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A review by aimiller
Victory's Price by Alexander Freed
challenging
emotional
tense
fast-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
5.0
What a culmination of this trilogy—I kept avoiding this book as I was reading it because it was so tense and I didn’t want to see my good friends the Alphabet Squadron get hurt or make Bad Choices. But it was so good, even if it was so tense I wanted to throw the book across the room.
But god, Freed really dives into the most interesting—and tense, fraught!—questions about a post-Empire world and what it means in material terms to try to build a new political structure on the other side of that. It also asked some really interesting questions about how we might go about repairing from massive harm (though I don’t know that it answered them in hugely satisfactory ways—this book greatest weakness in my opinion is the epilogue, because it left some things feeling too neat after three whole books of deep messiness, but it might serve more of a “and this is the End of the Trilogy” mode, instead of leaving things open.) Especially watching Quell develop her own answers to the problem that Keize seems repeatedly stuck on was very powerful, as what seemed to be a fairly reasonable stance instead became one that looked more and more deranged over time, which I think is a really difficult needle to thread narratively.
Overall, I think this was just a great end to a powerful trilogy, and they might be my favorite books of new canon.
But god, Freed really dives into the most interesting—and tense, fraught!—questions about a post-Empire world and what it means in material terms to try to build a new political structure on the other side of that. It also asked some really interesting questions about how we might go about repairing from massive harm (though I don’t know that it answered them in hugely satisfactory ways—this book greatest weakness in my opinion is the epilogue, because it left some things feeling too neat after three whole books of deep messiness, but it might serve more of a “and this is the End of the Trilogy” mode, instead of leaving things open.) Especially watching Quell develop her own answers to the problem that Keize seems repeatedly stuck on was very powerful, as what seemed to be a fairly reasonable stance instead became one that looked more and more deranged over time, which I think is a really difficult needle to thread narratively.
Overall, I think this was just a great end to a powerful trilogy, and they might be my favorite books of new canon.