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A review by ludovica
Architects of Destiny by A.K. DuBoff
The title of this book is extremely accurate. Reading this really feels like reading about the process of an architect – it’s extremely slow, nothing exciting happens, and in the end everything works out all the time.
I read 50% of this book and then skimmed to 60% before I decided I wouldn’t finish it. It’s just too goddamn boring to deal with the last 40%. Let’s break down some of the sections of this blueprint of boringness, shall we?
1) The hero is as boring as stale bread.
Cris Sietinen is the heir of one of the six big corporations that, together with the ominous ‘Priesthood’ make up the government of the world this story is set in. He is the second-born, but his older brother died, and apparently he felt like his parents are bitter over having him instead of his older brother as their heir, especially because he has telepathic/telekinetic abilities. So far so good. There is a lot of potential for anger and conflict and what do I know here – but the author just doesn’t really do anything with it. Cris knows that everybody else is wrong and that he should be allowed to use his powers. He knows that his parents are wrong. He runs away because he wants to ‘find himself’, something I have literally never heard any 16-year-old say, and of course he knows his way around everywhere pretty much instantly. He never really feels any negative feelings about where his story takes him, and while he does make a nice speech about how the Priesthood shouldn’t rule everybody, he has plenty few conflicted feelings about eventually returning to his family to pick up where he left off. Nothing ever really goes wrong for him. Which brings us to:
2) There are no actual setbacks. Like, at all.
Interesting stories are stories of failures, and of people trying to deal with circumstances that threaten to overpower them. There is nothing of that here. Maybe there’s a vague sense of threat at the beginning, but even that is harmless – so he doesn’t get to train his abilities while he keeps living in luxury, big fucking deal. So he tries to run away, and nothing goes wrong. He gets to the space port with hardly anything even complicating it. He finds a ship that will take him no problem. The people on that ship are nice, hard-working space merchants who don’t deal with illegal shit, great.
And then there’s all these conflict-teases that never really lead to anything worth reading.
Example: Suddenly Cris wakes up and the alarm of the ship is on. He floats through the air, coughs up his last meal, then floats through the ship – and turns out it’s only been a bit of friendly hazing instead of, say, pirates taking over the ship. Then he manages to get himself lost in the seedy part of a bigger space station. He nearly gets sold off into slavery – but nah, he manages to escape, all on his own, with not even a hair out of place. Later he gets attacked by an assassin sent by the Priesthood, who allegedly is the most powerful organization in all the universe, but honestly, a chimp with a gun would have had a better chance at actually killing anyone than that bloke. Even with a blaster-equivalent being fired off in his face, Mighty Cris of course doesn’t get a stretch – instead he activates his super special powers and the assassin runs off like a kicked dog.
3) If the hero is stale bread, the other characters are month-old rice crackers.
Seriously, all the side characters are basically there to transport Cris from point A to B, to act as an info terminal on two legs or to point out to him how special and powerful and unusual he is. Even the guy he spends a year with on board of a cargo ship stays what is basically a cut-out of your average sea dog In Space. Nobody but Cris has any backstory worth mentioning, nobody has any ambitions that don’t revolve around Cris, nobody has any negative feelings towards him.
Snore.
4) This might just as well be a thesis on the interior design of space ports.
About 20% of this book is an info dump delivered by the cardboard cut-outs that one might call side characters, 10% are Cris thinking the obvious or having inner monologues in very distracting and useless italic, and 70% are descriptions of every single goddamn space port and space base and other space space that Cris visits. I literally don’t need to know what color the crossbars at a tiny space port are. Seriously. It’s not that interesting.
5) Antagonist? What Antagonist?
So I guess you could call the Priesthood the antagonist? But not really, because they have ‘plans’ for Cris? Or maybe his father is the antagonist – but he’s literally not showing up anymore after 5% of the book. Or maybe the anti-telepath sentiment of this world is an antagonistic force? Well, could have been if his telepathic/telekinetic powers would not always work out to his advantage. Even when we enter the extremely boring training segments (from the 50 to 60% point) the author doesn’t even give us the curtsy of a school-yard villain or a disapproving mentor. Nah, everybody thinks Cris is just the bee’s knees. And if he tells them he’s not, he’s told that his humility is going to bring him far.
I’m still giving this book two stars because it was not offensive or bad enough to warrant one star. It just was… not really anything.
At the risk of repeating myself:
Snore.
I read 50% of this book and then skimmed to 60% before I decided I wouldn’t finish it. It’s just too goddamn boring to deal with the last 40%. Let’s break down some of the sections of this blueprint of boringness, shall we?
1) The hero is as boring as stale bread.
Cris Sietinen is the heir of one of the six big corporations that, together with the ominous ‘Priesthood’ make up the government of the world this story is set in. He is the second-born, but his older brother died, and apparently he felt like his parents are bitter over having him instead of his older brother as their heir, especially because he has telepathic/telekinetic abilities. So far so good. There is a lot of potential for anger and conflict and what do I know here – but the author just doesn’t really do anything with it. Cris knows that everybody else is wrong and that he should be allowed to use his powers. He knows that his parents are wrong. He runs away because he wants to ‘find himself’, something I have literally never heard any 16-year-old say, and of course he knows his way around everywhere pretty much instantly. He never really feels any negative feelings about where his story takes him, and while he does make a nice speech about how the Priesthood shouldn’t rule everybody, he has plenty few conflicted feelings about eventually returning to his family to pick up where he left off. Nothing ever really goes wrong for him. Which brings us to:
2) There are no actual setbacks. Like, at all.
Interesting stories are stories of failures, and of people trying to deal with circumstances that threaten to overpower them. There is nothing of that here. Maybe there’s a vague sense of threat at the beginning, but even that is harmless – so he doesn’t get to train his abilities while he keeps living in luxury, big fucking deal. So he tries to run away, and nothing goes wrong. He gets to the space port with hardly anything even complicating it. He finds a ship that will take him no problem. The people on that ship are nice, hard-working space merchants who don’t deal with illegal shit, great.
And then there’s all these conflict-teases that never really lead to anything worth reading.
Example: Suddenly Cris wakes up and the alarm of the ship is on. He floats through the air, coughs up his last meal, then floats through the ship – and turns out it’s only been a bit of friendly hazing instead of, say, pirates taking over the ship. Then he manages to get himself lost in the seedy part of a bigger space station. He nearly gets sold off into slavery – but nah, he manages to escape, all on his own, with not even a hair out of place. Later he gets attacked by an assassin sent by the Priesthood, who allegedly is the most powerful organization in all the universe, but honestly, a chimp with a gun would have had a better chance at actually killing anyone than that bloke. Even with a blaster-equivalent being fired off in his face, Mighty Cris of course doesn’t get a stretch – instead he activates his super special powers and the assassin runs off like a kicked dog.
3) If the hero is stale bread, the other characters are month-old rice crackers.
Seriously, all the side characters are basically there to transport Cris from point A to B, to act as an info terminal on two legs or to point out to him how special and powerful and unusual he is. Even the guy he spends a year with on board of a cargo ship stays what is basically a cut-out of your average sea dog In Space. Nobody but Cris has any backstory worth mentioning, nobody has any ambitions that don’t revolve around Cris, nobody has any negative feelings towards him.
Snore.
4) This might just as well be a thesis on the interior design of space ports.
About 20% of this book is an info dump delivered by the cardboard cut-outs that one might call side characters, 10% are Cris thinking the obvious or having inner monologues in very distracting and useless italic, and 70% are descriptions of every single goddamn space port and space base and other space space that Cris visits. I literally don’t need to know what color the crossbars at a tiny space port are. Seriously. It’s not that interesting.
5) Antagonist? What Antagonist?
So I guess you could call the Priesthood the antagonist? But not really, because they have ‘plans’ for Cris? Or maybe his father is the antagonist – but he’s literally not showing up anymore after 5% of the book. Or maybe the anti-telepath sentiment of this world is an antagonistic force? Well, could have been if his telepathic/telekinetic powers would not always work out to his advantage. Even when we enter the extremely boring training segments (from the 50 to 60% point) the author doesn’t even give us the curtsy of a school-yard villain or a disapproving mentor. Nah, everybody thinks Cris is just the bee’s knees. And if he tells them he’s not, he’s told that his humility is going to bring him far.
I’m still giving this book two stars because it was not offensive or bad enough to warrant one star. It just was… not really anything.
At the risk of repeating myself:
Snore.