Usurpation

315 pages

English language

Published 2024 by Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom.

ISBN:: 978-1-250-80918-6

View on OpenLibrary

(2 reviews)

2 editions

Martin reviewed Usurpation by Sue Burke

None

4 stars

This was good, but it felt almost alien in its narrative structure. I doubt this was an intentional choice, although maybe aspects of it were. The afterward mentions needing to tell the stories on an inhuman scale, which does feel like a piece of what I’m talking about. This book also featured both a global pandemic, as well as a totalitarian government, both of which feel a little too real right now. I enjoyed this, but not nearly as much as the first in the series.

enne📚 reviewed Usurpation by Sue Burke

3 stars

This is the third book in Sue Burke's Semiosis trilogy, that follows the events on Earth after some of the rainbow bamboo and other fauna from the planet Pax are brought back.

The previous books worked well for me because they told a story over time from different perspectives. Each segment could stand as its own connected story, and characters didn't have to be fully fleshed out because we were only getting a small slice of them. This book is more compressed in time and so we get a rotation of multiple views from the same characters, bringing back viewpoints from the beginning as a touchpoint at the end. However, there were a number of narrative perspectives that felt like they weren't doing enough narrative or worldbuilding lifting (especially the first couple), and seeing the characters again only made me see how weakly developed they were.

Overall, I enjoyed the …

This is the third book in Sue Burke's Semiosis trilogy, that follows the events on Earth after some of the rainbow bamboo and other fauna from the planet Pax are brought back.

The previous books worked well for me because they told a story over time from different perspectives. Each segment could stand as its own connected story, and characters didn't have to be fully fleshed out because we were only getting a small slice of them. This book is more compressed in time and so we get a rotation of multiple views from the same characters, bringing back viewpoints from the beginning as a touchpoint at the end. However, there were a number of narrative perspectives that felt like they weren't doing enough narrative or worldbuilding lifting (especially the first couple), and seeing the characters again only made me see how weakly developed they were.

Overall, I enjoyed the evolution of the ideas of this series but the execution could have been better.