be at one scene, with one event happening, then we'll move to a different scene where the new action is the only thing the characters think about. There's no bridge between the scenes, no thoughts from the characters about time passing or how their relationship with anyone has changed or how they feel about anything other than what's happening right that instant. At one point our main character, Phillippe, is mentioned to have become friendly with Emmanuelle - a reasonably important side character - but the book had never even shown him meeting Emmanuelle.
de Bodard also has a very light touch with world building, not in the sense that it's incomplete, but in the sense that there is very little exposition. The result is that it takes well over halfway into the book to understand really key aspects about this world and the characters, and some important points don't come up until almost the end. Towards the back half of the book I found myself really enjoying the world - the impact of Morningstar's disappearance on his house, the Dragon Kingdom and Phillippe's religion, the complexities of angel essence and the power and ruin it could bring - but it just came so late.
Then the plot starts. The author does a really terrible job making any of the characters someone you should care about because the book feels like a series of scenes that were never stitched together properly. We will be at one scene, with one event happening, then we'll move to a different scene where the new action is the only thing the characters think about. There's no bridge between the scenes, no thoughts from the characters about time passing or how their relationship with anyone has changed or how they feel about anything other than what's happening right that instant. At one point our main character, Phillippe, is mentioned to have become friendly with Emmanuelle - a reasonably important side character - but the book had never even shown him meeting Emmanuelle.
de Bodard also has a very light touch with world building, not in the sense that it's incomplete, but in the sense that there is very little exposition. The result is that it takes well over halfway into the book to understand really key aspects about this world and the characters, and some important points don't come up until almost the end. Towards the back half of the book I found myself really enjoying the world - the impact of Morningstar's disappearance on his house, the Dragon Kingdom and Phillippe's religion, the complexities of angel essence and the power and ruin it could bring - but it just came so late.