kaberett | (Reply)

From:

here's what I said on Goodreads about it: This book is 429 pages long and it still feels like a prologue to the book I wanted it to be. I am not interested in listening to a main character with stupid amounts of power vaguely wonder whether he should consider attempting to do something to make the world a better place, and I am just... purely exhausted of speculative fiction worlds built on archaic misogyny. It's a well-written book (four stars! I did like it!) but it kept teasing me with hints that it was going to be about UNIONS and SOCIALISM and FUCKING UP THE STATUS QUO and then the big accomplishment is getting Fantasy Congress to approve a bridge that might mildly inconvenience a particular subset of the upper class? Honestly I kept wanting to shake the main character and yell "DOOOOO SOOOOOMETHIIIIIIING." I was also annoyed by the implication that I was supposed to be impressed by his ~progressive~ views on maybe, after much profound thought regarding the political consequences, possibly entertaining the concept of not forcing women into unwanted marriages. I would much rather have read a book from the perspective of the beleaguered secretary, or the lesbian sea captain, or the priest detective dude, that last of whom seems to be potentially the focus of a sequel? Crossing my fingers, that sounds like extremely my jam. This was not extremely my jam, but I do see the appeal and would absolutely recommend it to people whose tastes in escapist fiction are oriented less toward worldbuilding and more toward character than mine.