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A review by max341q132543253
The Last Emperox by John Scalzi
2.0
Wait, what?
The first two books were light fun and the plot moved fast. Admittedly I didn't care that much about the characters but I appreciated the dialogue and clever intrigue.
Here, the first 100 pages of this 300 page book felt like nothing but recapping and the next 60 still contained a lot. The number of pages left was dwindling fast, mostly gone, and it still felt like the book had barely started. Anything non-recapping was mostly telling-not-showing, with long paragraphs with zero dialogue or sensory immediacy, summarizing a character's boring behaviour over days or weeks (not really clear), often with literal lists that felt like chores to read through.
New plot finally happened in the last third but it was too little, too late. I won't give away the ending but it left me more annoyed than satisfied. Even the author didn't seem to care that much about how things turned out. In the acknowledgements he acknowledged that he rushed the whole book, doing it at the last minute like a teenager. A shame because the first two books were really good. Not sure I'd read more of his work.
The first two books were light fun and the plot moved fast. Admittedly I didn't care that much about the characters but I appreciated the dialogue and clever intrigue.
Here, the first 100 pages of this 300 page book felt like nothing but recapping and the next 60 still contained a lot. The number of pages left was dwindling fast, mostly gone, and it still felt like the book had barely started. Anything non-recapping was mostly telling-not-showing, with long paragraphs with zero dialogue or sensory immediacy, summarizing a character's boring behaviour over days or weeks (not really clear), often with literal lists that felt like chores to read through.
New plot finally happened in the last third but it was too little, too late. I won't give away the ending but it left me more annoyed than satisfied. Even the author didn't seem to care that much about how things turned out. In the acknowledgements he acknowledged that he rushed the whole book, doing it at the last minute like a teenager. A shame because the first two books were really good. Not sure I'd read more of his work.