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A review by pufforrohk
Architects of Memory by Karen Osborne
2.0
Architects of Memory is a promising read, but I found it disappointing in the end.
I'm always looking for space adventures, and the beginning of this novel gave me flashbacks of the first Expanse novels. A crew of a small ship is working together and gets stuck in something way bigger than they expected. Alien technology is also thrown in.
I do not want to give the impression that it's derivative. Corporations control humanity and "indentures" must serve for years before gaining citizenship. While in the Expanse the crew becomes a family, this does not hold true for Architects of Memory, which spends a lot of the book on intra-crew conflicts.
This novel also starts in media res, both from the point of view of the character's life and the global plot. The book is set in the aftermath of a major battle won against the alien Vai. The more you go into the mysteries of the novel, the more you need to understand what happened in the previous years. My issue with this approach is that the author does not give a clear timeline of these events. I struggled to understand the discoveries of the main characters since they had much more information than I did.
I started losing interest in the second half of the novel. The reveals about the Alien motivation and the main antagonist felt cliché. The non-stop action exhausted me, as did the characters shouting at each other without breaks.
This novel is a dark space-operatic thriller with flawed characters and complex backstories, but it's not for me.
I'm always looking for space adventures, and the beginning of this novel gave me flashbacks of the first Expanse novels. A crew of a small ship is working together and gets stuck in something way bigger than they expected. Alien technology is also thrown in.
I do not want to give the impression that it's derivative. Corporations control humanity and "indentures" must serve for years before gaining citizenship. While in the Expanse the crew becomes a family, this does not hold true for Architects of Memory, which spends a lot of the book on intra-crew conflicts.
This novel also starts in media res, both from the point of view of the character's life and the global plot. The book is set in the aftermath of a major battle won against the alien Vai. The more you go into the mysteries of the novel, the more you need to understand what happened in the previous years. My issue with this approach is that the author does not give a clear timeline of these events. I struggled to understand the discoveries of the main characters since they had much more information than I did.
I started losing interest in the second half of the novel. The reveals about the Alien motivation and the main antagonist felt cliché. The non-stop action exhausted me, as did the characters shouting at each other without breaks.
This novel is a dark space-operatic thriller with flawed characters and complex backstories, but it's not for me.