Rai

This was a quick read although nothing special. I was expecting more suspense and maybe a bit more creepiness compared to court-room drama, sleuthing and inconsequential - almost random - KGB old boys. It felt a bit drawn out and slow-paced with no shock reveals to speak of. As the Goodreads ratings say “it was OK”.

What irked me most was that it felt at times as if the author, through these characters, was trying to justify things like toxic masculinity, objectification of women, xenophobia and other such things. That grated on me because not only was it a bit gross, trying to rationalise objectionable behaviour (including the far-right), but also utterly unnecessary; it added nothing to the story so only seemed to be there for the author to moan about ‘political correctness'. While I tried to ignore these sections and get on with the story, it has certainly put me off reading more of Coben's work in the future.

3.5 Stars
I had been expecting, from the blurb, for this to take place at Oomza University but it's mostly focused on Binti's journey to get there, which is eventful and historically important in this universe. Some of the elements felt a little convenient and deus ex machina-esque, which I can forgive as it's only a 96 page novella and going into great detail about the source and significance of some of those elements would take time.

The obvious racism Binti faces is something that we can see around us now, on our Earth, in our time, and for that I feel it's an important read to experience some of the micro-aggressions as Binti does.

It only took me a couple of hours to read and it is well worth the effort. I'll definitely continue the series as Nnedi Okorafor has managed to make Binti a character to invest in despite the short form of the story.

3.5 stars. Slow going, heavy character study.

I had a bit of a struggle with this (my first Hobb read) and unfortunately that's where it losing some star-points. It is very slow paced. Apparently, that's a staple of Hobb, though I didn't know that in advance.

What it is, however, is an excellent character study following Fitz from aged 5 to 17-ish(?) as he grows up the bastard son of a prince, learning the skills and politics to survive as such. I initially was expecting the childhood to just be a flashback but it is the entire book. There were a couple of small continuity issues that bugged me that broke immersion for me but bear in mind I can be quite picky on these things.

I do want to read more of Fitz's life so will continue the series, albeit with a faint hope of a little more action in the sequels.

If you've come for the “lesbian necromancers in space” then, er, readjust your expectations. There's no romantic or sexual involvement between anyone. Sure, Gideon fancies women but at no point does anyone identify themselves by a set sexuality - she could be bi for all we know - and while she sort-of fancies one of the other necromancers (not Harrow) for a while, that's it. She notices when one of the other women is in very flimsy attire but also notices the ‘58 abdominal muscles' of one of the male cavaliers too. Also, Gideon is not a necromancer. Also, they're not really in space, they're on a planet. So forget all the taglines, because they're bullshit.

I liked Gideon as a character but felt like there wasn't enough development of her and Harrow (more in the spoiler section below). Sure, their relationship changed but it made some big leaps as opposed to a steady progression and as such some of the story that relied on their relationship fell a bit flat. The necromancy and sword fights were pretty fun and if there'd been more than 2 or 3 actual fights I might not have felt quite so bored mid-book. I started skim-reading toward the end of Act III through some of it just to get to the next dialogue section as that seemed to be where all the information lay.

One criticism I heard before reading was that it was hard to follow all the names of characters because there were so many ways to refer to the same person, e.g.: Coronabeth Tridentarius was also Corona and ‘the glorious twin' (or something similar). And while ‘the mayonnaise uncle' was an amusing moniker, it was a bit difficult keeping everyone straight in my head and I had to keep referring back to the roster at the start of the book. The names were also a complete pain to try and pronounce correctly and I spent the whole book arguing with my brain and ended up shortening names to make it easier to read. After I finished the story, I found the pronunciation guide right at the back of the book, however, even then, my brain rebels.

One such other naming scheme was that of the Fourth house's obnoxious teens. The awful teens. And so on. Despite the fact Gideon and Harrow are also teenagers. This felt like something a person in their late 30s or up would moan about - teenagers so obnoxiously full of life - not an 18 year old.

———SPOILERS BELOW————-

There was a lot unexplored and unexplained and bits that seemed to contradict other parts of the story; it is mentioned that Gideon survived huffing nerve gas for 10 hours as an infant; she's survived a lot of things that should've killed other people; her parentage is a mystery; and then all of a sudden she's dead at the end of the book. Um, what? Sure I expect those things will be explored in the next book(s) but the ending doesn't exactly encourage me to read those because there's just too many arrows that were let loose all at once and only some hit their mark, the rest are scattered all over the place.

In a review for Harrow the Ninth, I read that Gideon was H's “one true love” and, I'll be honest, that is 100% not what I got from this book. They realise they need each other and rely on each other but “one true love” was not what they were exuding at all. Here, I'll point back to my comment about their relationship development taking some awfully big leaps without any groundwork to justify them.

It took me almost a month to read because of all these little niggles and because Act 3 & 4 were just a bit bleh. The novelty of having Gideon be a foul-mouthed teen using 21st Century language wore off pretty swiftly as I wondered how the heck she was meant to have heard of pizza or mayonnaise while spending her entire life on a dingy rock of a planet where they all live underground and eat gruel and ‘snow leeks'. Hm. It's not quite bad enough to be a 2 star but I was really hoping for better.