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A review by arthurbr
Morning Star by Pierce Brown
3.0
I thought I would love this, and do not get me wrong it's not bad, but it definitely did not live up to my expectations. I will outline some of my cruxes with this book.
1. The pacing felt very off in this book, and it almost seemed that I was stuck at around 50-75% for at least half of my readthrough of this book. The two previous books were page turners, but this book suffered from uneven pacing. Certain sections felt rushed, while others dragged on, which affected the overall cohesion of the story.
2. Many predictable plot points and quite similar story lines being reused over and over again. This is the recurring structure in my eyes: situations start off fine, then turn sour, followed by an inspiring speech, leading to a battle charge, resulting in many deaths, and ultimately, everything becomes dreadful. This cycle repeats itself n times throughout the book.
3. Unreliable narration, which makes sense as a reader but also does not make sense. I get that it is important to keep some/many of the most important plot points under cover to make the twists and turns even more suprising and interesting, but the way it is done makes negative sense. Why must the narration literally lie to the readers in order to cover the turns that will eventually come? Why can we not simply omit certain details rather than have the characters think about how something went wrong when it in fact did not go wrong. This felt so dishonest and made me feel very sour about the ending which I see many other readers having enjoyed a lot.
I do think it is a quite good book, but it is not as good as the two previous books in my eyes, and I feel like the main thing it suffers from is just being too similar and not innovative enough, and the unreliable narrator destroyed my overall view of the book as well.
Edit: I went back to my notes from reading it and I found this one quote that spoke out to me: "Justice isn’t about fixing the past, it’s about fixing the future. We’re not fighting for the dead. We’re fighting for the living. And for those who aren’t yet born."
1. The pacing felt very off in this book, and it almost seemed that I was stuck at around 50-75% for at least half of my readthrough of this book. The two previous books were page turners, but this book suffered from uneven pacing. Certain sections felt rushed, while others dragged on, which affected the overall cohesion of the story.
2. Many predictable plot points and quite similar story lines being reused over and over again. This is the recurring structure in my eyes: situations start off fine, then turn sour, followed by an inspiring speech, leading to a battle charge, resulting in many deaths, and ultimately, everything becomes dreadful. This cycle repeats itself n times throughout the book.
3. Unreliable narration, which makes sense as a reader but also does not make sense. I get that it is important to keep some/many of the most important plot points under cover to make the twists and turns even more suprising and interesting, but the way it is done makes negative sense. Why must the narration literally lie to the readers in order to cover the turns that will eventually come? Why can we not simply omit certain details rather than have the characters think about how something went wrong when it in fact did not go wrong. This felt so dishonest and made me feel very sour about the ending which I see many other readers having enjoyed a lot.
I do think it is a quite good book, but it is not as good as the two previous books in my eyes, and I feel like the main thing it suffers from is just being too similar and not innovative enough, and the unreliable narrator destroyed my overall view of the book as well.
Edit: I went back to my notes from reading it and I found this one quote that spoke out to me: "Justice isn’t about fixing the past, it’s about fixing the future. We’re not fighting for the dead. We’re fighting for the living. And for those who aren’t yet born."