Reviews and Comments

More misogyny, and a pretty slow story.

I never read this as a kid so I was doing a pre-read before introducing it to my kid. I guess I see some of the magic for a young reader, but the book is culturally dated and misogynistic. Not sure I'll be reading this one to my daughter.

I went in blind on this book after enjoying Babel. It is a quick read. The beginning of the book had me checking online to ensure that it wasn't YA fiction, as it is a traditional military/magic school storyline in the beginning. Its grimdark credentials are earned later in the book as Rin, the main character, experiences greater and greater war time atrocities in a not-so-subtle escalatory writing device. Given her academics, I found Rin to be more naive about ethics and strategy than I would expect, though this was in service of the plot. An important prisoner is freed, and several other actions set up the sequels in a slightly perfunctory manner. I loved the fictionalized world building with close parallels to historic Chinese and Japanese conflict. Overall a refreshing read, but a little tougher at the end than I expected.

A very ambiguous narrative requires some guesswork on the part of the reader, like a little puzzle. I enjoyed the art immensely, but had to read some fan theories to put the story together.

What an enlightening introduction to the Algonquin and Lenape history and myths. I ran across this randomly at the bookstore and was immediately engrossed.

What a slog. I had to push through this one because I’ve heard such great things about the series. The main issue here was that there is absolutely zero attachment to any character. As many have noted, there’s no character development. There are a lot of fun ideas here that do not live up to their potential. I read somewhere that Steven Erickson used his role-playing game universe as a setting for this book. I think the RPG would be more fun. One of these days I’ll work myself up to reading the next book in the series. Fun fact: you can find an annotated version of the first chapter, published on the author’s website; the level of narcissism his own comments are amazing to witness.