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zeph1337 's review for:
The Veiled Throne
by Ken Liu
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I am certainly carrying over some of my hype for The Wall of Storms but yeah feels great to continue being engulfed in this world of what is very much on pace to be an all time great series for me.
This book was certainly weaker than its predecessor. I think where this is most apparent is within its plot. I would say it’s even slower paced than The Wall of Storms and kind of lacks these huge moments of emotional impact and/or plot twists that totally elevated the previous book. There are still a bunch of great touching and or shocking moments but I think in this one it comes more from the characters rather than the plot. I think this very much explained from the final two books in reality being one immensely large tome that had to be split in two due to obvious reasons (this book alone is a 1000 pages). So I can't really subtract too much from the score for that.
The character work in this one was amazing again. I especially loved seeing Fara and Kinris' story being developed and can’t wait to see which pivotal roles they are going to play in Speaking Bones. The famous (I think everyone that got interested about the books at least heard about this) cooking competition where those two were majorly involved was super interesting. At first it was like “why did we have to get this plot?” Stakes are so high in the world and we focus on a prestige battle between two restaurants? But it was super neatly written and it will certainly matter in the grand scheme of things at the very least concerning the characters.
Previously established characters take more of a back seat in this one but I didn’t mind that at all as the new cast feels just as compelling as the old one. And of course we still got the occasional mischievous scheming by Jia and the constant bickering of the gods that have been favorite aspects in the previous book as well.
Worldbuilding and writing are still continuing to impress me. This book definitely carried over some of the delightful inventiveness of The Wall of Storms and I already loved those parts in there. Ken Lius writing is lyrical without feeling too complex. I made the comparison with Malazan last time and I'm gonna do it again here. You absolutely can write beautiful prose without using some super obscure word every other paragraph. :)
So yeah, I loved this book again. Slight minus points for the plot being a bit too slow which makes it barely not getting the full 5 stars but as it stands I still liked it more than Grace of Kings which I did have a little bit of trouble getting into. As book 3 and 4 are supposed to be one large tome, I will start with Speaking Bones very shortly.