Kane

The prose are truly awful. It reads like YA. Short simple sentences. Big words and complex world building scary.

I think this really quick shalllow story telling just isn't for me. The simplicity means I don't get immersed in the world and characters, and if I'm not immersed I don't care about reading more or finding out how it ends.

_Thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins for this early access eARC to enable this review._

Unfortunately I didn't love this book as much as I thought I would going in to it. Overall it's not a bad book but it is just not for me. The plot was pretty cool but the characters fell flat.

I'm a very character focused reader and I just ultimately didn't care about the characters in this book. Neither the main girl nor any of her classmates really drew me in or made me care about them as more than plot devices. If you asked me to describe any of their unique attributes I probably couldn't. If you asked me to pick a favourite, I had none.

The main thread of the book is around a school for assassin girls/women. Only the strongest can graduate so they all get killed off one by one until three remain. This means there was a looooot of fighting and a lot of backstabbing. I haven't gone back to count exactly how much; but, believe me, there was a lot. The first 25% or so was essentially all fighting - at that point I was wondering if there would be any other scenes. The problem with that? If I don't really care about the characters and if they win or lose then it really detracts from the fight. When so much of the book is focused on this suspense of killing characters off it relies on a certain attachment, which I just never had.

As I mentioned - the plot was actually pretty cool and crafts an interesting world and system. I am not really going to go into it because I consider most of it a spoiler; but, if you are a more plot focused reader or you can vibe with the characters more than me then I think you will love this book. That is why I give it 3 stars - my this has merit but it's not for me rating.

I'm not going to continue this series but I do think it is a good book for others and I hope those people find it and love it.

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.

`The Left Hand of Darkness` was difficult to enjoy in a modern context. Being originally published in 1969 it was obviously at the forefront of science fiction and paved the way for the genre I love today; but, over 50 years later I don't think it holds up as a novel that anyone needs to read, unlike other classic science fiction.

The concepts introduced such as faster than light travel, and futuristic weapons are things we still enjoy in stories today. They are early examples of some exciting new concepts for the time and it was fun to think that they are still speculative concepts half a century later.

The prose and story though are what really let this book down. The prose in particular was VERY simplistic. Very little in the way of any narrative flourish - with most of the story told, not shown, and in very plain and straight forward language. The story itself also being extremely straight forward with very little actually happening in terms of a narrative. All the interest is intended to be derived from the unique new (at the time) concepts introduced but Ursula seems to forget that something actually needs to happen in the story for those concepts to become interesting.

The characters were also extremely uninteresting. As a reader who generally favours character driven narrative I just simply didn't really care about either of the main characters and still after reading don't really feel any attachment, or feel like I really know them at all. Towards the very end - one of the characters is gunned down in a speculated suicide and it had no emotional impact whatsoever.

Overall I can't recommend this book except as a reference to compare modern sci-fi to and understand how it has evolved (or not).