The Sword and Laser discussion

I felt kinda weird about this book! Lol the setting wasn’t necessarily something I was enjoying. It felt too grim for me. And the first part killed me. I was so bored. But once we got to the second part and the challenge began, it was actually pretty entertaining. I liked all the characters and I was able to remember who was who, which shocked me. And I binge read it because I wanted to know what would happen and had a ton of fun. That all sounds positive right? And it is. But even with all of that, it still isn’t enough to get me to preorder the sequel. I do have positive feelings though when I think back on my experience reading it. Idk. Who can understand my brain? Surely not me.

I too have weird feelings about the book. I read it shortly after it came out and felt weird because I'd seen everyone raving about how fantastic and mindblowing it was but I finished it and just thought "that was fine."

I think a lot of my issue with it was that I never felt like I had a good enough sense of the scale of things. Like I loved the idea of the world and goth space fantasy is literally my ideal, but the worldbuilding felt kind of lacking to me, and I never felt like I knew just HOW important things were. Things were supposed to feel dire, but I never really felt like I knew how dire they really were? Like are our nine goth planets a galactic empire that rule the majority of the known galaxy, or are they literally just a small culture among many other galactic powers that is sorta troublesome. And how big is this war that's supposed to be going on? I have no idea. Maybe I missed some context by listening to it, but I don't feel like I ever got distracted and missed stuff. I just feel like some stuff I wished was there wasn't.

And I never really felt like I got attached enough to characters besides Harrow and Gideon, so when stuff started happening to them I didn't feel all that much? I don't know, it still seems like most people love this book and honestly the very concept of this book should push every single button I have but it just left me feeling like...eh? I haven't preordered the next book either and I'm not sure I will. If it goes on sale on kindle eventually, then maybe I'll buy it then.

Thanks for your review, Priscilla and Emily. I put this on my books to read... but I must be honest, both your reviews have me thinking twice about that now. I have a huge 'to read' list and the books on my list, I honestly intend to get to in my busy life. Currently I rarely read more than a few chapters a night of any book. I used to be the one doing all-nighters for engaging tales. I just have too much going on for that now.
Another thing that you both said in common that interested me....
You spoke of how the detail in the world-building and character development left you wanting. That is a helpful introspective observation! And this is something I struggle with in writing... how much detail is necessary to assist the reader in immersion. There are limits to how many pages some will read! So, as a writer, I feel like I'm on a razor's edge. All the same, as an avid reader, I enjoy the sense of immersion that an author brings to a tale through their detailed descriptions.
Thanks again for your thoughtful descriptions of your experiences in reading this tale.

Emily, I know what you mean about scale. These are supposed to be the heads of the major houses of the empire. I would expect a lot of pomp and heraldry and major political maneuvers. Instead, the author forced it to be a smaller personal affair where only two to three representatives would be allowed, and the empire's homeworld, despite the monks, feels so empty and hollow. Even a small empire should have more of a feeling of population instead of the empty palace we see here. This empire seems dead on arrival, which kind of makes sense since they are all necromancers.

I liked the book and loved the story taking it as it is, an Agatha Christie style mystery. It's not grand at the level of Game of Thrones, but worked for me as it is.

I really liked the book - the tone, the genre-fusion, Gideon as a flawed and unreliable point of view character, the humor, the world building with it's mixture of mundane, fantastic and outright bizarre elements as well as the twists and turns that were all surprising to me.

The only problems I had are probably more on me than Muir, mainly that I just couldn't tell most of the characters apart. I mean, they are all necromancers (and cavaliers) which is a very limited theme and that didn't help. I get that Muir tried to give everyone recognizable character traits, but for me it just wasn't enough (just as I can't really distinguish the Dwarves in The Hobbit).

This also meant I couldn't really try to solve the mystery on my own, as I couldn't keep track of all the people and their relationships ((view spoiler)[although I don't know if it's even possible to be ahead of the story due to all the things we just don't know (hide spoiler)])

The other thing that didn't help was (view spoiler)[that you only very late get to know why Gideon hadn't been killed a long time before the start of the book. And as at that time I didn't know the author, I didn't trust her that this wasn't just was lazy storytelling. I wish that had been done differently, because that would have allowed my to trust the story overall more and maybe had me allowed to catch a few things that were important but that I attributed to laziness on part of Muir. (hide spoiler)]

But overall, it was just such a FUN ride that for me these things are all just minor bumps in the road...

I'm with you Jan, there's some world-building at the end that makes the whole thing much more comprehensible, but I didn't mind just going along for the ride. I suppose if I wasn't enjoying the action, I'd have been disappointed that I didn't understand more about the world as it went on. Richard mentioned Agatha Christie, and I don't think that's unfair. Maybe the book was structured more like a mystery, with reveals at the end, than like SFF, which more often reveals bits of the world at the beginning.

I overall really enjoyed this book! There was just a certain little something missing that would have hooked me more as far as the tension of competing with these other Houses, some of them as allies, but still I consider this a "4.5 star" read - which, since that's not an option, means I gave it 5 stars.

I really did grow to like many of the characters, so I had Feelings about things that happened. With the exception of the shitty teens, I never really cared much about them.

This book reminds me a bit of Red Rising in some ways. Science Fantasy featuring "decadent nobles" with Latin-inspired names, sort of set in space but with the primary setting being on a particular planet, and it looks as though the sequel may have more of a space-at-large setting. I dig it.

Janet wrote: "I put this on my books to read... but I must be honest, both your reviews have me thinking twice about that now."

I think if you read the free Kindle sample you'll be able to tell if you like the tone or not. That's what sold it for me.

But yeah, we don't find out much about the universe. The way I read the ending, it sounded like we'd hear more about the rest of the empire in the next book.

Like Seth and Jan I really found this a fun ride. Which is an interesting thing to find myself saying about a book about necromancers where most of the characters die.