Bastards of Liberty

Holy exposition! Yeah, there are some stylistic issues with the writing that I really struggled with, but conceptually there are some interesting ideas. Overall this was a mixed lot with some very good things and some very bad...

First lets get the cat out of the bag. This book is incredibly exposition heavy. And that exposition is very intrusive, being thrown into conversations in a very mansplaining way on a regular basis. It is also repetitive. The same unsubtle exposition is thrown up multiple times in random conversation. The book felt under edited and the author seemed to be learning as he went on as it did improve through the book (but the tendency never went fully away). Unfortunately it definitely detracted from my enjoyment of the novel.

On the positive side - the conceptual basis for the book is very interesting. Taking the American Revolution as an influence and applying a fantasy skin is something I haven't really seen before. And this book manages to feel very American, even from a cultural perspective, distinctive from the more euro centric classic fantasy stories. Yes we get the classic tropey fantasy races of elves, orcs and dwarves, but they are given a distinctively American twist. The growth of industry, the allusions to slavery and treatment of the natives are all linked in with the fantasy races and how they are treated in the book. The names of places and empires draw heavily on real things, just given a slight twist, tying closely into American history.

This is definitely an interesting setting for a fantasy novel, and whilst I may have struggled with the it stylistically I applaud the conceptual work that went into it.