A review by jobinsonlis
A Game of Universe by Eric S. Nylund

3.0

I went back and forth on this one. Because on one hand, the soul-borrowing concept is fantastic and it's a space search for the Holy Grail story, which is exactly the spot I always want to be in. But Nylund kept interrupting my fun with upsetting shit. Germain as a conflicted, tortured assassin is fine, if played-out, and I was fully prepared for the scenes that would show us the horrible events that led him to his life in a murder company. But it's hard to prepare yourself for rape in a book that feels like a side story in the Star Wars universe and once Nylund introduces that aspect of Germain's childhood, he keeps coming back to it, especially right at the end. Personally I wish that he hadn't had that element in the book, especially as explored as it was, because I don't think that it added anything and for me, it really changed the entire tone. I still enjoyed large parts of the book and I was fascinated by the descriptions of how Germain's abilities worked but it gets heavy and that distracts away from all the fun space stuff.