A review by wordswritinstarlight
The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu

Did not finish book. Stopped at 45%.

I really, REALLY want to like this book, because the individual elements all work great.  It’s the assembly that’s the problem.  The chapters are incredibly short, averaging about ten pages, and rotate through three (briefly four) points of view.  This isn’t a problem when multiple of the protagonists are in one place, since you get a couple perspectives of one thing and then a break to see what the third person is doing.  But in the second act they’re all in separate places, doing separate things that do not impact each other at all, most of them with extensive down or travel time, and you only spend eight to ten pages with someone before you switch to, essentially, an entirely different book.  It’s driving me insane, and making it impossible to focus on ANY of the plots because the book is bouncing so fast between them.  

It feels overwhelmingly like this is a book about Taishi and Jian, and a novella about Sali exploring the other side of the war, mashed up together without a lot of regard for the fact that those narratives don’t really…improve each other?  They NEED to converge earlier, or have less down time, or not be so married to the POV rotation so that the narrative just outright skips travel chapters.  All three of these plot lines are interesting, but they combine into something that’s less than the sum of its parts.