Kane
Thanks to Netgalley and Titan Books for this early access eARC to enable this review.
If you enjoy Becky Chambers books then this is the book for you. It has the same light-hearted spaceship based story vibes as those books, and that is not a bad thing at all. For me personally though - coming from my usual epic space opera leaning, this book felt a little rushed and shallow.
The human characters were fine but not particularly memorable. I can't picture them in my head or really feel what it is like to be them as individuals. The hero felt like a hero, the pirate felt like a pirate, and the politicians felt like politicians; but, none of them really felt like more than their archetypes. The exceptions were the AIs and their physical representations - what was missing from fleshing out the humans went to making sure we had a vivid picture of the ships.
The plot was decent for the word count and left space open for a sequel; but, as formerly mentioned, it did feel quite rushed. You only had a moment to really think about any particular scene and you were onto the next one. The main thing I didn't understand about the plot was the romance. I didn't expect a romance at all and it felt superfluous and that it took up precious pages that could have been dedicated the main story. I think with a book this short you can't really afford to dedicated pages to side-arcs with little impact on the main thread.
In terms of sci-finess - it was definitely set in space and had some cool concepts around technology and FTL but much like the main plot they were only ever explored for a page at a time before it was time to move on. Perhaps sequels can explore the origins of some of these technologies. I desperately want more!
Overall I liked Jitterbug but didn't love it. I'd be inclined to pick up any potential sequels but I'm not waiting expectantly on them. Perhaps with the scene setting out of the way in this first novel Gareth can flesh out characters and plot points more in future books.
Originally posted at canberrabookclub.au.
Thanks to Netgalley and Titan Books for this early access eARC to enable this review.
If you enjoy Becky Chambers books then this is the book for you. It has the same light-hearted spaceship based story vibes as those books, and that is not a bad thing at all. For me personally though - coming from my usual epic space opera leaning, this book felt a little rushed and shallow.
The human characters were fine but not particularly memorable. I can't picture them in my head or really feel what it is like to be them as individuals. The hero felt like a hero, the pirate felt like a pirate, and the politicians felt like politicians; but, none of them really felt like more than their archetypes. The exceptions were the AIs and their physical representations - what was missing from fleshing out the humans went to making sure we had a vivid picture of the ships.
The plot was decent for the word count and left space open for a sequel; but, as formerly mentioned, it did feel quite rushed. You only had a moment to really think about any particular scene and you were onto the next one. The main thing I didn't understand about the plot was the romance. I didn't expect a romance at all and it felt superfluous and that it took up precious pages that could have been dedicated the main story. I think with a book this short you can't really afford to dedicated pages to side-arcs with little impact on the main thread.
In terms of sci-finess - it was definitely set in space and had some cool concepts around technology and FTL but much like the main plot they were only ever explored for a page at a time before it was time to move on. Perhaps sequels can explore the origins of some of these technologies. I desperately want more!
Overall I liked Jitterbug but didn't love it. I'd be inclined to pick up any potential sequels but I'm not waiting expectantly on them. Perhaps with the scene setting out of the way in this first novel Gareth can flesh out characters and plot points more in future books.
Originally posted at canberrabookclub.au.