Master of Formalities

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader as part of a quick-takes catch up post. The point is to catch up on my “To Write About” stack—emphasizing pithiness, not thoroughness..
—
Thousands of years in the future, elaborate rules of honor, etiquette, and form have been imposed on the planetary governments to preserve order—even in the midst of war. We're talking rules that Downton Abbey's Carson would find overly elaborate and restrictive.

Two planets have been at war for decades—but things have come to a tipping point. It's up to the two arbiters of these rules on these planets to keep things under control.

This book did something I didn't expect—I would have admitted it was possible, but wouldn't have expected that Scott Meyers and Luke Daniels produced something that left me frequently bored and that I had a hard time connecting with at all. It was clever, but that cleverness strayed into convolutedness in the plot. Good enough to listen to, but by a hair.