Reviews and Comments

Funny, sad, engaging, sexy, poetry, confusing. This book has it all.

I enjoyed this fantasy and thought it had enough red herrings and surprises to reward. I am somewhat curious about the prior challenges but would think it tedious for this great book to be turned into a series.

Not quite as complete and rich a story as the previous Imperial Radch novels but it is a different novel than those.

This book didn’t really work for me. Neither horror nor science fiction. It didn’t work as a thriller either. It needed more development. Some was there for the lead character but meeting the other characters in training would have provided connection and depth that was wanted.

I enjoyed this novel more than I expected. Dickens writes very impressively, which maybe should not be a surprise but I imagined something more formal and tedious. He writes with a rhythm and some amazing turns of phrases. I am unfamiliar with the speech of the time to understand how much of what seems novel to me is merely the idiom of the time.

It didn't seem that this book was written with as much attention or focus as the other volumes in the series. I did enjoy it, but was expecting better.

It felt like it took a turn and lost the thread. Or perhaps it was two different books.

Main character becomes almost god-like through the narrative but somehow dwelled in obscurity for years before. Some set piece scenes were out of place and others abbreviated.

At some level the confusion and lies are overwhelming. It definitely doesn't help that the main character is an entitled unrepentant jerk.