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This was mediocre but not terrible novel. It followed every trope of the super hero origin story.

Funny, sad, engaging, sexy, poetry, confusing. This book has it all.

I enjoyed this fantasy and thought it had enough red herrings and surprises to reward. I am somewhat curious about the prior challenges but would think it tedious for this great book to be turned into a series.

Not quite as complete and rich a story as the previous Imperial Radch novels but it is a different novel than those.

This book didn’t really work for me. Neither horror nor science fiction. It didn’t work as a thriller either. It needed more development. Some was there for the lead character but meeting the other characters in training would have provided connection and depth that was wanted.

I enjoyed this novel more than I expected. Dickens writes very impressively, which maybe should not be a surprise but I imagined something more formal and tedious. He writes with a rhythm and some amazing turns of phrases. I am unfamiliar with the speech of the time to understand how much of what seems novel to me is merely the idiom of the time.