The House of Shattered Wings

Very interesting world created by Aliette de Bodard with characters that are clear and have enough depth to the main players that makes them interesting. Plot really sucked me and the main point for me is that while this is set on the European continent it brings so much more of the world to play into drive that plot. Well done.

This is, without any doubt, one of the worst things I've ever read. And I've read fics written by obnoxious 12 year olds... I cannot even try to define what was wrong with it, since it was mostly everything. Plot wise it could have been ok, nice idea, but oh the development of it. It made no sense, it was spread too long at times, rushed at others, going on an endless loop of repeating the same sentences again and again. I am not exaggerating, there were sentences, descriptions mostly, that I could recite from heart by the end of the book. Yes, we get Philippe hates houses; Yes, we get Asmodeus smells like oranges and bergamot, etc.

None of the characters were likeable and none of their motives to do things made sense. I still don't understand the necessity of Madeleine in this story. Or, even, Philippe. OR, even, Morningstar, and he was the most likeable character, even if he's not even in the story. And they act so contradictory! I'm a prisoner, but I leave, but I come back, but I leave again, buuuuut then I will come back once more, hating every choice I make and having not even a good reason for why I act like this.

Mental.

I finished it because I try to never abandon a book, but you cannot imagine how hard and infuriating reading this was. The ammount of times I exclaimed ‘ffs' was too high.

Conclusion: No. Never again.

A frustrating read. A decent idea, but, to begin with at least, not that well executed. I found a sense of place lacking. The post war ruins of Paris didn't light up in my head like I'd hoped they might, and the HOuse itself was a missed opportunity - the frequent references to its enormous size set it up as a kind of Gormenghast, a location that could be a character itself, but this never panned out, and we only got a series of corridors and rooms, with no spatial relationship in the text. The actual characters aren't defined enough, and I had to keep flicking back to remind myself who the two characters in a conversation, and their relationship to each other, actually were.
Fairly damning criticisms so far, and yet, and yet....There's something about the book that kept me reading. The climax is genuinely exciting, and what had been a slog for the first few hundred pages turned into a sprint. I'll stick around for the next one.