A review by junglezee
Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone

4.0

This is a hella fun book. It reminds me of those summer blockbusters that come out that are super fun, like Detective Pikachu. That movie looked hella fun and enjoyable, and it was. It didn't go for Best Picture Oscars, but it was never meant to. That's what this book was like for me: I knew it wasn't going to be the best literature I'd read all year, but the storyline seemed cool, the title was interesting, and I found myself curious about the cover art, so I dove in (that last note about the cover art – I've read an embarrassing number of books by judging the cover. It's actually not that bad of a strategy!).

The book is a fun experience. The future world that Max Gladstone creates is fun to frolic in! He doesn't shy away from taking us into a wide variety of unique situations and introduces really cool sci-fi dynamics into those situations to create an easily readable hero's tale. I found some of the twists to be mildly predictable, but not to any extent that I was bored or found myself trying to hurry through chapters. There's so many cool things to think about in the Empress of Forever world!

This book largely takes place in space, so, read it if you're down with that and in need of a pretty quick burst into the cool world created by Max Gladstone.

It took me an entire month to read this because I went on a little reading hiatus, but I should be back up to speed now.