A review by kortirion
Schism by Catherine Asaro

3.0

I enjoyed this book, but only when I gave up trying to figure out what most of the proper names referred to. Most of the planet, empire, city, race, and family names were a vast puzzle to me until at least 200 pages into the book. That's a long time to be left in the dark when reading a book that deals at least partly with politics. I was told this was a good place to start reading in Catherine Asaro's Skolian Empire books, but I'm just going to stick with my method of reading series books in the order they were published, regardless of which book comes first chronologically.

I had some problems with how the main character. Namely, who it was. I still don't know. I'm guessing it was Soz, but for all the times the book said she'd gained demerits and was a whirlwind personality who spoke her mind, we didn't really see any of it. When she did exhibit personality, someone always called her on it. A personality like that should be more abrasive and intimidating. People shouldn't react with "Are you always this frank?"

Also, I skimmed the physics stuff. I respect that Asaro has a PhD in physics, but a discussion of quantum mechanics and whatever doesn't belong in a battle sequence.

This review makes it sound like I hated the book. Sigh. I AM planning to read the next book, though.