Scan barcode
A review by ejopet
A Red Peace by Spencer Ellsworth
This book was hella fun. Violent and sometimes dark, but fun nonetheless.
The characters are one of the high points. Jaqi is awesome. She's also a type of character that I haven't seen much of, because she's...not very smart. She's brave and worth rooting for, but she'll only think a step ahead. It's refreshing in a genre with a lot of "canny" or analytical protagonists.
The book also manages to have small children as main characters who felt real but weren't annoying, which is hard! I was less interested in Araskar--he knows a lot more of the plot than Jaqi, so his scenes tend to be higher on information, but I always wanted to get back to her. I couldn't connect with his romance subplot--in a novella you can't spend time on everything, and that was one of the things that didn't get elaborated on enough for me.
Most of the book is told through either Jaqi or Araskar's point of view, which I thought worked well. Jaqi especially has a distinctive "slang-y" voice, which makes her come alive. Seeing the same scene from two perspectives keeps the tension high.
The action scenes are particularly well done. They're well described enough to be legible, but the pace never suffers for it.
I did find myself a bit confused about characters' plans at a few points. For example, the scene that ends with Jaqi meeting the kids: Why is Jaqi following Palthaz in the first place? Where does she think he's going, and why would following him help? The scene was obviously written to lead Jaqi to the kids, but it could have been less clumsy about it. There were a couple of other moments where I lost what characters believed and why they were doing what they were doing, though not so much that it hurt my enjoyment.
I do recommend this book--as a novella it's only 200 pages, but it manages to pack fun characters and cool action (and space bugs!) into it. I'll definitely be reading the rest of the series!
The characters are one of the high points. Jaqi is awesome. She's also a type of character that I haven't seen much of, because she's...not very smart. She's brave and worth rooting for, but she'll only think a step ahead. It's refreshing in a genre with a lot of "canny" or analytical protagonists.
The book also manages to have small children as main characters who felt real but weren't annoying, which is hard! I was less interested in Araskar--he knows a lot more of the plot than Jaqi, so his scenes tend to be higher on information, but I always wanted to get back to her. I couldn't connect with his romance subplot--in a novella you can't spend time on everything, and that was one of the things that didn't get elaborated on enough for me.
Most of the book is told through either Jaqi or Araskar's point of view, which I thought worked well. Jaqi especially has a distinctive "slang-y" voice, which makes her come alive. Seeing the same scene from two perspectives keeps the tension high.
The action scenes are particularly well done. They're well described enough to be legible, but the pace never suffers for it.
I did find myself a bit confused about characters' plans at a few points. For example, the scene that ends with Jaqi meeting the kids: Why is Jaqi following Palthaz in the first place? Where does she think he's going, and why would following him help? The scene was obviously written to lead Jaqi to the kids, but it could have been less clumsy about it. There were a couple of other moments where I lost what characters believed and why they were doing what they were doing, though not so much that it hurt my enjoyment.
I do recommend this book--as a novella it's only 200 pages, but it manages to pack fun characters and cool action (and space bugs!) into it. I'll definitely be reading the rest of the series!