Joe S

Uneven but Enjoyable

Revisado: 03-12-25

This is a fun read despite its shortcomings. The main character doesn't fall into common stereotypes even while the story around her does. You'll likely figure out most of the plot early on and then wait twenty chapters for the main character to figure it out, too. There is a lot of setup with all the payoff happening quickly. There are also times where relationships become more than they were without explanation. It feels like inconsistencies introduced during revision, but it pulled me out of the story repeatedly. All that said, I enjoyed the read, the setting, and the time invested there.

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Not great. Not bad. A light read for ten hours.

Revisado: 09-24-23

Let's address the elephant in the room. This book was written by the same author as the Bobiverse novels. This book was narrated by the same voice actor who narrates the Bobiverse novels. Change Bill's name to Bob and this is an alternate reality prequel novel, as both characters have the same quirks, syntax, and interests. It can be extremely distracting.

If you haven't read the Bobiverse novels, this will be a light but fun read. Not a lot of depth, but an interesting premise regardless (setting aside the fact that all the main characters have more subject matter experience as undergrads than folks with years under their belts as paid professionals).

If you've read the Bobiverse novels, you'll need to remind yourself often that this is something different. Made all the more difficult by Ray Porter's narration. But if you can do that, you'll find 10 hours of pleasing sci-fi to fill your time with.

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Narration Undermines the Story

Revisado: 06-06-22

I'm not much of a hard science fiction fan. This might have been a hard book for me to like to begin with, but the quality of the narration would undermine the greatest of novels. Samuel does nothing to differentiate characters, making it easy to get lost during dialogue. He offers no emotion, even when the text provides it. For a murder mystery set in space, the story rarely hooks you, and when it does, the narrator is certain to pull that hook out.

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Strong World Building, Weak Storytelling

Revisado: 10-31-20

Shannon creates an interesting world with interesting characters. Summers narrates characters with individuality and substance. But those strengths aren't enough to bring this book together.

The world is well built and the author will not skip an opportunity to stop the story and tell you about it. Cut out the backstory exposition and this novel would be 25% shorter, at least. That writing time may have been better spent on the conflict, as any stakes that might exist for the characters are resolved without much investment by them or the plot. It comes off almost like someone giving a history report on these big dramatic things _they_ read about. By the end of the book, the absence of any genuine stakes made me stop character about the characters or the journeys they were on. I don't think I've ever DNFed a title this close to the end before.

As for Summers' narration, the accents are interesting, though the choices are sometimes a distraction (the enlightened king of the east is a Southern American?). Too often, she fails to lift average writing. Flatly written words become flatly voiced words and the two together seem to emphasize just how flat they are. Then there were the oddly mispronounced words (e.g., heREtic rather than HERetic). Unless this was intentional instruction by the author, I am at a loss as to why it was pronounced this way. If she does not know how it's pronounced, I would have hoped the recording engineer who edited the story did and told someone. (Likewise, I have to imagine Lord Satan is pronounced say-TAN, despite Summers' repeated invocation of the devil.)

All told, this was almost a really good book. I only have 3 hours left, so maybe I'll come back to it, to finish it if nothing else. But given how easily the characters have dealt with the "stakes" of the story, I do not expect much from its conclusion.

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Lots of Weighty Topics Lightly Explored

Revisado: 03-18-19

I had high hopes for this novel. The setting felt fresh and engaging and the author was getting a lot of buzz for her debut. I read some reviews that the three parts of the book read really differently, but I was not prepared for just how different those parts are. It's like a distilled trilogy.

First and foremost, this story is grimdark. I had not heard that before reading and was not prepared for that tone. When the main character says she wants power, I thought it was an interest setup for an exploration of what is power and what costs it accompanies. And the book sort-of addresses that. But not really. It floats on top of it while telling a story of war and genocide.

The Poppy War has a lot of weighty themes but never really plumbs any of them. It presents them, asks you to think on them, and then walks past like a dog distracted by a new squirrel. Its influences are prominent. Others have compared it to The Name of the Wind and there is a moment in the third book that I heard in Jim Gordon's voice from the Dark Knight, she's not the here Nikata deserves. She's the hero Nikata needs!

All told, I feel grimdark is hard to get right, and few manage to do so. Rin began as an interesting character but then used the "we have to, we have no choice!" trope that's so prevalent in CW superhero shows. She's even told how many choices she's had all along and still tries to play the, There's no choice! card. Honestly, I wonder what kind of exploration of its weighty topics this book might have managed if she had made different choices rather than being the same-old super-powered murderer we see in fiction today. In the end, I was underwhelmed and disappointed.

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Exceptionally well-written.

Revisado: 07-13-18

The language craft of this story is of a type we see less often today. The narrator makes the best of this writing to weave a wonderful story.

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