A review by bex_knighthunterbooks
Shards of Earth by Adrian Tchaikovsky

adventurous fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This is much more conventional space opera than what I've read from this author before. A rag-tag scrapper spaceship gets caught up in events much greater than intended - multi-POV, dual timeline, and epic in scope. There is a lot of action, including space battles, heists and a cat & mouse detective element. This all culminates for me into something that just isn't really my thing. I was interested in the two main perspectives, but beyond them did find myself losing track of the expansive cast. Maybe this was too complicated for me to take in as an audiobook, but I think the bigger issue is that the story just didn't really excite me to keep my attention. The world/galaxy the story is set on is one with many different intelligences and aliens and this adds to the complexity of the story, but we never got to explore them as in the Children of Time series (which I adored). There was a lot of depth to the world building, but I never really got the sense it was there for any reason - I'm not sure what this book was trying to say. When I was listening I was generally enjoying the story, but I just wasn't able to piece together enough of the whole to really feel the tension/mystery elements. Probably just not for me - I don't think I'll continue with this series.