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lbrunner.net · @lbrunner.net@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Shards of Earth 6/10

Firefly with a touch of Battlestar Galactica and post-WW1 Germany sentiments.



This book is dense, lots of world-building (makes sense for the first novel in a serie), lots of characters (including 4 POV characters!) and while the event of the book happen on the scope of around 2-4 weeks, it feels much longer because of all the flashbacks.



As expected from the author of Children of Time/Ruin, the world-building, science, xenobiology, etc is pretty top-notch. All the factions/races have a distinct feel and appearance. I am not a super big fan of post-apocalyptical settings (even though the author definitely loves them) but I still enjoyed it despite the Firefly's undertones. The Essiel are especially a cool concept (and now I want to learn how they developed to such a galactic power despite their inability to move by themselves! <spoiler>and we just might given Havaer Mundy at the end of the book</spoiler>).



Characters-wise, we got a pretty wide cast but they don't feel extremely unique, e.g. Kris and Solace seems pretty interchangeable a lot of time, they have very similar goals (helping Idris) and very little divergence (Kris will do whatever and Solace just want to get back to Parthenon). On the same note for the POV characters, apart from Havaer (who is such a weird inclusion as he isn't part of the crew), they don't have a distinct feel and apart from having different flashbacks (which always seem to agree, e.g. Idris and Solace in the refugee camp after the Battle of Berlenhof remember the same stuff). However there are a few interesting conflicts, Solace and Olli have some very interesting conversations around <spoiler>disability vs eugenics</spoiler> and the Hivers range from quirky to infuriatingly contrarians. There are a few queer themes: Partheni are all women and explicitly gay or bi and one of the original Intermediaries is non-binary. The Partheni in general raise a lot of questions of the effect of such controlled genomes and environment would have on potentially queer Partheni (and maybe the sequel might give us a better look on that?).



The plot is so dense, I felt like the book ended 2-3 times. Maybe it's due to the sheer amount of events, flashbacks, action scenes or places visited, but I really felt like I was getting literary whiplash a few times. One chapter might cut from one POV character to another, to then a flashback from another POV character. The timeline isn't super difficult to put together, but it's a lot of changes of POV/timeline in short amount of pages.



In any case, it's pretty enjoyable and I would definitely read the sequel.

#book

Published 2021-12-03 21:11 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere