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blainembentley 's review for:
Speaking Bones
by Ken Liu
I have never had such conflicting thoughts on a book or a series as I do for this one. On one hand it was absolutely brilliant, but on the other it was a slog.
With this concluding book, we now have the big picture of the series and it is beautiful. This was a clever and well thought out plot. There were so many jaw dropping moments in this final installment. A lot of these moments tied into earlier books and you can see just exactly how Liu has been crafting this story which was amazing.
There was a lot of work put towards world building. There is a lot of rich lore and history. There were a lot of technological advancements throughout. These advancements felt realistic, the explanations of how the technology felt real. Despite having different resources, the technology made sense for what was available to these characters. I am an engineer and this was so fun to read.
The plot was so clever, it had so much potential. But I did not like how it was presented. The pacing of this book was awful. Every single climatic moment was interrupted multiple times with other POVs. Leaving a climatic moment to move to another POV is often used and when done correctly makes a book a page turner and makes it enjoyable. Where most books succeed and where this one fails is the continuation of the momentum despite the POV change. Everytime we moved POVs in a climatic moment all momentum died. A lot of books keep the momentum by having these POVs all at a climactic moment at the same time. So despite leaving one POV in a cliffhanger moment, I pick up after a cliffhanger moment of another POV, keeping the momentum.
In this book, the POV shifts in a climactic moment typically jumped back in time. There was usually some big reveal that we then had to jump back in time to explain what was going on. Yes it was fun seeing how the technology had advanced, but leaving the middle of a war scene to then spend a large amount of time explaining how the technology was developed and how it works, just didn’t work. It killed the momentum. A lot of these explanations, although thorough and really interesting, were just lore dumps. It was in no way exciting to read. Often these chapters that showed how the technology had been developed were longer than the actual climactic moments. This made the pacing awful to have to deal with. In trying to tie off so many threads and with them being so spread out, this book felt like it had several endings. Not only that, the last 25% of the book was post resolution of these climactic moments. So this ending dragged on and on.
In the notes of this book and the previous book, Liu explains that these last two books were intended to be one book, but had to be split due to the length. He explains that the two books should be seen and read as one book. I do not feel that the length of both books was justified and honestly think this could have been done in one book instead of two. There was a lot of time spent in The Veiled Throne with a particular group of individuals that I would argue could have been left out entirely and nothing would be missed.
There was a specific plot device that had been used throughout this series that I felt was largely forgotten in this book. I can see how someone would argue that it was still going on off screen, but it felt weirdly absent in this book.
I can see why people love this series so much. I do think it is an absolutely brilliant plot, but I do not think the organization and presentation of the material was absolutely awful.