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A review by stephanieridiculous
A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine
3.0
I'm not entirely sure about a star rating. I'm hovering somewhere in the 3 to 4 range.
The pros:
-Great characters, specifically Swarm
-Engaging writing style in general
-Fascinating aliens
The cons:
-A lot of repetition. Gripes between characters kept getting rehashed repeatedly, concepts kept getting explained, just lots of hand holding that wasn't necessary
-Our two main characters didn't really do much? I'm not entirely sure how exactly they contributed to the overall plot. They mostly just existed and things happened around them, and there is A LOT of convenient timing, and a very simple resolution needlessly wrapped up in "complex" political machinations
-There wasn't a lot of suspense, or rather the things the suspense was built off of someone else always already knew - including us, the reader.
-Tonal shifts that were not telegraphed or expected. Both within the duology and within this installment. In book 2 we get both graphic sex (that is needlessly referred back to constantly) and body horror. Neither of these things are bad necessarily (although I don't really care for either), but they were so abrupt to me, and so different from the tone of book 1, that it jolted me out of the narrative repeatedly.
The pros:
-Great characters, specifically Swarm
-Engaging writing style in general
-Fascinating aliens
The cons:
-A lot of repetition. Gripes between characters kept getting rehashed repeatedly, concepts kept getting explained, just lots of hand holding that wasn't necessary
-Our two main characters didn't really do much? I'm not entirely sure how exactly they contributed to the overall plot. They mostly just existed and things happened around them, and there is A LOT of convenient timing, and a very simple resolution needlessly wrapped up in "complex" political machinations
-There wasn't a lot of suspense, or rather the things the suspense was built off of someone else always already knew - including us, the reader.
-Tonal shifts that were not telegraphed or expected. Both within the duology and within this installment. In book 2 we get both graphic sex (that is needlessly referred back to constantly) and body horror. Neither of these things are bad necessarily (although I don't really care for either), but they were so abrupt to me, and so different from the tone of book 1, that it jolted me out of the narrative repeatedly.