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A review by verkisto
Horizon by Fran Wilde
3.0
I enjoyed Updraft well enough to move on to the second book in the Bone Universe, Cloudbound, but the only reason I moved on to Horizon is because I wanted to see how Wilde drew her story to a close. I wasn't that impressed with Cloudbound, likely because I went from an audiobook to a physical book, and I started seeing more of Wilde's style. She uses a lot of sentence fragments (not as much as Blake Crouch, but still...) in ways that didn't match the mood or tone of the narrative. I can understand using them during action scenes to keep a sense of immediacy in the story, but she drops subjects when writing quiet transitionary scenes, and it took me out of the story too much. She does the same with Horizon.
Also, Wilde shifts her point-of-view characters from book to book. In Updraft, the narrator was Kirit; in Cloudbound, it was Nat; now, she uses three different characters to show the three different parts of the story. I didn't mind the shift so much between books one and two, but it felt inconsistent to then shift to multiple narrators. I can't see any other way she could have written the story without jumping to a third-person narrative, but it still felt weird to make that jump. Plus, in the end, the characters all had the same voice.
I also found it hard to make a strong connection with the characters in the book. I was engaged in the story by the events less than the characters. They didn't come alive to me, and it was hard to really root for or against any character (other than in the broadest sense) because they felt so flat. Even characters who had been established in other books, and with whom I should have already felt a connection, felt distant to me. Major (major) upheavals happened in this book, but it was hard to care about them because I lacked that connection.
Reading the Bone Universe reminded me a bit of reading Max Gladstone's The Craft Sequence: There are some great ideas and some good plots, but in the end, it was just hard for me to care enough about the characters to elevate the books above mediocre. Existing fans, and fans of The Craft Sequence, though, should finish out the series.
Also, Wilde shifts her point-of-view characters from book to book. In Updraft, the narrator was Kirit; in Cloudbound, it was Nat; now, she uses three different characters to show the three different parts of the story. I didn't mind the shift so much between books one and two, but it felt inconsistent to then shift to multiple narrators. I can't see any other way she could have written the story without jumping to a third-person narrative, but it still felt weird to make that jump. Plus, in the end, the characters all had the same voice.
I also found it hard to make a strong connection with the characters in the book. I was engaged in the story by the events less than the characters. They didn't come alive to me, and it was hard to really root for or against any character (other than in the broadest sense) because they felt so flat. Even characters who had been established in other books, and with whom I should have already felt a connection, felt distant to me. Major (major) upheavals happened in this book, but it was hard to care about them because I lacked that connection.
Reading the Bone Universe reminded me a bit of reading Max Gladstone's The Craft Sequence: There are some great ideas and some good plots, but in the end, it was just hard for me to care enough about the characters to elevate the books above mediocre. Existing fans, and fans of The Craft Sequence, though, should finish out the series.